Pay no attention to Josie and the Pussycats in Outer Space in the banner. We’ll circle back to that eventually. By the way, there is no rule 34 of that show, and I demand to speak to the manager of the Internet.
Over at GeekyDomain, we focus a lot on games, movies, comics, and all that, but I proposed that we’d neglected anime and animation in general. We should make up for that with a whole month just devouring animation. There’s so much in that vein that modern audiences just don’t know exists, especially older stuff they might have caught as a kid and half-remembered now. It’s the cure for the winter blahs, I soapboxed, so everybody went along with that.
That got me on an animated kick. First I commemorated Liquid Television, MTV’s groundbreaking showcase, which was a cheery bazaar of shorts, experimental projects, pilots, and episodes of series that could barely be tracked down otherwise. It was the launch point for Aeon Flux, Psychograms, The Maxx, and later Cartoon Sushi and the eventual launch of Cartoon Network. And then I barely had room to discuss USA Network’s Night Flight, a show with very similar DNA.
There’s no shortage of Gen-X kids who wax nostalgic for Night Flight now, but a lot of viewers couldn’t be bothered to stay up at 3 AM watching every random bit of craziness which tracked onto the screen, so they missed bits like Arise!, the Church of the Subgenius “recruiting” film. Let us pause in reverent amazement: In the early 1990s, before Bob J.R. Dobbs became the Internet’s very first meme, when Robert Anton Wilson yet drew breath, there was a Church of the Subgenius special aired on public television. Where ordinary muggles could see it. How we survived that calamity is anybody’s guess.
And that was just the first step of my month-long adventure…
Next Stop : Heavy Metal
This isn’t the first time I’ve deconstructed the 1981 animated misfire which has become a cult classic in spite of itself, but it was an opportunity to discuss the movie Heavy Metal in more depth. The movie needs explaining, because by God it’s confusing! There are so many ways it could have been done better. The fact that it enjoys enduring popularity goes to show that they could have made a whole franchise out of Metal Hurlant magazine, with animation set to killer soundtracks. But, shrug, I guess people are happy with what they have.
I’m Not a Huge Ralph Bakshi Fan
While I did admit that there’s some of his stuff that I do like, and concede that the man has his own artistic vision, I deconstructed Ralph Bakshi’s career. I pointed out that one obscure, unknown, impossible-to-find film by a couple rock stars, Down and Dirty Duck, managed to outshine everything Bakshi wanted to do in underground adult animation. As for Bakshi’s fantasy work, he still holds his crown there, but – Lord of the Rings, ahem – we all know why it’s tarnished.
Anyway: Bakshi : A fine talent, but with influence and legacy way out of proportion to his actual vision. Look, somebody has to be the critic, OK? I don’t do it because I’m mean, I do it because I love you people in a way that compels me to make you eat your broccoli even if you hate it.
I Declare Avatar : The Last Airbender to be Anime
I don’t know what gets into me, it’s like I naturally come to the conclusion that pisses off the biggest quotient of the fanbase. But for public service, without twisting anybody’s arm and insisting they must see it, I laid out a beginner’s guide to the ATLA NickToon in case they just want to watch it. If you can’t bring yourself to embrace Avatar : The Last Airbender as an anime, you can at least consider it on the merits of a Nickelodeon show. Not as anime, but as plain old animation. Surely it beats the feathers out of Doug!, right?
With that said, I don’t go so far as to worship ATLA either. It has its faults. I find Sokka irritating, but I see there’s plenty of room in that fandom tent already. Uncle Iroh makes up for him. It’s a great little universe.
Here’s a Piece of Every Anime Fan’s Childhood: Alakazam the Great
You saw this as a kid, catching it on some weekend kid’s film festival on TV. You had no idea what the flying bazoongas it was about, it was confusing but had an amazing epic adventure feel to it, and you could not remember it for the life of you afterwards. Since then, you’re kind of half-convinced you dreamed it. No, it was real, it was Alakazam the Great, and I dive into rabbit hole behind this bizarre film to the classic Chinese work it was loosely based on.
It is based on Journey to the West by Wu Cheng-En, a piece of ancient literature as much of a cultural staple to China as the adventures of Hercules are to ancient Rome. That being said, an unabridged copy weighs about as much as the complete works of William Shakespeare, so you can see why it didn’t make a very coherent animated feature. Alakazam the Great only tells maybe 2% of the whole story? Journey to the West is practically a stand-alone franchise by itself in China. A fully faithful adaptation would easily take up more space in your DVD rack than the entire Star Wars universe. You’ll never find it all; by the time you learn about it and you didn’t grow up Chinese, it’s already too late.
Everybody Loves Hanna-Barbera, Right?
Good, because I did a deep dive into the craziest cartoons Hanna-Barbera ever produced, and I’m dead certain that I could do it again and find even crazier ones. I mean, HB’s output was so prolific for half a century that you could keep naming their cartoons for the rest of your life. Like in this bonus gallery below:
I mean, look at the cartoon about a shark who fights underwater crime while also being a member of a band, called Jabberjaw:
I’m sure that was essential. And then there’s Lippy the Lion and Hardy Har Har, a cowardly lion and a hyena cohort with strained laughing muscles, so his whole shtick was that he didn’t laugh, just like the audience:
And there’s Frankenstein Jr. and The Impossibles, where you have a superhero show that takes Mary Shelley’s creation, makes it a robot for no reason, and then adds on a cast of beatnik (THEY HAVE TO HAVE A BAND!) mutants with random powers.
And who can forget the endless spinoffs, made specifically because HB was too lazy to draw new art or come up with new characters? Like Josie and the Pussycats in Outer Space, which is likely baked into your subconscious and the reason why you have a fetish for furry leopard women who play guitar.
So yeah. Even if you love those few Hanna-Barbera cartoons that stand today as classics, Scooby-Doo chief among them, you come away with a whole different impression of HB when you consider their entire output. You realize that this studio was a fat, lazy, slovenly grindhouse which enjoyed monopolistic control of children’s TV and made absolutely no pretense of giving a sasquatch’s shit about quality.
I had to stop animation month near about there, but that’s the highlights. There are worse ways to spend a January that brooked a US Capitol insurrection, a contested inauguration, a new Bernie Sanders meme, and a proletariat takedown of Wall Street. Say what you will about January of 2021, I think the country’s healing.
