Raping Your Childhood, Part Two

By Rann
(1 vote)

Rann: Hey all, just a short one today, so that you won’t all think Jim kicked me out for my bad review of his Robert Downey Junior/Harry Potter crossover fanfic he sent me to preread. Just haven’t had a ton to blog about here lately, though I may work up a review of Code Geass once I catch up on the second season.

Anyway, this is probably interpreting the title of these articles fairly broadly, but it still fits in, in spirit. Some of you may be familiar with the horror that was one proposal for localizing Sailor Moon, which would basically have seen them using just the vague concept and completely redoing the concept with a “five token band” of girls. Well, Gundam is one of Japan’s longest-running mecha franchises, and being the lovers of cute and ridiculously marketable things that they are, they also created SD Gundam, a lighthearted, chibi take on the show. While it was intended to be silly and fun… well, just look at what some marketing genius wanted to turn it into:

Rann: That’s late seventies/early eighties levels of bad. What really shocks me is that this was apparently done in 1991, when a lot of the cheesefests were starting to fade away a little bit as the genre slowly made its way towards the EXTREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEME! period. (Which, despite the title, I wouldn’t actually class The Extreme Ghostbusters as part of, that was a surprisingly good show.) But yeah, there you go. “DoozyBots”. ... Seriously, “doozy”? I know that funny-sounding words are supposed to be genius as far as marketing to kids is concerned, but that’s headed into grizzled old prospector territory.

Though, I guess if there’s any positive to it, the cheerleader kind of looks like a slightly older version of the girl from Jayce and the Wheeled Warriors, who seems to have been many a cartoon nerd’s first crush. (Not me, though, I was the Cheetara sort, though I also had a big thing for Steelheart. Guess I kinda liked ‘em a bit butch even back then.)

Yuri: So it’s YOUR fault that animated women who look like they should be working on motorcycles and punching people in the face make me feel all funny in my power supply!

Rann: Technically I think I can be blamed for like 99% of your personality quirks, but that’s neither here nor there. God, Silverhawks and Thundercats have not held up well, though. The new comics adaptation of Thundercats was pretty good, and I’d like to see something similar done with Silverhawks, but the original shows are absolutely horrible.

Still, nostalgia, she is strong. Stronger when I don’t actually watch the shows again.

Yuri: Can we do a “babes from old cartoons” article? Puh-leeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeze?

Rann: I dunno, might be a bit played-out.

Yuri: PUH-LEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEZE?!?!?!

Rann: … Fine, fine, we’ll do an article about it, probably later today or early tomorrow, just quit that before you wreck the site formatting.

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07/10/2008 9:43 AM
Categories: TV
Tags: nineties,marketing,gundam,fun,eighties,cartoon,anime,animated

1 buzzion wrote:

God, Silverhawks and Thundercats have not held up well, though.

I think Thundercats held up a lot better than Silverhawks has. I would actually sit down and watch episodes of Thundercats on Cartoon Network when I saw it on. I did that with Silverhawks because I had the leader’s action figure and a lunchbox as a kid, but after about 2 episodes it was just a “man this show sucks.” If I saw Thundercats on tv today I would probably still sit down and watch it.

07/10 at 11:18 AM

2 Rann wrote:

I think the only reason Thundercats has held up better is that it’s set on a planet. It still used the exact same fucked-up rules for space that Silverhawks did, it’s just that since Silverhawks is set in space, you get them all the time instead of every so often.

I at one point read this hilarious fanfic that chronicled Jaga’s diary over the many years running the spaceship by himself, and growing steadily more cantankerous and insane. At one point he decides to kill himself by throwing open the airlock, only to be rather annoyed at the discovery that Thundercats can apparently breathe in space. (Tigra, reading the journal, comments that he never really thought about it until Jaga pointed it out, but they can breathe and talk in space.) Afterwards, one of Jaga’s favorite activities is to let his ass hang out over the side of the airlock and just let the vacuum of space help him clean out.

07/10 at 11:37 AM

3 JimK wrote: