Culture Shock 06.05.14: Influential Japanese anime 'Space Adventure Cobra' comes to US

With an overly literal title like "Space Adventure Cobra," you know it has to be translated from Japanese.

Like "Super Dimension Fortress Macross" (aka "Robotech"), "Beast King GoLion" ("Voltron"), "Space Battleship Yamato" ("Starblazers") and "Science Ninja Team Gatchaman" ("Battle of the Planets"), "Space Adventure Cobra" hails from the golden age of Japanese animation. But unlike them, it didn't make the trip to America in the late 1970s and early '80s. It was something we first-generation anime fans could only read about, unless we were lucky enough to score bootleg VHS tapes that some other fan had subtitled. So it never got an Americanized title like "Sailor Moon" (known in Japan as "Pretty Soldier Sailor Moon").

One fan was alt rocker Matthew Sweet, whose music video for his breakout 1991 hit "Girlfriend" is mostly footage from the 1982 "Space Adventure Cobra" movie.

Back then we knew only that "Space Adventure Cobra" was about a pirate named Cobra who had adventures in space, and that it looked pretty cool. Turns out both are true.

The "Cobra" movie finally hit VHS in 1998 and was released on DVD just two years ago.

Now American anime fans can finally see the 31-episode TV series, too. Right Stuf, one of America's most venerable anime distributors, has released "Space Adventure Cobra" in two DVD box sets, which retail for roughly $40 each. Complete episodes are also online at Right Stuf's YouTube channel, youtube.com/user/nozomient.

Set in the far future, the series starts by borrowing from Philip K. Dick's "We Can Remember It For You Wholesale," which later became the 1990 movie "Total Recall."

A bored office worker can't afford a vacation, so he instead opts to have one implanted in his brain, so he can remember it as if it really happened. Instead, the implantation process awakens repressed memories: The office worker is really Cobra, a legendary space pirate who five years earlier changed his face, wiped his memory and went into hiding from the sinister Pirate Guild.

Now that Cobra remembers who he is, he decides to hit the spaceways again, even if that means avoiding both the Guild, which still wants him either to join or die, and the Galactic Patrol.

So, along with Lady, his android partner, Cobra sets out in his starship to have adventures, which, oddly enough, don't involve any real piracy, although he isn't averse to a heist or two for a good cause.

Cobra is the prototype for the heroes and anti-heroes who would come along later in "Cowboy Bebop," "Trigun" and "Outlaw Star."

His first adventure, which in heavily altered form is also the basis for the 1982 movie, involves a beautiful bounty hunter named Jane, her two twin sisters and a map to their father's hidden treasure.

Naturally, Cobra isn't the only pirate on the trail. The Pirate Guild's most dangerous member, the cold, calculating Crystal Bowie, is after it, too.

How to describe Crystal Bowie? Imagine a homicidal robot encased in a clear, laser-proof shell. Now imagine that robot is named after David Bowie.

Cobra's life of adventure is pure wish fulfillment. He has the best ship. He's surrounded by beautiful women. And concealed in his left arm is the "psycho-gun," a deadly weapon that never misses its target. How did he get such a magical device? It's not important. But it is enough to make you wonder if maybe this whole Cobra thing is really just the bored office worker's virtual vacation after all.

Even though it's 30 years old, "Space Adventure Cobra" holds up well compared to a lot of other animation from the same period. That's mostly because of the series' lush, airbrushed style. Almost any random frame of "Space Adventure Cobra" would look great painted on the side of a van — the sort of van on which you don't come a knockin' when it's a rockin'.

That's apt, because that's exactly the sort of van Cobra would drive if he didn't have a spaceship.

Culture Shock 05.15.14: Changing Godzilla reflects a nation's mood

Godzilla first stomps Tokyo in 1954's "Godzilla."

One of my earliest movie-going memories is my grandmother taking me to a Saturday matinee showing of "Godzilla on Monster Island," aka "Godzilla vs. Gigan."

This was Godzilla smack in the middle of his kid-friendly phase. During the 1970s, Godzilla kiddie matinees were common. It was the high tide of Godzilla's popularity in America.

Blue Oyster Cult released its 1977 album "Spectres," which included the single "Godzilla." Mattel produced a popular Godzilla toy (with spring-loaded claw and flicking tongue) that now fetches hundreds of dollars on eBay. NBC aired Hanna-Barbera's now-infamous "Godzilla" cartoon featuring Godzilla's dorky nephew Godzooky. And Marvel Comics published 24 issues of "Godzilla: King of the Monsters," which saw Godzilla square off against the Avengers, SHIELD and other Marvel heroes.

Godzilla vs. the Avengers!

Apart from the Hanna-Barbera cartoon, about which the less said the better, these American Godzillas kept him in his original role — a chaotic and destructive force of nature — rather than adopting the "protector of Earth" role Godzilla had by then assumed in Japan. For many Americans, Godzilla's hero period is yet another inexplicable artifact from the culture that is Japan.

In the Japanese context, it makes perfect sense. Many things about Godzilla may change, but for 60 years one thing has remained constant: Godzilla is Japan's most reliable mood indicator.

The original "Godzilla," aka "Gojira," opened in Japanese cinemas on Nov. 3, 1954, less than a decade after Japan's defeat in World War II and the nuclear attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It is a bleak and somber film, much more so than the Raymond Burr version most Americans have seen.

The '54 "Godzilla" is the product of a Japan still reeling from defeat, and Godzilla, a prehistoric creature awakened by atomic bomb tests, is a terrifying reminder of nuclear disaster.

That's the part Godzilla would play until the mid-'60s. With 1964's "Ghidorah, the Three-Headed Monster," Godzilla began to change. Toho, the studio that produced the Godzilla films, began pushing the character in a more heroic direction, having him team up with two other monsters, Rodan and Mothra, to fight the outer-space menace of Ghidorah. By "Godzilla vs. the Sea Monster" two years later, the transformation was complete. In that film, Godzilla defeats a terrorist army and its giant lobster monster, and in the process helps save the terrorists' captives.

Godzilla's flying dropkick in "Godzilla vs. Megalon" (1973).

Godzilla's change coincided with increasing Japanese confidence. In the '60s, Japan was a growing economic power. Also, it had begun building its first nuclear power facilities, taming for peaceful purposes the same atomic power that had leveled two of its cities and given birth to Godzilla in the first place. If the atom could be tamed, Godzilla could be, too.

Nowhere is the transformation more pronounced than in 1971's "Godzilla vs. Hedorah," aka "Godzilla vs. the Smog Monster," which pits Godzilla against a monster literally made of pollution. Godzilla here is completely domesticated. Children play with Godzilla toys, while Godzilla might as well be a cheerleader for nuclear power over smoke-belching factories.

The next change comes in the 1980s. Godzilla returns to his "force of nature" mode just as Japan reaches a peak of national prestige. Then by 1991's "Godzilla vs. King Ghidorah," Godzilla is saving Japan from time travelers who want to prevent Japan from becoming the future's dominant world power. Ironically, that was just as Japan's "lost decade" of stagnation began — pride before a fall.

So, Toho killed off Godzilla in 1995's "Godzilla vs. Destoroyah" only to revive him as a leaner and meaner monster in 1999's "Godzilla 2000," a symbol of what Japan needed to become to regain its confidence. (The Japanese don't regard the 1998 American-made "Godzilla" as a true Godzilla, and neither do I.) Then, after five more films, Fukushima happened.

So, now comes a new, American-made "Godzilla," the first Godzilla film since 2011's tsunami-spawned Fukushima meltdown. As Blue Oyster Cult sang, "History shows again and again how nature points up the folly of men."

In Fukushima's wake, Japan's answer is to let someone else deal with Godzilla for a while.

Culture Shock 07.18.13: 'Pacific Rim' honors 50 years of fighting monsters

There is nothing more quintessentially Japanese than the idea of giant robots fighting giant monsters. Japanese producers have entertained audiences for five decades by pitting futuristic marvels of human ingenuity against lumbering, primeval and often mindless forces of nature.

Perhaps that is what you get when you have a society that has embraced a kind of neon-soaked, "Blade Runner" aesthetic of the future yet, because of geography and geology, faces the ever-looming threat of primordial devastation from earthquakes and tsunamis.

"Pacific Rim" director Guillermo del Toro ("Pan's Labyrinth") and screenwriter Travis Beacham ("Clash of the Titans") make no apologies for their love of Japanese cartoons (aka, anime) and monster movies. Peer into their film's DNA, and you'll find the genetic markers of everything from Gamera to Voltron.

In the near future, humanity faces extinction when a dimensional rift opens deep beneath the Pacific Ocean, allowing creatures from another world to come through and flatten cities all across the Pacific Rim, from San Francisco to Sydney.

To protect themselves from this seemingly endless parade of monsters, called kaiju, the nations of the Pacific Rim build giant robots, called jaegers, to fight them.

Hey, it's exactly the strategy anyone who grew up on Japanese cartoons would adopt.

The movie's characters are equally drawn from anime mainstays. They include the heroic jaeger pilot (Charlie Hunnam), the hothead (Robert Kazinsky), the quiet but formidable female (Rinko Kikuchi), the gruff and stoic leader who is keeping a secret (Idris Elba) and not one but two mad scientists who double as comic relief (Charlie Day and Burn Gorman).

"Pacific Rim" is a direct descendent of "Neon Genesis Evangelion," the influential 1990s anime series that took all of the "giant robot" cliches and mixed them with a heady dose of Carl Jung and Sigmund Freud.

Del Toro and Beacham dial down the Freud. But just about every character still has daddy issues, especially Kikuchi's Mako Mori, who, with her purple-streaked hair and quiet demeanor, is the flesh-and-blood embodiment of "Evangelion" dream girl Rei Ayanami.

Basically "Pacific Rim" is from the template Japanese animators have used for decades, only now translated, by a Mexican director and an American screenwriter, into a colorful, action-packed, live-action thrill ride that's stripped down to the Platonic ideal of the robot vs. monster genre.

While the American-produced "Godzilla" of 1998 hid its monster, the kaiju of "Pacific Rim" are impossible to miss. While Michael Bay's "Transformers" films are an incoherent blur of CGI, the fights of "Pacific Rim" form a brilliantly choreographed ballet of destruction.

In "Pacific Rim," the power of nature is everywhere. Even when kaiju aren't attacking, our heroes' last-stand sanctuary in Hong Kong is besieged by monsoon conditions. But if nature is a constant threat, humanity's official institutions are a constant failure. Shades of Hurricane Katrina.

The world's governments abandon the jaeger program in favor of building a giant wall, which, unsurprisingly, fails to keep out the kaiju. Elba's Stacker Pentecost, however, opts for a more comprehensive solution to the "alien" problem. He turns to underground figures like Hong Kong crime lord Hannibal Chau (Ron Perlman), who can get him anything he needs, for a price.

Unlike other post-9/11 disaster movies that dwell on the visuals of falling buildings and ruined cities, "Pacific Rim," when not caught up in its spectacular metal-on-monster mayhem, focuses on how the human spirit overcomes a crisis, even in the face of that most intractable of monsters — the foolish politician.

Culture Shock 08.09.12: 'Jiro' dreams of perfection

The first time I had sushi, it was from a vendor booth at a Birmingham, Alabama, street fair. So began our torrid affair.

Since then, I've become a bit of an amateur sushi snob, scowling at dinner companions who can't properly use chopsticks or — worse — stir wasabi into their soy sauce.

But that's all petty grumblings in the grand scheme of things. A world away, working from his restaurant in the basement of a Tokyo office building — a 10-seat affair only slightly less unassuming than that Birmingham booth — Jiro Ono is in search of perfection.

In the world of sushi, his restaurant, Sukiyabashi Jiro, with its coveted three-star Michelin rating and months-long waiting list, is as close to perfect as there is.

It has won the praise of critics, foodies and revered French chef Joël Robuchon, who told The Wall Street Journal, "This is the restaurant that showed me sushi could be a great dish. Before that time, to me, sushi was just a piece of raw fish on rice, but there it becomes art."

Jiro's art, his obsession, and his relationship with the two sons who live in his long shadow, is the subject of David Gelb's engaging documentary "Jiro Dreams of Sushi," on Blu-ray, DVD, iTunes and Amazon Instant.

On one level, "Jiro Dreams of Sushi" operates as a great example of the regrettably named genre known as "food porn." Even the most jaded foodie is likely to be in awe of Jiro's sushi creations and the few preparation secrets he lets slip. If you think octopus is too chewy, Jiro agrees, and the octopus he uses has been massaged into tender submission during the course of hours by apprentice chefs not yet allowed to touch a knife.

From the lean and fatty tuna to eel to shrimp, this is a film made for high definition, each dish captured in colorful, mouth-watering detail by Gelb, who acts as his own cinematographer.

At 85 years old and with no desire to retire, Jiro's life revolves around sushi. He hates having to close the restaurant for holidays and takes off only for funerals. He literally dreams about sushi, sometimes awaking with a new idea.

Like a character from an Ayn Rand novel, he is uncompromising. For him there is only the work and its result, and if perfection isn't possible that's no excuse for not trying harder.

In a culture where reverence for one's ancestors is a serious obligation, Jiro is an oddity. He barely knew his parents and was on his own almost from childhood. Visiting their grave, he wonders why he should honor them when they didn't even raise him. At that, Jiro's eldest son, Yoshikazu, warns he shouldn't risk offending his ancestors like that.

Yoshikazu is possibly just as capable a chef as his father, but as the oldest son he is obligated by tradition to wait until Jiro dies or retires to take over the family business.

His younger brother, meanwhile, not burdened with the family legacy, has the luxury of opening his own restaurant.

Unlike his sons, the parentless Jiro was able to become his own man and indulge his own needs, honing his craft to the edge of perfection.

Jiro dreams of sushi, but whatever dreams his sons may have had that didn't involve sushi are lost. We do know that Yoshikazu has one hobby outside the restaurant. He likes fast cars. Whatever else he may daydream of as he rides his bicycle to and from the fish market each morning he keeps to himself.

He's living the dream, but it's the dream of his father.

"Jiro Dreams of Sushi" is a beautiful film about art and obsession and the sacrifices they demand.

Whether those sacrifices are worth it, who is to say?

Culture Shock 03.17.11: Some jokes just aren't funny

There is a saying in showbiz: "Dying is easy, comedy is hard." But when people really are dying and suffering, comedy is even harder.

Stand-up comedian Gilbert Gottfried learned that this week after he tweeted several jokes about Japan's disastrous 9.0 earthquake and subsequent tsunami, which killed thousands of people, with thousands more still missing and nearly half a million homeless.

Gottfried had been the voice of the Aflac duck. That ended Monday, when the insurance company fired him because of his weekend remarks on Twitter. Aflac does 75 percent of its business in Japan, but I suspect the company would have fired him regardless. He not only crossed the line of good taste, he left it receding in his rear-view mirror.

One of Gottfried's least offensive tweets was, "Japan is really advanced. They don't go to the beach. The beach comes to them," so you can imagine how bad the rest were.

Gottfried has since apologized and removed the offending "jokes" from his Twitter feed.

"I sincerely apologize to anyone who was offended by my attempt at humor regarding the tragedy in Japan," he tweeted Tuesday. "I meant no disrespect, and my thoughts are with the victims and their families."

A few hours later, Gottfried was back in form, tweeting from the Friars Club roast of Donald Trump.

"Thank God Marlee Matlin can't hear any of this," he tweeted.

Now that's funny. The joke depends on Matlin's being deaf, which isn't funny, but the joke's target isn't her, rather it's the comedians at the roast. That makes all the difference between an "offensive" joke that's still funny and an offensive joke — without the scare quotes — that isn't.

Audiences expect comedians to walk that fine line. We expect them to say what some of us only think. And what we think sometimes isn't pretty.

Gottfried is one of stand-up comedy's brightest stars, and I've been a fan since he hosted "USA Up All Night" from 1986 to 1998, where, during commercial breaks, he got laughs at the expense of movies like "Hell Comes to Frogtown" and "Sorority Babes in the Slimeball Bowl-O-Rama." Also, for what it's worth, he ranks 59th on Comedy Central's list of the 100 greatest stand-ups, placing him one spot ahead of Jeff Foxworthy.

Most people, however, probably know him as the voice of Iago in Disney's "Aladdin."

But his stage act almost always flirts with bad taste. His latest comedy CD and DVD, "Dirty Jokes," delivers exactly what the title promises.

And last weekend's incident isn't the first time Gottfried has gone too far.

Just weeks after the Sept. 11 attacks, Gottfried opened his routine at the Friars Club roast of Hugh Hefner with a 9/11 joke. That was too much even for jaded roast attendees, eliciting boos and a shout of "too soon."

Gottfried recalled that incident last month in an interview with the Las Vegas Sun: "When I figured I had completely lost them, there was nowhere to go but further down, I started telling ‘The Aristocrats,' and that just exploded. The whole place was cheering."

The Aristocrats is the filthiest joke in the world. It doesn't really have a punchline. It's all set-up — an escalating orgy of disgusting bodily functions and descriptions of sexual acts that would get you arrested in every state of the Union. The joke has a long history among stand-ups, and it seems like just about every comic has his own version. Bob Saget — yes, the dad from "Full House" — tells one of the more infamous ones. It is, as far as I know, the only joke to inspire a documentary film.

Gottfried's "Dirty Jokes" includes his 10-minute rendition of The Aristocrats.

The Aristocrats is obscene, but it doesn't really hurt anyone.

Gottfried's Japan jokes did.

If I were in charge at Aflac, I'd probably have fired Gottfried, too.

Yet this is, generally speaking, what we ask of comedians. We demand that they play with fire. And, usually, we're better off when they can say what no one else can — until they say what no one should.

Then we punish them for going too, too far.

Culture Shock 01.18.07: Japanese pop culture reveals a two-way street

I remember when I was young and folks my grandparents’ age said they’d never buy a Japanese car because of Pearl Harbor.

Twenty-five years later, Toyota stands ready to become the No. 1 auto seller in America.

That’s a big story. But, in the long run, it isn’t the big story as far as relations between East and West are concerned. When it comes to lasting impact, anime trumps automobiles.

I’m using anime — Japanese cartoons — as an example. It was only the beginning of Japan’s cultural invasion of America.

Consider the recent TV commercial for Nintendo’s Wii game system. In it, two Japanese men drive up to a typical American home and ask if they can play, too. The ad’s soundtrack, by the Yoshida Brothers, is American trip-hop with traditional Japanese instruments — shamisen, or three-stringed Japanese lutes.

This commercial tells us two things.

First, it says that Japanese companies have come a long way since the days when they downplayed their origins. Now, Japanese pop culture is cool, and companies like Nintendo exploit that.

Second, it says influence goes both ways. The Japanese culture we’re getting in the U.S. has been subtlety Americanized, like the Yoshida Brothers’ jazz- and dance-flavored music.

This cultural give-and-take between America and Japan has been obvious for a decade. But it’s only now getting attention outside academia and a growing number of young people obsessed with anime and manga (Japanese animated films and comic books).

Roland Kelts’ recent book, “Japanamerica: How Japanese Pop Culture Has Invaded the U.S.” is one of the few books aimed primarily at a general audience to get it right. Kelts sees that it’s a two-way street.

Until recently, Western culture poured into Japan while little Japanese culture leaked out. In the 1850s, Commodore Matthew Perry forced the U.S. into Japan at gunpoint. Nearly a century later, Japan underwent a second round of U.S.-led Westernization as it recovered from World War II.

Then, in the 1950s and ’60s, a young Japanese cartoonist named Osamu Tezuka, who’d fallen in love with Disney cartoons, invented the distinctive style most Americans now envision when they think of anime — big eyes, small noses and spiked hair, all of which comes from Tezuka’s reworking of the Disney style.

When anime exploded onto American TV in the 1990s, after years of false starts, it was so exotic that entranced children scarcely noticed the hints of its American origins. Americans will probably never embrace purely Japanese artistic institutions like Noh theater. But Japanese culture tinged with Western influence is a different story.

Americans invented the comic book. But the Japanese turned it into a mass medium, enjoyed by people of all ages and backgrounds. Now, in America, where readership of traditional superhero comics is a fraction of what it once was, readership of translated manga is one of the few growth categories in all of publishing.

And the next round is already under way. American cartoons like “Teen Titans” and “The Powerpuff Girls” and American films like “Kill Bill” and “The Matrix” can’t hide the influence of Japanese pop culture.

In the early 21st century, the ages-old suspicions East and West have harbored for each other are giving way to a cycle of cultural cross-pollination that shows no sign of ending.