You are welcome to look at the talkback but please consider that this article is over 5 years old before posting.
Forum - View topicShelf Life - Angel Cop
|
Goto page 1, 2, 3 Next Note: this is the discussion thread for this article |
| Author | Message | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
MarshalBanana
 Posts: 5423 |
|
|||||
|
If this is Shelf Life, then I'm a banana.
Why does Facebook have an ANN page? |
||||||
|
||||||
CatSword
 Posts: 1489 |
|
|||||
Some loony Spanish licensor streamed Captain Tsubasa and Reborn through Facebook. 
|
||||||
|
||||||
LegitPancake
 Posts: 1302 Location: Texas, USA |
|
|||||
|
Should we expect Angel Cop to be available to stream any time soon? I don’t usually blindly buy.
|
||||||
|
||||||
|
Theodore Relic
Posts: 63 |
|
|||||
|
Yeaaahhh, I remember watching the first VHS ep of Angel Cop when it came out in the US, and even before I heard about the anti-Semitic garbage in the Japanese original, I already knew I wasn't going to finish that particular crap buffet.
|
||||||
|
||||||
|
Scalfin
Posts: 249 |
|
|||||
Almost worth the price of admission on its own. I don't suppose we could get an Answerman on this or Mike Toole on Jews and anime in general? |
||||||
|
||||||
|
Lord Geo
Posts: 2589 Location: North Brunswick, New Jersey |
|
|||||
Honestly, I'd rather not, because that would just open up a giant can of worms that I'm sure ANN would rather not want to deal with. I actually just got the Angel Cop BD recently, but haven't seen the OVA yet, but one thing that's really gotten me intensely curious about it is that, for the longest time, English-speaking anime fans have been misattributing the "fault" with the anti-Semitism in Angel Cop... Sort of. Even going back to Justin Sevakis' Buried Garbage article on Angel Cop, Noboru/Shou Aikawa's involvement has always been brought up as something notable, but Aikawa was apparently only a small factor in it all. Discotek's packaging says that he helped write the first three episodes, but Wikipedia Japan's page for the OVA says that Aikawa only co-wrote the first episode, with the remaining five all being solely written by director Ichiro Itano. Does this mean that Itano is primarily responsible for the anti-Semitism found in Angel Cop, or did Aikawa implement it from the start, only for Itano to carry it over into the rest of the story? Also interesting is that the entire second half only came out after a four-year hiatus (1990 to 1994), and during that break Itano only worked on a single anime production. Said production was Star Dust, a single-episode OVA from 1992 that was seemingly made by the students over at Yoyogi Animation Academy, which Itano was a teacher at during that time. Itano directed Star Dust, and is easily the least violent anime he has ever directed. In fact, it's actively pacifist & is all about helping out your fellow man, even if he's your enemy! Then, two years later, Itano would finish up Angel Cop, which seems like an utter about-face from what Itano had lead with Star Dust. Without a doubt, Angel Cop is one-of-a-kind, even without ever having seen it. |
||||||
|
||||||
penguintruth
 Posts: 8475 Location: Penguinopolis |
|
|||||
|
The important thing is, Shou Aikawa clearly got the help he needed.
|
||||||
|
||||||
Zin5ki
 Posts: 6680 Location: London, UK |
|
|||||
But they helped to specify the age range of the local market! Decades later, anime's consequent association with 'adult' material has certainly benefited more prestigious works over here. |
||||||
|
||||||
Chrno2
 Posts: 6171 Location: USA |
|
|||||
|
I do want to see 'Angel Cop', mainly because I did a cyber punk a thon some time back.
Well, like they say, one man's trash is another man's treasure. So it's good to see these titles make a comeback so that people can have the chance to check them out and review them. 
|
||||||
|
||||||
|
MarshalBanana
Posts: 5423 |
|
|||||
|
||||||
|
||||||
Top Gun
 Posts: 4655 |
|
|||||
|
As far as I'm concerned Angel Cop is Shelf Worthy for the glorious dub alone. **** AND PISS!
|
||||||
|
||||||
|
GeorgeC
Posts: 795 |
|
|||||
I have the recent Discotek Blu ray of Angel Cop so I'll answer this. There's an essay about the controversy behind Angel Cop. Yes, it's text and you have to read. Anyhow, the point is Japan isn't as isolated as you might think. There was an influx of ideas from Europe especially after the American Navy forcibly opened Japan to the West in the second half of the 19th century. Japan literally remodelled the entire country, top to bottom, within a few decades after Western conventions in many senses. The schools and Japanese adopted similar uniform styles from the West, the Japanese Diet was patterned more after European parliaments, and they became more tolerant of non-Asian religions but Christianity has never been huge over there even though you see crosses and Christmas symbols all over the place. They also brought in Western ideas of prejudice (not that Asian groups NEVER had tensions between each other; talk with Koreans and Chinese and you'll see there's always been tensions between the Japanse, Chinese, and Korea forever) and anti-Semitism took hold there. Japan developed ties with Germany and imported a lot of their ideas including the bad ones. Hitler's Mein Kamp and the odious Protocols of the Elders of Zion were translated into Japanese. So, many Japanese became as paranoid and hateful of Jews as the people ever were in Europe. A lot of those ideas percolated in Japan decades after they were diminishing in the West -- Japan never went through the Holocaust and had the broad exhibitions of written materials and films documenting what went on in the European death camps (even though there were parallels in Asia, similar camps run by the Japanese ALSO doing medical experimentation on POWs and locals). Japan's always been cagey about dealing with the reality of what its government and military forces did in Asia during the War which is why there's still resentment in Asia towards the Japanese from just about every other group. There was an agreement by the American occupation NOT to push the issue in exchange for Japan becoming an ally of the US during the opening stages of the Cold War. The Allies also didn't prosecute the Emperor of Japan, the last surviving major pre-World War II Axis leader, by agreement, too. Mussolini and Hitler were dead by the end of the war, and the major surviving Japanese military leaders WERE imprisoned and many of them executed by war tribunal commissions. Angel Cop was born during the Japanese boom of the 1980s and ended in the middle of the Japanese recession of the 1990s. You might not have been alive back then but I was... There was some amount of Japan-bashing, a lot of paranoia that Japan might become THE dominant power in the world, and even a few American films that featured culture clashes like the comedy "Gung Ho." And, of course, a lot of us remember Pat Morita's Mr. Miyagi fondly from Karate Kid which was a big movie series in the 1980s as well. Karate Kid was fairly positive but they definitely highlighted tensions that still exist in the US between ethnic groups. MIyagi himself was a war veteran and member of one of the all-Japanese American regiments deployed to Europe during World War II. He was still a bit bitter about the experience but also realistic about being lucky to have survived! Anyhow, it was impossible for the Japanese to not notice these things and the Japan-aphobia was part of the plot in Angel Cop except Japan was reimagined as being THE big economic power in the world AND the Ground Zero of terrorist attacks. There's a lot of that paranoia and conspiracy theory craziness explored in Angel Cop... It has a LOT of resonance today because you hear the SAME NONSENSE repeated on news broadcasts and, sadly, college campuses. Anti-Semitism never went away completely... It just kind of went in hibernation and they coach it in other ways today and it's intertwined more tightly with Arab-Israeli issues which is the excuse people use to say things they wouldn't dare say if they had any shame. Yes, I don't buy criticism of the Israeli government and some of its policies as being EXPLICITLY anti-Semitic but c'mon! Getting back to Angel Cop -- it is eerie how reflective that anime is of events going on today in many senses. Yes, it's a Japan-centric, paranoid view of the world from a Japanese perspective but it's not that far removed from the scenarios presented in the US for about the last 20 years. I disagree with the review, btw, about the anime LOOKING ugly. I think it's actually fairly well-animated and the character designs are no bad. They're evocative of the era. The lead character, Angel, is very much built in a Priss/Sarah Connor mode. Very no-nonsense. There's a sense she was developing feelings towards one of the other characters in the series but otherwise it takes about half the run of the series for her to warm up. She's very cold and calculating in the first third of the show... As far as the Blu ray goes, it has its visual issues. It's an upscale because all that's left of the show are SD tapes which is unfortunately the case for many pre-2000s anime where production companies went out of business and source materials were shifted around and things were lost or thrown away. It happens in every entertainment industry around the world! |
||||||
|
||||||
scriver058
 Posts: 127 Location: NY |
|
|||||
|
It's absolutely trash, but for me it's classic trash/filth/ hyper violent 90s bloodbath anime. Did wonder how it would hold up upon acquiring the recent BD, and if nothing else it's still an interesting, entertaining watch.
|
||||||
|
||||||
|
Redbeard 101
Oscar the Grouch
Forums Superstar  Posts: 16948 |
|
|||||
Just an FYI but Answerman (Justin) works for Discotek and was one of the people helping upscale Angel Cop. So he had a direct hand in getting this BR release done. So any questions regarding Angel Cop he would definitely be in a position to probably answer. I do agree with Lord Geo I doubt that's a route we want to go down, especially in the forums. Justin might answer you privately in an email though. |
||||||
|
||||||
Compelled to Reply
 Posts: 358 |
|
|||||
What is there to answer? We're talking about conspiracy theories subscribed to by a miniscule minority of people, especially in Japan. It's just they tend to be loud and amplified.
Except Angel Cop was more about the paranoia of the Cold War à la Red Dawn, as alternative history where the United States is destroyed by communism, and "Red May" was like a cyberpunk Japanese New Left (shin-sayoku), a communist movement responsible for several terrorist attacks and had connections to Aum Shinrikyo. Interestingly about The Karate Kid, whether it was deliberate or the writers were ignorant to the fact, Miyagi and karate are Ryukyuan. A lot of Ryukyuans don't consider themselves Japanese the same way the Irish were to the British, and still are to an extent in Northern Ireland. Last edited by Compelled to Reply on Thu Nov 01, 2018 10:00 pm; edited 1 time in total |
||||||
|
||||||
 |
All times are GMT - 5 Hours |
|
|
|
Powered by phpBB © 2001, 2005 phpBB Group