The Mike Toole Show

The Tone of Locke

There are a whole lot of different ways to watch anime nowadays. There's good old TV, both broadcast and cable. There's DVD, because it's hilariously cheap to own both a DVD player and many, many DVDs. More and more people are watching their anime online, which is pretty great because it's letting people see and discuss recent hits like Underpants and Socks with Straps right as they air in Japan. But it hasn't always been this good - just a couple of decades back, you had a simple choice. You could watch your anime on TV, or you could watch tapes.

That's right, tapes. Curious little contraptions with spools and magnetic tape and cheap black plastic cases and that little button that you could press to flip up the tape guard, which came in handy that one time when you had to reach inside the videocassette and attempt to un-twist the mangled tape containing your precious copy of VCR decided to chew on the one part that you kept rewinding and watching over and over, the one with the bank heist and inexplicably nake-- ANYWAY, I'm sure that some of you are nodding in sympathy, while others are backing away slowly. But don't be afraid of tapes, because after all, buying and selling and trading tapes is what grew both the anime business and anime fandom through most of the 90s. Video tapes are old friends! Also, there's still some anime out there that you can't get on DVD in these parts-- only VHS. This time, we're going to talk about five of the best.

There was a time when it seemed like every anime under the sun was getting a DVD release. Hell, even completely unremarkable fare like Buichi Terasawa's medieval adventure manga.

In other cases, the VHS release came just a bit before before the DVD wave of the turn of the century swept everything up. That was the case with several ADV releases, such as Leda - Fantastic Adventure of Yohko. I'm pretty fond of Leda. It's one of those deals that hearkens back to simpler times, when a production company could roll out an OVA featurette that focuses more on arresting visuals than top-rate storytelling, and the resulting product succeeds in spite of itself.

Leda is definitely like this. For my money, this 1985 chestnut's best feature is its character artwork, by the great Escaflowne, and connect the dots. Right Stuf has expressed some interest in releasing Leda on DVD, but have remained noncommittal - and it haven't happened yet.

Another VHS release that somehow slipped through the cracks came courtesy of Genesis Surviver Gaiarth.

I liked Gaiarth a lot when I saw it fifteen years ago. Like Leda, this three-episode tale from 1992 features an unusually talented staff, headlined by ace character and Shinji Aramaki. Its hero is a buff young dude named Ital, a tough kid with a shock of blond hair and a huge laser sword. His parents are long gone, his father having perished in an old military conflict. Ital was raised to be a fighter by an intelligent robot called a war-roid, and like the famous Japanese soldier Hiro Onoda, he spends years doggedly waiting for fighting to resume in a war that ended ages ago. Ital eventually gets his wish, after a fashion, teaming up with another war-roid and a mysterious girl to duke it out with the bad guys. Gaiarth eventually saw release on DVD in Japan, but AnimEigo never bothered; their mid-90s VHS release was even dubbed, but it's long gone and all but forgotten. It shouldn't be!

Along with AnimEigo, US Renditions, and Anime Expo. When a fan asked about The Cockpit and DNA Sights 999.9, Medina very explicitly stated that the VHS releases of these shows did poorly and the license was too expensive to consider a DVD release. Information like this is usually carefully guarded, so Medina's frankness was telling; nobody bought the damn things on VHS, so DVD wasn't happening.

I can only reinforce fanzine. The series is still going today. Well it's not like there's a new Locke chapter every week - Hijiri's a pretty old dude now, so Locke only shows up occasionally. The series has remained fairly popular throughout the years-- Locke enjoys a particularly large female following, no doubt due to the character's steely gaze, youthful good looks, and tenderness towards women, and has actually managed to outlast several publishers. I think this is particularly neat, because it mirrors the story of the title character himself. Locke is a mysterious, emerald-haired psychic who usually hangs around the planet Lonwall in the Galactic Republic. His exploits span centuries, but he always appears to be a young man, somewhere between 13 and 18 years of age. Some experts whisper that he's hundreds and hundreds of years old, and maintains his ageless appearance to keep from scaring the shit out of people. Locke has watched empires rise and fall; he's the galaxy's most powerful psychic, so people are always looking for his help. But he likes to keep a low profile, so he only pops up sporadically.

Locke made the jump to animation in 1982, as the star of a big-budget feature film. Entitled Locke the Superman, this is an awesome, enthralling piece of work, full of conflict, crazy psychic/telekinetic fight scenes, and bursting with neat visual tricks. The reason you can't get it on DVD can be summed up in four words: Best Film & Video. This company is very well-known among older anime fans; they released a whole range of anime movies on VHS, some of them great (Dagger of Kamui, anyone?) with the violent bits crudely razored out, and fitted with cheap, awkward dubbing. A lot of fans I know bought these tapes, including myself - not because we loved them, but out of a weird sense of obligation. It was anime, we had to get it!

The Locke movie (which was retitled Space Warriors, to boot, and Locke himself does not appear on the cover.

Man, I really wish Locke was available on DVD! The movie, at least, is a lousy pan n' scan job, and I want to see it in widescreen. To add insult to injury, the Japanese DVD is letterboxed, so even the more faithful, local version ain't perfect. I also feel like there's an opportunity here, because there's actually two additional Locke OVAs, New World Command and Mirroring. The former is pretty gnarly, featuring some unusually crappy animation, but the latter, which is a mere 11 years old, holds up well. If publishers are getting out there and taking chances on Galaxy Express 999 and Dirty Pair, why not Locke the Superman?

Why, indeed. Why didn't any of these great titles make it to DVD? We know the reasons, in some cases. In other cases, we can make a pretty good guess. But all those aside, there's still a ton of anime that remains tucked away on obscure old analog tapes: anime like Wild 7, and Legend of Kotetsu, and AWOL, to name just a few. Do you have a favorite VHS anime, one that you've kept safe while you quietly pined for a DVD release? Talk about it in the comments, and : tapes are our friends!