Galactic Patrol Lensman: Ghetto (SF) Supastar (That Is What You Are?)

Previously in the SF Shin Seiki Lensman Review:

"Taking aside all of the hubbub & hullabaloo when it comes to the production of this film, & the apparent major headache it gave E.E. 'Doc' Smith's family (that seemingly continues on to this very day), SF Shin Seiki Lensman is not a bad film by any means. Is it accurate to the original Lensman stories in anything beyond the most basic of ways? Not at all, and it's easy to see why the Smith family hated it for that reason, but when taken as its own thing it is a good time to be had... However...this movie wasn't the only bit of Lensman anime that was put into production, and for the longest time that other side of the coin was effectively (but maybe not literally) a 'lost' production..."

As was established in Review #299, while the exact details of what happened may be obscured with time & a bunch of games of telephone, the basic concept was that Kodansha had the rights to publish the Lensman books in Japan during the 80s, via a license made through then-current English publisher Berkley Publishing Corporation. Through a mix of simple assumptions made by Kodansha, & what was more-than-likely vague terminology in the contract (see: All of the madness that came about from the initial licensing of Tetris & what defined a "computer"), an anime film adaptation was put into production without the family & literary estate of original creator E.E. "Doc" Smith's knowledge, which in turn seemingly killed a Hollywood deal that was all but finalized. Since the film was already well into production the Smith family decided to give it their blessing & let it see completion, with it debuting in Japanese theaters on July 7, 1984. That much seems to be generally agreed upon when it comes to the production of the film, but aside from later licensing history nowhere near as much is really known about why what came next, production-wise.

A mere three months after SF Shin Seiki Lensman debuted in theaters in Japan the first episode of a brand new Lensman anime debuted on TV Asahi on October 6, 1984 at 7:00 pm. It was titled Galactic Patrol Lensman & would run for 25 episodes, but aside from some returning staff & a smattering of returning voice actors (plus once again being co-produced by Kodansha & MK Company) it wasn't treated as a continuation of the film. Instead, this TV anime was a complete redo that seemingly intended to be more accurate to the books than the film was, complete with characters who weren't in the film now being here. If I had to make a guess, when considering pre-production lead times & the like, I'd say that Galactic Patrol Lensman was likely Kodansha's way of appeasing the Smith family during the film's production. I'm sure it was plain to see (even prior to release) how little SF Shin Seiki Lensman actually resembled "Doc" Smith's books, so offering to produce a more "accurate" TV series was likely an attempt to make nice with the people who actually owned the Lensman IP itself. However, it seems as though the Smith family was still not pleased with how Galactic Patrol Lensman came out, and after the show fully aired in Japan only the first six episodes ever saw a home video release on VHS & LD over there. There was also a "Lensman Video Special" offered as a bonus VHS tape for anyone who could provide proof of purchase of all six VHS tapes, with the special apparently being two extra episodes that never aired on TV. Unfortunately, the Lensman Video Special looks to have become lost with time, or at least highly inaccessible (because who knows if Kodansha still has the masters), as I imagine few bothered to actually send in their proofs of purchase for it, and while I've seen some state online that they've watched "Episodes 26 & 27", there's never been any visual proof of it.

As mentioned in the last review, after Galactic Patrol Lensman finished up in Japan the Smith family apparently hoped to let all of this be forgotten with time, and they'd never have to think about these two anime ever again... until around 1988 or 1989, that is. Somehow (whether it was through Kodansha or MK Company isn't fully clear) the company Harmony Gold managed to license both Lensman anime & had produced two edited, English dubbed, made-for-TV movies, with the one for the TV anime (titled Lensman: Power of the Lens) using footage from five of the first six episodes, i.e. the ones that saw home video release in Japan; the copyright for this dub says 1987, but it likely didn't air until 1988/1989. A lawsuit was alleged to have been made, though there's no proof of one actually being filed, but in the end Harmony Gold's license for both anime was seemingly made null & void, while Streamline Pictures wound up being allowed to license the Lensman film... and only the film. Streamline's Carl Macek, though, did state during a panel at Anime America in 1993 that he had intentions of licensing Galactic Patrol Lensman, dubbing it, & airing it on the Sci-Fi Channel, but that obviously never came to pass. The claim is that the Smith estate has since barred any & all licensing of either Lensman anime following Streamline's license, but a Catalan dub for the entire show (well, the 25 episodes that were shown on TV, at least) was broadcast via TV3 in Catalonia, Spain in 1994, well after Streamline got the license to only the film, so go figure.

For the longest time having access to all 25 episodes of Galactic Patrol Lensman was considered a bit of an anime holy grail, as while everything beyond Episode 6 was no doubt recorded by people in Japan back in the day the chances of any such recordings surfacing was considered highly unlikely, and especially for the entire show. However, back in 2016 a group of anime fans within the fansubbing scene (which was now focused mainly on older titles, due to simulcasting removing the need for fansubbing new shows) were actually able to collect complete footage of Episodes 7 to 25, and alongside LD captures of the first six episodes started working on fansubbing Galactic Patrol Lensman into English. They relied on mostly Betamax recordings, with some VHS recordings, including a multi-gen VHS source for Episode 15... and, somehow, a 16mm film print for Episode 23, with film preservation group Kineko Video being hired to scan the film into HD, before finally having the entire series subbed into English at the end of 2024. In fact, the last two episodes' video was apparently so rough that they had to sync the Japanese audio to rips of the TV3 Catalan dub footage just to for them to look good enough to release. Without a doubt, the rescuing of Galactic Patrol Lensman from the deepest depths of inaccessibility is an amazing achievement that was only really possible by the fan community, since it's still stuck in legal limbo officially. However, with all that out of the way... is this series even any good? So, for Review #300, it's time to see how Galactic Patrol Lensman came out, both in its original Japanese form as well as that compilation movie edit from Harmony Gold.

Obscusion B-Side: The Short (But Memorable) Life of Fresh Games

While it's not necessarily as readily provable today, especially since the sheer amount of "indie" games has diluted that feeling to a large amount, there's always been a belief that if you want to look for the more unique, experimental, & "weird" video games then one should look at what comes from Japan, and especially the stuff that doesn't get localized outside of that country. This was seemingly most true between the mid-90s & the mid-00s, i.e. from the launch of the PS1 & Saturn to (at latest) the early days of HD gaming on the PS3 & Xbox 360, and especially on Sony's consoles due to both the PS1 & PS2 having massive catalogs of titles (~4,074 on PS1, ~4,344 on PS2) that even the original Switch hasn't quite surpassed yet (though it's currently close to the PS1's). Because of that there were many games released that would normally never see international release due to a variety of reasons, one of which would simply be "they're too weird/bizarre" & wouldn't appeal to international audiences.

However, in the early 00s one video game publisher decided to seemingly try their hand at localizing some of these "weird" or "bizarre" Japan-developed games... and failed, but the attempt is still remembered by many to this very day. So, for the 100th Obscusion B-Side (including B-Lists), let's go over the life & titles of Fresh Games.

Not quite a "wonton font", but not too far off, either.

Originally founded in 1984, Domark was a European video game publisher that made its name publishing titles for PC & later game consoles, even establishing a US division in 1993, but by 1994 was in some financial trouble. In September of 1995 Domark would be formally acquired by Eidos, a video compression company, resulting in the formation of Eidos Interactive, and via both the acquisition of other companies (Core Design, Crystal Dynamics, a majority share of Ion Storm, etc.) & some good publishing deals the company would slowly make a name for itself with franchises like Tomb Raider, Legacy of Kain, Hitman, Deus Ex, & Fear Effect. This success seemingly allowed some at Eidos to expand their horizons a bit with what the publisher could potentially put out, and the decision was made to launch a new label for something a bit more... "fresh". So, in late January of 2002, Eidos Interactive announced the launch of Fresh Games, which Eidos CEO Mike McGarvey stated was "a boutique label, created solely to expose gamers to unique and captivating gameplay experiences that traditionally have been unavailable outside of Japan." The person leading Fresh Games itself was Kevin Gill, then a global brand & product manager for Eidos, who in an interview with Gaming Age later that February went into more detail regarding the creation of the label.

In the interview Gill explained that Fresh Games was launched as a way for "hardcore gamers everywhere to be able to buy ['Quirky' or 'Odd' games with a lot of polish & attention to detail] at their local store without having to deal with mod-chips and exorbitant costs", i.e. importing, & that they "wanted to break some rules, and break some of the barriers that exist in this industry in regards to 'What type of games do people really want to play?'" Also, the reason for not simply publishing them under the Eidos name was because "they have their own unique heritage and they needed a label to represent that, a label that represents a standard of excellence in gaming, a label that represents something new and groundbreaking" & that the titles published under Fresh Games were "something out of the ordinary". While three PS2 titles (all originally published in Japan by SCEJ) were announced alongside the label that January, the plan was to be platform (& licensor) agnostic, and while Gill was open to all genres, he did say that Fresh Games likely wouldn't publish "a character based sequel, a license, or a [sic] extreme sports game". Unfortunately, after those initial three titles came out throughout the Spring & Fall of 2002, only one more game (which came from another company) would come out shortly afterwards before Fresh Games became a dead brand by the end of the same exact year it launched. The label would be revived for one last release in early 2004, but beyond that Fresh Games was seemingly just too weird/bizarre/quirky/odd/etc. to continue to stick around... but was it because of the games themselves, or was Fresh Games maybe just too ahead of its time? Let's go over each of the five games released under the Fresh Games branding & find out!

The Murderers' Row of 1970s Manga: Shonen Jump's Stretch of Simultaneous Long-Running Baseball Series

While baseball is nicknamed "America's Pastime", one could probably make a decent argument that Japan may possibly love the bat-&-ball/safe haven game even more so. I mean, let's face facts... the United States don't have anything close to an equivalent to the Spring & Summer Koshien tournaments, which are literally for high school teams yet are seemingly treated almost as important as the big leagues. Introduced to the country in 1859, baseball would become a school sport in 1872, and by the 1920s there were already professional teams, though it wasn't until the 1930s that the pro league concept truly became a hit with the populace. Naturally, manga about baseball would get made alongside the growth of the sport, and in the late 1940s Kazuo Inoue's Bat Kid would become the first "proper" manga series about baseball. The next evolution in baseball manga would then come about over a decade later across three series, the last two written by the late Kazuya Fukumoto: 1958-1963's Kurikuri Pitcher by Hiroshi Kaizuka, 1961-1962's Chikai no Makyu/The Magic Ball of Promise (drawn by Tetsuya Chiba), & 1963-1965's Kuroi Himitsu Heiki/The Black Secret Weapon (drawn by Daiji Kazumine). All three fully established the concept of the "makyu" to sports manga, allowing for all variety of fantastical pitches to be thrown, while also emphasizing the "pitcher/batter" dichotomy as the dramatic focus of each game. Then, in 1966, Weekly Shonen Magazine saw the debut of Star of the Giants by Ikki Kajiwara (story) & Noboru Kawasaki (art), which would become one of the most iconic & influential sports manga of all time, as well as the very first sports anime, its impact still arguably felt to this very day. Two years after the debut of that megahit would see the debut of Weekly Shonen Jump in 1968... and it's here where things get interesting.

Debuting in (there whereabouts of) August 1968, Shonen Jump's very first issue saw only two serialized manga (Harenchi Gakuen did appear in it as a one-shot, but wouldn't become a proper serialization until Issue #11), and one of those was a baseball manga: Chichi no Tamashii/Father's Soul by Hiroshi Kaizuka, the creator of Kurikuri Pitcher. Detailing the journey of Hayato Nanjo as he makes his way up the school baseball ranks, this was the first long-running serialized manga in Jump history, and outside of some short-lived titles in 1970 (like Animal Kyujo & Namida no Gyakuten Homer) & a single short-lived title in 1971 (Yami no Senshi) Chichi no Tamashii was the only truly notable baseball manga that ran in Weekly Jump at the time. Things would change with Issue #36 of 1971, though, which saw the debut of Samurai Giants, the creation of legendary writer Ikki Kajiwara & relative newbie artist Ko Inoue that told the story of Ban Banba, a teenage pitching prodigy known for his immensely strong & forceful pitches who finds himself scouted to play for the Yomiuri Giants. In fact, Shueisha apparently had an exclusive contract with the Giants that had predated the debut of the magazine, hence why Chichi no Tamashii had actual pro players appear in it & why Samurai Giants saw Ban join the actual team, and there are varying stories regarding why Kodansha was able to get away with Star of the Giants. It's either that Tadasu Nagano (who would become Jump's first Editor in Chief) simply allowed it "for the sake of the manga industry" (according to Shigeo Nishimura, the future third EiC) or Shonen Magazine's third EiC Masaru Uchida personally made a deal with the Giants himself, which then resulted in Shueisha terminating the exclusivity deal (according to author Shigeru Ohno). Regardless, Jump wouldn't have two long-running baseball manga serializing at the same time for long, as Chichi no Tamashii would end just eight issues after Samurai Giants' debut, in Issue #44 of 1971, after 128 weekly chapters across 14 volumes, though it would get a three-volume continuation in Monthly Jump from 1975 to 1977, showing Hayato's time in the pros; as of today only the Weekly Jump run has ever seen re-release, though.

However, Samurai Giants wouldn't see a similar run as Jump's (mostly) isolated long-running baseball manga. No, starting the following year Weekly Shonen Jump would go on a multi-year streak where it would have multiple long-running baseball series running simultaneously, and even if you just count two as enough then it would be a nearly decade-long stretch! Not just that, but from 1972 to (technically) 1978 Jump saw a new baseball manga debut each & every single year, nearly all of which would go on to be simultaneous long-runners!! Was there just something in the water at Shonen Jump back in the 70s? Was the Japanese populace just more obsessed with baseball than usual? (To be fair, the Yomiuri Giants were on a bit of a hot streak during this time) Regardless, let's get taken out to the ball game & see what baseball manga were running simultaneously in Weekly Jump during these years & try to figure out how this "Murderers' Row" fared for the magazine.

Oh Me, Oh My, OVA! ι: Deus ex Rota III (Trick?... or Treat?)

Yeah, it's only been a little over two months since the last installment of Oh Me, Oh My, OVA!, and I certainly don't intend on doing them this often, but I at least have a good excuse here. Namely, it's Halloween & while I tend to focus on something spooky, horror-themed, or at least involving something not of this world for the occasion there is another aspect of the holiday I haven't really focused on here: "Trick or Treat". Dating all the way back to classical antiquity, though there it obviously related to All Hallows' Eve, the idea of trick-or-treating has a long history & includes the old traditions of souling, mumming, & the Gaelic festival of Samhain before the idea of dressing up in a disguise became associated with the holiday. It eventually came to North America sometime in the 1910s, while the iconic decree of "Trick or Treat!" looks to actually be a Canadian creation, before eventually disseminating down to the US in the 1930s. Regardless, the idea of kids receiving candy from their neighbors on Halloween, lest they find themselves victims of mischief (though almost no one actually does that nowadays), is a cherished part of the holiday... and it just so happens that the next OM, OM, OVA! was going to be about randomly-picked entries.

Therefore, it's time for me to ask The Almighty Wheel to "Help the Halloween Party" (as they used to say in Ireland) & see what I'm given in return. Will I be treated well... or will I be tricked once again? After all, last time I asked The Wheel one of the OVAs it gave me was Homeroom Affairs, so I already know that it is not a wholly merciful demiurge.

First up we have a work from the minds of creator/director/storyboarder/mechanical designer Koichi Ohata (seen most recently directing this year's 9-Nine: Ruler's Crown... which wasn't simulcasted by anyone) & writer Riku Sanjo (who's still slowly writing Beet the Vandel Buster & Fuuto PI, among other titles), the same duo that gave the world M.D. Geist! Yes, it's 1989's Seijyuki/Sacred Cyber Beast CyGuard -Cybernetics Guardian-, a 45-minute OVA that, admittedly, seems to often be considered the also-ran of Ohata's early OVA output, being neither as notoriously infamous as M.D. Geist or as beloved/hated (depending on the person) as the later Genocyber (which Sanjo had nothing to do with). Still, it's an early Ohata work so Central Park Media head honcho John O'Donnell made sure to give it an English release, whether it was on VHS, MPEG-encoded CD-ROM (again, yes, this was a thing), or multiple times over on DVD. On that final format it was given a standalone dual-audio DVD release in 1999, then bundled as a two-pack with the Sony Music Entertainment & Movic-produced Judge OVA in 2002, & then finally as part of the "Mecha Masters: Explosive Anime Classics" boxset in 2002, alongside M.D. Geist I & II and Genocyber (though no soundtrack CD for Cybernetics Guardian here, unlike the others); in short, it was a boxset aimed clearly at the hardest of Koichi Ohata's core. It's been a long time since I covered something directed by Koichi Ohata on the blog (Saiyuki Reload -burial- back in 2012, to be exact), but said last time it was something that actually worked to Ohata's strengths as a director, so time to see if Cybernetics Guardian truly deserves its seemingly middling place amongst Ohata's oeuvre.

SF Shin Seiki Lensman: A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to Hollywood...

Born on May 2, 1890 in Sheboygan, Wisconsin, Edward Elmer Smith was studying food chemistry at George Washington University in D.C., where he'd get his masters degree in 1917 & a PhD in 1918, and it was during his time at GWU that Smith would start writing his first serialized science fiction story. With the help of Lee Hawkins Garby, the wife of an old University of Idaho classmate-turned-neighbor, Smith would write the majority of what would later be 1928's The Skylark of Space, which is now often considered to be the very first space opera; Smith wrote the sci-fi adventure bits, while Garby handled the romance bits. Smith would write two sequels to Skylark in the first half of the 1930s (& a fourth entry would be Smith's final work before his passing in the 60s), but in 1934 a story by Smith titled Triplanetary was serialized in Amazing Stories magazine, the same place Skylark had been serialized in. A few years later Smith would then serialize the story Galactic Patrol in Astounding Stories in 1937, which would mark the start of the sci-fi series "E.E. 'Doc' Smith" would be most known for: Lensman. Three sequels to Galactic Patrol would get made between 1939 & 1948, followed by Triplanetary being reworked to act as the official start of the Lensman series in 1948, with a straight-to-novel story written in 1950 that acted as the link between Triplanetary & Galactic Patrol, and the entire series (as well as Smith's catalog, in general) has been cited as major influences for everyone from "The Dean of Sci-Fi Writers" Robert A. Heinlein to George Lucas to J. Michael Straczynski. It's even the inspiration for two Boston-based sci-fi cons, Boskone (which dates back to 1941) & Arisia (which started in 1990).

After E.E. "Doc" Smith passed away on August 31, 1965, at the age of 75, his family & estate has continued to manage Smith's literary rights, and there have been numerous attempts to adapt Lensman into film, most recently one that died in 2014 (due to Universal Pictures balking at the costs) that Straczynski himself wrote a couple of script drafts for. One attempt got extremely close to truly happening in the 80s... only to be beaten to the punch by Japan.

As detailed in a post from 2019 based on information sourced in large part by the late SF writer Frederik Pohl, a close friend of the Smith family, after the success of Star Wars in 1977 the Smith family was eventually able to make a deal with "a major studio" to produce a series of big-budget Lensman films, and everything was seemingly ready to start entering pre-production... until a video tape showed up on the Smith family's doorstop. You see, back in the 60s publisher Kodansha got the rights to republish the Lensman novels in Japan, having acquired those rights from the US publisher at the time, Berkley Publishing Corporation (now Berkley Books), which was given permission by the Smith family to license out international rights on their behalf; everything checks out, so far. The people at Kodansha, in turn, were interested in producing an adaptation of Lensman themselves, and according to how Japanese copyright & licensing worked at the time Kodansha felt that it had the right to make such an adaptation, at least as long as it stayed in Japan. Apparently, most non-Japanese companies didn't question this at the time, since such adaptations were Japan-only & wouldn't make their away abroad, similar to how big name actors used to secretly take Japan-only commercial gigs. Now, to Kodansha's credit, they claimed to have informed Berkley about their intention to produce an adaptation... but apparently Berkley never bothered to let the Smith family know about this; whoops! Therefore, right as everything was set to be signed for a big-budget "Hollywood" production of Lensman to get started, the Smith family (allegedly) suddenly got a video tape showing early work that was being done for a feature-length anime film adaptation of Lensman, which Kodansha had seemingly sent over as a courtesy; a similar thing allegedly happened with Alexander Key & the Future Boy Conan anime back in the 70s.

Needless to say, according to this version of events, everything blew up in the Smith family's faces. The major studio immediately backed out of the deal, as it wanted full control over the Lensman IP when it came to adaptations & felt that the anime film (which was looking very promising, visually) would be competition that it didn't want to deal with. While the Smith family was understandably furious about the loss of their big Hollywood deal, they tried to make lemons out of lemonade by at least giving the anime film their blessing & allowed it to see completion & release in Japan, with it premiering in theaters on July 7, 1984 (about six months after Triplanetary's 50th Anniversary) as SF Shin Seiki/Sci-Fi New Century Lensman; they even allowed the production of a 25-episode TV anime reboot... but that's for next time. In the end, the Smith family was not really pleased with the end result, feeling that neither anime was accurate to the original stories at all, but had hoped that all of this would simply be an errant blip that'd stay in Japan, would never be seen again, and after a little bit they could try again for that Hollywood deal; an annoying rough patch, sure, but live & let learn. Unfortunately, it was now the mid-80s & the idea of recording to VHS had become ubiquitous, so copies of the Lensman film & TV anime were starting to appear at American sci-fi conventions throughout the 80s (i.e. places were the earliest form of American anime fandom gathered), having made their way over from Japan, which in turn allowed word of its existence to spread. Not only that, but Kodansha (or possibly co-producer MK Company) would then later make a deal with Harmony Gold to allow both the film & TV anime to see official English release outside of Japan, all seemingly done without the Smith family's knowledge or approval; that's not good! Harmony Gold would produce an edited dub version of the film under the name Lensman: Secret of the Lens, while some of the early episodes of the TV anime were edited together into a dubbed film titled Lensman: Power of the Lens, & both seemingly only ever managed to see release via some TV broadcasts around 1988/1989, similar to the Galaxy Express 999 TV special dubs HG produced in 1986.