“Fritz becomes actively involved in espionage, scuttling a freighter to block the Panama Canal and hobble the US naval response. It is Fritz’s execution by the vengeful Americans that leads to an outright declaration of war by Germany. Japan frees India from British oppression, in part owing to the Nitahara-class aerial warships able to cross the Himalayas in a surprise attack…”
In a tongue-in-cheek reminiscence, Yasuhiko Tan, the NHK producer who greenlit Future Boy Conan over dozens of other possible projects, wrote of his interest in the show as if it were a deluded romance. Bewitched by the charms of the original offer, and over-awed by the appearance of the pilot episode, he alluded to the progress of his “relationship” as he continued to throw support behind a project that fell behind and became too big to fail, only to snatch disappointing ratings on broadcast.
“These days,” he wrote to Conan as if it were a fondly remembered ex, “people talk about you like you are the great anime masterpiece, but back then, your reputation, to be honest, wasn’t so good. The audience share didn’t meet up with people’s expectations, and I heard all sorts of stories. You know how difficult it is to hear bad things about the one you love, don’t you?”
Over at All the Anime, there’s an extract from Future Boy Conan: Miyazaki’s Directorial Debut, the book I’ve written with Andrew Osmond to accompany the UK release of the 1978 TV series.
Over at the History Hack podcast, I talk to Alex and Zack about the role of music and songs in the rise and fall of the Japanese Empire, drawing on my new book, Japan at War in the Pacific.
Some of the songs mentioned include “Miya-san, Miya-san“, the revolutionary anthem of the Meiji Restoration, and “Miya-sama, Miya-sama“, its surprise reappearance in Gilbert & Sullivan’s The Mikado, as well as “Myriad Enemies“, the stirring naval march that spent decades drumming the idea of “shattering like a jewel” into the minds of young recruits, and “Qing Lai“, the song about Chinese conjurors that the Japanese Imperial Army bulk-bought in thousands and scattered all over China six months after the Rape of Nanjing in a misguided effort in cultural outreach.
As a parent, one of the surprising things about my daily life is how many cartoons I end up having to sit through. I know, right? The irony. And I’m wondering what it is that is the cartoon of choice among the kids at Mamoru Hosoda’s house.
“Oh,” he says, “they are mad for PAW Patrol. It’s PAW Patrol all the time at our place.”
Blimey, I say to the director of Summer Wars and Belle, that must be awful.
“Oh no, it’s great,” he says graciously. “All these little dogs and it’s kind of like a sentai show. They love it.”
I personally can’t imagine the horror of being a world-class animator, who comes home after a tiring day making films to discover that your kids are obsessed with Canadian cartoon dogs, but Hosoda is determined not to be That Kind of Animator.
“I don’t make a big deal about being The Guy Who Made the Films,” he says, despite literally being the guy who made the films. “I did take my daughter to see Belle at the cinema, and there was one of those UFO Catcher machines at the cinema, which had Belle dolls in it. She was keen enough on the film to ask me to win her one. I must have put three thousand yen [£20] into that machine!”
At this point, I have to point out to him that he wrote and directed Belle and owned all the licences. If he wanted a box of Belle dolls dropped on his doorstep that night, he only had to make a phone call.
“Yes,” he says shyly, “but I’m not the kind of guy who says I directed the film. I’m the kind of Dad who wants his daughter to see him win something.”
It’s a lovely little window into his character, and into how sweetly he puts family ahead of work. But with the sight of both Belle and PAW Patrol: The Movie on the Oscars Best Animated Feature longlist, will there be a ceremonial burning of doggie merchandise at the Hosoda home?
“I think if my kids were voting members of the Academy, they would be voting for PAW Patrol without a second thought,” he grimaces. “But luckily, they’re not.”
[Peace was preserved when neither film made the shortlist] Jonathan Clements is the author of Anime: A History. This article first appeared in NEO #217, 2022.
Anime in the UK: the History, Cultural Context, and Evolution of UK Anime Fandom by Leah Holmes is the culmination of over a decade’s work, an M.Phil thesis that covers 30+ years, most crucially of the 1990s, before the internet singularity so vastly increased the amount of data (and noise) available. A super-fun read for anyone who was there, and something of an eye-opener, I expect, for anyone who wasn’t.
“What makes this such a stand-out book on Japan is its humor. Clements injects his book with humorous observations and anecdotes that add so much humanity to an otherwise dry and exhaustingly lengthy topic. This is a history book painted with color and vibrancy.”
“But as director Yuasa notes, the war was not merely a time of catastrophic conflict, but a spur to artistic creation, as travelling bards began recording martial deeds in song, in saga-like chronicles like the aforementioned Tale of the Heike. It was, Inu-Oh suggests, a crisis that helped form the Matter of Japan, a terrible national event that only healed over the centuries as later generations processed the trauma at first as a form of exorcism, and later through the creative arts.”
Over at All the Anime, and with a little help from Carl Sagan, I explain the complex historical origins of Masaaki Yuasa’s Inu-Oh — cursed swords, samurai spirits, forgotten rock stars and no business like Noh business.
And so it’s farewell to the live-action Cowboy Bebop, coldly cancelled by Netflix a mere twenty days after its much hyped premiere. That’s the thing about Netflix, they’re very much about going big or going home, and dropping an entire season online not only fuels the binge-watchers, it also supplies overwhelming statistical evidence that allows for a fast executive decision.
The live-action Cowboy Bebop notched up 74 million hours worldwide in the three weeks since its November activation date, but it seems that many of those hours were people watching the first episode and not coming back for more. Unlike in the bad old days of terrestrial telly, when people might nickel-and-dime and campaign and, say, give a show another week, binge-level content provision requires a binge-level response out of the gate, otherwise it shows up on the Netflix stats as a dead dog.
The same algorithms that pointed to Cowboy Bebop as a much beloved anime show with a twenty-year fandom and a massive footprint in the American market, that same box-tickery that put John Cho in the lead and brought back Yoko Kanno’s iconic score, all that robot number-crunching that tells Netflix what to do and how to do it, reported back in record time that Cowboy Bebop did not justify a greenlight for season two.
But do not despair, a whole bunch of people are still sitting pretty. At a very basic level, the cast and crew of Bebop got paid to make their show. But the real winners from the whole debacle are the owners of the anime. Because while fandom is carping about the remake, the hype over it has functioned as a massive advertising campaign for the original. My inbox lit up for weeks with journalists in search of anime punditry, and even NEO got in on the act with that lovely cover story. That’s not bad attention for a show that is 23 years old, and which is still just as good, just as fresh and just as fun this month as it was last month.
Like every disappointing remake, it stands a good chance of bringing in thousands of new viewers to appreciate the original, which has to be a good thing. And if people are wondering what all the fuss is about, they can even see the original right now… er… on Netflix.
Jonathan Clements is the author of Anime: A History. This article first appeared in NEO #216, 2022.
Over at History Hack, I regale the squad with tales of the Shimabara Rebellion.
In 1638, the ruler of Japan ordered a crusade against his own subjects, a holocaust upon the men, women and children of a doomsday cult.
The sect was said to harbour dark designs to overthrow the government. Its teachers used a dead language that was impenetrable to all but the innermost circle. Its priests preached love and kindness, but helped local warlords acquire firearms. They encouraged believers to cast aside their earthly allegiances and swear loyalty to a foreign god-emperor, before seeking paradise in terrible martyrdoms.
The cult was in open revolt, led, it was said, by a boy sorcerer. Farmers claiming to have the blessing of an alien god had bested trained samurai in combat and proclaimed that fires in the sky would soon bring about the end of the world. The Shogun called old soldiers out of retirement for one last battle before peace could be declared in Japan. For there to be an end to war, he said, the Christians would have to die.
“So, what does it actually mean when Mamoru Hosoda’s Belle received a 14-minute ovation at Cannes [last] summer? It means, presumably, that French audiences rated it much higher than Moonrise Kingdom (2012, 5 minutes), and more than Twin Peaks (2017, 5 minutes). It means that, by some odd metric of hands smacking together, it was worth more than Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (2019, 7 minutes), better in some way than BlackkKlansman (2018, 10 minutes), and a smidgen more entertaining than Bowling for Columbine (2002, 13 minutes).”
With Mamoru Hosoda’s Belle receiving its UK-wide cinema release this Friday, I thought it was a good time to re-link to my article about it from October over on All the Anime.
The Official Schoolgirl Milky Crisis Blog 