Anime World Order Show # 14 – Tim Eldred: VOTOMS scholar, Star Blazers expert, and so much more

This week we depart from the standard show format to conduct an interview with Tim Eldred, who’s been an anime fan for about as long as we’ve been alive. Tim is a huge fan of Space Battleship Yamato (aka Star Blazers) as well as Armored Trooper VOTOMS and Fist of the North Star. In addition, he has written comicbooks and does work in Western animated works such as Teen Titans, MTV’s Spider-Man, and much more.

Full show notes below. Sorry for the delay in getting those up, but the post was made at 3:30 AM and I got about four hours of sleep since I stayed up finishing this to make up for last week’s episode coming out so late.

Part 1 (0:00 – 20:19)
The interview starts off and we talk about how Tim first became interested in Japanese animation back in the early 1980s. The only reason I call this Part 1 is because Tim’s phone–this entire interview was conducted while Tim was in his car, first while he was driving and then while he was parked in his driveway–lost its connection and we had to get him back, so we used that time to take a break. This would not be the only time that we lost the signal, but it is the only time we actually left it in the show.

• Fansview’s Tim Eldred page showing what he looked like six years ago
• Picture of the Sorter in Revolver (is it “the” Sorter or was Sorter his name?)
• The Official Star Blazers website – Tim Eldred is the webmaster of this site
• Space Webzine Yamato – an online version of sorts of the 1983 “Space Fanzine Yamato” fanzine by Jerry Fellows; Tim Eldred didn’t actually do THIS one to my recollection, but it’s a good example of the sort of stuff that was out there
• The Wave Motion Webpage – another great Star Blazers resource; man, this all makes me want to start chanting DESSLOK, DESSLOK DESSLOK…DESSLOK, DESSLOK DESSLOK
• Animania – the anime club which Tim founded decades ago in Michigan that still exists to this day
• Hokuto Renkitouza – still the best Hokuto no Ken / Fist of the North Star website out there after all these years; Daryl’s entire ILOVEKENSHIRO Internet gimmick was based around simply reading information off of this site
• Yahoo group Fist of the North Star Games – some of the most dedicated HnK fans around; join the group and tell them you heard about the group through Daryl Surat
• The Armored Trooper VOTOMS rerelease (the first 3 items are the rerelease; Stage 4 is not yet listed)
• Toonzone interview with Tim regarding the Armored Trooper VOTOMS rerelease

Promo: Weekly Anime Review (20:19 – 20:51)
We probably should have played more promos this episode given the fact that it’s all one giant segment, but we weren’t thinking. Anyway, true to the name, each week (or so) Aaron reviews a different anime title and reads user-submitted reviews as well. C’mon man, when are you going to follow our lead and review Odin like we did in Show #12?! And where’s your ad copy reading of you know what?

Part 2 (20:51 – 1:28:32)
There’s no additional breaks really in this interview since we edit this in teams and all the other technical mishaps were removed so as to provide the illusion of our competance. The interview resumes, discussing the difference between Gundam and VOTOMS, how Tim got into the comicbook and US animation industries, what led to his involvement with Voyager Entertainment (who owns Star Blazers) and Central Park Media (who owns VOTOMS), and what he’s up to now, such as the new Scooby Doo series on Kids’ WB. Does that involve the dreaded Scrappy Doo? Listen and find out!

• IMDB entry for Steve McQueen – go watch Bullitt and The Magnificent Seven if you haven’t already
• ANN’s entry for Ryousuke Takahashi – other than Gasaraki, most of these are worth seeing
• Wikipedia entry for Malibu Comics
• Amazon.com’s listing for Lensman: Galactic Patrol
• The Captain Harlock Archives – by Matt Murray, founder of Corn Pone Flicks; the man’s knowledge of Yamato and Harlock is downright terrifying, but for Pete’s sake, STOP ASKING HIM WHERE TO GET EPISODES OF CAPTAIN HARLOCK
• American Manga: A History of Translation – article from the now-defunct Pulp mentioning Tim Eldred and Studio Go
• Bruce Lewis’ website – Bruce MCs Anime Hell events at cons and draws a mean Heino
• Encodes of every episode of Wing Commander Academy – courtesy of the Wing Commander CIC; still the best Wing Commander resource site around, it’s run by some of the Wing Commander superfans from the glory days of Usenet and IRC like Christopher Reid and Ben Lesnick among others
• Wikipedia entry for Heavy Gear
• PBS’s Dragon Tales webpage – how the heck did we completely forget to ask about the fact that Tim got nominated for an Emmy for his work on this? Sure it was a Daytime Emmy that was shared with several folks, but that’s still more Academy Awards than any of us have ever gotten remotely close to getting! Oh well, at least we got the story behind “Dragon Tales: Too Hot for TV”!
• Official Xiaolin Showdown webpage
• Toonzone’s Teen Titans section containing episode guides
• A Geocities page for the MTV Spider-Man animated series
• Space Battleship Yamato: The Making of an Anime Legend – fantastic documentary created by Tim Eldred
• Star Blazers Rebirth webcomic
• Official Grease Monkey website – you can read the first chapter for free
• Tim’s tribute to the recently deceased Hiroshi Miyagawa, composer of the score for Space Battleship Yamato (and Odin, as discussed in Show # 12)

Next week we’ll just be answering listener email with our special guests, the host(s) of the Anime Pulse podcast. Lots of “what do you think about this anime” stuff, so don’t think we’re slacking off that much even though the reason we’re doing this episode is to catch up!

Slightly inaudible line that Tim said as we were referring to The Nish: “I think they [Yoshinobu Nishizaki and Barry Winston] met because they were in a yacht club together.” I think we just may have pinpointed whose howitzer shells those REALLY belonged to after all.