Tuesday, November 01, 2005

Defenders of Universe


CollectionDX has posted reviews for our new favorite Korean animated features on dollar DVDs:

DEFENDERS OF SPACE

PROTECTORS OF UNIVERSE

and SPACE THUNDER KIDS
with links to the movie trailers, lots of screencaps and they even point out where all the robots are borrowed from. Heck, these reviews are as good as the ones you'd find at Anime Jump. And we hope that we'll see these gems at the next DUBS THAT TIME FORGOT with Mike Toole and Neil Nadelman.

12 comments:

Chris Sobieniak said...

I've read these reviewd almost two months back when I got to get my copies of those DVDs.

Noticed one DeviantArt fan brought up about these on his journal entry...
http://asswhompsupreme.deviantart.com/journal/6893312/

By the way, here's some background on IFD Film & Arts, featuring screengrabs of their Columbia Pictures ripoff logo!
http://simonyam.com/hkmw/producers/ifd/

Here's the main company's site...
http://www.ifd.com.hk/

Of course the best place to find out just what gets copied... eh... inspired in Korea is here...
http://nandakorea.sakura.ne.jp

Daryl Surat said...

I picked up these along with another one called Beauty and Warrior, which probably isn't Japanese or Korean or anything but still looked like a cheap DBZ knockoff on the cover. I'd really like to show as much of this as I could at Anime That Sucks next Jacon, but so much of the humor relies upon people recognizing the designs that were mercilessly swiped.

Here's hoping that episode of The Simpsons doesn't ring quite as true as it once did and that people out there have seen TRON.

Unknown said...

Yeah, I picked up BEAUTY AND WARRIOR, too. I haven't watched it past the really, really slow opening.

I gotta admit, I love when stuff like this shows up. Like when I got THE ENCHANTED JOURNEY, pure weird animated badness. I just picked up another copy at Big Lots for $3. I found a box of Bandai DVDs at Big Lots all marked $3.99, a random assortment of Gundams and what not.

I found a boxset of the Mexican CANTINFLAS cartoons at Walmart, but didn't have the pesos at the time. Gotta go back and pick that one up, too...
-d!

Chris Sobieniak said...

Daryl Surat said...
I picked up these along with another one called Beauty and Warrior, which probably isn't Japanese or Korean or anything but still looked like a cheap DBZ knockoff on the cover. I'd really like to show as much of this as I could at Anime That Sucks next Jacon, but so much of the humor relies upon people recognizing the designs that were mercilessly swiped.

That's true. You can't really get any ol' Joe Anime Public into these unless you otakunize them first!

Here's hoping that episode of The Simpsons doesn't ring quite as true as it once did and that people out there have seen TRON.

Find it funny if they'll forget again!

Chris Sobieniak said...

Tohoscope said...

Yeah, I picked up BEAUTY AND WARRIOR, too. I haven't watched it past the really, really slow opening.

I find it quite slow as well, had to scan through most of it personally. It's actually an Indonesian production, though I can only trace that to an e-mail address or whatever I spotted in the end credits.

I gotta admit, I love when stuff like this shows up. Like when I got THE ENCHANTED JOURNEY, pure weird animated badness.

I just found a copy of this too at some used video shop. Find it funny Orson Welles had to get his ass in on this.

Only other thing that comes to mind is the obvious image cropping down to remove Japanese writings on signs that are in the backgrounds on some shots in the city I noticed (typical Americanization in action).

Here's an IMDB entry for it, though it's VHS cover is to an unrelated French cartoon I otherwise found on tape as well.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0087202/

I just picked up another copy at Big Lots for $3. I found a box of Bandai DVDs at Big Lots all marked $3.99, a random assortment of Gundams and what not.

You have better luck at your Big Lots than I do at mine. Mine hardly gets any anime in. :-(

I found a boxset of the Mexican CANTINFLAS cartoons at Walmart, but didn't have the pesos at the time. Gotta go back and pick that one up, too...
-d!


Damn, wonder if my Wal-Mart has that? Usually don't find any Latino-related items for sale much there.

Though I am unfamiliar with this. Would this happen to be the Hanna-Barbera involvement from the early '80s? I believe that was never aired in the US, but an English dub does exist for it.

Here's some info I guess about the DVDs in question, though I can't say they'll have English tracks as well...
http://www.latinola.com/story.php?story=2018

Unknown said...

Well, I am surrounded by Texas WalMarts, so there's a high ratio of latino crossover.

From what I understand the Cantinflas DVD boxset is a combination of Hanna Barbara Cantinflas episodes and episodes animated by a Mexican animation house. The Mexican shorts are of higher quality and better designed while the HB ones look like the typical saturday morning stuff that HB churned out mid 80s.

Now I love HB, but they did kinda give up toward the end of that era...
-d!

Chris Sobieniak said...

Well, I am surrounded by Texas WalMarts, so there's a high ratio of latino crossover.

True. There's hardly enough to warrant my WalMarts to do the same, or any store for that matter. I never got to appreciate that kind of culture early on like watching some obscure anime dubbed in Spanish from a Hispanic UHF station or such.

From what I understand the Cantinflas DVD boxset is a combination of Hanna Barbara Cantinflas episodes and episodes animated by a Mexican animation house. The Mexican shorts are of higher quality and better designed while the HB ones look like the typical saturday morning stuff that HB churned out mid 80s.

That's true. H-B's output by that point was pretty mundane.

Now I love HB, but they did kinda give up toward the end of that era...
-d!


Sad really, especially when they got into doing co-productions with foriegn companies, as well as the toy company marketed toons that the 80's would ensue as well. Just not the H-B that once existed back in it's glory days.

Unknown said...

YOUNG ADB AL-RAHMAN IN "FINAL JUSTICE!"

Aw yeah. Bruce just showed me the suicide bomber clip on Friday. I gotta email these people for a copy of these. Great post, Chris!
-d!

Chris Sobieniak said...

Tohoscope said...
YOUNG ADB AL-RAHMAN IN "FINAL JUSTICE!"
Aw yeah. Bruce just showed me the suicide bomber clip on Friday. I gotta email these people for a copy of these. Great post, Chris!
-d!


Thanks for enjoying it! In coming up with the title, I was thinking of an '80s Joe Don Baker flick with that phrase, as I felt that's what this toon pretty much explains.

Still find it amusing how cheap it was produced, almost like they had to get it out at the last minute at times, resulting in scenes that look to be shown with a windowbox effect or uncompleted areas that probably would be cropped if watching on a normal TV (not counting the bugs and subtitiles plastered over the screen).

I got my copy of this film in WMV format someone put up on a Swedish tracker (of whose name I'll withhold), perhaps those guy scan give you a much higher res version in case you're lucky!

Chris Sobieniak said...

The site I directed you to for that toon probably has a lot of other clips of interest if you can sneak them into your Hell screenings!

Unknown said...

Boys Beware
Yeah, I've played parts of this in my show. I prefer Sid Davis' LIVE AND LEARN for it's wonderful scenes of child endangerment. Or his anti-shoplifting short which pretty much tells you exactly how to shoplift. What part of Boys Beware do they use on the Howard Stern Show?
-d!

Chris Sobieniak said...

Tohoscope said...
Boys Beware
Yeah, I've played parts of this in my show. I prefer Sid Davis' LIVE AND LEARN for it's wonderful scenes of child endangerment. Or his anti-shoplifting short which pretty much tells you exactly how to shoplift.


Heh, that's cool. Don't see more than four of his films up at archive.org though. Another one that might seem interesting is of skatebording safety from the '70s.
http://www.archive.org/details/skateboard_sense

What part of Boys Beware do they use on the Howard Stern Show?
-d!


They mostly used the footage concerning the boy who meets the guy who takes him to a fast-food drive-in, then fishing, and eventually to his apartment to show off some of his photo collection! In doing so, they re-edit much of the narrator's lines to fit more evenly for it's use on radio, so most of it's silent parts with just the music aren't used, but I thought it was tightly well constructed.

Somehow Howard thought this was from the '50s when in fact the film was made in '61, but almost feels of that period still.

Here's some extracts I've made of two previous broadcasts of this...

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=C66HA4DR
Somehow they went overboard near the end and had to bring up the use of music in this film as in most scenes where the music got creepy as "homo music", and just went off from there into weirder territories.

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=W32XS2FU
They pretty much replay the same sequence, but follow up on it by highlighting a later passage with a kid not wanting to go under the peir after spotting a gay person in the bathroom following him.

Earlier this year I've heard them play another film off archive.org, "Molly Grows Up." Appaerntly just to make comments over the dated nature and dialogue in that film.
http://www.archive.org/details/MollyGro1953

Another film heard on there was "The ABC's of Sex Education for Trainables."
http://www.muchosucko.com/viewlink5100.html

For a shameless plug, here's Howard's Sirius Radio promo in case you might get a kick out of it.
http://www.howardstern.com/archives/email/