Unchain My Heart (Catch)

This past week something special ended for me, and while I wouldn’t quite put it in the same league as the final episodes of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Xena: Warrior Princess or Battlestar Galactica, it still feels like a kick in the gut and has left me feeling strangely down in the dumps.

I’m talking about the 49th episode of anime series HeartCatch PreCure!, which was broadcast on Sunday morning here in Japan. HeartCatch is the seventh version of the long-running girls' concept created by the “mysterious” Izumi Todo – actually none other than an alias for the creative types at Toei Animation.

I've known all along that production house Toei reinvent their Pretty Cure anime series every February, and that they'd done so seven times already since 2004, so I could see the writing on the wall for this particular incarnation from the moment it started in February, 2010.

Each year there’s a new super-team of Pretty Cure girls to battle baddies and dress in glitzy new ways, taking the baton from Sailor Moon but at the same time making that predecessor seem underplayed.

You can read more of this rambling yarn and about the end of HeartCatch @ the Forces Of Geek site.

Now for new incarnation Suite PreCure ♪ tomorrow.

IMAGE COPYRIGHT
© ABC 東映アニメーション

Black Tokyo

I have two disclaimers I need to unravel hereabouts in order to set the record straight about me and Aux 88. The first one is that I'm a huge fan of the Detroit duo, and have been for well over a decade.

Also known as Tommy Hamilton (aka Tom Tom) and Keith Tucker, they've released through respected labels like 430 West, Submerge, Metroplex, Direct Beat and Studio !K7.

Too many of their releases are absolute classics, like Aux Quadrant on Direct Beat, which hasn't left my record crate in about 15 years; I also really dig the self-titled Aux 88 album they put out through Soundscape over here in Japan five years ago - it's hot.

So it should come as no surprise that I've been keeping an eye on the Black Tokyo project they're finally releasing through Puzzlebox this week on November 22nd... along with nifty associated furniture.

Fortunately I haven't been anywhere near disappointed; this is superb stuff.

While the name of the album itself is a wee bit misleading - after all this has been engineered and produced by two Americans from Detroit rather than persons Japanese residing anywhere near Tokyo - they get away with this by calling themselves Arashi Hoshino and Shin Muramatsudo here; also on board for the ride are bona fide local musicians Akiko Murakat and Erika Tsuchiya, and the opening track 'Intro (Japenesse)' has a nice monologue in nihongo over lush strings.

There are also track title references to Japan like Kyoto Station, Winter in Japan, Tokyo Telacom, Tokyo Drive and, yes, Black Tokyo.

Musically speaking the album brings together that classic Detroit techno sound along with the more riotous electro sensibilities and basslines that Aux 88 are famous for.

The title track references classic Detroit by the likes of Derrick May and Carl Craig, wrapped around vocal riffs Kraftwerk would be proud to claim, while Tokyo Drive is a crisp, bouyant reconsideration of classic electro and Electronic Cinema continues this theme with some floating/spacious vocal work-outs.

Then Stance (Interlude) again takes up the baton of lush strings from the opening number.

But for me it's the second and eleventh tracks, Groove Theory and Dragon Fly, that stand out here as something subversive and definitely ones to drop on a late night, up-for-it floor in order to mess with some headz.


I'm also a little biased, which brings me slap-bang into that second disclaimer I alluded to above.

When I recently rather cheekily bounced the idea off them about doing a remix for one of my Little Nobody tracks, Hamilton and Tucker promptly agreed.

Even more jaw-dropping was Tucker's extra added bonus comment that "the original mix sounds hot.” (Zounds!)

That mix - called The Condimental Op - is being released along with the Aux 88 rejig and another one by Chicago pioneer K. Alexi Shelby (Transmat/Trax/Warp) on old skool vinyl at the end of November 2010 through IF? Records, via British distributor Prime Direct.

It's already being spun, charted and is gathering steam thanks to support from Laurent Garnier, Trevor Rockcliffe, Alan Oldham, Inigo Kennedy, Kirk Degiorgio, Steve Poindexter, Jerome Baker, Lenny Burden, Mike Dehnert, Dan Curtin and Anthony Shakir.

Dave Clarke's also spun the Aux 88 remix on his radio show White Noise - twice.

Tokyo International Anime Fair 2010

I've loved Stan Lee since making the goldmine discovery of ancient '60s Marvel comics in the shed of my grandmother Nanny Bergen's house in Richmond, Melbourne.

The titles that grabbed me then were The Avengers, Captain America, Thor, Hulk and The X-Men, and my admiration of Lee increased two-fold when I was about 12 and sent him my idea of an Aussie super hero called Southern Cross (yep, he had the Eureka flag emblazoned across his chest) - and Stan "The Man" actually wrote back to say that he liked it.

He didn't actually use it - but he said he liked it. 'Nuff said, and all that jazz.

Which brings me to a discovery I made yesterday at the first day of this year's Tokyo International Anime Fair.

We call it "TAF" for short; for reasons as-yet-unknown, the organizers drop the “I” bit, maybe because it just looks better in terms of the logo design.

Think displays by anime producers like Production I.G, Gonzo, Mad House, Toei, Studio Ghibli, Aniplex, Sunrise, and Bandai flaunting their upcoming wares, and not just the scantily clad pseudo-cosplay girls outside their booths.

TAF is also the host of the annual Tokyo Anime Awards and this year’s Animation of the Year was Mamoru Hosoda’s superb Summer Wars.

Anyway I'm digressing (as usual).

One of the best anime studios, Bones (they made Fullmetal Alchemist and Wolf's Rain) had a stall that featured this giant fellow (above) and a bunch of fliers promoting Heroman (ヒーローマン), a new series set to start screening on Japan's TV Tokyo this April.

It's billed as "Stan Lee's newest superhero" and credits him as original creator, with scripting on the show by Gyo Yamatoya (Naruto).

This year's TAF (my ninth in a row) was that kind of event - oddly surprising, occasionally invigorating, yet on the whole a wee bit lacklustre compared with its predecessors.

While the industry proved that there's still a lot of life to it there was no stand-out anime series or movie to talk up here, no Summer Wars or Ghost Hound; no new series of Fullmetal Alchemist.


One of my favourite animation companies, Studio 4°C, did however have these funky underpants retailing for ¥4,000.

There were also some interesting looking series I'll probably get round to talking up once I finish wading through the hundreds of posters and fliers you get swamped with at these events.

Live action rather than anime-wise, there was some promotion for December's big budget remake of Space Battleship Yamato (宇宙戦艦ヤマト) and Klockworx has a new movie coming out in May called Big Tits Zombies (it's subtitled Deadly DD-Cups).

No doubt we'll be reporting more on that shortly.


“TAF is the Mecca for anime fans around the world,” Makoto Tsumita, the former marketing manager for the international division of essential anime production house Gonzo, told me about three years ago.

At that time Japan produced almost two thirds of the animation watched around the globe, “and 70 percent of this is produced in Tokyo,” a spokesperson for the TAF Executive Committee Secretariat told me in article that year for the now defunct Geek Monthly, making the argument that this city was the natural setting for the hugely successful anime trade affair.


“It’s the best place for foreign buyers to find everything under the same roof,” reported Stephane-Enric Beaulieu, a spokesperson for the Canadian Embassy in Tokyo.

In 2007 the event drew close to 107,713 people over four days, up 8.8% from the previous year’s attendance. If yesterday is anything to go by, we may see a dip this year - they had 13,076 visitors on the first day, albeit business-only.

Also, thanks to the success of Avatar, there's a heavy fixation this year on anime in 3D; at the Gonzo booth you can catch comparisons of 2D and 3D renderings of Last Exile and Blassreiter, and neither series - even though I dug both in their original format - looked so cool as they do with this technology.


TAF opens its doors to the general public over the weekend, and takes place at the cavernous Tokyo Big Sight - located in Koto-Ku on land reclaimed from Tokyo Bay, situated right next to the Odaiba area and Rainbow Bridge... ostensibly one of Tokyo’s most famous romantic viewing points.

Metropolis Magazine's Japanese Clubbers' Almanac

Published today here in Japan (well, in Tokyo anyway) in free weekly English-language magazine Metropolis.

The lowdown on 2009 - and wishlists for 2010 - from some of Japan's top artists, producers and labels including DJ Kentaro, Fumiya Tanaka, DJ Mayuri, DJ Baku, Takkyu Ishino... oh, and my crap 2 cents' worth as well.

You can the article out online HERE.

Space Battleship Yamato 2010

Remember Uchū Senkan Yamato (宇宙戦艦ヤマト) anyone?

Most people probably won't since the series was first screened - under the lacklustre ulterior title of Star Blazers - in the US and Australia in 1979.

In the Western version there was deviously reduced violence, toned-down dialogue, and the complete deletion of the partaking of sake. Alcoholism and sexual innuendo were completely whitewashed or at least visually clipped out on the editing room floor and/or erased from the English dub.

Best called Space Battleship Yamato in English, the series was created by Licca-chan designer Miyako Maki's husband - the great Leiji Matsumoto (Captain Harlock and a swag of Daft Punk videos) - and actually screened on TVs in Japan in 1974-75.

It tells the story of the beleaguered inhabitants of Earth who, under hostile alien attack, secretly build a massive spacecraft inside the ruins of the Japanese battleship Yamato.

The first 90-minute movie spin-off, released in 1978, outclassed Star Wars at the Japanese box office, and quite understandably there've been a wad of sequels since then; the Yamato iconography - for both the space craft and the characters - is absolutely huge here in Japan.

And now there's this: A live-action rebake slated for a December 2010 cinema release, directed by Takashi Yamazaki (Returner) and starring SMAP's Takuya Kimura (Love and Honor), Aya Ueto (Azumi), Tsutomu Yamazaki (Departures), and Japanese favourite - but someone I just can't warm to; maybe it's the use of the single name? - Koyuki (The Last Samurai).


Having director Yamazaki "return" to sci-fi/action after a long stint doing more popular domestic comedy-drama (the Always double-header and The Animal Doctors) is possibly the greatest thing to happen to this genre in Japan since 2004, when Ryuhei Kitamura unleashed Godzilla: Final Wars and Kazuaki Kiriya pushed through Casshern. Yamazaki's earlier work Returner (2002) may have been flawed, but it still rocked on a lot of levels and bears up to repeated viewing.

While the original anime predated both Star Wars and the original 1978 version of Battlestar Galactica, the preview (below) does intimate that the makers indulged in much viewing of Ron Moore's recent Galactica reinvention - which, really, can only be a good thing.

Keep an eye on the official website - there's not so much on there at this stage but it's sure to develop over time, methinks.

Here's the sneak preview:



© 東北新社 / 2009 ヤマトスタジオ／「宇宙戦艦ヤマト 復活篇」製作委員会 / Yoshinobu Nishizaki