Go Nagai with his Mazinger Z

Was reading interesting article from an Egyptian online paper on Go Nagai, talking about his anime works made such impact on several (and uncommon) communities in the anime world, including the likes of Middle East and African countries and explains how he got famous.

Here’s the following excerpt of the article.

For my generation, the generation of Mickey Mouse and Tin Tin, MazingerZ and the Japanese cartoon genre of manga, the printed comic cartoons, were something beyond our conception. I had neither understood the cartoons nor sympathised with the characters. For the current generation, however, their creator is a big hero.

Thirty minutes before the talk Go Nagay was to deliver at the Cairo Opera House was due to begin, dozens of young people, most of them are students at the Faculty of Fine Arts, were trying to enter the gate but were held back by security. It was amazing to see how popular this artist is in a culture so far from his own in every way. I made my way into the hall after myself getting into a short clash with the security men, who let me through when they saw my press card.

The lecture was part of the programme in a four-day visit organised by the Higher Institute for Cinema (HIC) in cooperation with the Japanese Foundation in Cairo to host the internationally renowned cartoonist in Cairo.

The visit included a lecture at the Artistic Creativity Centre at the Opera House and an interactive workshop with HIC students on how he designed and created his cartoons. Both the lecture and the workshop included the screening of one of Nagay’s latest episodes of MazingerZ.

“Egypt has been one of the places that I have dreamt of visiting since I was a child. And I am happy to be here tonight, and even happier to discover that my cartoons are famous here too,” Nagay says.

…………………………………………………………………..

The length of the lecture was too short to satisfy the audience. They wanted more interaction with their very own hero. At the press conference held at the Japan Foundation in Downtown Cairo, a more relaxed Nagay received questions from journalists, most of them of the younger generation who appeared to be up to date with the episodes of MazingerZ and Grendizer and were familiar with the most key characters.

Asked about the kind of influences that had shaped his imagination since his youth, Nagay said World War II was the most important and had led him to make a deliberate attempt to show children how awful and destructive wars are through his popular cartoons.

“The mangas are easier to read than long novels, at least for teenagers, and this is one reason why my mangas have become very popular in Japan since World War II.”

Source: Al-Ahram

Click on the above link to read more on the article.

A little over a week ago, in my last post, I mentioned about endeavouring to find this great rare book online since it’s out of publication for the last 11 years.

And by jolly gosh, I found it! There’s someone on Ebay that’s actually selling this out-of-print copy. So I quickly rushed in and ready to make the purchase of USD $22 (excluding shipping cost) rather than bidding. (Okay so I was pretty desparate that I didn’t want to wait for its bidding period of 14 days 55 hours to be over despite there’s hardly anybody bidding for it. But I don’t care! :p).

However, as soon as I tried to purchase it, I was stopped short in the next screen when it asked me to for my ebay account information.  And… I just realised right at that moment I forgot what my password was and I remembered I had trouble registering my Ebay account with them a few days back and I never got it to work properly. So because of this, I ended up struggling for almost 90 minutes of my life trying to create another account. But Ebay refused me to proceed! What on earth was going on here???

Clearly, I was left pretty flustered, confused and a bit frustrated that I couldn’t get my hands on it anymore…. So I hesitantly gave up and try another avenue instead.

Which I did after 20 minutes later…..

I discovered this on Barnes and Nobles.

The other Super Robot Chronicles Book

Okay. It’s a little different to what I originally wanted. Nevertheless, the theme of the book still revolves around Japanese super robots and the robot toys in the 70s and 80s. And after reading its little content summary on Barnes and Noble pages, it’s confirmed that all the super robot series from the early 70s and 80s are included there such as Micronauts, Diaclones and Shogun Warriors. Interesting they mentioned that the authors of the book who are very passionate with Japanese robots, especially in the toy collection space and that one of them worked for a company called ToyBoxDX that specialises in collecting the Japanese toys from previous decades until today. Apparently, they do have a website that comes with blogs as well. Hmmm… Maybe worth to pay a lengthy visit.

Anyway, I purchased the book online, filled in all the details, and have the order processed. Done and dusted. At least it’s better than nothing, right?

The order is expected to arrive within 7-21 days. Its retail price went for USD $18.95. The shipping fee came up as USD $12.95. The total was USD $31.90. So if you translate that in NZ currency terms, I’m expected to pay around 45 bucks, which is okay IMHO. The book comes paperback after all with 250 pages inside. So it’s a good spend with a great service from Barnes and Noble. :)

Now I wonder would it be worthwhile for me to check out Ebay again for that original print?

Source: Barnes And Noble

That’s right. You heard me. To get a job nowadays in Japan for recent graduates, employers must insist that you must have good Gundam modelling skills before they can offer you the job on the paper.

It’s crazy! I couldn’t understand how on earth could they even fanthom a new recruit can only be qualified to fulfill a role if that person has good Gundam-esque modelling skills as part of the psychometric testing?

Is this doable? Can they seriously be rolling out this new approach of candidate screening for any roles’ suitability across any industries of the country? If that’s the case, then we might as well encouraged every student in the whole country to take up part-time Gundam modelling to guarantee their careers as part of the working communities of Japan. This can be anything from

Cosplays

Mum, I want to be advanced weaponry specialist.

Dad, I want to be Gundam undercover agent

to this type of modelling of the odd kind…

Right…. Pink. Definitely a good foundation for aspiring manicurist/dress makers. I wonder where far will they go with this?

Source: CartoonLeap.com

After coming back from my holidays, I’d bet there’s plenty of things happening in the mecha world during my long absence. I was edging to find out how ‘new’ Mazinger Z series is going lately, now they’ve been on air since April this year. Apparently, the studio company, Dynamic Planning, has been pretty busy with selling the hit TV series in CDs, DVDs and Blue ray discs packages, seeing as so many online otaku ecommerce sites like Play-Asia.com and YesAsia.com got their hands on these copies. Several toy lines for series are on sale for quite some time now from the Soul of Chokogin series, just as my last post here.

After bumping into Shin Mazinger’s website (www.shin-mazinger.com), there’s wide white banner at the bottom of the page, saying there’s a great Go Nagai sale going in Shibuya, the fashion shopping capital of Tokyo, Japan. Having it aroused my mecha curiosity, I decided to have a peek for myself…

And sure enough… they got great arrays of Mazinger Z Tees in store.

If you click on this link, you will find there’s a few T-shirt galleries that belong to Go-Nagai’s, and they’re currently selling them at retail price of 6090 yen. Not sure how much is that in US (or NZ dollars), but I bet it’s still a lot, considering how expensive Tokyo is. (I came back from London and boy!! The shopping center over took me a major surprise!! :-/).

Source: Shin-Mazinger.com, Revelations

I’ve been meaning to provide my insight review of Mazinger Z DVD review since I got its DVD copy since June 2009.
For the past 4-5 weeks, after watching its series half-way through, I’d say everything’s a great fascination to me. Nothing short of disappointments to be found, other than the mere fact it’s a mecha show that was released on air more than 30 plus years ago. I still find myself dumbstruck asking this numbing question “Why of all mecha anime they had during the 80s did I not come across this one first before the others?” Clearly, it’s a revolutionary genre which sparked off several chains of super robot shows I watched such as Voltron, Transformers, UFO Robo Grendizer , Danguard Ace, etc.
That’s still a mystery to me why it never broadcasted in my hometown of Malaysia. One day I’ll find out that reason…
But enough about me and quibbling. Onwards to the main task at hand.
My initial thoughts about Mazinger Z were exactly the same as I would think for other mecha anime I watched in the early 80s. They got atypical good-guys-vs-bad-guys element to the plot and it never tires the traditionalists such as myself when watching them over and over again. Good guys with their powered-up set out the mission to protect Earth from evil forces of mechanical monsters or robots that threatens the very existence of peace and tranquility for the planet. Only this time, this one is more refreshingly raw and original.

We start off with our main protagonists here, Kouji Kabuto, who is said to be very hot-blooded, gets very eager to jump into upcoming battles with mechanical monsters, ready to fight them off with everything he’s got in order to save people from the evil clutches of Dr Hell, Kouji arch-nemesis, whose sole ambition is world conquest. We learned that his grandfather was the scientist who used to work well with Dr Hell as colleagues in the archaeological exploration of the ancient ruins of Greece, and they discovered the military secrets of the Greek civilization for keeping invaders at bay using Mycaene giants which are also called mechanical robots. When Dr Hell betrayed the colleagues and his grandfather, Dr Kabuto, he killed everyone except Dr Kabuto, who managed to escape alive by a tail of whisker by jumping on the lone boat and sailing far away from Dr Hell. Dr Hell got away with his evil deeds and Dr Kabuto, from then on, gave his life dedication to this super robot construction project whose purpose is to thwart the evil plans of Dr Hell for good. However, later in the show he died in the early part of the show as Dr Hell’s henchmen successfully disposed of him by blowing up his secret lab in the basement. Kouji witnessed the whole thing and was in complete grief that his grandfather was caught in this heated battle with a very dangerous enemy, and his last words to Kouji was that “It’s a shame I could not see you ride on Mazinger Z after I gasped my last breath”. This is truly sad. This impacts Kouji for the rest of his life and that probably explains why he’s always so hot-headed whenever he hears any mechanical monsters that try to threaten the peace and tranquility of his home country, Japan in every Mazinger Z episode. He never once wanted to step away from the opportunity to fight, especially if it’s justice he seeks. Very common trait of a hero wanting to set things straight with villains that there’s no room for enemies to prosper. And you always get the sense that he will never say a ‘no’ for every challenge Dr Hell wanted to give him relentlessly.

Later on, I learnt more interesting facts about how Kouji tried to pilot his mecha for the first time. And the series dedicated the first 5-10 episodes just to see how he managed to control his robot’s simple movements such as walking, running and landing his rocket punch on the enemy. There were some really funny scenes of this and I didn’t know whether Go Nagai was intently trying hard to infuse the viewers to comprehend the struggles Kouji gets when learning to ride his robot as compared to riding a motorcycle or a car. As if the viewers were ‘educated’ to understand that controlling the car’s movements can never compare to the likes of controlling robots when you’re dealing with 50 different controls to operate. Along the way, we starting to see how Kouji develops friendships with allies he meets along the way and they assisted him to fulfill his objectives as well. In the midst of all this, Kouji gets pretty settled in Dr Yumi’s lab and soon we started to recognize the infamous scene where the pool opens up and Mazinger comes up rising from the pool and Kouji’s hovercraft also known as ‘Pilder’ lands on top of Mazinger Z’s head, acting as Mazinger’s brain (see below).

Friends

As our hero gains confidence in making full use of Mazinger Z’s fighting abilities, so are his new found friends and allies growing their confidence in him defending the earth from evil forces of Dr Hell. We have Professor Yumi and daughter , Sayaka Yumi, who always prepare to give advice to Kouji whenever he’s in any imminent danger, even though at times Kouji appears to be not interested in listening to the things Sayaka says about his reckless and sometimes boastful behaviour which could lead to further troubles ahead, unnecessarily. Sayaka Yumi, like Kouji Kabuto, who also programs her own robot, Aphrodite A, to engage in battle, but lack the necessary firepower in order to sustain any ‘practical’ damage on the enemies. Aphrodite A is useful in several occasions where Kouji/Mazinger Z could not handle things themselves. We have three amazing scientists, best working colleagues of Professor Yumi, who assisted Kouji a lot in his quest for peace and justice, by regularly reviewing, analyzing and enhancing Mazinger Z’s fighting capabilities. They’re really indispensable bunch! Then we have our big former-foe-but-turned-to-a-friend-of-Kabuto-Kouji, Big Boss and his two sidekicks, who respects Kouji a lot when he’s in the battlefield when facing tough opponents. But on the ground level, Boss’s envy on Sayaka’s love interest on Kouji, is really apparent that he would take every step to prove his affections for her is better than Kouji. After all, Kouji did seem at times getting pretty cheeky and arrogant about this achievements with Mazinger Z, Sayaka’s taking the short end of the stick for the credit and Boss did try to take advantage of this so things would come out favourably for him.

Enemies

When there’s hero in need to the rescue, there will certainly be villains that stirred up the troubles. There’s no other greater evil than Dr Hell(first inset), the evil-doer who started this whole world conquest vision (starting from Japan), using the ancient technologies of the Mycanae empire, along with his most loyal subordinates, Baron Ashura(second inset) and Count Brocken(third inset). Together, they will bring a huge force of army that’s very menacing that they can completely dominate the entire world with his fleet of giant robots, if it wasn’t for Mazinger Z( that keeps on thwarting them everytime). Very focused individual, trying to devise several strategic ways to eliminate Kouji, Professor Yumi and Mazinger Z during the series Z, but only to result in failure in misery. Baron Ashura, his most trusted subject, earlier who follows every Dr Hell’s instructions to create destruction and despair amongst citizens of Earth (or Japan in this context) and executes them without question. His loyalty and dedication to his master, Dr Hell is almost admirable that it reminds you how soldiers were at that time WWII occurred, they’re willing to put their lives at stake in order to fulfill their commands of the commanding officer, just as he’s willing to give his life to Dr. Hell. Throughout the series, we see him struggling to defeat Mazinger Z, Baron Ashura was seen humiliated and defeated that we have Count Brocken, who’s surfaced to replace Baron Ashura and Ashura’s seen demoted. Both of them are not getting along together because of this tension for Dr. Hell’s appraisal’s for one’s achievements. Count Brocken, a cyborg with floating head seems to be a very calculative and devious (just like all villains) with a Nazi-complex (the uniform was give away), tries to prove he’s far superior to Ashura when it comes to fighting Mazinger Z with results Ashura struggles to achieve.

Mechanical Beasts

There’s so many mechanical beasts this series introduced (I’m still half way through them) and I think it requires a different post to dedicate this topic. However, if I were to give a review on this, I would say they are very pretty impressive. Especially considering it’s an official fact that this one sets out the standard for all mecha shows to feature new monsters or villains every week, dubbed as ‘monster-of-the-week’. Every mechanical beasts that come out to battle Mazinger comes with any unique abilities to deter Mazinger and eventually destroy him as part of its attempt everything from boomerang sickles, giant monsters inspired from Ancient Greek times, flying monsters to light-saber-enhanced scythe, etc. Here’s a brief list of Mazinger’s villains.

Overall comments

Looking at the whole series so far up to this point, I find it very good and it delivers what a mecha anime ought to be ie weekly monster feature, battle cry weapon commands eg Rocket Punch, male hero gets robot that’s invented by his father scientists, used it to serve the purpose of protecting mankind etc. This ‘formulaic’ approach works very well for Mazinger Z and that probably explains why Go Nagai deserves full credit for this and receives so many honorary awards after so many years in anime business. I highly recommend it to people who’s truly into this subgenre and very passionate about their favourite mecha shows of the past (which Iam) and learn its historical influence which contributes the growing number of mecha/super robot shows in the past 30 years.  I’ll give a rating of 4.5/5.

Wow! This is it! The 2.5 metre-height of Mitsuteru Yokohama’s late Tetsujin 28’s head is now put on a public display. Well sort of, judging by the look of these pictures from CartoonLeap.com

The unveiling sure is a giveaway.  As this suggests the whole Tetsujin 28 construction is currently underway so what better way to generate public interests is to grant them a glimpse view of its incredibly believable head design of Tetsujin 28.

It is a magnificent thing to view. Said to be weighing at least 50 tonnes. Considering all the parts they had to use to make his limbs less than 8 weeks ago, it would make a complete sense how the building engineers have come up with a  figure summed up like that!  The Kobe Project was estimated to be worth around 100 million yen to construct and build and most of these funds come from donations of individual and corporate firms.

It sure has come a long way since they began this project back in June.  But it’s worth the wait to see the finale of everything once its final construction gets done by September!  Fingers-crossed!!

Source: CartoonLeap.com

Ha! Like I wish! Given the fact I couldn’t afford it after looking at these many zeros in its price figure. Seriously, this would be a very nice collection to add, if you’re into hot cars of all sorts. Or in my case… Transformers cars. :)

And what better way to own one is to have this cool looking Transformer action figure that TakaraTomy has been busy working on since Tranformers: ROTF movie release not long ago.

Optimus Prime Alternity

After I read the link from DannyChoo.com and reading the amazing power on the actual car’s specs, I learnt how they did an amazing paint job of reconstructing Optimus Prime from cab-over fire truck into one of the hottest sports car on the planet (Bumble bee is not the only one that gets all the glitz and glamour being a Camero!). The aesthetics, the body parts, the arms, the legs. And especially his distinguishable face. How incredible is that!

Takara Tormy explains the reason for this design is to offer another dimension of the Transformers toyline ‘universe’, if that you may accurately call it. Cause after all, Transformers franchise has gotten several changes and (ironically enough) transformations over the past 2 decades with many versions of production toylines under different names since Transformers G1’s debut in USA and Japan such as the Pretenders and Micromasters. And now Alternity is one of the newer ones they have for a while now.

Apparently, you can purchase these online from HobbyLink.Japan for about 4500 Yen (USD $48.55). And it’s available in two colours, silver and black at the same size. They are other online stores you can get from as well, but of course prices do vary a lot depending on which supplier you’re going with and how good their services are.

Source: Dannychoo.com, Wikipedia.org, HobbyLink.Japan

I  bumped onto this link the other day from someone’s blog (which I couldn’t remember the life out of me) on Mazinger Z.  Basically, it’s one of the collectible toys that’s released by Bandai that conforms with standards of “Soul of Chogokin” disciplines.  I do not know a great deal of what “Soul of Chogokin” is about, but my understanding is (after reading from Collectiondx.com) they’re all the up-market action figures of famous classic robots, normally imbued with very high-durable materials when manufactured, which sets them apart from other ordinary robot toy lines children get to play such Lego’s Bionicle.  These items are targeted for the more mature audiences who are keen to collect them as part of their growing memoriabilia in order to reconnect their former childhood memories of fun they had when watching them.  Much like myself.   (Though I am not really a collector, only because they’re slightly out of my personal budget. For the moment…)

Regardless, I just thought it would be nice to share this with everyone, just to take a glimpse of the incredible designs it’s formed (see below).  Aparrently, according to the link, you can purchase this online for Â¥4907 , saving of 22% discount.  I don’t speak or write Japanese but looking at the store’s link, it’s pretty clear about their layout when they highlighted the slashed price in bold and red. (Go figure!).  It also comes with other accessories that assemble with this unit as well.

Mazing Z Model with its pilot Koji Kabuto, as a model also.

Source: CollectionDX.com, Amiami.com

Mazinger Z.  Yes, the greatest robot anime of all time in Japanese animation industry as anime industry analysts said.  I heard so much about it from many great accolades of fans(old and new) that the show trully defined its own special subgenre of anime , of that we all  now know as ‘Mecha’. The show’s popularity had grown exponentially over the years between 1972-1974  and many children at the time gave incredibly high ratings for it.  The scale of its popularity is almost comparable to likes of the Beatles’ mania that exploded throughout the 70’s!  But at a much smaller scale, matter-of-factly, within the shores and soils  of Japan. But sources gathered that it became a

major hit in Spain and Italy so the show made quite an impact that Mazinger Z is recognized as a symbol of ‘cult’ status just as much as what Beatles did in other specific continents of the world.  Yet, personally I never knew anything about Mazinger until last year when I run into Wikipedia, and looking up for all great super robot shows.  As I read the history on the developments of this genre, I arrived at the conclusion that (hence my post’s title) our infamous anime creator, Go-Nagai, delivered a simple manga produce that turned itself to be the great ‘mother’  of all super robot genre shows in our lifetime so far.  Without it, we would not have seen so many talented anime artists coming out of Japan to produce great mileage of robot series and ever growing fan base of robot anime enthusiasts out there, across the globe.

So what is Mazinger Z, truly?  What is it all about?

Mind you, I never watched this show in my country of Malaysia while growing up, but I distinctly remembered seeing programmes produced by Go Nagai, but it appeared under a different broadcasting agency called Force Five series.  And I saw the opening credits that went by saying ‘Animation created by Go Nagai’ for the shows of Getter Robo(known as Starvengers) and UFO Robo Grendizer (also known as Grandizer). I was deeply shocked about this because we lacked the public information that Go Nagai was truly

the great genius behind these shows and we didn’t have the privilege to watch Mazinger Z which started it all??  It doesn’t make any sense.  How can we supposed to acknowledge his great works of art when the media came and made us to think these programmes were made in USA, but it’s all because of licensing and broadcasting rights USA companies like Force Five Series can take and rebrand the product to get a different name and the kids just watched thinking these are memorable cartoons on Saturday mornings??  I felt my mind’s been plagued by these distortions and I find it sad I only came to know the truth at the later stages of my life.  Tsk…. Tsk….

But still, I’m glad to say even where I’m at in my life now, I finally get to know what Mazinger Z is thanks to the ever-growing presence of internet that lets you connect people in so many ways.  Especially in the mecha community field.  I’m glad this technology has allowed me to seek the bigger and better picture of what mecha anime industry is going about.  I’ve learnt heaps about this in particular.  Go Nagai pioneered the whole mecha genre inside out and that’s how many animators in Japan could produce several, if not all, successful anime programmes of this genre for last 30 years.  His visual concept of a person ‘piloting’ a robot as if he was riding an aeroplane was a genius idea in the making.  The coolest part of his design is that when giant robots are given special commands for attack, the pilot would yell the attack sequence and the robot will launch them.  And suddenly everybody’s gotten completely bonkers over this and soon many robot shows are following the same ‘format’.  Really ingenious and stupendous. So it would be fair for me to acknowledge that his series also sparked another new mecha subgrene, called “Real Robot”.  Go Nagai  was not involved with any of Real Robot developments.  It was one of other famous Japanese mecha artists and producers by the name of Yoshiyuki Tomino, who’s responsible for converting Super Robot mecha genre into Real Robot genre (click here on his Wiki page for more info). Yoshiyuki used to do a lot of previous work on Super Robot genre for several years before he’s decided to make Real Robot a success with his life-long series of Gundam shows.  Officially, he’s the godfather of “Real Robot” since then.  Thanks to ongoing success of several super robot anime series in the early 70s, 80s this part of animation industry enjoyed, Real Robot became a possibility.  You gotta give plenty of credit for Go Nagai how much impact his Mazinger Z did on Tomino’s works, including others.

One other interesting element I find about Mazinger Z is how so many successful super robot series shared the same element of story-telling Go Nagai had for Mazinger Z ie “father-builds-robot-for-son-so-he-can-ride-it-to-save-the-world-from-bad-guys” part to  having every new enemy robot featured on every episode.  Examples for these are Toshi Gordion, Steel Jeeg, Groizer X , Mechander Robo, Invincible Steel Man Daitarn 3, Trider G7 etc.  It’s very refreshing to think back how great every robot anime I watched in those days all shared one common thing.  And that to me that’s the winning formula for making great mecha anime series, all the time.

I’m looking forward to watching the original series from beginning till the end now that I have the copy of its DVD release.