#Iczer-Two

[guywhowatchesanime]

"Man, I've got so much free time during winter break, what should I do?" And so, following this thought, I decided to watch 10 movies, forming a whole decade. I'll list what I watched, with a small summary and review for each!

1980 - Toward the Terra, the Humans and Mu are fighting, but eventually the greater foe, the huge world controlling computer system, and win. I liked how all of the characters changed and stayed affected by things that happened to them. A solid 9/10, and a good general recommendation!

1981 - Mobile Suit Gundam I, Humans fighting with big robot suits, Gundam, but war is hell. I'm sorry Gundam fans, but this movie to me was way too long and repetitive, I feel like it could have been two smaller movies. 5/10

1982 - Space Adventure Cobra The Movie, Cobra's just a guy fighting with his cool psycho gun, and he is always smoking a cigar. I didn't realize it was a power fantasy until he was surrounded by women and lots of people were in love with him, but still pretty good! 5.5/10

1983 - Crusher Joe, space fights and conspiracy! Really good, my other favorite of what I watched, and a solid 9/10!

1984 - Birth, humans vs inorganics, I did not really understand or like this movie, but I feel like it was more than likely pretty influential. 6/10

1985 - Fight!! Iczer-One, battling space aliens for the sake of the earth. I love the designs and horror elements, but I hate how Iczer treated her partner so that made it hard to watch for me. 6/10

1986 - Call Me Tonight, whenever he's turned on, he turns into a horrific monster for a little bit. Honestly? A fantastic, cute romcom were I liked both characters, plot, and design! 7.5/10

1987 - Laughing Target, is she a stalker, obsessed, or possesed? It's all three, and makes for a really good horror movie. 7/10

1988 - Appleseed, humanity fighting for a right to their future against a place with no room for them. I didn't really like it, but the Devilman level dub with all the added swears was pretty funny. 5.5/10

1989 - Demon Hunter Makaryūdo, devils vs humans and a fight for humanities future. Holy shit the harpy designs are really funny, and s pretty solid movie. 7/10

Sorry for the long post, and sorry if I didn't like your favorite movie. I might do this again for the 90s, but ten movies in five days is a lot so I'm tired. On a side note, it's really hard to find lists of all movies per year, and for some reason there were so many movies that I wanted to watch from 1986 so maybe I'll have another huge post about that year alone.

[swordshapedleaves]

Fight! Iczer One is one of those 80s OVAs that seem primarily concerned with filling the screen with fun images and much less concerned with plot or characters. While the text tells a story or horror, grief, and rage, the camera leers over nude breasts and female suffering in the same way it lingers over the cool spaceship designs and the writhing alien body horror, gore, and explosions.

There is immense tension between these two competing elements, like a tug of war, but the visuals are the lion and the story is the man visiting the zoo. The desire to look at cool animation is constantly winning. The first time our protagonist Nagisa actually decides to pilot the robot, the camera makes sure to keep her bare breasts in the shot. Fanciful future military ships are introduced and then summarily exploded in bright splashes of several different shades of red and orange and yellow. It feels like a child smashing toys against each other, doll with no clothes included.

But I cannot stress enough how cool this OVA is to look at! I am not immune to evil space lesbians! Maybe it's just that I have a very high quality copy, but I could see the brush strokes in the paint! There were shots that were so gorgeous I felt intoxicated just looking at them! This series would probably be really enjoyable if I actually was high, now I think about it.

The plot is silly and stupid but the animation is gorgeous. Turn your brain off (chemically if you're into that) before watching for a great time.

[canmom]

Animation Night 103: Toshiki Hirano

Hi friends! It’s a Thursday, and I hope you know what that means by now~

Next week: the two year anniversary of Animation Night! I’m aiming to get a commenting system up on my blog by then and do some of the cleanup tasks for the Animation Night archive.

Now, you like Animation Night and want it (and various other creative projects) to continue, please forgive me for humbly passing around the Patreon hat. The next week or two I’m going to be working on illustrating, and then releasing, a certain RPG setting with all sorts of things I like such as jelly alchemists, weird gender shit, and early-modern body horror, and I’ll be keeping you posted on there.

Anyway, on to this week’s event: lesbian apocalyptic sci-fi mecha OVAs from the 1980s.

Tonight on Animation Night, I have two of the earliest ‘big’ OVAs, back from when the new format was still an open question, which both became cult classics: Megazone 23 and Fight! Iczer One. And this writeup, I’m indebted to Youtube user MercuryFalcon, who put together a 30-minute video about Iczer-1’s production, and even more so the blog aaltomies, who wrote this impressively detailed retrospective.

We’ll begin with the erotic manga magazine Lemon People, which I believe I first talked about back on Animation Night 69 (now in its proper place in the Animation Night archive!), and the mangaka Rei Aran (阿乱 霊). Despite the long shadow that Lemon People’s work cast over the evolution of anime and manga styles, and Aran being active at their strongest period, Aran remains barely known outside of his work on Iczer One. Aaltomies writes that Aran was prone to overworking, and as a consequence, most of his works - including Fight! Iczer-1 and Galaxy Police Patrizer-3 (the latter running from 1983 to 1993).

You can see some of Aran’s work at the link above. He was a self-taught artist, working his way up through dōjin groups before submitting work to Lemon People at the suggestion of his friend Hariken Ryu. but here’s a cover he drew for the issue of Lemon People in which Iczer 1 debuted:

The jump to OVA came via Hariken Ryu’s college friend, Toshihiro Hirano (who’d later change his first name to Toshiki), who in 1982 had been working on Macross (Animation Night 64). Having yakked sufficent de culture, Ryu, Hirano and many Macross animators announced in ‘83 they would adapt Ryu’s 1982 manga Gekisatsu Uchuken (Space Punch) for TV, but it fell through. Meeting Aran, Hirano instead started talking about adapting Iczer, perhaps as one of these new-fangled OVAs...

The OVA format was still very new in 1985, and even in the bubble economy (c.f. Animation Night 34). The ball was supposed to start rolling Mamoru Oshii’s Dallos (1983), but when it flopped, the idea was postponed and Hirano went to work on other projects like Megazone 23 (1985). Planned as a 12-episode TV anime, funding was pulled and Megazone came out instead as an OVA, where in contrast to Dallos, it proved wildly successful. Suddenly adapting Iczer was back on the table for AIC, who gave Hirano the choice of what to adapt; he chose Iczer, and the first episode released that very same year.

Hirano is one of the major sources of the look of 80s anime, and yet he was slow to come around to the medium. (Drawing now on another retrospective on him here). Born in the 50s, Hirano was initially dismissive of anime, seeing it as inferior to his beloved manga; he changed his mind after seeing Toei’s The Little Prince and the Eight-Headed Dragon (わんぱく王子の大蛇退治, Wanpaku Ōji no Orochi Taiji, 1963), which was I suppose you could say his sakuga awakening, but his biggest passion was tokusatsu, particularly Tōhō’s kaiju movies and TV series like Ultra Q and Ultraman. His interests drifted to Western movies, but he was pulled back in high school by the 70s era of tokusatsu (notably the original Kamen Rider) and early robot anime such as Mazinger Z.

This waxing and waning interest continued as he went to Tokyo Designer Gakuin College, falling in with a group of future mangaka including Hariken Ryu who shared his love for robots and toku. Still, it wasn’t as if he then ran straight for anime; he took a part-time job at Toei at university, drawing inbetweens for none other than Yoshinori Kanada (see Animation Night 62); he only gradually came around to working full-time at Toei.

As such, he is an artist whose passions are very straightforward: he wants to make stuff with the same feeling as tokusatsu; he likes drawing robots, superheroes, monsters and women he finds beautiful. He got his start at Toei only to find to his immense disappointment that he’d instead be working on a 200-episode historical series Ikiyu-san about a young Buddhist monk, which ran from ‘75 to ‘82. He absolutely hated the ~8 months he worked on this series, only finding relief drawing robots for Televi-kun magazine. Eventually he escaped to draw nigen [2nd key animation, aka tiedowns] of cars for a racing show Arrow Emblem: Hawk of the Grand Prix (1977) directed by Rintaro, which proved much more to his taste. This led him directly to work on Captain Harlock, drawing nigen for two episodes, particularly proud of his illustrations of the women antagonists in each. (Not sure if the following is one of Hirano’s...)

Next came inbetween checking on Farewell to Space Battleship Yamato (1978) - it’s notable that here Toei were already outsourcing douga (cleanup and inbetweens) to South Korea, and Hirano’s job here was to fix those drawings or even fully redraw scenes that weren’t up to standard. This is where we can join (drink) Matteo Watzky’s account of the period here, as Hirano finally left Toei to found studio Beebow with Tomonori Kogawa, working as a subcontractor mainly for Sunrise, particularly on Space Runaway Ideon (see: Animation Night 88). There, we started to see some real breakthroughs in drawing characters with solid 3D form; Watzky points to this cut from the Ideon followup film Be Invoked.

Following this, Hirano launched another new studio, called Io, and it’s here his work on Macross takes place. Hirano was very frustrated with the corners the anime had to cut, but here he started rising to prominence for his animation of Linn Minmay, off the back of which he became one of the animation directors for the Macross film Do You Remember Love (Animation Night 64), made an episode director debut in the foundational ero-anime series Cream Lemon (Animation Night 69). DYRL was followed for the Macross team by Megazone 23, pitched as a sci-fi series Omega City 23 that ended up awkwardly compressed into an OVA film after a troubled production, yet this all found unexpected success on the sheer strength of the animation and style - much of that being Hirano’s character designs. (Notably, this film also featured the key animation work of Hideaki Anno.) Which brings us back up to Iczer One...

So what’s it about? We’ll start with Iczer One. Let’s put it this way: in 1983, throwing around the word Cthulhu wasn’t nearly so stale as it is today. It’s packed full of indulgent ideas and things that someone like Hirano would like: women, robots, body horror... and he made it even more so, making it much more lesbian centric. As not just the director but also the character designer

The story begins with a catgirl called Iczer-One - this is a catgirl of the classical anime big hair mode - who wishes to fight aliens called the Cthulhu (no relation, I think) who are attempting to take over the Earth by implanting mind control parasites. When Iczer foils this plan, they escalate to full-on military invasion. To fight back, Iczer needs a suitable ‘synchronisation partner’ to pilot her mecha... which she finds in a Japanese schoolgirl called Nagisa. The battle against the aliens rapidly escalates, destroying much of the planet that Iczer wished to defend.

And Megazone 23? It’s set in a far-future city deep in space, locked in a war with a rival megazone. The government of the eponymous Megazone 23 launch a plan to hack the city’s governing AI, EVE, and force it to participate in the war. In the midst of this is Shōgo Yahagi, who gets pulled into a complicated intrigue which reveals that, surprisingly enough, the government is full of lies and his world is some kind of simulation. The first two parts of the OVA series, released in 1985 and 86, tell the story of what happens to Shōgo, while the third, released in 1989 under the direction of Ichiro Itano (yep! the missile circus guy!), takes place after a centuries long time skip during which time Shōgo has undergone a serious heel turn. whoops, I got this mixed up: Itano directed the second episode in 86, and actually that’s a really interesting story in its own right which I’ll address in a followup post!

The animation is absolutely spectacular: you can totally see that this is the same team that made Macross DYRL, and it’s full of the ideas of the Kanada school taken to an absurd level of polish - like just look at this background animation, how??

I will admit, these are absolutely on the more indulgent end of OVAs and probably not going to offer deep meditations on the human condition, but they’re also a fantastic window into a period when the craft of animation was going through some seriously rapid development. It really is hard to overstate the difference in animation of 1980 and 1983: the drawings are more convincingly physical, rich in detail, move better; effects animation has completely transformed; the complex camerawork of people like Itano has come in. Nothing would be the same after.

Hirano would go on to make many more OVAs and films, both as a director and key animator which I may well address in the future; he would later fall in with the realists and work on Roujin Z and Akira, and work on Itano’s gory 90s OVAs like Battle Royal High School. And although his 80s designs sensibility went out of fashion, he is still very active in the anime industry today, most recently directing a Netflix-backed adaptation of the Grappler Baki martial arts manga just last year! Which is wild, because he is almost 70 years old at this point.

So if that all sounds fun, please join me at 7pm UK time at our usual place, twitch.tv/canmom! In the meantime, I will hopefully soon be live with some drawing of my own.

[mokonalord]

I wonder what the mkr anime would be like if Nanase Ohkawa stuck to her manga storyline for Part 2 when writing it? It's like they really wanted Nova and Debonair in it just to make an Iczer reference?

*WARNING: RAMBLING OPINIONS ACTIVATED!*

At the very least, we would have a cute animated orchard scene. My inner devastated teenager will never forgive them for leaving that out.

Ideally, I would’ve like to see an anime that held to the manga plot, but used the extra episodes to expand on the existing characters and worlds. Like, I think the anime’s expansion on Ascot & Caldina’s non-blood sibling relationship was a good addition. A lot of the stuff they added for Ferio was pretty good, too. They could’ve also done things like explain how Zagato and Alcyone met and how she got to be so obsessed with him so we might actually care about her dying by his hands, or describe some of the details about what went on during the season gap, or explain more about the situations on Autozam, Chizeta, and Fahren that led them to seek the Pillar system’s help. They could’ve done a lot to make the anime different without changing the actual story.

But, since they did want to change a lot, they still could’ve done it much better than they did. First off, scratch Debonair entirely, she added nothing of value to the series, and cut back on Nova. Sierra either needs to get motivations that actually hold up to the slightest bit of scrutiny or to also be chopped on the editing room floor.

But really, you know what was probably the biggest problem, a problem that still exists with manga to anime adaptions? They rushed to get it out. The manga only ended up being six volumes released over the course of two years, I think the anime would’ve been much better if they’d given it more time to iron out the wrinkles and really figure out where they wanted to go with it. Now this, I can’t entirely blame the writers for. Who knows if they would’ve gotten another opportunity to make an anime out of it if they didn’t do it then?

But, then again, that was probably all the more reason to stick to the plot they’d already developed, with some necessary tweaks, rather than trying to come up with something different. Of course, it’s only too easy for me to sit here and criticize them from over two decades in the future, so take that with a grain of salt.

Really is a crying shame there probably won’t ever be a remake.

[nomadicism]

Some Yahoo! Japan auction loot over the past few months.

First: art books for Southern Cross, Megazone 23, and Iczer 3; and terebi [ テレビ ] book #2 for Dairugger XV (aka Vehicle Voltron).

Second: scan of first spread from the Dairugger XV terebi book. Shown in the image are: Miranda Keats (Krik), Moya Kirigas (Cinda), Haruka Kaga (Lisa), Manabu Aki (Jeff).

Third: scan of first page of the Iczer-3 book (because the super-deformed art on the cover doesn’t do the series justice). Shown in the image are: Iczer-1, Iczer-2, Iczer-3, and Atros.

Fourth: two Heavy Metal L-Gaim artbooks, two Super Robot Wars fanzines(?) by niwagenji, and a Blue Comet SPT Layzner character/mecha spec guide.

Fifth: scan from pages 18-19 of Dan Gan SRW #2 zine, b/c Dairugger.

The fanzines are neat, I really like the art. Good detail on the mecha, and the comics are cute. They follow the format shown in the scan of the Dairugger spread. I’ve checked out niwagenji’s blog, and trying to see if I can directly order zines from them. They are a nice quality paper and binding, and the covers are semi-gloss.

Dan Gan SRW #2 has: Great Mazinger, Steel Jeeg, Voltes V, Godmars, Z Gundam, GaoGaiGar, Gordian, Dairugger XV, and Laserion.

Dan Gan SRW #4 has: Getter-1, Gaiking, Ideon, Golion, Shining Gundam, VF-17S Stealth Valkyrie, Gold Lightan, Srungle, and Robo Galatt.

As usual, to see in higher-res, click-thru to the permalink b/c Tumblr dash hates art.

[pandor-pandorkful]

I have watched Iczer One! I loved it, though I have... questions...

So Iczer One basically ended up with the power to hit the undo button on Earth, bringing everyone back to life and setting them back to how they were before alien shenanigans with no memory of the invasion... did the massive reset also resurrect the Cthulhu ladies who died? Are Cobalt and Sepia safe? What about Iczer Two? Will she be born again, this time without a preprogrammed desire to kill her big sister??

Stories that just hit the undo button are generally unsatisfying, but this story left just enough threads open that I feel like it really worked for me.

Also when Nagisa asked Iczer One why she chose her to be her partner, the answer “Cuz I like you” is real cute, but I can’t help but wonder if the real reason was “Well, you’re the only human with protagonist colored hair, soooo...”

I was going to complain about it being yet another anime where only the antagonists get to kiss, but I guess we got a sort of ghost kiss between Iczer One and Nagisa, kinda. If random anime movies have taught me anything, it’s that absorbing your lover’s ghost into yourself is the highest form of love. Weird that the last random anime movie I watched also had that as an end plot (tho that esper polycule presumably stayed together.) Is two enough times to be a trope? I bet there’s more than those instances, actually.

Yeah anyway that was great! Kinda gorey but not super awful (I’ve seen worse, the stylization tones down all the head popping I think) very, very mildly horny (no molestation!! good job!! just... you must be naked to pilot your robo gf, i guess.), overall just really fun to watch. Android elves fighting with lightsabers? Lesbian mechas?? I love it.

[shadowzgather]

Other Muses About for Mobile

Jem And the Holograms 88’

Rory “Riot” Llewelyn, Lead singer of the Stingers. (Very Canon Divergent.) 

Personality traits: Aloof, Charming and Arrogant.

Age: 25

Gender: CIS Male He/Him

Otome inspired Historical figures.

Takeda Shingen Hybrid of Samurai Love Ballad Party and Ikemen Sengoku

Oda Nobunaga Hybrid of Destiny’s Princess and Ikemen Sengoku.

Trolls

Cloud Guy

OC Crow (Neo classical Darkwave Troll)

Age: Adult

Gender: CIS Male

Brief Bio: Crow and his tribe are a small group that branched off from both the Rock Trolls and the Classical trolls to create something new, not being satisfied with their own styles. Crow himself is stubborn, flamboyant and overconfident, He has a kind heart but a creepy but elegant demeanor.  He wears a black double breasted frock coat with tails that has black spider-web like laced over the dark red lining. He has a deep grey skin tone an drooping almost greased down black hair and dark circles around his red eyes that may or may not be makeup. (picture coming soon.)

Name: Queen Barb of the Rock Trolls.

Age: Adult

Gender: CIS Female

Follows the canon of the second movie.

Ducktales 87'/Darkwing Duck 91'

Name: Fenton Crackshell

Age: 28 DT87 - 30 DWD91

Gender: CIS Male

Fenton follows the cartoon canon but not the comics.

Name: Magica De Spell

Age: 42 *approximate*

Gender: CIS Female

Magica follows the cartoon and Darkwing Duck Boom! Comics, including the comic crossover with Ducktales.

Sing/Sing 2

Name: Miss Crowly

Age: 67

Gender: CIS Female

Follows the canon of both movies.

Name: Jimmy Crystal

Age: 45

Gender: CIS Male

Follows canon up to hiring Buster Moon and Co. then is heavily divergent.

Anime/Game Muses

Dragon Quest Builders 2

Name: Malroth, Lord and Master of Destruction

Age: Adult

Gender: CIS Male

Follows the game canon.

YU-GI-OH!

Name: Simon Muran

Age: Very Old.

Gender: CIS Male

Mainly seen in the games, Simon Muran is Pharaoh Atem's advisor, and it's implied he was his tutor and teacher as well. He occupies a role similar to Modern Yugi's Grandpa.

Fight!! Iczer - One and Adventure Iczer - Three

Name: Iczer - Two

Age appearance and maturity: Adult.

Gender: CIS Female

Follows the canon of both series. She is a bioroid created by Big Gold to kill her older sister, Iczer - One and conquer Earth for Big Gold and the Cthulu alien race.

Additional Darkwing Duck 1991 Muses

Name: Negaduck (Real name Drake Mallard or Jim Starling in Twin AU's)

Age: Same age as Darkwing.

Gender: CIS Male

Follows the canon of the Cartoon and Boom!/Joe Books Comics. Will also have a verse for Dynamite Comics that is separate from the Main. He will be very headcanon heavy, and Divergent in some respects but I hope to keep him close to at least the Cartoon Canon.

South Park muses.

The Amazing Digital Circus

Name: Gummigoo

Age: Adult

Gender: Male

Species: Athromorphic Gummy Alligator/”NPC”

Differs From canon: For mysterious reasons Gummigoo was allowed to stay at the Circus rather than being poofed at the end of episode 2. 

AU: Gummigoo is actually a human that abstracted like Kaufmo and who's data was remade into the “NPC” Gummigoo. This verse is treated as default unless more info about abstracted characters gets released in future episodes.

The Great Ace Attorney Chronicles

Name: Lord Barok van Zeiks

Age: 33

Gender: CIS Male

Job: Prosecutor (Lawyer) in Victorian Britain/Verse dependant

How they differ from Canon:

Spoilers below!

Canonically Barok is racist against Japanese people due to the death of his older brother. I find this to be a poor reason for it. So I'm alter this portion of his character to instead be more of a "He sees his brother killer" or rather their traits in the Japanese men he meets until the second game's end where he over comes this as the truth is revealed. Other Verses may vary and completely change his backstory and will be noted as such.

Name: Enoch Drebber

Age: 35

Gender: CIS Male

Job: Engineer with background in Science and Magic (stage magic) / Former Science student / Grave robber - The Repurposers / Con Artist (Making fake inventions)

How they differ from Canon:

Minor Spoilers Below!

In canon Enoch is shown to be something of a hypocrite as he acts to avenge his hopes and dreams being crushed but has no guilt over crushing someone elses in pursuit of that revenge. My version will be more bitter by his lost dreams and see his efforts keeping others from being dreamers so they don't go through what he did rather than blatant hypocrisy.

Like with Barok, verse my alter or completely change his backstory and will be noted accordingly as separate verses.

Transformers One

Name: Megatronus Prime

Age: Adult

Gender: CIS Male

How they differ from canon: Though decapitated and having his T-cog removed by Sentinel, Megatronus lived. His spark was extracted by Sentinel and kept as a sort of trophy. Made to watch and hear within a cube that sustained him but unable to do anything about what was going on.

His spark was discovered in the remnants of Sentinel's tower post battle by the new Optimus Prime. A new body was made for him, and he was given the T-Cog of his brother, Prima Prime, which Megatron had discarded after taking his from Sentinel.

Sonic Muses

Knuckles

Flash (OC)

[thesawcesomeone]

Welcome to a New World of Gods and Backlogs.

-Vidja Games:  Played a decent bit more of Tekken 7.  Almost have the Platinum Trophy.

-Comics:  Batman #24; Nightwing #21; Superman #24; and Iceman #1.

-Movies:  The Mummy (2017).

-TV:  Two most recent episodes of Gotham.

-Anime:  Fight! Iczer-One; Gundam Build Fighters; two most recent episodes of Kado: The Right Answer, Attack on Titan Season 2, and Eromanga Sensei; and the most recent episodes of Yowamushi Pedal: New Generation, Akashic Records of Bastard Magic Instructor, Sakura Quest, Love Tyrant, My Hero Academia 2, and Tiger Mask W.

Okay week.

Tumbl on.

[amazingcomictoycollector-blog]

Fight!! Iczer-One Volume 1 - Acts One & Two - VHS Tape - US Renditions

[theghostcobra]