animation

As I was watching the ‘Pathetic Losers’ edition of American Idol last night, I was hit in the face with a big, fat stereotype. A self-proclaimed ‘otaku’ was auditioning to be part of the apocalypse that is televised pop music, and she was very enthusiastic. And terrible.

There was a time in college where I dabbled in a few different Japanese cartoons, and even enjoyed them. Unfortunately, the company that these habits entertained was less than optimal, and I bowed out before I fell in too deeply. I’ve known plenty of anime enthusiasts, and a good handful of them have been wonderful people – but just as with any hobby, there are very severe stereotypes that follow around those who are intensely interested.

Comic book collectors are all presumably bespectacled and awkward, and either terribly overweight or underweight. Toy collectors lean towards the overweight, balding, and unwashed demographic. Hot Wheels collectors are all middle aged and angry. Of course, these things aren’t true statements – but there are countless stereotypes that come to mind when the word ‘collector’ is mentioned. Hummel figurines, Pez dispensers, miniature gamers – all of these things come with a stereotype that is only marginally true. For a while, I collected anime.

I was initially drawn into anime because many shows actually feature a dominant theme of ‘collecting’, and even had real world artifacts from the show that were collectible. For someone who is inherently drawn to completing sets of things as well as animation, this was a very alluring space for me.

Pokemon’s classic tag line was ‘Gotta Catch ‘Em All!’, and I did. Even though the show was more about making little slave-monsters beat the living hell out of everyone else’s enslaved monsters and somehow attaining your superiority over other slave owners in this fashion than actually collecting monsters, the video games focused more on the ‘collecting’ aspect of Pokemon. The moment that the number of existing Pokemon went from 151 well-defined monsters into a countless number of poorly designed OTHER monsters, I gave it up. I still have a box of Pokemon stuff around here, including a number of plushes, various games, and lots of weird little artifacts from Japan. Collecting monsters was fun. The show, however, always sucked.

The story behind Cardcaptor Sakura held my interest for a while also. In this anime, a girl accidentally releases a whole mess of magical cards-slash-creatures into the world and she needs to go out and find all of these cards before they cause too much havok. Not only were these monsters pretty neat, but the cards themselves featured very nice art nouveau designs. When the show was eventually aired on Saturday mornings in the US, American TV stations edited out all of the pubescent sexual subtext (much of it homosexual) and any of the content that was actually meaningful. I lost track of the show and sold off all of my cards.

While I never intently watched InuYasha, I saw enough mixed in with my [adult swim] watching to know that it was about traversing a weird ancient, magical version of Japan to find a ton of tiny broken crystal shards (most of which were embedded in monsters or otherwise guarded by monstery things) that were dispersed in the series pilot. Again, collecting objects played a vital role in the plot.

Many of these shows are about collecting multiple powerful or magical items, rather than a single talisman, so it’s hard to ignore the idea that ‘collecting’ is a pretty unique aspect of Japanese cartoons. While the US blatantly airs cartoons to sell vehicles and characters from the toy shelves based on a recognition factor, anime creates these fictional talismanic items for the characters and then asks you to go out and buy them for yourself. Which is pretty hardcore – and sometimes, pretty fun.

There aren’t a lot of films that really need to be in a Blu-Ray format. Classics, things with amazing cinematography, things that can be considered art, things with a considerable attention to detail. These are the things that benefit from an intense amount of clarity – and for the love of god, nothing with Vince Vaughn or Sarah Jessica Parker ever needs to be seen with any modicum of clarity. I intentionally poke myself in the eye if I accidentally see them on TV. It’s for my own survival.

I’m still being sold on the merits of Blu-Ray over my handsome DVD collection, and while the DVD medium will likely be hanging around for at least another decade, I’m slowly collecting things that really deserve to be seen in excruciating clarity. The list is small, and the films of Pixar figure heavily into this list. In fact, the only three Blu-Rays that I own are Disney films.

Disney and Pixar recently released Monsters Inc. and Up on Blu-Ray for the first time. Both films also have DVD editions which were published, so every type of physical modern media is covered. But this is what I absolutely love about Disney’s DVD releases, and how friendly they are to collectors who are as uncertain of new media forms as I am : the Blu-Ray editions of both films also include DVD copies in the same case, as well as a digital disc for use on an iPod or other small-screen device. You’re covered in every possible aspect. I only need one, but it’s good to be covered on all fronts.

Which is really unprecedented. What’s even more incredible about collecting these is that these 4-disc sets are set to retail around  $40 each, but can often be purchased brand new for $20 or under, which is effectively the same price as buying one new DVD anyhow. The choice is made for you. This is the ultimate in collector friendliness.

While the Blu-Ray discs include a huge array of extra bonus features, the packaging fails to describe precisely what’s included on the single DVD disc as extras. Rest assured that everything that’s described as being on the first Blu-Ray disc is included on the DVD also. In the case of Monsters Inc., all of the original bonuses are listed as included.

So, this blog isn’t to deliver film critiques, but rather comment on the collectability of various items throughout history and make you aware of their existence, and these things may just happen to be films. Allow me to digress for one moment into a small film critique : Up is probably one of the most beautiful films I’ve ever seen. It’s heartbreaking, uplifting, moving, hilarious, and such a visceral experience that I fully expect it to win multiple awards whenever they give out those things. As someone who has had a hard time coping with a lot of loss at once, this film was exactly what I needed to get back on my feet. It’s a PG film, but the depth is amazing. That’s all I’m going to say about that.

In terms of collecting movies, Pixar fulfills every criteria I described in the first paragraph. They’re worth having in the best possible format. There’s a real stigma against cartoons that should be lifted here, because while animated, they’re not ‘cartoons’. They’re films. They explore the fantastic in an innovative way, but they’re definitely films – in the best possible way.

I have made absolutely no secret of my gushing, nerdly adoration of the Justice League animated series. Repeatedly. To the point of annoying the bejesus out of everyone here, no doubt. In short – it’s the greatest thing to happen to cartoons in, well, forever.

Building upon the epic stylings of the Batman and Superman animated series (masterpieces both), the Justice League animated series took all of this and added in just about everyone in the DC Universe. It brought obscure characters to the forefront of battles, threw in mentions of just about everyone else, spawned the most extensive comic-based action figure line ever, and really told meaningful, smart stories. So smart, in fact, that episodes aired in prime time and in a letterboxed format. That’s the kind of ‘classy’ we’re talking here. It’s rare to encounter a cartoon that can be defined as ‘powerful’, but this is one.

And I have to be completely honest here – I always cry like a baby during the episode ‘Epilogue’. Not only does it depict the perfect Batman, but it’s one of the best five television moments ever created.

This is not to say that the series didn’t have a few clunkers. Any show that depicts a ‘war world’ usually puts me to sleep, but the rest of the series more than makes up for it. Episodes featuring Batman singing, a Wonder Woman pig, and an episode where the JL is turned into kids that actually doesn’t suck all add up to a great experience. The series even manages to tie in the largely forgettable Batman Beyond series and give it some relevance to the bigger narrative scheme.

Justice League : The Complete Series, handsomely encased in a tin container, includes every episode from Justice League (2001 – 2004) and the follow-up series, Justice League Unlimited (2004 – 2006), despite just being called ‘Justice League’. This includes 91 episodes over 14 discs – and packaged in a much narrower set than all four previous DVD sets. These DVDs reproduce all of the bonus features that were originally included in the originals, except for ‘And Justice For All’, a mini-documentary about the transition between the two related series. This is replaced by a completely new documentary called ‘Unlimited Reserve’, which covers a lot of the same ideas anyhow. Even the images on the DVDs themselves are identical to the original releases, so you’re not missing any detail, really.

This whole set, which spans an insane 2062 minutes (which I include because the box says so, despite being a tremendously impractical way to measure time), can be purchased for around 70 bucks – less than half of what the original four sets would set you back.

It’s probably the best investment in an animated series you could make today, because they’re pretty endlessly rewatchable, have some amazing voice talent (seriously, Scrubs’ Dr. Cox as The Atom!), and hell, they’re just really good. It’s nice to see them all so respectfully gathered into one mega-set, especially because they’re so sequential and relevant to each other. Plus, as a 28 year old male with cartoons on your bedroom shelf, having them in a tin is slightly less repellant to the opposite sex.

There’s really no better way to describe the Plastic Man cartoon from 1979 than to give a brief plot synopsis of one particularly memorable scene` :

Plastic Man and his two completely hapless, powerless sidekicks are launched out of torpedo tubes into the undersea depths by a hyperintelligent pirate scallop who calls himself ‘The Clam’ (because scallops were more fun to draw, I guess), and are immediately caught by a giant squid. Because Plastic Man had just been sprayed by a plastic hardening spray, he is powerless – though all three characters can talk freely underwater and seem to be in no danger of drowning. Suddenly, the blonde girl remembers that she has a bottle of hot sauce in her shoe, which she extends Inspector Gadget-style to Plastic Man, who then drinks it with a straw (still underwater). This somehow negates the effects of the hardening spray completely and they are all rescued.

When you get this wacky, you’re not even talking about charming Silver Age weirdness anymore. You’re talking about writers who threw darts at index cards and grocery fliers and just wrote what stuck. Hanna Barbera is guilty of producing some exceptionally schizophrenic cartoons during their lifetime, but this is probably the most egregious I’ve ever witnessed – and I recall watching this at 6 AM when I was 5 years old and a very early riser.

To the best of my knowledge, Plastic Man’s criminal history or source of his powers isn’t explored, nor is his connection to the rest to the DC Comics universe. Instead, he’s saddled with a girl named Penny who is constantly fawning over him (who he later has a baby with), and a Hawaiian guy named Hula-Hula who can’t make a single statement without throwing the word ‘pineapple’ into it at random. Honestly, it’s borderline racist, but the whole cartoon is an amazing surrealist package of what-the-hell.

The villains are hilariously bizarre, even though they’re rarely funny themselves. Disco Mummy, Half-Ape (who is half man, half ape split perfectly down the middle), and a gang of tiny gangsters are just a few of the insane bad guys that Plastic Man battles against, and which would be perfect fodder for a modern revisitation of the series.

But wait : they produced a pilot for just such a thing in 2006. It’s completely ‘Freakazoid’ meets ‘Ren and Stimpy’, and just the kind of kinetic action that Plastic Man needs. It’s included here, but it’s obvious why it fell flat, despite the even more obvious potential for being something greater. Note that the bonus features are on discs one and two, and not all on disc four as the DVD notes describe.

It’s absolutely a nice set, but calling it ‘complete’ is a misnomer, as there are plenty of later episodes with the Plastic Man family that are left out. If you know your late-70s Hanna Barbera cartoons, you know what to expect – gaping plot holes, fuzzy animation, and general nonsense. And that’s probably exactly why you like them to begin with. The set can be purchased for around $30.

My Saturday mornings are doing everything they can to draw me back in.

Those were mornings of pancakes and Count Chocula (which did not happen simultaneously until I could make my own dietary choices), and hours of staring into the box that would mold me into the slightly deranged, completely harmless human that I am today, painting alarmingly realistic versions of Popeye and with a heart full of robots.

This month sees the release of a ton of great cartoons from the past 50 years, all very much connected and all important to the very evolution of the animated art form. They’re also all continuations of series I’ve gushed about here before, and thus, vital steps towards completing my sacred quest of finding every meaningful childhood cartoon and never leaving my warm bubble of familiarity. Made of couch cushions and my old Super Mario Bros. towel.

Let’s go in chronological order, by way of airdate. First, we have the second volume of Gigantor, which completes the entire 52 episode run by providing the final 26 episodes. With the upcoming release of the animated Astro Boy movie, this has never been more relevant – and as far as animated robots go, the barrel-chested, rocket-packed, remote-controlled Gigantor is one of my favorites, if only for aesthetic reasons. A bulbous, giant, metal man with spiked wrists and a gladitorial-helmet shaped head is just the definition of what robots should be.

E1 Entertainment does an awesome job, once again, with packaging up this series from 1964. The four discs are numbered with respect to the first set, labeled 5 through 8, and all housed in a very handsome fold-out cardboard case. The companion guide is the most excellent part of the collection, and something that so many DVD sets neglect to include. It describes the titles and plot points of every episode included, and groups them with the storyline they belong in, making it easy to follow along. Top this off with a vintage Gigantor ad that ran in newspapers and it’s a perfect package.

In the bonus features, Fred Ladd returns to discuss his role in bringing Gigantor into the US. There’s also a photo gallery of (now deceased) Gigantor creator Mitsutero Yokoyama, who totally quit his job at a bank because he didn’t have enough time to draw. That man is someone to model my own life after. Finally, issues 7 through 12 of the more recent Gigantor comic book are included on the DVD. The limited animation, the warm greys, the neat bad guys and great, classic robots make this complete collection a very awesome thing, and they’re given a great deal of respect. We’ve all seen dollar store DVDs of old cartoons that have lapsed from copyright, so seeing this set treated so well is exciting.

Twenty years later, in 1984, the popularity of Gigantor and the whole robot genre would eventually coalesce into The Transformers, proving the timelessness of robots, and especially robot toys. In this spirit, we have Transformers : Season Two, Volume One released this month from Shout! Factory, who once again knock packaging out of the park.

Once the Transformers had latched their metal hooks into the collective psyches of young boys everywhere with the first season, the series saw a change. To say that it ‘fell victim to’ the motivations behind Saturday morning cartoons of the ’80s would seem to imply that the animation suffered, but that’s not the case. The show was picked up for syndication and the number of episodes had to be increased to 49 per season, but because of the nature of syndication, the clearly linear storylines were abandoned for a more one-shot kind of attitude to the stories. A whole mess of additional characters were tossed in without any real explanation, but very obviously to provide a market for toys that Hasbro wanted to release. It’s this kind of business-centric mindset that dominated a majority (if not all) of these 1980s cartoons, from Snare-Arm Swamp Thing action figures to GI Joe vehicles that looked like giant toys, because they were designed as toys before they ever had a purpose in the plot of the show.

It’s important to bear in mind that these ARE cartoons, and not things of gripping importance, and the madness is actually quite embraceable. A little wriggly, but embraceable. Season 2.1 includes 28 episodes across four discs, in two plastic cases packed in a slipcase, and with a great episode guide also included. Just like the release of the first season, the DVD set endeavors to replace all of the missing clips that were cut from previous DVDs, restoring the DVDs to exactly what we saw on TV, making this the definitive edition of the First Generation shows. After season two completed, the Transformers Movie would be released, setting the stage for even larger changes in the Transformers universe.

Let’s fast forward to 1994 to another team of heroes. We’re halfway through the run of the popular X-Men animated show, which drew its stories directly from the comics, with suitable modifications for TV. Still, the tales told were fairly ambitious, with a good deal of them spanning four or five episodes – the equivalent of a long animated movie, and many more needing at least two episodes to be told. These two DVD sets, comprised of two DVDs each (but sold separately), contain the 29 more episodes of the 76-episode series, leaving us at episode 62.

While these two volumes are much more nicely packaged than the first two (with holographic slipcases and the works), this is where the episode numbering gets incredibly confusing. Like, DaVinci code confusing. This is in no small part to episodes airing completely out of order due to being pre-empted from their original air times, finding a weekday air date, and leaving some even airing in the middle of a completely different season – despite being highly sequential! Kids were handed episodes full of Cyclops mourning the death of Jean Grey in the middle of completely different adventures, two years later, and this was due to problems with the animation that was produced. Because of this, it’s impossible to really package these as seasons, so these sets begin during the third season, and cut off somewhere in the middle of the fourth, packaged according to the original air date – no matter how screwed up it was.  What’s important is that we eventually score every episode. Wikipedia can help us reassemble them in the right order later.

It’s no secret that the X-Men comics of the 90s were an incomprehensible mess of time travel conundrums that resulted in Cyclops being his own step-sister, crossovers with other comic books, the meaninglessness of comic book ‘death’ becoming a cliché, and writing that assumed way too much the the readers ability to give a damn after a while. I kinda see these cartoons as a succinct collection of footnotes to that garbled period that existed before the X-Men comics started getting really accessible with Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely, much later. These DVDs include The Dark Phoenix Saga that every Marvel fan knows, trips into the Savage Land, and even obscure characters like Silver Samurai and Leech. Not unlike the sudden arrival of Transformers characters, the X-Men action figure line of the 1990s thrived on these otherwise forgettable characters popping up into the animated stories, so I don’t doubt the intentions of any of this.

While I wish that the first two volumes also had shiny slipcases that remind me of the Marvel trading cards of the same era (or hey, even a few reprinted trading cards themselves) for some consistency on the shelf, these DVD sets (although bare bones and without guides or bonus features) are a great addition to reclaiming an entire Saturday’s worth of toons. One more disc and we should be set with the entire collection!

With the original Plastic Man cartoon coming out next month, I’m pretty much just waiting for Earthworm Jim or the final episodes of The Tick to show up. Great DVDs all around, and if I hide them from potential girlfriends, I should be okay.