Monday, December 5, 2011

FTT Off-Topic: Star Blazers

I'm old, folks. Old enough to remember an incredible turd burger of a Japanese animated show that was shown in syndication back when there were VHF stations and UHF stations, and this was most assuredly shown on the latter.

"Star Blazers" was Japanimation before anyone knew what that was in North America. All I knew, as a 10 year old, was this INCREDIBLE SPACE SAGA WAS ON TV, but never when I was at home to enjoy it. It was so incredibly unfair. Whenever I was home sick the flu, I'd try to figure out some way to take off a few months and see this. (Months, you say? Yes, months. Because Star Blazers was a one year mission to save the Earth, dammit, which means there must have been 365 episodes. A FULL YEAR OF SCIENCE FICTION INSANITY, and none of it reachable by my means, since this was a time before VHS (or even, sigh Betamax -- and yes, my family had one of those, too).

It's now on Netflix Instant. I watched it tonight with the Shooter Wife.

Oh, and it's spectacularly, hilariously, jaw-droppingly awful and stupid.

And yes, yes, you should watch it. If only because when floating continents appear on Jupiter to just serve as a plot device, when the last best hope of Earth is a fat load Admiral who mostly seems to have grown the biggest beard for it, when Earth is menaced by fey Germanic aliens who want to destroy the planet for no stated reason, monetary gain, or just because they are bad bad bad, and their only real defense is a phallic one shot spooge weapon of insane power... well, it's just all kinds of special, really, and RIPE for mockery.

Joe Bob says check it out. Though, well, I completely understand if you don't.

Now, everybody sing!

1 comment:

Darren said...

I don't know, I thought it was mind-manglingly awful back when it first ran in the US.

The only good thing about it from my perspective is that it inspired my buddies Marc and John's "Bleep War" Saga (an ultra-violent series of what could be loosely described as comics about little fuzzy promotional items blasting each other -- and their enemies, the Cloud Empire -- to bits).

The sad truth is, pretty much everything that passed for kids entertainment for our generation inhabited the bottom one percent of the bottom one percent of the quality spectrum, from abysmal to crime against humanity.

On the other hand, we were nourished by our parents' generation's leftovers. Warner Brothers, Looney Toons, you know, the classics. Everything I know about being cool - and a lot of what I know about Western civilization - I learned from Bugs Bunny.

(Yes, I know, explains a lot.)

I don't think my kids would even recognize Bugs Bunny if they saw him. And if they did, it would be from that stupid Michael Jordan movie.

Basically, what I'm saying is, I have too much free time today.

But thanks for reminding me just how much Star Blazers sucked. OTOH, I'll see your Star Blazers and raise you Speed Racer. !OH!