Читать книгу Anime Impact - Chris Stuckmann - Страница 12
ОглавлениеGinga Tetsudō Surī Nain
— Emma Fyffe —
In the pre-Internet era—well not exactly pre-Internet, but in the era of “all my friends had AOL and just talked to each other on AIM all day” while I, the child of two programmers, explored the far reaches of burgeoning fan pages via Netscape—the manner in which we were introduced to new media, particularly that which at the time was considered “niche” or “alternative,” often came in the form of actual printed publications. And for a fledgling otaku (a fandom-obsessed person) like myself circa 1999, one such publication reigned supreme: Viz Media’s monthly magazine Animerica.
At the Borders in that area of Southwestern Connecticut, up the street from what is now an AMC Theater (that I was never entirely sure whether it was Brookfield or Danbury), I first discovered Animerica amongst the other nerd magazines I’d seek out in that far corner of the wooden magazine stands: GamePro, Electronic Gaming Monthly, Wizard, etc. I recall browsing its pages, eagerly taking in the artwork, and searching for reviews and recommendations of anime series beyond what was currently airing on Toonami. Series I would go home and immediately search for on our recently purchased TiVo to see if there was any chance of me catching them without having to ask my parents to drive me to Blockbuster on the off-chance I could rent them.
I’m not certain if it was the first issue of the magazine that I actually decided to purchase—in fact, I know I owned Volume 7, Issue 9, which featured interviews with the staff of Serial Experiments Lain—but one of my earliest memories of owning and thoroughly devouring a copy of Animerica was June of 2000, Volume 8, Issue 5, which coincided with the limited US theatrical release of director Rintaro’s adaptation of CLAMP’s X, localized as X/1999, at the time. What I didn’t realize then was that Rintaro was previously responsible for the film adaptation of another piece of media that appeared in every issue of Animerica I ever owned: Leiji Matsumoto’s elegant space opera, Galaxy Express 999 (pronounced “three nine” not “nine nine nine”).
As previously mentioned, Animerica was published by Viz Media, who remain a major player in the world of US licensing & distribution to this day. So, Viz would publish single chapters of manga they currently had the license to, and during my prime Animerica reading days, that manga was Galaxy Express 999. Though, as an adult, I’m realizing this might not have been the original 1970s series, but the sequel which began publication in Japan in 1996. It’s difficult to tell, thanks to Matsumoto’s unique and consistent art style (to this day, I must admit, I blame him for my addiction to eyelash extensions), but my research tells me that the original manga series has never been released in the US in any official capacity.
Which is definitely not the case with Rintaro’s 1979 film. Thanks to its massive success in Japan, and the steadily expanding anime fandom overseas, Galaxy Express 999 was the first anime film ever to receive a US theatrical release, albeit in a heavily modified format, produced by Roger Corman of all people, in August of 1981. The 130 minute film was shaved down to 90 minutes, the title was shortened to simply Galaxy Express and several name changes, including Captain Harlock being changed to “Captain Warlock” and Tetsuro Hoshino to “Joey Smith.” I wish I could say this was the manner in which I first experienced this series on screen, but I am 99 percent sure I just saw bits and pieces of the still edited 1996 Viz dub on the Sci-Fi channel, where I recognized it as “that thing I thought was kind of weird in the middle of every issue of that magazine I liked.”
Because, let me be clear, I was not instantly in love with Matsumoto’s work. I didn’t dislike it, and I will say I was definitely intrigued by how bizarre his character designs were. Tetsuro looked like a chicken nugget wrapped in a blanket, wearing a hat. Maetel was too tall and skinny, even by anime standards, and I was extremely confused by her furry Russian Cossack hat. Also, most of the chapters I read in Animerica seemed to just be Maetel & Tetsuro floating around space on an old-timey looking train—remember, Viz was only publishing single chapters and we weren’t getting a whole lot of story—so the action paled in comparison to other space series I was watching at the time, Gundam Wing. Still, something about this series intrigued me and despite not really being sure if I liked it, I did keep reading.
That was when I started noticing all the ads in Animerica for other series, featuring characters who looked like the ones I was seeing in Galaxy Express 999, but in full color and with flashier outfits. Like any self-respecting fourteen-year-old, I loved pirates, badass women, and beautiful men with good hair, and found all of these things personified in Queen Emeraldas & Captain Harlock, who at this point were just images to me. It did not take long to realize these characters existed in the same universe as Galaxy Express 999 and thus began my now lifelong fascination with the “Leijiverse.”
While the promise of “cool” characters like Captain Harlock drew me in—I’m pretty sure I bought Harlock Saga, Matsumoto’s take on Das Rheingold from Wagner’s Der Ring des Nibelungen the minute Central Park Media released it under the US Manga Corps mantle in the US—it is ultimately the complex (and admittedly, sometime convoluted) morality of Galaxy Express 999 that forms the heart of Matsumoto’s vast, frequently interconnected body of work. The reverse Pinocchio journey of tenacious Tetsuro Hoshino, who dreams of replacing his perishable human body with an immortal machine one upon reaching the Andromeda Galaxy—the final destination of the Galaxy Express 999—is full of all the emotional turmoil you’d expect in the journey of an orphaned ten-year-old who’s discovering the value of a finite lifespan. His relationship with Maetel, part surrogate mother, part first love (in a one-sided crush kind of way—it’s mostly not creepy) is sweet and compelling, especially as we learn more about who this mysterious blonde woman—who also bears an uncanny resemblance to Tetsuro’s late mother—is.
While not every stop along this galactic train journey across the Sea of Stars is a winner (there’s an episode wherein a planet commits suicide out of embarrassment after Tetsuro cuts it open), some of them are truly gut-wrenching. For example, Tetsuro’s discovery that the human bodies of people who’ve abandoned them in favor of machine ones are stored under the ice on Pluto. The stories of many of the more prominent side characters who were deemed important enough to appear in Rintaro’s really excellent film, like the glass-bodied waitress Claire, the elegant Ryuzu, and the bandit Antares, all resonate in the hearts of the viewer as deeply as they do in young Tetsuro. The revelation of the true nature of the free mechanized bodies being offered up to those who complete the journey to get them. Galaxy Express 999 is a coming-of-age tale that elegantly undermines childhood fantasies of the glory of immortality, addresses issues of classism, corrupt leadership, and the emotional repercussions of physically sacrificing your humanity.
Despite the original manga having never been licensed in English, all 113 episodes of the original 1978 anime series are available streaming in Japanese with English subtitles on Crunchyroll (as of this writing). The 1978 film also has some staying power, with the film finally receiving an uncut, official English-language DVD release in 2011 thanks to Discotek. This version features both the original Japanese-language version and the Viz dub, which isn’t terrible, but I highly recommend watching in Japanese, if only for Masako Nozawa’s performance as Tetsuro. And while you could get the DVD right now, Discotek has announced that they will be releasing the film on Blu-ray soon, so hopefully by the time you’re reading this you can and absolutely should purchase it. Though I don’t expect you to love every second of it, because Matsumoto’s art and storytelling does take some adjusting to, it’s impossible to walk away from this series without at least appreciating the amount of thought and detail behind it, and its lasting impact on the science fiction genre.
Emma Fyffe currently resides in Los Angeles where she hosts a Sailor Moon podcast Love and Justice and an anime talk show Hyper Otaku on Hyper RPG’s Facebook page. She is also the “Golden Mic” of the Movie Trivia Schmoedown (it says so on her IMDb) and the Captain of a ragtag crew of smugglers on Hyper RPG’s Twitch-based Star Wars roleplaying game series “Pencils and Parsecs.”
