#Lensman

[vintagegeekculture]

[transfem-monarchist-laura-rolla]

kawajiri #1 - lensman

i love how proud they are of the best cg 1984 had to offer. it's very charming

visually this is a feast, the kawajiri levels growing as it goes on. plenty of great setpieces with great vibes, from the snail alien hookah den to the disco seemingly designed solely to make sure the cops have to run in and break up fights to the 2 different flavors of evil villain lair (death star and skeletor's castle). it's such a shame this never even had a dvd release, though i know the rights situation is not good and they probably don't want to press their luck on something that wouldn't be a big seller. it's ALSO a shame that this movie is just not well written, though i will extend the benefit of the doubt and acknowledge my subs were not the best. but as i watched it it was a kinda mediocre immediately post-star wars* space opera that just happened to be an immaculately greebly animated 80s scifi anime by one of the most visionary directors of the decade. there are much worse things to be and way worse ways to spend a few hours. great first outing from a visual perspective, but i hope the rest of his stuff has a bit more meat on their bones

*the lensman books started in the 30s but this definitely owes more to lucas than smith. star wars never had the afterschool special attitude towards drugs though, that's pure lensman. or so i hear, i never read those books, just heard a lot about them

[hire-hopes]

[crionic-dubs]

(Unconfirmed) Influences listed in this article (not including potential gameplay inspirations):

Alien (film) obviously, but the article is about influences other than that

Baraduke (video game)

Moebius (artist)

Nausicaa Of The Valley Of The Wind (film)

Star Wars (films)

Gradius (video game)

Lensman (film, tv show & book)

Cobra/Space Cobra/Space Adventure Cobra (manga, tv show, film)

Barbarella (film)

[spacenoirdetective]

Jack Gaughan, cover for "First Lensman" by EE Doc Smith, 1964

[evilmidnightlurker]

Ships of The Culture

GOU You Cross This Line You Die

ROU Stark Fist of Removal

GOU Have You Considered a Career Change?

GCV Sativarg

ROU Really Quite Angry

GOU You Need a House to Go With This Doorknob

VFP Disturbing Palindromic Song of the Mutant Gerbils

GCU No Jury in the Universe Would Convict Me

GCU Billions of Blistering Blue Barnacles

ROU Your Kung Fu is Weak

GOU WITH CATLIKE TREAD UPON OUR PREY WE STEAL!

GOU Continuation of Diplomacy by Other Means

ROU Consider an Iceberg, its Every Form and Aspect

GOU My Powers are Weak, my Intellect Feeble

ROU You Just Lost the Game

VFP Centipede's Dilemma

GOU Very Special Blend of Psychology and Extreme Violence

[laboitediabolique]

Cover of press kit booklet for Lensman, 1984. Scanned from my personal collection.

[believerindaydreams]

I am not an expert chemist, and Doc Smith was; on the other hand I have played more than one wargame, and you can tell the genre didn't exist yet when he wrote Galactic Patrol because building your novel plot around the Smartest Naval Strategists Ever sending a glass cannon to go shoot things with zero backup is dumb as a bag of hammers

[kasperl-ruprecht]

What if they call Earth "Tellus"?

You see it's quite simple: if they call the earth Gaia, it's fantasy. If they call it Terra, that's sci-fi

[kosmos2999]

Saturday's Late Night Sci-Fi Cinema (Double Feature)

Tonight on this theater of the universe, space opera meets the law and order!

Space Police: Star Laws (1986 unaired TV series pilot)

In a very far distant future:

After serving for 15 years in the New York Police Department (N.Y.P.D.), Lieutenant Brogan has been transfered to 44th East Precinct in the farthest reaches of space.

It comprehends of an unamed world. On its surface, there is the City of Ultraville, in were manu kinds of alien life forms from the galaxy are gathered.

After the arrest of many of his gang members, incluiding his main henchman, Armpits, Ultraville's Organized Crime Boss, Victor Lann has declared a war on Space Police.

While this world's president was making a travel to Ultraville, his monorail train was taken under control by Lann in exchange for all his arrested subordinates.

To freed the President, Lt. Brogan will need the help from his fellow officers. A group of aliens with superhuman powers.

Space Police: Star Laws is an unaired British TV series pilot completed in 1986 by Gerry Anderson and Christopher Burr. A mix of space opera and police drama.

Main cast:

Shane Rimmer as Lieutenant Brogan Catherine Chevalier as Officer Cathy Costello Christine Glanville (in costume) and David Healy (voice) as Officer Tom Lyn Beardsall (in costume) and Kate Harper (voice) as Officer Harry Jan King (voice) and Jeff Harding (voice) as Officer Dick Tina Werts (in costume) and Desiree Erasmus (voice) as Officer Bats Gary Martin (voice) as Slomo and Victor Lann

Production staff:

Directed by: Tony Bell Story by: Gerry Anderson and Tony Barwick Produced by: Gerry Anderson, Christopher Burr and Bob Bell Cinematography by: Alan Hume Edited by: Alan Killick Music by: Christopher Burr and Gerry Anderson

Fascinating facts:

Born Gerard Alexandrer Abrahams (April 14, 1929 - December 26, 2012), Gerry Anderson, was a successful TV and fillm producer, writer and director. Most of his body of work was on science fiction.

Anderson began his long career in the late 1950s working on children's television shows. In the early 1960s, Anderson made his big break with two successful TV series, Supercar and Fireball XL5. Both of them and more are made using marionettes instead of live actors or animated cartoons. His technique was named Supermarionation.

His most successful show using that approach was Thunderbirds.

In 1969, one of the feature film productions of Anderson, Dopplelgänger (a.k.a. Journey to the Far Side of the Sun) recieved an Academy Award nomintion for its special effects.

It drove Anderson's TV productions to live action shows. Two of them fairly successful, UFO in 1969 and Space: 1999 in 1975.

For this pilot, Anderson employed a technique named Galactronics. A way of combining both full size actors and smaller replicas for miniature sets.

This pilot episode was released in 1986 as a concept to seek for financial backing for a TV series. It wasn't until 1994, an official series, Space Precinct was released.

It was published in DVD format with some extra materials in The Lost Worlds of Gerry Anderson in 2015.

YouTube channel: Tom Junk

Lensman: The Secret of the Lens (1984 film)

Japanese theatrical release poster

In the 25th Century:

Life has changed for a farm boy named Kimball Kinnison after making contact with a dying Lensman.

He received the Lens, a device created millions of years ago by an anicient race, the Arisians.

After his father was killed and his homeworld destroyed by the Boskone Empire, Kim has no other choice than joining the Galactic Patrol to fight the evil empire as one of its elite members, the Lensmen.

Lensman: The Secret of the Lens a Japanese anime film from 1984. Released in Japan in movie theatres and in US as a direct to video or in anime terms, an original animation video (OVA) in both 1988 and 1990.

Main cast (voices, Streamline Pictures English dubbed release):

Kerrigan Mahan as Kimball Kinnison Michael McConnohie as Peter Van Buskirk Edie Miram as Clarissa MacDougall Steve Kramer as Worsel Gregory Snegoff as DJ Bill Tom Wyner as Lord Helmuth Michael Forest as Admiral Haines Alexandra Kenworthy as The Lens

Production staff:

Directed by: Yoshiaki Kawajiri and Kazuyuki Hirokawa Written by: Sõji Yoshikawa Produced by: Michihiro Tomii, Tadami Watanabe and Masao Maruyama Cinematography by: Iwao Yamaki Edited by: Osamu Tanaka Music by: Akira Inoue Production company: Madhouse Distributed by: Toho-Towa (Japan) Harmony Gold (1988 English dubbed release), Streamline Pictures (1990 English dubbed release) Release date: July 7, 1984 (Japan)

Fascinating facts:

This film is loosely based on the novel, Galactic Patrol by E. E. 'Doc' Smith. Published in 1950. The third in a series of six.

Edward Elmer Smith (May 2, 1890 - August 31, 1965) was an American food engineer and science fiction writer. Apart from the Lensman novels, Smith is also known for another series of novels: the Skylark series.

The complete Lensman series is comprissed of six volumes: Triplanetary in 1948, First Lensman in 1950, Galactic Patrol also in 1950, Grey Lensman in 1951, Second Stage Lensmen in 1953, Children of the Lens in 1954.

He was often named as the Father of Space Opera.

E.E. "Doc" and the cover art for his novels from the Lensman series

Most of the CGI sequences were created by the Japan Computer Graphics Lab (JCGL).

YouTube channel: TheCartoonVault

[shaneplays]

A race of aliens creates an interstellar law-enforcement agency and gives each member a device that grants them powerful abilities to help them perform their duties. No, not the Green Lantern Corps, silly… the Lensmen from E. E. "Doc" Smith's series of sci-fi novels! DC Comics has always maintained that any similarities were coincidental, but the basic premise seems cosmically similar. Through the lens… on Sci-Fi Saturday!!

[hire-hopes]

Know this ain't canon but...

Connie, how annoyed are you by Riddle Roseheart's collars?

[kasperl-ruprecht]

U.S.A.-Robotech and Saber Rider. Also known respectively as Macross, let’s not lie no one remembers seasons two and three of Robotech, and Bismark. I suppose the Mysterious Cities of Gold might also count since it was a joint Franco-Japanese production. I’m half certain I saw the old Streamline pictures dub of Lensman back in the day. The South Bend Indiana public library system had a truly remarkable VHS selection back in the day, circa 1988-93.

 I’m also fairly certain I saw Dirty Pair fansubs at one of the Star Trek conventions in the same city around that time at one of the vendor booths.

I guess the first “proper” anime I watched would either be Dragonball Z or Gundam Wing.

That post about death note being "everyone's first anime" (untrue statement) made me curious and now I want to gather data for science

Can you reblog this and tell me where are you from and what was your starter anime?

[whats-in-a-sentence]

In fact, by definition, mass and inertia are different names for exactly the same property.*

* The late E. E. Smith, in his classic 'Lensman' tales postulated an inertia-free drive to get around the speed-of-light limit for space travel. Ordinary mass with inertia cannot go faster than light, he suggested, but mass without inertia can go at any velocity, however great. It was a fascinating suggestion and I loved it, but if we look at it in the hard light of reality, we must admit that mass without inertia is equivalent to mass without mass – a contradiction in terms. (At least, so it seems.)

"The Stars in their Courses" - Isaac Asimov

[zeether]

Starship - 銀河の波を蹴って

Take off - 愛よ走り出せよ

I don't know how many other folks are aware of the toys produced for the Lensman anime but I'm glad to finally own one, and what a beauty it is.