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On the subject of things that a few years ago were impossible to find but can now be easily acquired via BitTorrent, in part 3 of Show 85 Gerald reviews Bobby’s Girl, a forgotten classic of the 1980s. Fairly light on dialogue and somewhat experimental in its overall approach, it encapsulates a great number of different animation styles within its fairly short running time.
Great review Gerald!
I have never seen Bobby’s Girl (or even heard of it until now…) but now I will definitely be on the look out for it!
Actually, a little off-topic but this review actually reminded me of another anime that came out many moons ago which also featured men on motorbikes. That show was called ‘Bomber Bikers of Shonan’ (or ‘Shonan Bakusozoku’ in Japanese). I was wondering if anybody at AWO had ever seen these OAVs or knew much about them? I think the first one was released in the west but I don’t know about the rest of the OAVs…
Anybody know what I’m talking about?
R.I.P. Imagi Studios. I don’t think we’ll be seeing that Gatchaman movie any time soon:
http://www.toonzone.net/news/articles/32660/imagi-animation-studios-shuts-down
I’ve seen Bobby’s Girl, though oddly every time I some how comes up in conversation with my one friend he thinks it’s absolutely terrible because that is what he has been told. I rather liked it as a mood piece and I really liked the way some of the scenes were animated and while I can see how it wouldn’t hold a lot of people’s attention I don’t see how someone thought it was so terrible they had to tell others that.
I actually have the one video of that, which was released over here. What was released over here was just a one shot video, but I understand that the original show was much longer. I know Animeigo was looking in to releasing it based upon the sales of the video, and, as you can see, didn’t do too well.
Right with you on your confession there, G. Continuing to dig into the anime well year after year keeps you honest and humble. Every time you think you’ve hit bottom, the ground opens up beneath your feet and you drop into yet another pit of mystery. Being reminded of how much you DON’T know is a healthy lesson.
Wow, that was pretty good.
I saw it last night and thought it something well done for being short. You are right, the animation was amazing! I’ll have to say that I think it was ahead of it’s time and then again not really. To me, it was a work of art that people took the time to make and was done very well. If it wasn’t for budget constraints and time constraints, stuff like this can be made more often.
The story was predictable, or at least to me I was like “Yea, something bad might happen at the end,” but to me it fits the story. I do think it is something you can show to other people just to sit down and enjoy without any thought or going in very deep. Plus, since i took a year studying graphic design and illustration at college, this would be something to show to a class just to see it in an artistic way.
It boils down to this, why can’t anime be more like this?
One of the reasons why Bobby’s Girl had such spectacular animation is because Koji Morimoto (of Studio 4C fame) was one of the lead animators on the movie. The man is unbelievably talented, and criminally underrated.
Thank you for reviewing this, and thank you to Anime-Classic (or perhaps the To-Y Restoration Committee?) for subbing it! I would love to see more reviews like this in the future; perhaps some reviews of To-Y and Urban Square?
Not to get off topic, but I’m going to go off topic. I’d like to kindly echo the words of Daryl from episode #66’s show notes: “Perhaps then we’ll finally get the rest of Cyborg 009! REMEMBER THAT ONE, SONY?! WHERE’S THE REST OF OUR UNCUT CYBORG 009 HUH?” You filthy rat bastards! Nothing makes me happier than watching the first 8 episodes on dvd uncut and unedited then drinking a bottle of scotch and trying to imagine the glorious world where you could finish episode 8 and move onto episode 9. What a nice world that must be. *gives Columbia/TriStar and Avex the finger* I hope you can see that you bastards, because I’m doing it as hard as I can! – Anthony in Tampa
Trying out the new comment form. Took a while to get the time to catch up on the newer podcasts, but glad I did.
Thumbs up to Gerald for this one. Now you get a bit of the feeling we did back when this stuff was still fairly new – standing on the streetcorners and yelling to whoever would listen. As Tim said, there’s always something to find that few have seen. For me, this was one. As just about all the larger clubs did, we got “Kamui no Ken,” and showed the hell out of it wherever we could. Not so, this one. I’d heard of it, but never could track down anyone who had a copy. Still haven’t seen it. Great story with J-S Frasier, btw.
As for “Violence Jack,” the “Mad Max” films were mainly Australian efforts. The Aussies could get away with such things. There’s a pretty good reason there weren’t a whole lot films/TV shows of that type from this side of the Pacific during the late ’60s/early ’70s – it was all too real. No one wanted to “have fun” with the concept when Vietnam was taking lives and Nixon was in the White House and we were still having lessons about how to duck under our school desks in case of alarms. It took risk-takers to get stuff like “Fail Safe” and “Dr. Strangelove” made in the early days, and even braver souls like Harlan Ellison to give us things like “A Boy and His Dog” when times were especially rough. Films like “Damnation Alley,” bombed. We just didn’t want to go there. It was just too real.
Damn, now I need a drink.
RWG (to never having to duck under a desk ever again)
Oh yea, I remember when South Park tried the whole “Duck and Cover” with volcano’s… I don’t remember it going so well LOL.
Oh yea RWG, I actually read that piece when you showed Wicked City on your blog. God, things like that is something I would love to got back in time to go see and be a part of. Today it’s “Oh yea, I saw that on the internet already.” I guess when all you guys had was Trisha Leudox doing the AniMag stuff back in the day for anime as your only source of info (I actually got her to sign some old Animerica issues and talked to her for a bit at Animazement 2009. I told her I got an old AniMag issue with Zeta Gundam on it was basically from what she told me, interpreted what she could from the show in raw form and translate that into the issues of AniMag, and this was 15 some years before the DVD’s ever made it to America, WOW) and whatever came out that you didn’t know about first hand was something to brag about till everyone caught on.
What’s your preference for drinking, I happen to like Bud Light and Sake (not in that order… or mixed).
Well, the “Wicked City” thing wasn’t all that much fun at the time. At the time, it was more like “Aw, geez, I hope no one from the con staff walks by.” OTOH, I guess it would’ve been kind of fun to watch someone fight that crowd in order to turn the damn thing off.
Hell, back in those days, we didn’t even have Animag. It was just two-generation photocopied synopses of Zeta Gundam episodes, with two lines cut off the bottom. AND WE LIKED IT!!!! I never was around for the days when they’d show the Yamato movies with someone like Jeff Blend on the side with the movie script doing the play-by-play with a flashlight in his hand. Boy, I bet that must’ve been fun. Closest I ever came was doing off-the-cuff commentary because, hey, at least I’d SEEN the thing once or twice before when no one else in the room had. Like Daryl’s taken to saying, just a little knowledge makes you the expert when nobody else knows nothin’.
Suffice to say, you guys have it a lot better now, even if you do have to gripe about lousy subtitling or bad voice acting every now and again…
And Trish was always really nice to me, but then we’re both big Matsumoto fans. I remember that issue with Zeta Gundam on the cover.
As for drinkin’, I’ll drink pretty much anything anymore, so long as I have a chaser. Don’t have the patience for beer, though…much less wine.
RWG (Wild Turkey 101, babieeeeeeeee)
Yea, see the stuff your talking about was something that I could either do/make when I was in elementary school (elementary school days for me was from 1992-1997 ish. I’m 24, so I’m not too far behind the “good ol days” of anime fandom). I guess I might be technically 3rd/4th Gen anime fan more or less.
Plus the whole “just a little knowledge makes you the expert when nobody else knows nothin’” to me probably still applies in certain aspects. To me, that was an unspoken word when your in elementary school when it came to either video games/comics/WB cartoons/and whatever anime that was on TV at the time. I think that rule still applies in schools today, but I don’t remember that being a big thing when well… everyone had the internet.
As for bad voice acting, I’ve seen some in my day. You happen to be talking to someone… that in a way, likes MD Geist dubbing (And HEEEEEERE comes Dayrl [it’s spelled “Daryl” damn you]) and MD Geist in some since (I like MD Geist in its “its bad and terrible, but I’m weird and like it for the
soulsole purpose that it’s entertaining and that it was never ment to be taken seriously”). I saw it when it was on Sci Fi “Ani Monday” back in I think Aug or Sept of ’08 and TAPED it, and I still have that on tape. I think it was John O’Donnell way of saying “Yea, CPM going away soon, and here is my going away present, suckers.”At Trish’s panel at Animazement ’09 last year (only me and 4 other people were there… yea kinda sad) she was telling us that when Star Blazers was on TV at the time she was studying Japanese at the time and was
estaticecstatic when, I guess whoever did the editing for the show, didn’t take out some Japanese lettering. She stated she flipped outthat she nowand that’s how she found out it was a Japanese anime at that time. Plus the issues I had her sign was… well screw it I got photos: (Fatal Fury issue: http://i18.photobucket.com/albums/b136/ApexFFspec/101_0056.jpg / http://i18.photobucket.com/albums/b136/ApexFFspec/101_0055.jpg) (BGC Issue: http://i18.photobucket.com/albums/b136/ApexFFspec/101_0058.jpg / http://i18.photobucket.com/albums/b136/ApexFFspec/101_0053.jpg) (Patlabor Issue: http://i18.photobucket.com/albums/b136/ApexFFspec/101_0057.jpg / http://i18.photobucket.com/albums/b136/ApexFFspec/101_0054.jpg) (AniMag Zeta Gundam: http://i18.photobucket.com/albums/b136/ApexFFspec/101_0059.jpg / http://i18.photobucket.com/albums/b136/ApexFFspec/101_0052.jpg).So far, those are pretty much the only things autographed from someone in the anime industry (Well, minus my Zeta Gundam jacked that was signed by Keiko Han from Animazement ’07) and I tend to hold on to those for a long time. Trish husband was telling me that there was some issues of AniMag that were were worth something, and I told him that I could take a drive 4 some miles where we were to the comic book store I got those magazines from and see if they have them there. There was another issue, now that it comes to my mind, where Four is on the cover of AniMag, and I’m pretty sure the comic book shop may or may not have it ( I got my stuff back in ’07) but I think they priced it more than what I was willing to pay for it. I haven’t set foot in that store in almost 2 years now.
For drinking, I’m starting to like Bud Light more. I am a wuss for liquor ( I have to mix it with something it seems) but at least beer I can burp it up more, but I can’t have to much of that because then I get tired of tasting beer when I’m not drinking it.
And if you must know, today at work I spent about 2 some hours reading some of your blogs from January, even the one including how you got into HnK and what not. Getting into anime like you did happened to me back in the late 1990’s (Ok, around the time I noticed that DBZ started on Toonami because kids at school were talking about it, and this was a year or so before it went huge). I’ve always noticed anime before I got into it (and saw a few episodes of Sailor Moon when it was on syndication in the early to mid 1990’s) but Toonami really helped that out, as well as what weird stuff was on Sci Fi saturday mornings as well (I remember watching Rojin Z, and thinking “this is… kinda awesome!” yet this was a few years before I finally realized what I saw that day was Roujin Z).
I’d hate to use up all this free nice comment space on AWO, it would be kinda cool to talk to you if you got AIM or something. I’m at zeonicfreak18 for my AIM. Yea, I’ve said enough for now.
Hey guys, loved the review on ‘Bobby’s Girl’ but I couldn’t find the torrent. Is it still available to download? Really want to check it out.
Thanks
[Search under its alternate title “Bobby’s In Deep” and it should come up on AnimeSuki and other places. –Daryl]
I guess I’m a bit late to the party, but I’m glad a friend of mine told me about this podcast. A while ago, that same friend recommended Bobby to me, after I had watched (and loved) Ai Monogatari: 9 Love Stories by Kawaguchi Kaiji, which is also an outstanding work of animation.
I was really impressed with Bobby. The love for drawing, animation and biking that went into it is clearly visible. But I was equally impressed by the underlying themes, which I pointed out in a short review on MAL (nickname Boltz): http://myanimelist.net/anime/3120/Bobby_ni_Kubittake/reviews . ParaParaJMo also makes a few interesting highlights in his review.
Anyway, thanks for the podcast. It was really interesting to hear how Bobby came to light again and spread over the internet (and I’m glad it did).