galaxy express 999 and some other questions

[lordmagius]

Does anyone know if either of the GE999 movies were ported to dvd for r1? Also curious about a show I saw many years ago in Germany called Thundersub, think its Blue Noah? Anyway, is this show available on r1 dvd? One final one, several years ago, I managed to pick up some FHE tapes for some anime shows. I have since found 2 of them, Arcadia of my Youth and Dagger of Kamui. I have another one called Earth Station S-1 on the tape, but I have never been able to find anything out online about it. Does anyone know what the original Japanese show was called? And if its ever been brought over as well. Thanks for the help.



Lord Magius

[Alucard]

None of the GE999 movies is available on R1 DVD, and neither is the Uchu Kubo Blue Noah series (which I used to watch on TV many years ago, it's a great series). I believe that the R2 boxset for Blue Noah is OOP now as well.

[kusanagi-sama]

Viz had the license to one of the GE999 movies, but nobody has the license to the TV series.

[big e]

Two questions: #1 is the reason the GE999 movies haven't surfaced on dvd yet because they were not popular here and #2 what other anime series take place in the GE999 universe?

[kusanagi-sama]

Oh, another thing, GE999 is a Toei work, so it won't see a R1 release ever. After Toei's little debacle here in the US, Viz's GE999 movie license probably won't be renewed.

[k_chan]

as others have stated, with the exception of the first and second GE999 movie which were released by Viz back in the vhs heyday, there is no other ge999 anime liscenced. a sad fate of pretty much all matsumoto-san anime, unfortunately. the yamato movies are available on dvd uncut and in their original japanese language. the tv series has also been released on dvd, though it is the dubbed version only. adv has also released the newer Queen Emeraldas anime on dvd, though only the first 2 of 6 (i believe) OVA episodes. the rest are in liscence limbo according to adv /images/graemlins/cry00000.gif

[Digital Boy]

[ QUOTE ]
k-chan said:
as others have stated, with the exception of the first and second GE999 movie which were released by Viz back in the vhs heyday, there is no other ge999 anime liscenced. a sad fate of pretty much all matsumoto-san anime, unfortunately. the yamato movies are available on dvd uncut and in their original japanese language. the tv series has also been released on dvd, though it is the dubbed version only. adv has also released the newer Queen Emeraldas anime on dvd, though only the first 2 of 6 (i believe) OVA episodes. the rest are in liscence limbo according to adv /images/graemlins/cry00000.gif

[/ QUOTE ]

you can get:

Arcadia of my Youth
Gun Frontier
Cosmo Warrior Zero
Galaxy Railways
Harlock Saga
Herlock
Maetel Legend

A decent enough selection!

[Lego]

I remember seeing GE999 on the Sci Fi channel a long, long, long time ago. I loved the movie, and the visual style that it had. To bad it's only around on VHS R1 wise heh.

[littleharlock]

<Regarding the Queen Emeraldas OVA>
[ QUOTE ]
k-chan said:
the newer Queen Emeraldas anime on dvd, though only the first 2 of 6 (i believe) OVA episodes.

[/ QUOTE ]

There are four episodes:
- Episode 1 "Tabidachi (Departure)" (first released in Japan 1998/06/05)
- Episode 2 "Fumetsu no Monshô (Eternal Emblem)" (first released in Japan 1998/10/07)
- Episode 3 "Shukumei no Kizuna (Friendship)" (first released in Japan 1999/08/06)
- Episode 4 "Siren no Megami (Siren)" (first released in Japan 1999/12/18)

The first two episodes were done by a different studio (Episode 1 & 2 done by Studio OLM and episode 3 & 4 done by Multi Access Company) and staff (different directors and character designers) than the last two.

Additional there exist two omake shorts released with episode 3 and 4 of the Queen Emeraldas OVA (AFAIK those omake shorts have only been released with the jp VHS and DVD release strangely *not* with the LD release), two "episodes" (only about 10 min. long) of little tiger cat Mî-kun titled Torajima no Mî-me (based on the Shoujo manga by Matsumoto of the same title). I guess that´s why you probably confused the OVA to be six episodes?

It´s sad that there weren´t more episodes produced (especially since the first two showed how decent Keisuke Masunaga´s character designs can look given a high budget) and a bit more faithul to the original manga wouldn´t have hurt them either (damn I really want to see the story of <span style='color:#dddddd;background:#dddddd'>how Emeraldas got her facial scar</span> adapted into anime one day)

so far
yours
littleharlock

[Darkseid]

[ QUOTE ]
littleharlock said: (damn I really want to see the story of <span style='color:#dddddd;background:#dddddd'>how Emeraldas got her facial scar</span> adapted into anime one day)

[/ QUOTE ]

Yeah, we've seen two totally different versions of that event animated. Which one's closer to this manga you mentioned?

Like you said, the difference between the first two and last two Emeraldas OAVs is very evident and the second studio put much more effort into the animation. The shorts were kinda cute. I just looked at my friend and was like 'Dude.... he just did an anime about his cat. LOL'

[Darkseid]

[ QUOTE ]
Digital Boy said:
you can get:

Arcadia of my Youth
Gun Frontier
Cosmo Warrior Zero
Galaxy Railways
Harlock Saga
Herlock
Maetel Legend

A decent enough selection!

[/ QUOTE ]

Honestly, out of all those, I'd only recommend Arcadia of My Youth and Captain Herlock: Endless Odyssey. Though I haven't looked at Galaxy Railways much, the rest of that group is pretty sub-par compared to other animated Matsumoto works.

[Alucard]

By the way, littleharlock, did you ever happen to watch Uchu Kubo Blue Noah? If yes, what are your thoughts on it?

[littleharlock]

[ QUOTE ]
Darkseid said:
Yeah, we've seen two totally different versions of that event animated. Which one's closer to this manga you mentioned?


[/ QUOTE ]

In the Queen Emeraldas manga Emeraldas <span style='color:#dddddd;background:#dddddd'>got her scar after a duel. She won the duel but decided to spare her opponents life. The bastard took the first change when she was about to turn her back to him to try and stab her, which led to the facial scar. IIRC (it´s been a while since I read it and don´t have the Bunkoban in reach to tell you for sure) she killed the bastard and swore to herself never to let her guard down that easily and spare the life of an opponent in future.</span> As much as I love the Waga Seishun no Arcadia movie and adore the appearance of Emeraldas in it, I found that the manga version of telling that particular event was way more fitting for the crimson ladypirate ^_^

[ QUOTE ]
Darkseid said:
Like you said, the difference between the first two and last two Emeraldas OAVs is very evident and the second studio put much more effort into the animation. The shorts were kinda cute. I just looked at my friend and was like 'Dude.... he just did an anime about his cat. LOL'

[/ QUOTE ]

She is included in almost every work by him though in different shapes (and different genders ^_~). My favorite appearance of Mî-kun is still the fat (and by fat I mean pig-like) Mî-kun in the Saint-Elmo movie (the interaction with the humans and the scarab was just hilarious).

so far
yours
littleharlock

[Digital Boy]

[ QUOTE ]
Darkseid said:
[ QUOTE ]
Digital Boy said:
you can get:

Arcadia of my Youth
Gun Frontier
Cosmo Warrior Zero
Galaxy Railways
Harlock Saga
Herlock
Maetel Legend

A decent enough selection!

[/ QUOTE ]

Honestly, out of all those, I'd only recommend Arcadia of My Youth and Captain Herlock: Endless Odyssey. Though I haven't looked at Galaxy Railways much, the rest of that group is pretty sub-par compared to other animated Matsumoto works.

[/ QUOTE ]

Galaxy Railways is terrific, I watched the first 3 DVDs in one sitting. It's epiodic, but they do some things that flip around the Leiji-verse usual pattern of events

[littleharlock]

[ QUOTE ]
Alucard said:
By the way, littleharlock, did you ever happen to watch Uchu Kubo Blue Noah? If yes, what are your thoughts on it?

[/ QUOTE ]

Nope. It´s a Nishizaki show if I saw that correctly and honestly speaking I don´t find myself bearing much motivation for his projects. That said I´m not really thrilled on Nishizaki´s Shin Uchû Senkan Yamato (http://www.enagio.com/yamato/) theatrical project that is scheduled for a 2006 summer release either (given that there were absolutely no news in regards of this projects after the initial announcement it´s likely to say that they will delay that project). However sad to see what happened to Matsumoto´s Dai Yamato Zero-gô (https://www.daiyamato-zerogo.com/) project (despite the potential it had).

so far
yours
littleharlock

[Alucard]

[ QUOTE ]
littleharlock said:
[ QUOTE ]
Alucard said:
By the way, littleharlock, did you ever happen to watch Uchu Kubo Blue Noah? If yes, what are your thoughts on it?

[/ QUOTE ]

Nope. It´s a Nishizaki show if I saw that correctly and honestly speaking I don´t find myself bearing much motivation for his projects. That said I´m not really thrilled on Nishizaki´s Shin Uchû Senkan Yamato (http://www.enagio.com/yamato/) theatrical project that is scheduled for a 2006 summer release either (given that there were absolutely no news in regards of this projects after the initial announcement it´s likely to say that they will delay that project). However sad to see what happened to Matsumoto´s Dai Yamato Zero-gô (https://www.daiyamato-zerogo.com/) project (despite the potential it had).

so far
yours
littleharlock

[/ QUOTE ]

Yes, it's a Nishizaki project. It is one of the first anime shows that I ever saw, and I love it, but thats just my opinion /images/graemlins/sweat000.gif I don't know if you'll like it, but it's certainly worth a look if you ever get the chance.

About Yamato, what happened to Matsumoto's Dai Yamato Zero-gô? I believe a few DVD's for this have already been released (The site lists the first 3). Last time I checked (which was a long time ago), there were also 3 DVDs listed (or was it 2? I'm not sure), so I assume it was put on hold? Or was it cancelled altogether?

[littleharlock]

[ QUOTE ]
Alucard said:
About Yamato, what happened to Matsumoto's Dai Yamato Zero-gô? I believe a few DVD's for this have already been released (The site lists the first 3). Last time I checked (which was a long time ago), there were also 3 DVDs listed (or was it 2? I'm not sure), so I assume it was put on hold? Or was it cancelled altogether?

[/ QUOTE ]

They released 3 episodes/DVDs of the OVA. The first two were even released with almost no delays, but soon after the release of Vol. 3 Venture Soft announced that the project has been put on hiatus for the time as they are doing some major re-work on the OVA to "make it more fitting for the Leijiverse". You know the Dai Yamato Zero-gô OVA originally was officially announced by the manufacturer (and production company) Venture Soft to feature same characters as the Leiji Matsumoto manga Shin Uchû Senkan Great Yamato however not going to be an adaption of the manga (yet judging by the screenshots of the third episode they also included the Mahoroba ^_~). Anyway one of the reasons it obviously sold pretty bad was because Venture Soft decided to sell the OVA DVDs exclusively via their Official web´s store, which doesn´t ship overseas either. I´ve seen the first two episodes and while the first episode is really good and promising (featuring decent character designs, a huge cast of interesting characters, decent Seiyuu performance *Isao Sasaki back, Romi Paku as Apolonia, Yuko Minaguchi as Hongo* the only thing I really couldn´t stand was the majority of the music, with exception of one orchestral piece the BGM and OP/ED music is pretty much weird techno beats that sound like an intro for a low-class fighting game *and I repeat they have Isao Sasaki as seiyuu so why they didn´t let him perform an OP or ED is beyond me*) the second episode managed to waste a whole LOT of the potential builded up in the first one (i.e. the usual Venture Soft crappy animations...heck they want over 6,000 Yen for an OVA DVD and then the animations look at times like some crappy flash animation -.-).
Honestly speaking it would have been a lot better if they´d stick to another production company than Venture Soft, they screwed up other Matsumoto projects in past pretty bad as well (Cosmo Warrior Zero) and something tells me we won´t see the result of the "reworking it to make it better"-efforts that soon.
Despite the bad taste the second episode left, I´m probably going to check out the third episode soon...if it´s just to see the Mahoroba ^_^

so far
yours
littleharlock