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arachne-the-spider · 11 months ago

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Thinking about "Legend of the Blue Wolves" (1995~1996)

You've heard about the memes about it on the internet. It's "Bravern's copycat" or "Bravern but less gayer", or Char's Counterattack but also less gayer, Gundam's ripoff, a parody of a parody. That anime with ugly bastard content.

Et cetera et cetera.

Not much people even watched it beyond maybe for the lulz, and it's usually watched by people with judging tone since they're not a part of the "fujoshi" audience

But, what the hell is Legend of the Blue Wolves anyway? What's the deal with its horrible name, Hot Space Cowboys? What was its content beyond the meme? Or was it as some fujo put it "A parody of gundam and votoms in the worst way"???

I wanna put out this thoughts, since recently I've found out that the creator of this anime passed away last year at November 2023. This blog post will put out my personal thoughts on it

WARNING : Contains triggering topics since the anime got instance of RAP3, also I had doomer outlook towards BL industry

Legend of Legend of the blue wolves

This anime had 2 titles in japanese, "Legend of the Four Horsemen of Apocalypse" and "Legend of the Blue Wolves", but it's true name was 銀河帝国の滅亡・外伝蒼き狼たちの伝説 "Fall of the Galactic Empire Gaiden : Legend of the Blue Wolves" (Holy shit, a logh reference!!111")

It was localized by critical mass video in USA as "Hot Space Cowboys", god knows for whatever reason, but I suspected that it was coz the story was set in Arizona, and "space cowboy" was ironic because this anime existed long before Cowboy Bebop

Ok, what was even the motivation for the anime's creation anyway? Apparently according to a person named XQO who was responsible on bringing the anime to DVD by petition, it was an experimental move. Like many OVAs in that era.

The creator was the late producer Yasuto Yamaki, under the name Kensei Date, he achieved success from Giant Robo OVA that he helped produce (Yes, THAT Giant Robo OVA).

Apparently they wanted to create IP that could fund the final episode of Giant Robo, and they choose the yaoi genre.

I'm guessing the massive boom of yaoi fandom at that era also factored in the creation, as Ai no Kusabi had an OVA adaptation in 1992, Zetsuai got 2 parts episode, and then there's tons of OVA in that genre (Fish in the trap, lesson XX, be boy kidnappin idol, boku no sekuhara and maaaany others I could name)

Even regular mech anime creators started noticing the uptick of fujos since the Char x Garma cults of the 70s to Godmars alabamacoomers and J9 fangirls.

...Even SMT Tokyo Revelations seems to have an attempt to tap into this demographics, and meanwhile I remember Kazuma Kaneko attempting to bait BL fandom by creating Jun Kurosu in p2

Don't forget about Kaworu x Shinji in evangelion too! But unlike other mecha evangelion isn't a booboo big robutss anime like shitty gundumz because it focuses on the character!!!!

But of course, there's so much BL and BL-bait anime in the market at that time. As someone who plans to make a brand new BL anime, surely they should do something different... Right?!

Phoenix Entertainment, infamous for Giant Robo OVA, the quintessential Urotsukidouji : Legend of Overfiend (Yes, that one too) and a former studio under Yoshinobu Nishizaki's West Cape name prior, wanted something different from other BL at that time.

And with the help of Makoto Kobayashi of ZZ Gundam fame, they made it a mecha-BL anime with full emphasis on the military, and to increase the difference further, they even consulted Barazoku to write a more "grounded" gay story than the fantastic "yaoi" popular at that time

(note : Back then in the nineties, fujos and geicomi were more segregated. Sure there's some intersection during the June era AND Nikutaiha was the exception, but past that, I think there's some divide between the tastes...

I've heard about a 90s BL magazine that tried different thing, by creating an anthology of BL made by straight men, with different aesthetic. It bombed, until they revamped it to a generic shota yaoi mag, which sold like hotcakes afterwards)

But at the end of day, it's clear that LotBW wanted to be something different from the average "Yaoi" at that time

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A Hot Space Cowboys Adventure

I don't want to spoil the story much (but there's a lot here lolz, not that anyone will watch it anyway), but in short it was about a typical alien invasion attack vs humans with a dark twist.

In short, Jonathan, the protagonist, was your typical soldier. He enlisted in the military to punch the hell outta a crafty aliens called the Apocalypse in the face with Powered Suits, a giant robot provided by the Military on Earth.

In the army base where he was assigned to, he met a world weary soldier named Leonard. Who's implied to be the sole survivor of the first colony attack 2 years ago. Together they went from a rocky first impression, to a close friendship. Doesn't help that they both remind each other of their close families too! (Typical shoujo romance "flag" lol)

However, the base wasn't all prim and proper.

Creepy horny dudes runs the place and they abuse their authorities to buttraep soldiers that they found hot. And unfortunately, their next target was our poor sap, Jonathan.

At the same time, Our two leads homie behavior starts to blur, and some "tension" happens between them. Personal past traumas starts to surface, the creepy horny rap1st authorities starting to make a move towards Jonathan. etc etc.

You can watch the anime itself for more.

Unlike what people says about being a CCA ripoff, I think the equivalent would be what was happening to Angelo Sauper in gundam unicorn, in more graphic detail (Well ,earth feddies in gundam aren't that heroic to begin with but that idea was taken to extreme in LotBW)

Plus it's funny, despite the blatant 0079 gundam cover artwork, it's less known that LotBW was more of a 0083 stardust memory reference. With Leonard oddly looking like a strange mix between Kelley and Gato's penchant of schooling (Even more than the guy in the epilogue). Jonathan and his standard uniform looking like if Kou and Nina had a baby son out of wedlock after the 0083 NTR incident

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Bonus Rant : Fandom Double Standards, UNLIKE OTHER MECHA YAOI... THIS ONE...

You've heard the memes and slander. I just find the whole irony of mocking LotBW as a parody's totally fucking dumb just because it had a Scopedog-like mech designs, blatant gundam references, the ZZ lookalike (Despite, Makoto Kobayashi actually wanted to see his super ZZ gundam kit animated outside of gundam project), the obvious space battleship yamato references

...then the same groupies would praise bang bravern for being "unlike LotBW's cringe parody", despite Obari did the same think and threw homages to his past work, and the anime itself being a parody of super robot/real robot genre conventions.

You know why there's tons of Yamato reference? As I said before. That's because the creator (Yamaki) also worked as a producer under Yoshinobu Nishizaki's company (Even he butts head with Nishizaki too during Urotsukidouji's production!!!).

Phoenix Entertainment's past name was West Cape before it went bankrupt

It should be natural that they'll throw references to their past works

"But there's ugly bastard!"

Oh you sweet child, LotBW was the tip of the iceberg compared to many snuff geicomi created by Gengoroh Tagame, Go Fujimoto, and the likes. People likes to diss LotBW for having extreme contents when Tagame's doujinshi on "NSFW vanilla" always had some kind of r4pe, and violence.

But oh yeah, they don't know geicomi beyond My Brother's Husband, my bad

A lot of yaoi at that era had relationships that were even more problematic* than LotBW, Iason in Ai no Kusabi fuckin sold Ricky (Martin) to slavery and it's portrayed as uguu redemption.

*I'm not into anti/proshipper debate. While I find some proship tropes to not be my cup of tea/borderline cringe, calling it "impacting real life" is fuckin dumb. It's just cartoon gdi. Problematic well... yeah, I mean in kinky terms

I just hate the double standards when LotBW was brought up by the so called "uwu inclusive" BL fanbase

ok... enough doomer mode. Back to talking about LotBW's fate

It's just sad. Beyond the infamy for its graphic r4pe, and it being the first uncensored animated yaoi p0rn to grace anime world, there's a lot of thing in LotBW that goes beyond the gooning

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Possible Sequel?!

There was going to be a sequel of some sort, planned to be released at the end of 1996. A total of 4-6 Episode, but a lot was unknown

However, it wasn't their first time doing a sequel bait and then doing nothing.

During 1995 to 1998, they made another anime, one was Shin Kaitei Gunkan (a "loose adaptation" of Kaitei Gunkan, also known as Atragon in the west), and Makai Tensho, which was infamously known in the west as Ninja Resurrection just to bait Ninja Scrolls weebs.

Both had sequel baits, especially Makai Tensho, but eventually nothing happened and they moved on to their next project, Princess Nine, Sin the Movie, the last remaining episodes of Urotsukidouji sagas and some other things.

There was a manga adaptation, but from what I read, it seemed to be a troubled production, from bad planning et cetera. It was serialized in a non-geicomi classic bishie BL magazine for some reason.

From some people who read it, it seemed to be a condensed short version of the anime, with no deviation or some sort

But I'm not sure

(Can't have Leonard the seme to be an asshole after all! Uguu!!!)

From what I heard, one of the adaptation makes Jonathan younger for some reason 💀 (Muh Uke), and it seems like they revamped a lot of Leonard's behavior to be more classic "romantic seme" 💀💀💀

But idk, nobody has bothered to get the manga, and it might be as well a lost media in its own right.

((Sure there's some rumor about the sequel, especially "that one" floating (though that's partially my fault for leaking it). I don't believe that one was canon because how it radically deviates from the creator's intent of making something original plus all the plotholes etc.

Plus it sounded like a fucking two person shitty OOC fanfic. It was so bad that I went sick for a month fr. I think I'd rather not talk about it

I won't be surprised if the faulty promotion was linked to the bad decisions of the promoter instead of the creator. Think about how shitty SMT marketing was prior to IV))

If you don't understand a whole thing in the double bracket, maybe it's for the best lol, forget about it

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Personal Ideas, brainrot and lost opportunities

I feel like Legend of the Blue Wolves was an complete sad loss of opportunity. We have tons of BL vibes in mecha, evangelion, bang bravern, etc etc, the OG gundam.

But while LotBW ideas might not be super original, at least it could be a part of the BL-mecha wave. And it could probably explore the worlds of mecha in another light.

In my vision, I was thinking about how LotBW could focus on micromanagement and logistics of scenes behind the war, as fitting for its "Gaiden" name? Think of how Tamura bitches about the lack of salt in 0079 gundam, or the engineers behind the GP01 and GP02 in 0083, and grunts unit a la 08th ms team/war in the pocket.

With Apocalypse as the theme, they could incorporate more forms of it. Maybe an episode with a black rider-themed apocalypse centering on famine scenes, or red rider-themed apocalypse events where the earth feddies in lotbw breaks up and had internal conflict... So much potential

Plus if a main character named "John"athan in an revelations-themed anime, damn, for a SMT-weeab like me, that's one lost opportunity

One time the main character gets accused as a spy too. I think it would be interesting if Jonathan actually became a spy and it incorporates espionage element like the original Yokoyama's Giant Robo manga (where a 20 year old student gets accused as a spy and got hitched with a giant robot that only obeys him due to an accident), that'll be interesting too

As for romance

I feel like the romance can be weaved to the narrative without the classic boremance yaoi tropes of love triangles/dramatic angst/ sudden harem or some other weird shit. Coz Apocalypse and the evil government itself was already a point of conflict.

It could be just Jonathan trying his best to find remains of Leonard, and surviving, and it could still be romantic af without the need of soap opera drama conventions .

Of course in a group of villains that tries to dehumanize the protagonist, having a sense of love and care is what makes them still feels humane.

I just love how minimalist the romance is to contrast with the complex, evil schemes of the villains behind the scenes. I feel like "dark anime" does need a cast of likeable "vanilla wholesome" cast to make the darker parts stands out more, because if you hate most of the cast, why would you care if they got tortured?

I think Jonathan should have some "I will live and survive to tell the tale" kind of arc

Romance aside, it was interesting to read a wiki about Barnard Star, on how they were a subject to planet-finding expedition in the 70s, and how there's plans to include self-replicating robots for it, which includes Berserker mechs. A robot created to destroy lifeforms, unmanned... while multiplying like a virus

it became a popular subject in 70s sci fi novels... Sounds familiar and interesting but idk...

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Final Thoughts(?)

ok jesus christ, that's a mucho texto, my internet broke as I wrote this gigantic essay(?)

LotBW is a mixed bag of lost opportunity, and a cruel victim of time and circumstances and yaoi fanbase preferring much more conventional tropes , ok I sound like an pretentious hipster edgelord, but damn I'm sad.

Every time I see memes and slanders perpetuated by mech fandom, even the yaoi fandom audience onto itself, it's just depressing.

I get it, BL isn't for everyone. It's easier to find fangirls that are into Yuri, but a regular (mostly straight guy populated) fanboys gonna have hard time watching BL. There's stigma, ghetto and many other problems within the audience, so I get it. Legend of the Blue Wolves is definitely not for everyone's taste

However it's just sad, after Phoenix Entertainment went bankrupt. The creator Yamaki himself managed the licenses alone, and ultimately with his passing, LotBW might be a lost media after all, forgotten by times

LotBW had bad business decisions, but everything in this world had imperfections too, especially when the studio who works around it was struggling to make ends meet after Giant Robo production left a giant-Bashtarle level of crater in their bank

(RIP Phoenix Entertainment's money)

And animation ain't cheap too, so yeah... Understandable. They had to do everything to rake money, even they made a undercover studio named Y.O.U.C to produce cheap h3ntai to secure cash for their starving employees.

But alas, I guess fate is just cruel like that.

There's a lot I wanna talk about the themes of LotBW from what I watched, but that'll take more space, so maybe I'll make another blog post vent on another time

Rest in peace Legend of the Blue Wolves.

Gone, but not forgotten

Maybe someday they'll got reincarnated, Jonathan and Leonard was happy in another life raising Leonard's lilbro together like a parent in the new year of AD 2200

well, it's a "legend" after all