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[The last few minutes of this podcast are out of sync. We’ll fix it…uh, later.]
It took about four years longer than it should have but we’re finally at Show 100! To commemorate this occasion, we bring back Mike Toole to discuss Yoshiyuki Tomino’s most heartfelt work…Garzey’s Wing!
Mike’s been writing The Mike Toole Show column over at some website called Anime News Network. Perhaps you’ve heard of it!
Garzey’s Wing is years out of print, though can easily be found. The last thing we want you to do–despite what we may insinuate–is to watch some Internet “nerd comedy” video review of it, even though those have rendered audio podcasting obsolete. No. You have to cut out the middlemen and watch Garzey’s Wing in its entirety for yourself. THE DUB:
CONGRATULATIONS! 100 episodes! Wow, I FELT LIKE I WAS HAVING A DREAM! Here’s to 100 more!
PS: I would have entered the contest but I already own the Dirty Pair and there are no vending machines… oh well, I’ll write a review for you guys anyway! Keep it up!
Aw Tokyo Kid is closing down. Man that was my youth in anime. I bought Soul of Chogokins there and then later sold them years later.
I am shamefully behind on my podcast listening. I think maybe I need to put this and a few others on my iPod Shuffle to listen to as I wait for the TSA to rape me on my way to AWA.
I’m sad that Toole neglected to mention just how sketchy Andrew–the person who runs Tokyo Kid–is. I know a few people who either know him directly or know his former co-workers, and I’ve heard some STORIES.
But yeah their figures were retardedly expensive. I was going there for four and a half years when I lived in Boston, and some of that stuff in the showcase just never moved.
I also kept trying to get a job there but was always turned down ’cause I wasn’t an under-aged white girl for Andrew to fawn over.
One thing which has always confused me is that Tomino doesn’t write the dialogue in his shows – yet everything he’s directed has that those weird, stilted conversations.
I was listening to the Gundam Unicorn commentary the other day, and Furuhashi talked about how Tomino never trusted in the power of pictures, which to Furuhashi was more important than dialogue. Maybe that has something to do with it.
Great episode! I think you guys really summed some of the issues with Tomino in a very specific, coherent way. I still can’t help loving Turn A and 0079, though.
That’s strange, since apparently Tomino does usually get story or script credits in many of the shows he has also directed. You would imagine that means he wrote at least some of those conversations himself.
On another note, I wonder if that commentary is available in English. It certainly sounds interesting enough, but I remember hearing that there were no subtitles on the Unicorn release.
It was certainly subtitled on the first release, though I believe the commentaries on the second and third episode were unsubbed. Could be wrong about that though.
Tomino is great, I think he is one of the best directors in anime history!
Congrats on 100 show…awo…I love you.
At NYAF when Tomino came, they of course showed all the works of Tomino, except one.
Guess which one?
Victory Gundam?
Oddly enough, when asked Tomino said that the Victory Gundam MS were his favorite due to the smaller size.
The lamest was when when someone dressed as a Naruto character asked the Bald Wizard “what can I do to be a great writer?”
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
“-no Mikoto” as in “??” or “??” is a title that most commonly follows the name of a god (e.g. Kashima Shrine’s deity Takemikazuchi no Mikoto), although I think it has been used for some of the nobility as well.
By the way, AWO’s original pronunciation of “Tomino/??” was the more accurate one. Satoshi Cones notwithstanding (I hear they come in dream flavour), AWO does a fine job with names.
This was very entertaining, as expected, and it’s nice to see Mike Toole show up on AWO from time to time, even if it doesn’t exactly happen as often as one would like. Still, it certainly works for arbitrary yet special occasions. Congratulations!
Admittedly, I’m quite guilty of hearing or seeing people comment on Garzey’s Wing as opposed to actually sitting down to watch the whole thing myself. But who knows, maybe one of these days I’ll be tempted to aim for the real deal. I’m afraid I’ve probably already seen all of the memorable parts though.
In the end, I agree that Tomino is definitely at his best as a creator, period, rather than as a particularly outstanding director or writer. Then again, I also don’t think that’s such a bad thing. Having a completely cynical view of his flaws (and those of other directors) can be entertaining, of course, but sometimes too much of it leads to frustration and makes us miss the better parts of the man’s work.
I suppose we can try to be…post-cynical, for lack of a better word, and either enjoy things for what they are or, at the very least, focus on the interesting bits. Doesn’t seem like Garzey’s Wing would be a good example of that last statement though, since even if it had better scripting and pacing there’ s nothing too unique or unusual about yet another typical fantasy story. On the other hand, most of his Gundam projects absolutely qualify: they’ve got interesting worlds and concepts, despite all the strange characters quirks and random weirdness.
Does anyone have, or is anyone willing to make, the Garzey’s Wing Menu scream as a ringtone?
You know mang, I’m not even sure if people really like Dunbine for the robots ‘cuz nobody seems to buy them every once in a blue moon Bandai decides to make some new Aura Battler toys. Probably doesn’t help that all the enemy Aura Battlers are kind of weird designs that only appeal to people who think Zentradi and Inbit mecha are cool. I like the Dunbine and Billbine (aka Bug Bird Valkyrie) well enough though.
I think Zentradi and Inbit mecha ARE cool, because they look like they came from an alien design sense rather than a human one.
Yeah but you have to remember, Japan’s favorite robot is Strike Freedom.
Clarissa states that even $1 is too much, but Garzey’s Wing is right up there as best $10 I’ve spent! This totally is MD Geist territory in terms of being a failure on every level.
It sounds like Garzey’s Wing was meant to be longer and that what came out was a compilation of whatever animation had been finished, much like The Thief and the Cobbler. It definitely sounds incomplete. It’s possible that some of it was cut for budget and time, maybe he just ran out of money during the development.
And like many early shows a bad translation doesn’t help. But the funniest bad translation I’ve ever heard was in one movie (I think it was a Korean animation) where after a planet had been devastated by an alien invasion, one of the characters turns to another and says, “Thank you for helping with our foreign immigration problem.”
About Satoshi Kon’s name–now I’m starting to get a little confused. Saying it like “cone” is in fact correct–his website was called “Kon’s Tone,” so as to rhyme with the English word “tone.” There is also a different Japanese last name pronounced like “khan,” but that’s Kan, as in the recent prime minister of that name, Naoto Kan.
Daryl remarked on the fact that despite doing excellent adaptations of Urusei Yatsura, Patlabor, and Ghost in the Shell, Oshii’s obsession has been with his Kerberos saga.
I guess I’d never thought about it in such terms, but I suppose Oshii feels this way because, unlike those other works, Kerberos is his creation. But it makes you think about the fact that plenty of the world’s great directors made their reputation adapting things other people came up with–this is true of Stanley Kubrick, for example, to say nothing of the average Hollywood director who creates neither the concept nor the script. I’d go as far to say that the ability of a director to come up with original concepts or write a screenplay has no necessary bearing on their talent as a director, just as a screenwriter isn’t any less of a writer because they didn’t direct.
(You can see how Oshii’s obsession with Kerberos makes itself awkward even in the one really good expression of it, Jin-Roh, directed by Hiroyuki Okiura–where Oshii, acting as writer, feels the need to give you the whole background at the beginning, as if you’re new players joining his campaign. I feel the film would have actually been better for new audiences if he had left that stuff out, and just dropped us straight into the street-and-sewer battle. The whole voice-over isn’t necessary to set up the political struggle behind the Wolf Brigade, because the film itself shows you that).
In Japanese romanization “o” is a mid-back rounded vowel, but the “o” in “cone” is a dipthong (think “eye” vs. “ai”). I suspect there’s a misunderstanding of English phonology at work there. Or just an oyaji gag.
Great 100th episode. I lost my shit when Clarissa said “It’s a duck that kidnapped his ghost at the start of the show.” That needs to be in the Wikipedia entry for Garzey’s Wing.
Oh I thought that out of synch part was intentional. Like you were being all Tomino incoherent.
Why did Gerald hate Shortbus? Was it due to a lack of sexual content?
Well, I did it. I reviewed Harmagedon. Sorry to jump the gun on you guys, but well, I needed to make my opinions of it on the OG podcast…show #331 if you’re so inclined to look it up (after the musical interlude bit)