People who aren’t members of Animation Resources don’t understand how comprehensive our Reference Packs are. Over a couple of weeks, we are posting what each section of our current RefPack looks like. Today we are sharing the Early Anime section. If you are a member of Animation Resources, click on this post to go to the Members Only page. If you aren’t a member yet, today is the perfect time to join! Our current Reference Pack is one of our best yet, and General and Student Members get access to a special Bonus Archive with even more material from past Reference Packs.
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Lately, Animation Resources board member JoJo Baptista has been researching the early history of Japanese animation. He has searched out video copies of 1960s anime to add to our Animation Archive. Over the past year, he has accumulated hundreds of hours of rare television programs. We will be will be sharing some of them with you in our Reference Packs. Our members have asked us to share complete films and publications with them, not excerpts, so we will be sharing complete half hour episodes with you. We don’t claim that everything here is great. But there are great bits. You can sift through them and discover the gems for yourself.
SD VIDEO:
Golden Bat
Curated by JoJo Baptista
Ep.16 / Ep.39 (1967)
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The character of Golden Bat goes as far back as 1930, and is, by some, considered to be the first superhero. He was created by Suzuki Ichiro and Takeo Nagamatsu, who named the character after a popular cigarette brand of the time. His appearance has undergone several incarnations, but he is most easily recognizable by his golden skull. He made his first appearance in a kind of traveling show called a kamishibai, also known as paper theater. The performances were not unlike a Punch and Judy puppet show. However, instead of puppets, what was presented in the miniature stage were illustrations accompanied by the narration of the showman. This form of entertainment remained quite popular in Japan until television took over the eyes and imaginations of Japanese children in the early 1960s.
First came a live action film. Then in 1967 it was time for Golden Bat to make the jump to the medium of television. This version of the character replaced his original 17th century swashbuckler attire with more traditional superhero attire— golden tights and a black cape with red lining. His appearance was likely streamlined to make drawing him easier for the animators to manage. He also lost his original cross-eyed expression, derived from Japanese warrior prints, replaced by mostly empty eye sockets. Not to be outdone in the optics department, in the redesign the villain, evil Dr. Nazo was given an extra set of new eyes!
While unfortunately, I don’t have much to say about the animation in this series, I can appreciate the fun ideas that went into it. There isn’t a lot of filler in this series. It’s wall to wall action most of the time. Golden Bat’s maniacal laughter is infectious. He makes you want to laugh like that! He cackles away at every opportunity as he beats his foes into submission. I found myself feeling a little sorry for his enemies because of it. It’s got to be humiliating to be laughed at like that when a bomb has just blown up in your face!
In episode 16, Golden Bat whacks a robot off a cliff and watches him plunge hundreds of feet into the ocean. Golden Bat stands triumphantly at the cliff’s edge laughing his ass off. It turns a dramatic scene into something funny. I think the following scene with Dr. Nazo slamming his claw down in anger and scolding his subordinate is funny too. Nazo slams his claw a few more times, each time accompanied by the exact same pathetic sound effect.
By the way, the robot in this episode roars like a lion. I don’t why. Maybe they didn’t have a lot of sound effects to choose from. But it’s a nice touch. Perhaps the most disturbing sound effect is used in episode 39, where a monster is bloodily devoured by a pack of sharks. There’s a visceral wet chewing noise that made me feel very squeamish!
This series delivers exactly what kids in the 1960s wanted… giant monsters, superheroes, robots, evil villains and tons of stuff exploding into bits. Enjoy!
I’ll have more early Japanese TV series to share with you in our next Reference Pack.
MP4 Video File / SD / 24:06 / 251 MB Download
MP4 Video File / SD / 24:05 / 269 MB Download
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Animation Resources is one of the best kept secrets in the world of cartooning. Every month, we sponsor a program of interest to artists, and every other month, we share a book and up to an hour of rare animation with our members. If you are a creative person interested in the fields of animation, cartooning or illustration, you should be a member of Animation Resources!
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