Australia is currently in the closing stages of a long, slow transition to digital television. The delivery of new channels has been exciting and depressing. Channel Ten started promisingly with 1HD, mainly because it aired the SF shows that were being lost during the channel’s regular broadcast schedule, including Battlestar Galactica and Smallville. Sadly 1HD is now a 24hr sports channel, broadcasting American time fillers like paintball and baseball, and the SF shows are lost again. Channel 9 has joined the fray with GO!, and it is also off to a good start. The channel has peppered its programming with Warner Brother superhero cartoons (Teen Titans, The Batman, and Justice League), but the biggest surprise is the appearance of the original Marine Boy.
Marine Boy is one of a string of great Japanese cartoon shows from the sixties. Some of them have been remade (Astro Boy, Gigantor), at least one became a movie (Speed Racer), some were plagiarised by the west (Kimba the White Lion became the Lion King, and elements of Gigantor surfaced in The Iron Giant) without acknowledgement, and others are awaiting rediscovery (Prince Planet).
Marine Boy can breathe underwater (thanks to oxy-gum), swims quickly thanks to his propeller boots, and is protected by his orange suit and sonic boomerang. He helps his father (Dr Mariner) at Ocean Patrol to protect the oceans, along with comedy duo Piper and Bolton, Professor Fumble, and Neptina (a topless mermaid with a magic pearl).
I’m not sure what we should make of the sexual connotation of a half naked prepubescent girl with a pearl necklace, or her provocative fondling of it. Some of the interaction between Marine Boy and his father is also a little suspect. Or maybe I am reading too much in to the imagery.
The show is reliably formulaic and generally has a big, nasty villain, some hideous henchmen, a diabolical plan, and Marine Boy saving the day. If some of the voices seem familiar, then you may have heard them in the original Speed Racer or other dubbed anime. In a marketplace that thrives on cheap nostalgia and fake retro, Marine Boy is a welcome piece of authenticity, complete with inventiveness and violence.
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2 comments:
Damn straight... it was a staple of mine as a young lad... good stuff, dodgy as hell by today's standards but still way wicked none-the-less (go the violence)
Marine Boy remains a favorite of this Yank, and I'm irritated that it hasn't yet turned up on DVD. If that ever happens, I hope to finally see the long-read-about original series of perhaps six B/W episodes. I'd also like to see them fully uncut and subtitled, if for no reason other than to find out what the characters' names actually were.
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