The Bogeyman!

First of all, my apologies for my long absence from the blogosphere. No particular reason, just laziness and a lack of topics I suppose.

Why am I back tonight? Because I learned that today is the 84th birthday of Raymond Briggs.

He has been a favourite of mine since I first read Fungus the Bogeyman.

I never knew it was adapted for the BBC a few years back. Here's a sneak peek.

Another book I'd read and later watched is When the Wind Blows. It's a lovely little ditty about the end of the world and if Trump and his pal Rocket Man have their way, it may come to fruition.

I just happen to have found a copy of the Animated Film's pamphlet a few weeks back and have been waiting for a chance to showcase it. Here are several of the colourful pics scammed from it.

And some monochrome ones.

This is from the back cover. A rather apocalyptic update of the front cover.

If you don't have a copy of the book handy and you can read Japanese, then this blog can help you out. If you can track down the video in Japanese, good for you. Here's a sneak preview:



I never knew that it had been adapted for stage, it would have been amazing to see it in Japanese.



Last week was the second anniversary of David Bowie's passing and it just so happens that there's a Bowie song in this movie.



If you click the Briggs label, you can find snippets of Raymond's Snowman as well.

Wait a sec, it's also A.A Milne's birthday! Dang, I don't have anything prepared for him.
Ah Pooh!

Gamba-te.

The other day when I saw 009 vs. Devilman, I had some time to kill beforehand and saw another animated movie called ガンバと仲間たち Gamba and Friends about a spunky little mouse and his rodent friends. (Click that link for lots of cool info.)

"Gamba, a town mouse with a brave, adventurous spirit decides to go on an adventure to discover the ocean. On his way, he meets a troubled child mouse, Chuta. He says his family and other mice have been killed by a clan of weasels living on a nearby island. Chuta asks a group of ship mice, the bravest of their kind, for help, but when they find out that the villain behind this event is the terrifying weasel-leader Noroi, they give up on helping Chuta. However seeing the hopeless Chuta, Gamba promises him to save the island, his family and the other mice. Gamba and his friends team up to go on their adventure to defeat the evil Noroi and his clan." (Scammed from here).

That is really a lovely song but seems pretty old school for modern animation. This song was sung during the opening and closing credits and had some nostalgic looking stop-action animation. Based on the audience of a half-dozen older ladies and NO kids, I surmised that this was based on an old animation.

I was right. I did some digging and discovered that there was indeed a previous movie called ガンバとカワウソの冒険 or Gamba to Kawauso no Bōken (Gamba and the River Otter Adventures).

Which was a sequel to a 26 episode animated tv series called  ガンバの冒険 or Ganba no Bōken.

 Which was based on a series of kids books.

I'll have to seek these out.

Speaking of old animation, here is the making of the opening credits sequence.





That's just a taste, you can find a whole lot more of these here.

Here are a couple more stills from the movie.

 

My favourite characters were the villainous weasels. In the recent movie, they were referred to as イタチ (Itachi = weasels) as opposed to カワウソ (Kawauso = River Otters from the prequel) but they were equally spooky. They were led by an albino weasel named NOROI who was damned creepy.

Gamba was voiced by Yuuki Kaji (Eren of Attack on Titan fame) and he was indeed spunky. His girlfriend was the gal who voiced Anna in Frozen, Sayaka Kanda.

Here's an interview:


By the way, the Executive Producer is none other than アヴィ・アラッド, better known to North American audiences as Avi Arad of X-men, Hulk and several other Marvel movies.

Who knew that he was branching out into Japanese animation?

Happy Papa No Hi.

How many kids have dreamed that their father was a hero? Will this wee lass IS the daughter of a true hero.

I present for you Papa is Ultra-Seven written by Tatsuya Miyanishi back in 1999. I discovered this book a few weeks ago but was waiting for Father's Day to present it. I'll let the story tell itself and if you can't read Japanese, you can try and figure it out for yourself.
(Be sure to click on any pic to Ultrasize it.)

(I doubt whether you'd ever see a page like the above in a North American Children's book.)

And they all lived happily ever after. (They must have for there is a sequel. If interested, I can post it tomorrow.)

By a fortuitous coincidence, a friend of mine went to an exhibition of the author's works today. Here are a few pics that I scammed from her.

I hope the exhibition makes it to Sendai. I'll be there!

There is a movie of his works out right now although unfortunately I think it has reached the end of its run. I'll check out to see if it's still playing tomorrow.

In the meantime, here is another one of his Dinosaur movies. Part One and Part Two of You Are Umasou.

Happy Papa's Day everyone!