Anime The Way-Back Machine

[The Tentacle]

This thread is devoted to anime that we might have seen during our childhood and can't quite remember now.  If you have such a memory post what you can recall here and maybe someone on the OB has seen or heard about it.

Mine comes from.....,well probably before some of you were born.  I remember seeing an anime movie about a pair of chipmunks from the city trying to find their way back to the forest.  I can't recall may details other than their names. The male chipmunk was called Glicko and the female was No-no.  

There was also a movie called Voltus 5 that I remember watching several times.  And the Thunderbirds anime was also being aired at the same time.  I don't remember much about them though.   

[Sangome]

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[color="#9932CC"][font="Microsoft Sans Serif"]This little ditty, as the title screen says, is [i]Samurai Pizza Cats[/i], and possibly the first anime I ever actually saw. It was originally a simple kid's show in Japan, but when it was licensed for release over here [apparently on the heels of the Ninja Turtles movement], Saban was either given a horribly translated script or no script at all. Their solution? To write their own script from the ground up. Nowadays, that would typically be met with furious ire, but back then, no one cared. And even today, it's regarded as actually being vastly [i]superior[/i] to the original Japanese version, with the directors going as far as saying that the original is inferior, and the English dub is "what [they] should have written to begin with".

That entire paragraph up there was written based on what knowledge I have now, many years after having initially seen it [and from looking it up just now to post it here], as I only have the vaguest of vague memories about it. It ran on a local WB! station here when I was around seven years old, and eventually stopped airing around the middle of the year [right in the middle of a two-parter, IIRC]. Although, considering [url=http://bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/wiki/Pok%C3%A9mon_anime]what other series would air on the same station the following year[/url], quietly pulling it may have been for the best. But I digress.

As far as I know, this show got no completed release on VHS or DVD; according to Wikipedia, the most it got were the first 20 episodes released on Japanese VHS, although apparently a DVD set claiming to be the first boxset turned up on Amazon back in '07. I know if I saw this show now, I'd probably appreciate it a lot more than I did when I was a youngin', given the snappy, shameless puns, numerous references to other media, and, of course, a nonexistent fourth wall. I could probably go hawking for episodes on Youtube, but I'd still love to physically own some episodes one of these days, however impossible that may be.[/font][/color]

[Zombie_Nosh]

[quote name='Sangome' date='13 October 2010 - 07:48 AM' timestamp='1286952500' post='701066']
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[color="#9932CC"][font="Microsoft Sans Serif"]This little ditty, as the title screen says, is [i]Samurai Pizza Cats[/i], [/font][/color]
[/quote]

Sweet Zombie Jesus! I had completely forgotten about this. I was going to say something banal like DBZ or something, but I totally remember watching this now. Brilliant!

[The Spectacular Professor]

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[b]Mon Colle Knights[/b] made its way across the pond as part of Saban Entertainment's final death throes, and it's basically the very definition of a gag dub. The basic story goes thusly: Mondo Ooya and Rockna Hiiragi are ordinary elementary school students who, in their off-time, travel to the alternate dimension of Mon World to help Rockna's father, Professor Hiiragi, study the local wildlife and defend it from the evil prince Luwig von Monsterstein Eccentro, who wishes to use the monsters of Mon World to [url="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X8u7px_GzWQ"]take over the world[/url]. Yeah, basic, generic and all too cliché.

The thing that sets [b]Mon Colle Knights[/b] apart from all the other monster collection/battling anime that were all the rage at the time is the fact that this one was pretty clearly meant as a parody. Most of the conventions and settings of shows like it were lampshaded and mocked continuously, and there was always an underlying feel of humor to the whole thing (until around the finale, but even [b]Excel Saga[/b] suffered from that). On top of that, Professor Hiiragi's motivations weren't exactly pure. The guy wanted to study Mon World, collect all the data, and then reveal it all to the public and win lots and lots of awards. Sure, this is a little better than Prince Eccentro's plans, but the fact remains that they're both basically there for selfish reasons. There was also an episode where Mondo and Rockna's teacher somehow stumbled into Mon World and was mistaken for a monster, which was just too funny.

Apparently the dub created a couple of plot holes, but I have a hard time remembering that thanks to all the fun they obviously had lampooning this show in the voice booth. And it's late Saban, so the dub's voice cast is pretty excellent and includes a lot of the [b]Digimon[/b] alumna. Definitely a fun way to waste a kid's time for half an hour on a Saturday morning.[/font]