Was Astro This Naive?

[RemyC]

I was 10 years old when the original Astro aired in black & white on TV... I have a few on tape... I expect they are now all available on DVD, although I have not started looking yet.

I missed the premiere of the new CN series on Monday... I thought it was going to be on the WB. That's what the New York Times TV Guide said, so I looked on the wrong channel.

But I caught it on Tuesday... I didn't like the episodes on Tuesday and Wednesday very much... kowtowing too much to what people have come to expect from anime... but I loved the one that aired today.

On Tuesday and Wednesday, I didn't like how naive they made Astro out to be. I don't remember him being that naive, even in the comic books... I read half of the 23 books published by Dark Horse. I have them all, just haven't had a chance to finish them all yet.

I was astounded to discover that the ENTIRE premise for the Spielberg movie Artificial Intelligence was in fact the origins of Astro Boy in the comic books. I never knew this until I read the original Dark Horse books... Spielberg stole the entire plot line and didn't even credit Astro! This makes me angry.

I knew that Crichton lifted the entire premise for Jurassic Park from one of the 60's Astro TV episodes called Dinosaur Carnival about a mad scientist who brings dinosaurs back to life and inserts human DNA into their genes so they are smart enough to talk. They become the star attraction at a carnival until they get nasty and Astro comes to the rescue. Again neither Critchon or Spielberg ever gave Astro credit!

Anyway, it's great to see such a great board pop up for Astro fans... count me in!

[jeffbert]

I did not know about the JP stuff.

Good to have you, RemyC; you will be disappointed to know that when NBC was about to return the films to Mushi Studios, Mushi was bankrupt, and the films were drestroyed. Anything that survived was an illegal copy. Check The Right Stuf for tapes. 36 Episodes in varying degrees of 'quality' are available. eBay member Gleckner sells 6 packs of VHS tapes, of which there are 3 sets.

[RemyC]

I'd heard about this... but never in great detail... Was not the NBC dubbed version an edited form of the Japanese version? Edited down for time to insert commercials? So wouldn't the Japanese version of the 60's series still be available intact somewhere? I can't possibly believe that these were the only copies. I'd heard that the reels of the episodes aired on NBC were in fact split three ways between different people and companies, and never brought back together again.

I've been getting the Right Stuf catalog since they were solely dedicated to Astro... but haven't really paid attention since they expanded their selection. Now that the new series is on CN, I'm really curious and eager to see a restored DVD of the entire 60's series happen. Even if it has to be pieced together from bits and pieces.

I'm on the Birds of Prey online board, and there they pointed to a website that's put up by the DVD industry, tabulating the number of people who want this or that show on DVD:
http://www.TVShowsOnDVD.com

You can go in a register... and place your vote for Astro.

From:
http://mag.awn.com/index.php?article_no=1408
"The first, 193 episodes in black-&-white from 1963 to 1966 by Osamu Tezuka's Mushi Production Co., was Japan's first TV animation. This is the series that introduced Astro Boy to America."

It would seem according to what I just found here:
http://en.tezuka.co.jp/news/soft
That the entire 1960's series is indeed available on DVD.
ASTRO BOY DVD|BOX4
Episodes: #94|#126
Price: 28,200Yen (exclusive of tax)
Release Date: Jan.18, 2003
Distributor: Columbia Music Entertainment, Inc.

The whole set of 6 or 7 DVD Boxes is available for sale on amazon japan:
http://www.amazon.co.jp

Anyone know if and where the Japanese DVD box set is available for sale somewhere in the US in NTSC?

[DrFrag]

The destruction of the Astroboy episodes for Mushi resulted in the loss of the English dub soundtracks. The Japanese version still exists almost in its entirety.

What surprises me is there doesn't seem to be any attempt (outside of The Right Stuf) to recover missing soundtracks.

Take the early BBC episodes of Dr Who for example. There were hundreds of episodes missing because they were taped over. Back in the 60s they weren't considered to be worth anything. Since then, collections have been searched around the world and many have been recovered. There are only about a hundred missing now. It was big news for Dr Who fans a few years ago when another lost episode was recovered from a guy in New Zealand. All the sound tracks have been recovered, because fans back in the 60s were taping the audio on to their primitive reel to reels. Massive work has gone into the restoration of Dr Who.

But then you look at Astroboy. There doesn't seem to be any attempt at recovering the lost English soundtracks. That shocks and surprises me. Can this guy own some of the last remaining copies? How long before his tapes deteriorate and are lost to history? It's mind boggling. It's been 40 years and there still isn't a single legitimate English dub or sub episode on DVD. From any series.

[RemyC]

Thanks for the insight...
I for one, would be perfectly happy with the complete Japanese DVD set of the 60's series, subtitles or no subtitles...
Do you know if and where the DVD set can be found in the US?
USA and Japan both use NTSC, right? So in theory I could even get someone to help me purchase the DVD set from Amazon Japan and I could play them in my DVD here in the US?

[jeffbert]

Same here! I have 3 DVD drives on my pc, and could easily switch 1 to region 2. I assume everything else would be the same, other than the regions. <_<

[tinlunlau]

there's a chance that your player would be able to play them as well.

google around and look for a hack code to play all region discs. since Japanese dvd's are in NTSC, you shouldn't have any problem at all to play them them (once hacked).

[jeffbert]

there's a chance that your player would be able to play them as well.

google around and look for a hack code to play all region discs. since Japanese dvd's are in NTSC, you shouldn't have any problem at all to play them them (once hacked).

So, you are saying that the inability of the hardware (I thought that the region was located in the drive's electronics) to play a different region DVD can be resolved via software?

[tinlunlau]

Originally posted by jeffbert@Mar 25 2004, 06:58 AM

[b]there's a chance that your player would be able to play them as well.

google around and look for a hack code to play all region discs. since Japanese dvd's are in NTSC, you shouldn't have any problem at all to play them them (once hacked).

So, you are saying that the inability of the hardware (I thought that the region was located in the drive's electronics) to play a different region DVD can be resolved via software? [/b]

i'm not sure what you just said but yeah...

[jeffbert]

i'm not sure what you just said but yeah...

The DVD drive, that you can purchase in the US for as little as $60, itself contains the restriction that it will only play region 1 DVDs. It is alterable, but one can only change its region 4 times. Changing the region would be done via the PC's device manager. Although the changes were made via the Windows system (software), they would affect the DVD drive even if it were physically installed in a different PC.

You say that there is a method for circumventing the drive's restriction on which regions it will read, that does not involve writing to the drive's internal registers. I found that rather strange. I had thought that if the drive itself will not read the disk, nothing that you do to the software will change that. However, it could be that the drive will read the disk, but that it somehow will not work with any conventional DVD player software, unless, as you say, the hack code is used.