Sunday, February 23, 2020

Shin Super Robot Sunday: Ultra Seven



Eiji Tsuburaya has come up a few times already for his work with Toho Studios as a special effects director with a long and storied career that began in the 1920s. Arguably most famous for his work on the original Godzilla films and his pioneering work in “Suitmation” (the technique of putting an actor in a monster costume and destroying a miniature set), he was a mainstay at Toho during the company's rise in the 50s and 60s. In 1963, he founded his own visual effects studio, Tsuburaya Productions. While still continuing his work with Toho, the new studio would release Ultra Q, a black-and-white 28 episode long horror series in the vein of The Twilight Zone (with a significant presence of monster costumes), which led directly to Ultraman, released that same year.

Ultraman ran for 39 episodes (40 when factoring in a pilot episode) and was in color. Wildly successful, the show featured an extraterrestrial giant merging with a human to save his life, who could then transform into the giant superhero Ultraman to defend Earth from giant monster threats.



In October of 1967, the sequel series to Ultraman would air: Ultra Seven. Originally intended as a standalone show, it was folded into the Ultra series in pre-production and featured suit and monster designs by Tohl/Tohru Narita, who worked with Tsuburaya during the late 60s.



The plot is similar, but different from the original Ultraman. Instead of merging with a human host, this show's Ultraman came to Earth from the Land of Light in Nebula M78 (an actual nebula and part of the Orion constellation) and rescued a guy, then took his form and calling himself “Dan Moroboshi” joined the Ultra Garrison, an organization dedicated to defending the planet from alien invaders as its sixth major member. Using an eyepiece called the Ultra Eye, he can transform into his true form, a 40 meter (131 ft) tall red and silver giant superhero dubbed Ultraseven because he was the unofficial “seventh member” of the Ultra Garrison. Equipped with a staggering array of special attacks and abilities typical for a tokusatsu superhero, the show was an even bigger success than Ultraman. It ran for 49 episodes and featured even better ratings than the previous series. Ultraseven is one of the most popular characters of the entire Ultraman metaseries, and holds a high rank as one of the Ultra Brothers. Dan Moroboshi's actor, Kohji Moritsugu is still active and frequently reprised the role in more recent Ultra shows.

Cool guy status notwithstanding, Ultraseven is like all the other Ultras: a giant dude, not a robot. Unlike the original Ultraman, Ultra Seven introduced giant robots into the mix.



Nurse, or Narse, is a giant robotic space dragon that serves Alien Wild, a collector of human souls. The dragon can transform in a flying saucer form, but was ultimately ripped to pieces by Seven.







Crazygon is an asymmetrical scavenger robot built by the Alien Banda race to collect machinery. In practical terms, the robot rampages around a city and puts cars into its torso with a giant claw arm.






A race of near-humans called the Alien Salome built an imitation robot Ultraseven in their scheme to conquer Earth. Eventually the real Seven would escape captivity and defeat the robot with the help of Agira, a capsule monster ally.





What's a capsule monster? In the show, its a series of three artificial monsters that Seven can summon from a capsule to help him fight. Two of them, Agira and Miclas, are more bestial in form, while Windom is a more obviously robotic creation. Windom was reprogrammed by the Alien Kanan race into fighting Seven before being rescued, and then later fell in another battle. The entire concept of monsters that could be miniaturized in a portable storage device and then deployed to fight on behalf of the owner would be one of the major influences on Pokemon years later.






Lastly, and probably the most iconic of Ultra Seven's giant robots is King Joe. Deployed by the warlike Alien Pedan race in an attempt to conquer Earth, King Joe was deployed as four piloted ships that could combine into a 55 meter (180 ft) tall mecha that trounced Seven in their first fight until it was knocked over and unable to get back up, like a turtle, and transformed into flight mode to get away, like a different turtle, until eventually being defeated by Seven in a harbor. The robot's odd name was in reference to the lead writer of Ultraman and Ultra Seven, Tetsuo Kinjo.



Originally planned as the final Ultra series, Seven's success guaranteed that another show would get made, but it would be several years before another Ultraman series would air.



Next time on Shin Super Robot Sunday: He tried to kill me with a forklift!


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Sunday, February 16, 2020

Shin Super Robot Sunday: King Kong Escapes




The road to 1967's King Kong Escapes is a curious and twisting one. The original 1933 King Kong is a certified masterpiece of special effects and adventure. In the early 1960s, King Kong's original animator, Willis O'Brien, outlined a Kong sequel where the giant ape fights a Frankenstein's Monster in San Francisco. A film producer by the name of John Beck got a scriptwriter, George Worthing Yates, turn it into a script, then shopped it around. Toho Studios bought the script, then had Shinichi Sekizawa (a Toho regular who would write several kaiju films for the studio) re-write the script, and Frankenstein was replaced with Godzilla. Original King Kong co-director Merian C. Cooper evidently tried to sue to stop the production (and felt insulted that Kong would be portrayed by a man in a suit instead of as a stop motion puppet), but the movie went ahead anyway, and 1962's King Kong vs. Godzilla (from director Ishirō Honda and special effects supervisor Eiji Tsuburaya) would become the third entry in the Godzilla franchise, the first in color, and a smashing success that revitalized Godzilla into an entertainment powerhouse.




This begat a 25 episode 1966 television series co-produced by Videocraft (the original name of Rankin/Bass Productions. Yes, the Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer people) and Toei Animation called The King Kong Show, where a friendly Kong teams up with kid hero Bobby Bond, and they have adventures where they thwart the machinations of the evil Dr. Who (no relation).



What matters here is that one of Dr. Who's attempts to defeat King Kong takes the form of Mechani-Kong, a piloted giant robot.




This then leads to the main event of this post: King Kong Escapes. Released in Japan in 1967 and 1968 in the U.S., it was co-produced by Toho and Rankin-Bass, directed by Ishirō Honda with Tsuburaya as special effects supervisor again.


The movie completely eschews the boy adventurer plotline in favor of a more traditional mad scientist kaiju storyline. Dr. Who is the mad scientist in question, who is digging up the highly radioactive Element X at the North Pole and is using the gigantic Mechani-Kong to do the work, but the radiation is too much and the robot Kong breaks down. With his financier Madame Piranha breathing down his neck to get results, Who manages to get to Mondo Island where the real King Kong is chilling out and fighting dinosaurs, and hypnotizes Kong to bring him back to the North Pole to dig up Element X.




Through the intervention of a joint US-Japan task force, the plot is uncovered and King Kong escapes and swims to Japan, where he and the repaired Mechani-Kong 2.0 have a final showdown at the Tokyo Tower while a beautiful young woman's life hangs in the balance because that's what you do with King Kong stories.



The movie version of Mechani-Kong is a great design. Measuring 20 meters (65.62 ft) tall and a solid gunmetal gray instead of brown, this version possesses great strength, a belt of large grenades intended for digging but also useful for destroying other stuff, and bright lights in the head that can either blind or hypnotize the real Kong.


This would be the final King Kong movie project from Toho Studios, but not for a lack of trying. The studio tried to get a remake of either of their King Kong movies off the ground in the 90s, but without the likeness rights it went nowhere. Mechani-Kong would, however, make an appearance in the 1992 manga series Godzilla, King of the Monsters from Kodansya Comics. There, Mechani-Kong teams up with MechaGodzilla in a two on one fight against Godzilla, but both are defeated.




Next time on Shin Super Robot Sunday: Seven, Seven, Seven, Seven.

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Sunday, February 09, 2020

Shin Super Robot Sunday: Giant Robo



Mitsuteru Yokoyama had fantastic success with Tetsujin 28-go, and with the manga and show wrapping up in 1966, a brand new manga series was produced in 1967: Giant Robo. Manga artist Satoru Ozawa (of Blue Submarine No. 6 fame) was a major collaborator on the first parts of the Giant Robo manga.

The story follows young Daisaku Kusama as he gets caught up in the schemes of the villainous organization Big Fire, where he subsequently escapes with a robot designated GR-1, more simply known as Giant Robo. Taking the fight to Big Fire, Daisaku and GR-1 battle other robots like the aquatic GR-2 and airborne GR-3. Notably, the GR-2 robot has an attack where it can fire its fists at an enemy, a milestone in the genre, and the Rocket Punch will become a big deal later on.


Giant Robo's design is evolved from the portly Tetsujin-28, featuring a fitter, more “chiseled” physique, and an Egyptian style head. The Japanese wiki mentions that Ultraman and Daimajin, both from 1966, were major influences on the design. In addition to flight and immense strength, Giant Robo was equipped with more ranged weapons than Tetsujin, including finger guns. Like Tetsujin, Giant Robo requires someone to control it from the outside. To avoid Tetsujin's problem of anyone in possession of the controller being able to operate the robot, Giant Robo is keyed to Daisaku's voice and will only obey him.


Now's a good time to briefly touch on a series that is extremely important to the development of super robots, especially live-action versions: Ultraman. The brainchild of Godzilla creator Eiji Tsuburaya, Ultraman took the concept of monsters running around wrecking miniature sets and applied superheroes to them. The result was 1966's Ultraman, a pseudo-spinoff of weird tales/sci-fi creature feature Ultra Q. Ultraman was a benevolent alien who came to protect the Earth from giant monsters (much like 50's heroes Super Giant and Prince of Space) and was assisted by a support team of heroic humans. Unlike mecha, Ultraman is not a robot but a dude who can grow to giant size to take the monsters on head-on, and the trappings of support teams and alien invasions would play a huge part in the evolution of Mecha. Ultraman also has a staggering number of entries in its series and a deep, deep lore that is outside the scope of this project, but it will touch on it occasionally, and soon.


As for Daimajin, that was a trilogy of period films produced in 1966 by Daiei (the Gamera studio) where a giant stone statue would come to life and wreak havoc on evil warlords and villages.


The manga series was successful enough to warrant a television adaptation, only instead of anime, it would be live-action, and it would shift away from the spy thriller aspects into a spy thriller with alien invasion elements.



Daisaku's plot is mostly the same, only now he joins a law enforcement group called Unicorn in order to fight Big Fire, which is now the brain child of the alien Emperor Guillotine, who naturally intends to conquer Earth. The show ran for 26 episodes from October 1967 to April 1968. Like Tetsujin-28 Go, Giant Robo would also get dubbed and broadcast in America, as Johnny Sokko and his Flying Robot. After an initial broadcast in 1969, the show would be in American syndication into the 1980s. In 1970, a bunch of episodes of Johnny Sokko would be cut together into a TV movie called Voyage into Space. For the US release, Big Fire would be renamed to “The Gargoyle Gang,” along with all the other characters, but the plot is basically the same.

Whereas the ending of the manga is open-ended for further adventures, the show features a pretty definitive conclusion. Emperor Guillotine attempts to use his atomic body to destroy the Earth in final gambit, and Giant Robo defies Daisaku's commands in order to sacrifice himself to fly the emperor into space, where they collide with a meteor and explode.





Its only 1967, and the genre already has its first downer ending to a series. It won't be the last.



Next time on Shin Super Robot Sunday: The Eighth Wonder of the World.

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Sunday, February 02, 2020

Shin Super Robot Sunday: Frankenstein Jr. and the Impossibles



Superheroes were big in 1966. The decade had started out with DC Comics revitalizing their superhero stable with new versions of the Flash, Green Lantern and more. Meanwhile, the publisher formerly known at Timely and Atlas comics renamed itself to Marvel and cemented its own legacy with The Fantastic Four. Batman got a revitalizing shot in the arm with a live-action TV series. The Fantastic Four and Spider-Man would get cartoon shows in 1967, but between then was Hanna-Barbera.

Founded by Tom & Jerry creators William Hanna and Joseph Barbera in 1957 as H-B Enterprises, became Hanna-Barbera Productions Inc. in 1959, and had a knockout success in 1960 with The Flintstones. The studio then cranked out a staggering number of successful (or at least memorable) shows from Yogi Bear to The Jetsons to Jonny Quest.

1966 would see Space Ghost (created by DC Comics veteran Alex Toth), which would usher in a new blast of creativity from Hanna-Barbera with subsequent superhero shows like Birdman and the Galaxy Trio and Mightor. Space Ghost had a solid visual design and mixed super heroics with teen sidekicks, space opera, and a funny animal sidekick, which helped set the formula for the company's more “realistic” shows down the line.





But there was another Hanna-Barbera superhero show that was produced in 1966 and aired on CBS. Sharing a September 10 air date with Space Ghost, Frankenstein Jr. and The Impossibles was a curious double billing of super hero comedy. A total of 18 thirty-minute episodes were produced over two seasons, and the show was split up into two parts.

The Impossibles were a musical trio of musicians inspired by mod fashions and 60s rock and roll that became a trio of superheroes who fought silly villains.



Frankenstein Jr. on the other hand, was the invention of boy scientist Buzz Conroy (and his father Professor Conroy) who controlled a giant, friendly flying robot with an energy ring and together they fought mad scientists and monsters.

That sure sounds an awful lot like 1964's Gigantor, but there are notable differences.



Rather than simply taking cues from Frankenstein, Franky is a giant, friendly looking robot Frankenstein's monster with a domino mask and a cape. Franky also has more than just his fists at his disposal, including a number of useful gadgets.

There's not a whole lot to discuss about the show, considering its overall short episode length. Its cult status ensured occasional the occasional home video release and an appearance in the 2016 crossover comic Future Quest, which was a mashup storyline where numerous Hanna-Barbera heroes like Jonny Quest, Space Ghost, the Herculoids, and Frankenstein Jr. had to team up to stop a villain that threatened the world.

The show IS notable, however, for its cast. Aside from diminutive voice actor Dick Beals (who made a career of voicing kid characters including Buzz on this show) and the Impossibles being voiced by tremendously prolific voice actors Paul Frees, Hal Smith, and Don Messick, the show was a breakout voice acting gig for Frankenstein Jr's voice actor: Ted Cassidy.

Who's Ted Cassidy?


Does this ring any bells?

Already famous as Lurch (and Thing) on The Addams Family (1964-1966), Cassidy's huge size and huge voice made his portrayal as Lurch an icon, but the show ended in 1966, and he became a regular voice actor for Hanna-Barbara throughout the rest of the 60s and 70s (among other acting gigs including several appearances on the original Star Trek) until his untimely death from surgery complications in 1979 at the age of 46.





On the next episode of Shin Super Robot Sunday: Yokoyama returns.


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