"YOU WA SHOCK!!" FIST OF THE NORTH STAR: THE TV SERIES Overview-Part 1

 From 2010.

NOTE: this is a long one, folks, so if you have no interest in FIST OF THE NORTH STAR, bail out now.

The first boxed set of the complete unedited and subtitled run of FIST OF THE NORTH STAR is finally out in legal, licensed form in the U.S. (as opposed to the previously available and horrendously subtitled “gray market” version from Hong Kong), with the second (of a total of four) just recently out as well, so now is as good a time as any to give you my overview of the whole shebang. The first boxed set contains episodes 1-36, but first a wee bit of history for the uninitiated. (NOTE: though I've seen the entire series all the way through in various states of translation ranging from the totally untranslated — when I was first watching it on tapes culled from the original Japanese airings in the mid-1980's — to the passable and the downright awful, this viewing of these fully-authorized and professionally subtitled episodes is the first time I'll be making my way through all of it with a quality, unified vision of the story told in English, so this is as almost as much of a journey of discovery for me as it is for you, dear Vaultie.)



A strong contender for the title of "Best Cartoon Theme Song Ever."

Much has been written on this blog about my undying love of HOKUTO NO KEN, aka FIST OF THE NORTH STAR, in all its many iterations, but the one that started me on all of this is the animated TV series that ran from 1984-1987 and it's immediate sequel series, HOKUTO NO KEN 2 (1987-1988). Based on the landmark manga series by artist Tetsuo Hara and co-writer Buronson that ran in weekly installments in Japan's SHONEN JUMP weekly comics anthology from 1983-1988 (and as of 2007 was the 7th best-selling collected manga series of all time), the TV adaptation followed its source's template of over-the-top martial arts super-heroic ultra-violence and manliness, and even went it one better by exaggerating its already considerable excesses from the ridiculous to the sublime. While definitely possessed of skills and abilities that would meet anyone's definition of the term "powerful," the characters became kuh-razy super-powerful in the TV version, and it is from that launching point that all other versions of the series' signature mega-martial arts stem. It was the element of a very Japanese take on superheroes combined with an equally Nippon-tastic spin on what one could get away with in what was originally considered a kids' series that guaranteed HOKUTO NO KEN classic status, and it is in many ways even more popular today than it ever was in the first place.

A typical day in FIST OF THE NORTH STAR's post-apocalyptic shithole of a world.

The show's basic premise is the same as the manga's: in the year 199X, World War III breaks out and after the nuclear holocaust's smoke and fire clears (to say nothing of the attendant fallout), the earth has been rendered a scorched and barren wasteland where lawlessness and savagery rule and the weak are the pathetic prey of the strong and cartoonishly sadistic. Out of the blistering, Sergio Leone-esque wastes strides Kenshiro, a tall, stoic and impossibly-muscled warrior who is a completely flagrant fusion of the ENTER THE DRAGON-era Bruce Lee's martial prowess (taken of course to an insane next level) and Mel Gibson as Mad Max, for both the Aussie hero's post-apocalyptic setting and basic visual. (NOTE: Kenshiro can't be considered a total visual ripoff of Mad Max because Ken's leather jacket does not have any trace of sleeves!)

Mel "Sugartits" Gibson: the sartorial template for Kenshiro.

It is at this point that I’ll break down the episodes contained in this first boxed set by which installments the viewer really should not miss, with notes on the various important characters encountered along the way. There will be spoilers, but they don’t really spoil anything because, if truth be told, about two-thirds of FIST OF THE NORTH STAR’s early run is simply not very good, and I say that as a hardcore fan.

The series' first twenty-three episodes comprise "Chapter One" and what's contained therein is rather a mixed bag, as we shall see.

Our protagonist: Kenshiro, the 64th successor of Hokuto Shin Ken, the deadliest martial art known to man.

Episode 1: In which Kenshiro wanders out of the wasteland and begins has ass-kicking career in bloody earnest. This implacable and initially-unexplained warrior arrives in a small town that's been attacked by a gang of Mohawked and feathered biker thugs, hulking human vermin who don't hesitate to kill any who offer them the slightest resistance when they come to raid the place for food and water. Before the awed and horrified eyes of the townspeople, Kenshiro (Ken for short) single-handedly, fatally and quite literally explosively sorts out the gang in a spectacular and jaw-dropping display of the secret martial art of Hokuto Shin Ken — literally "North Star God Fist" or "the Holy Fist of the North Star" — a discipline that grants its adepts a vast array of superhuman powers and abilities, and causes those struck by it to blow apart from within.

Kenshiro powers up: when the aura's sparking and the leather jacket burns away, that's your ass.

The typically shirtless Ken. Where does he get replacements for all the sleeveless leather jackets he burns through?

Fit to burst: Hokuto Shin Ken in action.

When the gory and decidedly one-sided melee is over, Kenshiro departs and makes his way once more into the desert, single-mindedly continuing upon a quest in which his every step is galvanized by visions of a mysterious beauty named Yuria. What follows is a harrowing odyssey of escalating violence and literalized "martial" law through a savage new world, and we, the viewers, are taken along for one hell of a ride.

One of the show's many awesome/amusing tropes: a killing move is executed, the action is freeze-framed, and the move is identified, often with a lengthy narrated explanation of its particulars. In this example, Ken's move causes the bad guy's eyeballs and brain to spew out of his face.

It should be noted that the first episode introduces the only three characters who are there for the entirety of both the original and sequel series. Characters in FIST OF THE NORTH STAR in any version tend not to survive any given story arc, not even the favorites of the fans, or they get completely written out, so the trio of mainstays includes Kenshiro (obviously), Bat (or "Bart," depending on the translation) and Lin, a pair of orphaned survivor kids.

Lin and Bat: the show's only other full-time cast members.

They meet Ken when he staggers out of the desert demanding water and is immediately imprisoned, pending a determination of whether he's kosher or just another biker thug; Bat's in the same jail cell, also held on suspicion, and Lin is tasked with bringing them food and water. Once the biker gang shows up and Ken gorily reduces them to splattered chutney, saving Lin from getting her head torn from her body in the process, Bat follows Ken on his quest, declaring himself Ken's "manager" and intending to trade Ken's lethal skills for food. Lin soon joins them, and it's at that point that the viewer's patience begins a serious endurance test; both Bat and Lin embody two of the worst and most common aspects of manga and Japanese animation, specifically the unnecessary "cute" and comic relief characters in a series that would almost definitely be better off without them. A series as grim as this definitely requires some kind of levity and tender human feeling to alleviate some of its unrelenting tragic tone and there is certainly plenty of that to be had in Kenshiro's snide interaction with his opponents/Hokuto Shin Ken fodder and some of the other later supporting characters, but Bat and Lin are damned near insufferable from the moment when they show up, especially Lin. Almost universally reviled by even the most diehard fans, Lin's endless and shrill screams of Ken's name ("Keeeeeeeeeeeeen!!!") will make you want to shove the nearest pointy object through your eardrums, and that agony goes on unabated until the sequel series, at which point the plot skips ahead by several years and Lin is a grown woman.

Bat, while certainly annoying and abrasive in his own right, is at least around sixteen when we meet him, so he's not in any way "cute," but his self-serving shtick wears out its welcome pretty swiftly. Both kids follow Ken with full awareness of the incredible violence and danger that marks his journey, which at times makes them both look like self-destructive idiots while simultaneously painting Ken as huge douche for doing little or nothing to prevent them from barreling headlong into peril (not that his warnings or orders ever stop them). In their defense, the pair do kinda/sorta grow to have their place in the story as Kenshiro's surrogate children (which evolves in a couple of weird directions in the sequel series, but more on that when we get to it), with Lin frequently displaying great (if possibly suicidal) courage while Bat slowly learns from Kenshiro's selfless example and reveals himself to be less of an opportunistic turd than he wants the world to believe he is.

Anyway, as the series progresses, we discover that Kenshiro is on a mission to rescue Yuria, his fiancee, from the clutches of Shin, a master of Nanto Sei Ken ("Southern Cross fist"), the martial art that is the yang to Hokuto Shin Ken's yin, and affords its masters the ability to carve through even the most dense of matter, but mostly people.

The deadly hands of Shin, master of Nanto Sei Ken, the "Southern Cross fist."

Shin visually resembles nothing so much as the "Fragile"-era Rick Wakeman decked out in an assortment of flamboyant outfits that look like castoffs from Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, thus rendering him the first in a long line of opponents — and sometimes allies — whose perceived borderline-flaming "fagginess" stands in direct contrast to Kenshiro's stoic, bikery butchness. Also going by the honorific of "King" and fronting a conquering army of ragingly sadistic assholes, the chiefs of which each bear ridiculous playing card-based names, Shin brutally ravages his way across the wasteland while making his base at the city of Southern Cross. (As Hokuto denotes the northern art, Nanto represents the southern flipside.)
Episode 5: After witnessing Ken in action for four episodes and noting the seven scars on his frequently-exposed chest, the viewers are granted the first look into his past and shown the shattering event that set him on his path of rescue and revenge. At an unspecified time in the past but likely about a year before the events seen in the first episode, Kenshiro and Yuria, his fiancee, pay their respects at the grave of Ken's father and prepare to venture into the hostile wilderness, ready to start a new life flush with young love.
The romance of Kenshiro and Yuria: the catalyst for a cornucopia of tragedy and death.

That plan is immediately derailed when Shin arrives and declares his intent to take Yuria for himself, citing that she needs a real man to protect her in the harsh post-nuke world and challenging Ken for her hand. At this point in his life, just after being declared the successor to his family's sacred martial art, Kenshiro was in no way the kung fu powerhouse that he would evolve into, and his resolve in the fight against Shin is hampered by two crucial points: the two-thousand year law that Hokuto and Nanto must never come into conflict because that battle of united opposites would potentially destroy the world (exactly how or why is never really made clear), and the fact that Ken and Shin grew up as friends. The fight goes quite badly and Kenshiro suffers severed tendons in his arms and legs. Then, adding enormous insult to equally dire injury, Shin forces Yuria to declare her love for him by using his stone-penetrating fingers to slowly poke deep holes into Ken's chest, holes that form (and mock) the Hokuto symbol, the constellation known in the West as the Big Dipper.

Shin disrespectfully marks Kenshiro's body with what would become the Japanese answer to Superman's "S" crest.

Not wanting Ken to perish, Yuria proclaims her love for Shin and tearfully goes off with him. Galvanized by the trifecta of crushing defeat, grievous injury and having his fiancee taken away against her will (an act he knows she allowed to save his ass), Kenshiro somehow survives and doggedly begins killing his way through Shin's forces, a battle that continues over the next seventeen episodes.

As a bad guy, Shin is admittedly somewhat nuanced, but he's barely more than a post-apocalyptic mustache twirling "boss" villain. His love for Yuria is genuine but he is so deluded that he cannot accept that she will have room in her heart only for Kenshiro, so one would feel quite sorry for Shin if not for the fact that he clearly enjoys killing innocent people, all in the name of conquest that he is somehow convinced will be understood by Yuria as love offerings from him. The only truly interesting thing about him is that although he kidnapped Yuria with the clearly-stated intention of taking her as his woman, he is clearly shown not to be a rapist. He never once attempts to take Yuria sexually without her consent and would never raise a hand against her; instead, he seeks to win her heart by lavishing gifts upon her and ruthlessly conquering villages in her name, something that only drives her deeper into melancholy.

Yuria: the face that launched uncountable deaths.

For her part, Yuria is a bland and virtually undefined character, which comes as little surprise since this was originally very much a "boys only" manga, but that's rather beside the point. In fact, calling her a character at all is almost a stretch, since she only serves the narrative as an objective for Kenshiro's quest and the unrequited focus of Shin's demented ardor. She's passive in the extreme and has no real personality to speak of, yet she ends up as the over-used catalyst to many other as-yet-unseen characters' motivations and agendas (as we shall see as the series progresses) but her near-total lack of personality other than being "the girl" makes one wonder just what the big deal about her is. As previously stated, I've been a big fan of FIST OF THE NORTH STAR for twenty-five years, and I have yet to understand her appeal to any of the characters whose lives she is later revealed to have so drastically affected (with one major exception, but he doesn't show up for quite a while yet).

Episodes 6-8: the "God's Army" arc.

As his pursuit of Shin continues, Kenshiro runs into a highly-skilled paramilitary force known as God's Army, a vicious lot who prey upon the weak for provisions, kidnap women for breeding purposes, and mercilessly kill all who oppose their reign of terror.

Kenshiro tells the finest paramilitary force the world has ever known to "suck it."

Kenshiro would not have put up with their bullshit for long anyway, but when they make the drastically bad move of kidnapping Lin as an underage broodmare (she's maybe ten), God's Army signs its own death warrant. Kenshiro fights his way into their citadel and hands out the most righteous ass-whuppings of his career to date, but after he kills the rat bastards he still has to contend with The Colonel, their one-eyed leader, whose psychic powers allow him to read and counter Kenshiro's moves before he even makes them.

The Colonel orders his men to find and kill "the man with the seven scars." Yeah, good luck with that.

This arc marks the point where the show re-arranges the manga's storyline and juggles several elements that came after the conclusion of the Shin story, apparently in an effort to keep the thrills coming where the manga kind of floundered once Shin was out of the picture. Any fan who's read the manga can tell you flat-out that perhaps the greatest flaw in the early run was that the creators seemed to meander with the narrative until the series finally figured out what its real point was, but more on that later. The God's Army arc was hands down my favorite portion of FIST OF THE NORTH STAR's early period and I loved it for its non-stop action and genuine testing of Kenshiro's early-period skills (I've gone into detail on the manga version elsewhere), all of which is to be had in the TV version, even if the evil soldiers are now written to be underlings of Shin. That aspect is total bullshit because, even as formidable as he and his forces were, I very much doubt that Shin could have taken God's Army's elite warriors. Oh, and this arc is also of note because The Colonel explains to Ken (and, by association, us) exactly how and why World War III happened, a bit of exposition that one would think would be very interesting and important, but it's given pretty short shrift and is never mentioned again (until somewhat retconned in one of the recent theatrical film retellings).

Episodes 9 & 10: These are the first of several disposable and awful "filler" episodes that were thrown into the series in order to pad out the season, and they can be skipped over without missing anything. Anything, that is, excepting a great moment in Episode 10 where a member of a biker gang recognizes and identifies Kenshiro, prompting the whole lot to take off in the opposite direction at very high speed, a tactical decision that saves their worthless lives. That rare moment of intelligence in the series' villains would not be repeated, and as such it's pretty damned funny.

Epsiodes 11-13: the Jackal arc.

One of my least favorite sequences in both the manga and the TV series, this is of note for an interesting look at Bat's pre-Kenshiro existence and what spurred him to become a scavenger. The sequence's Big Bad is Jackal, a large but rather cowardly biker gang leader and pragmatist whose advises his men not to fight anyone who is stronger than they are, and he should know because he's no kind of match for Kenshiro and doesn't even try to prove otherwise. Instead he resorts to every bit of underhanded chicanery that he can muster, which makes him a very disappointing villain for a series that relies on the hero fighting worthy martial foes. Once Ken finally kills Jackal's gang and goes after the head man himself, Jackal runs to a conveniently-located prison that holds "Devil Rebirth" (often mis-translated as "Devil Reverse," as it is here) a towering giant of a man whose mastery of the ancient and unspeakably deadly "Arhat Deva fist" has turned him into a mass-murdering martial arts demon. Jackal unleashes this living horror against Kenshiro, giving our hero his first bout against a straight-up monster. Each week, FIST OF THE NORTH STAR's opening sequence famously depicted Ken launching himself into the gaping maw of some unexplained creature roughly the scale of King Kong, but that scene never occurred in the manga or anywhere in the TV version.

The end of the show's weekly opening sequence: a battle that never came to pass, but considering where Kenshiro's skills ended up going, I totally believe he would have kicked that monster's ass.

But Ken's encounter with Devil Rebirth is the closest we get to him fighting an actual giant monster, so I'll take what I can get.

Jackal unleashing Devil Rebirth.

I'm guessing the confusion over the translation of "Devil Rebirth" comes from the fact that his name in the original manga was in English and written phonetically with Japanese kanji, so its sound could easly be taken as "Devil Reverse." I go with "Rebirth" because the character is very much a an ogre-like horror straight out of Japanese yokai mythology, whereas a "devil reverse" would seem to be something of innate goodness, which this bad guy sure as hell ain't.

Episodes 14-21: Nothing but filler here, all of which can be skipped over, with Episode 17 holding the dubious distinction of being the first of many, many full episodes that recap the entire series up to that particular installment. There is a stunningly ludicrous scene where Ken fights a WWII-style tank with his bare hands and wins, but even that is not worth sitting through the entire episode.

Episode 22: The end of Chapter One, in which the well-tested and fully-motivated Kenshiro finally confronts Shin.

Kenshiro delivers a killing bow to his rival.

Driven to a berserker rage by the sight of Shin seemingly killing Yuria, Kenshiro puts an end to his rival once and for all, but all is not as it seems. Upon examining the body, Ken discovers that Shin had actually attacked a lifelike manikin, knowing Ken would think it was Yuria and thus put Shin out of his misery. When asked why he did this, Shin tearfully explains that upon hearing of his latest plan for violent conquest in her name, Yuria threw herself to her death from the tower of Southern Cross rather than bear the guilt for one more innocent life that would be lost. Despite his own demise by Hokuto Shin Ken being imminent, Shin makes like Yuria and takes a tower dive rather than suffer the indignity of exploding from his enemy's polar opposite fighting art.

With the long haul of the Shin storyline finally over and done with, the second chapter begins, and it is there that the first inklings of what made FIST OF THE NORTH STAR a classic are seen.

Episodes 23-29: This arc finds Ken and his young companions encountering a village led by Mamiya, a fierce warrior-woman armed with much moxie and razor-edged yo-yos that she wields like a champ. She also bears a strong resemblance to Yuria, which freaks Kenshiro out to no small degree.

Mamiya deploys her lethal yo-yo acumen.

Very tough and capable (though her skills are only within the boundary of normal human abilities), Mamiya is a worthy addition to the cast and becomes the series' lone regular female badass. (We learn a good deal more about her in the stories found in the next boxed set.)

When Ken and the kids arrive, Mamiya and her people are waging a decidedly one-sided battle against the wolf-like Fang Clan, an apparently limitless legion of waaaaaaay vicious and sadistic wolf-themed killers who are all the sons of a hulking leader who can literally turn his skin to impenetrable steel. Being the BMF that he is, Ken makes quite an impression when he kills scores of the Fangs, so Mamiya offers him the job of her town's protector, complete with housing, food and water, along with certain other "benefits" being hinted at. She digs Ken bigtime, but his heart only belongs to Yuria, and that's that.

Rei: the bishonen badass and the other true star of the early portion of the series.

The most significant element of this arc is the introduction of Rei, one of the top masters of the Nanto disciplines, in this case the spectacular Nanto Suicho Ken ("Southern Cross Water Fowl Fist"). Not dissimilar to Shin's style, Nanto Suicho Ken is also a martial discipline that principally concentrates on hand attacks, but as it is based upon the movements of a swan, it grants those who master it a superhuman grace that is seen to great effect when the style's moves are executed

Rei's very memorable first appearance. 

Along with enabling its user to slice through virtually anything with surgical accuracy (accented by psychedelic laser-like trails streaming from the fingers), the art also grants its user the ability to "take flight" for impressive aerial attacks, lending the user the aspect of some great and beautiful bird.

Rei, seen in mid-air assault against the dastardly Fang Clan. They didn't stand a chance.

Nanto Suicho Ken's effect on the human head.

A classic '80's example of the manga/anime trope of the bishonen ("beautiful male") and pretty enough to believably pass himself off as a girl (which at one point he does, with hilarious results), Rei arrives from out of the desert in search of his sister, Airi, who has been sold into what is heavily implied to be multi-owner sexual slavery, and her abductor has been described by an eyewitness as a man with seven scars on his chest... Rei intends to visit some major and fatal hurt onto his sister's abductor and during the course of his quest for vengeance he has lost a good deal of his humanity, callously killing anyone who gets in his way and being willing to whore out his considerable skills to whichever side seems to have the upper hand. Playing the Enkidu to Kenshiro's Gilgamesh, Rei eventually succumbs to Kenshiro's example of decency and selfless protection of others, and in no time the two recognize kindred spirits in one another, forming one of the great bromances of manga/anime (to say nothing of introducing an intriguing somewhat-homoerotic subtext that has been the subject of much debate and conjecture among fans for twenty-five years). Though initially siding with the Fangs, Rei soon joins Kenshiro and Mamiya to form a heroic trio that lasts well into the next boxed set, with some very interesting results (which will be discussed in the review of the second boxed set), and the damage they inflict upon the Fang Clan leads the head of the clan to pull some seriously nasty business that cannot go unpunished.

Rei, Kenshiro and Mamiya: my vote for the defining superhero trio of '80's manga/anime.

Righteous punishment does indeed come, but not until our heroes engage in several memorable and definitive battles in the process. Among other highlights can be counted Ken's utter decimation of Madara, a Fang Clan member who is apparently some kind of horrifying human/lupine mutant hybrid,

Madara meets Ken's fist. Note the depth of impact.

and Ken's dispatching of the formerly steel-skinned clan leader with a move called the "mountain- splitting wave."

The devastating power of...

...the "mountain-splitting wave."

Episodes 30-32: the Jagi arc.

Once the Fang Clan is wiped out and Rei's poor, abused sister is rescued, Kenshiro susses out that the mysterious villain with scars that match those on his chest is none other than Jagi, Kenshiro's presumed-dead adoptive older brother and rejected contender for successorship to Hokuto Shin Ken.

Jagi: shattering proof of what can happen when you teach superhuman killing skills to a sociopath.

Sometime before the first episode of the series took place, Jagi, angered at being passed over for the successorship, confronts Kenshiro and demands that he renounce his new position and cede it to him. Ken ain't havin' it, so he thrashes Jagi to within an inch of his life, hideously disfiguring him in the process (thus necessitating Jagi's subsequent wearing of a face-obscuring helmet), yet allowing him to live because of their familial connection. That was in the days before Ken grew himself a real pair, and the mistake of not putting Jagi down when he had the chance has now come back to bite a huge chunk out of his ass; following his beatdown and banishment, Jagi scars himself and wanders the wastes, committing acts of wanton murder, rape (strongly implied but not explicitly stated) and other evil, all while identifying himself as Kenshiro in an attempt to besmirch his younger brother's name. When Ken finally faces Jagi, a number of interesting revalations roll out, allowing us our first real glimpse into Kenshiro's family and the Hokuto Shin Ken training process/culture, along with the fact that Jagi was the catalyst that spurred Shin to kidnap Yuria. But the biggest bombshell of all is that Ken's two eldest brothers, Toki and Raoh, also survived, and the two of them in many ways make Ken look like a weak younger sister. That leaves Kenshiro no choice but to find them and settle the matter of successorship once and for all.

Episodes 33-36: the Amiba arc.

This one's a bit of a throwaway, but it does serve to fill us in on even more about Kenshiro's family, specifically his much-admired elder brother, Toki. A sweet-natured pacifist who wanted to use his art to heal rather than kill, Toki would have been chosen as the successor to Hokuto Shin Ken if not for him being exposed to severe radiation when the bombs fell, which turned his hair white and left him only a limited amount of time to live. Toki apparently settles into a town that comes to be known as "the village of miracles" once he moves in and starts healing all and sundry, but then Toki's personality abruptly changes from kind to sadistic as he has a private gang of thugs kidnap innocent people for his twisted and painful medical experiments.

Kenshiro's older brother, Toki...or is it?

This change in temperment is questionable to say the least, so Ken sets out to prove whether it's an impostor or if his beloved brother has inexplicably snapped and turned completely evil. It spoils nothing to state that the evil healer is indeed not Toki, but a jealous impostor named Amiba, a self-proclaimed martial and medical genius who can mimic most of the particulars of any fighting style he sees. Incorrectly thinking he's mastered a form of Hokuto Shin Ken — exactly how and where he would have seen it is never made clear, and it makes no sense since none but the chosen ever witness its training secrets — Amiba sees Toki's successful healing of the sick and tries to duplicate it. When Toki sees Amiba injuring someone Toki had just healed, Toki slaps him aside and comes to the victim's rescue, warning Amiba not to use skills he has not mastered. Outraged at being hit by Toki, Amiba somehow manages to get rid of the healer (how is never made clear), alters his features in order to pass as Toki, and sets about attempting to reinvent Hokuto Shin Ken in his own image. Needless to say, Amiba needs killing, and Kenshiro's the guy for the job... END OF BOXED SET.

Once Amiba's splattered hither and yon, we move on to the next chunk of the story and the real point of the entire epic: Kenshiro's brothers — the gentle Toki, and Raoh (about whom we know nothing yet) — are still alive, so now Ken must settle the whole succession issue and reluctantly face his destiny as the potential savior of the post-apocalyptic world. The big stumbling block to that goal is...well, that would be telling, and all of that is found in the next boxed set.

Two more Hokuto brothers remain, and with that fact the glory days of FIST OF THE NORTH STAR kick into high gear (in the next boxed set).

If all of that seems rather convoluted and potentially confusing, it certainly is, but that's the unfortunate flaw of the early FIST OF THE NORTH STAR, in both manga and animated form. The Shin arc meanders quite a bit and once that's done things continue to ramble on seemingly without a point until Rei enters the narrative. I honestly think the creators didn't really have much of an idea for the manga at first, other than "badass kung fu superhero guy wanders a post-nuke wasteland and kills shitloads of evil scum in creative and gory ways," but with Rei and Ken's brothers added to the mix, an avalanche of excellence and unbridled badassery gets properly underway (with the next boxed set) and propels the series to classic iconic, landmark status. Nonetheless, considering how deeply flawed — no, make that downright bad — the show was for much of its first year, it's a miracle the series survived long enough to get good. Though this was perhaps the most action-packed anime series ever made up to that time, it had several aspects that turned off all but the most diehard of fans (who learned to ignore those aspects, for the most part), including frequent re-usage of footage and recaps up the ass (which really become egregious after the episodes covered here), plus to say nothing of the fact that when one really looks at the story's setting, it does not bear close examination and makes little sense in any kind of science-fictional context. I mean, think about this:

• If the nuclear apocalypse happened in "199x" as is stated at the start of the story, the level to which what remains of society has sunk would have to have required maybe a minimum of two decades for such outright and fetishized tribalism to have taken root and become a part of actual cultures.
• What would have been unquestionably high levels of radiation are apparently not an issue.
• Considering the aforementioned radiation, the lack of outright mutants is surprising. Creatures like Devil Rebirth and Madara are given no plausible explanation at all and are not declared to be mutants, but maybe we are supposed to infer that that's indeed what they are. Who knows?
• Plant life is practically nil, so crops are extremely unlikely and there would not necessarily be enough plants around to generate breathable air.
• Cannibalism would be a viable and likely nutritional option, yet it is not addressed.
• The world seen in the sequences depicting the days before the war seems to be somewhat multi-culturally futuristic even by early-1980's standards, so the stated start date of 199X seems seems a tad early.
• Where is everybody getting all that fuel for cars, trucks, dune buggies, and motorcycles (not to mention the aforementioned WWII-style tank)? Considering that THE ROAD WARRIOR was an obvious cribbing source for all of this, I'm guessing the creators may have assumed everyone had seen that and would apply what was seen there to the world of FIST OF THE NORTH STAR.

"I object to your pointing out of my story's logical inconsistencies. NOW YOU DIE!!!"

There are many, many more such questions raised, so I'll answer all of them with this simple explanation: the series has nothing to do with realism (well, duh) and the creators used WWIII as an excuse to rewrite the human landscape into one of pure (if horrible) fantasy. FIST OF THE NORTH STAR has always struck me as kind of an heroic campfire story or epic poem told by tribal storytellers in its dire future, a tale about destiny, loyalty, family drama and romance (though that element is given admittedly-short shrift), and as such it works just fine. Just sit back and let it take you on its crazy ride. It obviously worked for a good number of people because it's still here after over a quarter of a century, and it's popularity shows no sign of slowing down. And if you've made it through the first thirty-six episodes, trust me when I say that what follows is brilliant (up to a point), as we shall see when I do a writeup on the next volume.

STAY TUNED!!!

Packaging art for the boxed set.

SPACE BATTLESHIP YAMATO (1974) Episodes 1-9

From 2010.

If you’re a fellow aging child of the STAR WARS generation, you no doubt remember the sci-fi mania ignited by that landmark film’s from-out-of-nowhere arrival and the subsequent avalanche of movies and TV shows that appeared in an attempt to scratch that itch (translation: “cash in”). Studios and distributors scrambled to release anything that might ride the coat tails of George Lucas’ lightning in a bottle, scouring the planet in search of product, and more often than not their efforts yielded mixed-to-lackluster results. However, one of the unforeseen side-effects of this trend was the second wave of imported Japanese cartoons — the first wave occurred during the 1960’s, bringing ASTRO BOY, SPEED RACER and several others to these shores — and one of the cult juggernauts that hit the U.S. during that period was STAR BLAZERS, a military science-fiction epic that originally aired in Japan starting in 1974 under the title SPACE BATTLESHIP YAMATO.

The series had a well-conceived and detailed visual style — the signature look of manga artist Leiji Matsumoto — that bolstered its 26-episode narrative, and it has since gone on to become a landmark in anime and Ground Zero for a seemingly endless series of sequels and a cornucopia of merchandising that continues nearly forty years after it kicked off. There’s even a soon-to-be-released live action adaptation on the way, so before I see that film I figured I’d revisit the series that started it all. I was a fan of STAR BLAZERS when it first aired, but I didn’t get to see as much of it as I would have liked, thanks to the Monday-through-Friday logistics of dealing with adolescence, ninth grade and homework. STAR BLAZERS ran at a time when I might make it home in time to see it, depending on whether our questionable school bus driver was bombed again, but more often than not I was shit outta luck. It wasn’t until over ten years later that I finally got to see some of the theatrical films in uncut, subtitled versions, and what I saw was terrific, so I longed to see the original series as it was intended, and not in the edited-for-content American version that also featured annoying and ridiculous names for the characters (“Derek Wildstar?” Oh, puh-leeze…). That opportunity finally presented itself recently when an anime site that I occasionally purchased uncut/subbed DVDs from announced a fall clearance sale. I checked to see how much the first two YAMATO series were marked down to — along with 1979’s CYBORG 009 reunion movie, THE LEGEND OF THE SUPER-GALAXY — and when I saw that both were priced at under $25 each, I pounced. The transfers look very good, although I would not say they are remastered, and they display the expected signs of age that would be evident in a show that’s nearly four decades old, but that in no way detracts from the overall strength of the series. The subtitles are better than most fan-subs and it’s clear that the translators have a genuine grasp of the English language, but at times they have a tendency to over-formalize in their translations, which results in the English-speaking viewer having to do a little contextual linguistic juggling to fully get what’s being said. Anyway, that’s the specs. On with the review!

NOTE: I’ll be using the original Japanese names for the characters, so if you’re already familiar with this series, it will be pretty apparent whom I’m talking about. I’ll also mostly be using the Japanese names for assorted bits of tech, with the exceptions of the few American re-namings that in some cases are more appropriate translations into our idiom.

The mysterious planet Gamilas. Why do its inhabitants want to destroy the Earth?

The story begins in the year 2199, as the Earth is being saturation bombarded with massively radioactive asteroid bombs that have reduced the planet’s surface to an unlivable, scorched expanse of sheer desolation. Why this is happening is unknown, but it’s the work of hostile aliens from the planet Gamilas and as a result humanity has retreated to underground cities in order to survive. Nonetheless, the vast doses of radiation are seeping into the cities and the total extinction of life on Earth is estimated to occur in approximately one year. As the Earth’s space forces wither beneath the swarms of Gamilas spacecraft, help unexpectedly arrives when an unidentified vessel crash lands on Mars, where Earth Defense Force cadets Susumu Kodai and Daisuke Shima are dispatched to investigate. They find the body of the ship’s pilot, an alien later identified as Sasha, and in her hand is a strange object.

Message from space: Sasha sacrifices herself for strangers in a galaxy nearly 300,000 light years from her own.

Upon analysis, the object is revealed to be a message from Sasha’s twin sister, Stasha, queen of the distant and dying planet Iscandar, who offers the Earth the means to reverse the effects of the Gamilas’ bombing with a device called the “Cosmo Cleaner-D.” (Exactly how she is aware of the Earth’s peril is left unclear, so just go with it.) The problem is that in order to get the device, an expedition must be mounted that will require a spaceship to travel from Earth to Iscandar and back before time runs out, a journey of 296,000 light years (!!!). Fortunately, Stasha provides the plans for a faster-than-light engine, and once built it gets incorporated into the refurbished remains of the Yamato, the legendary flagship of the Japanese fleet that was sunk during WWII.

From the ashes: the remains of the Yamato, soon to be refurbished and emerge as a science-fiction landmark.

Led by combat-hardened veteran Captain Juzo Okita, the all-Japanese crew takes off on a damned near hopeless mission in the hastily-assembled space-battleship, bearing an untested warp drive and the potentially devastating “ripple cannon” as their firepower trump card, with a round-trip deadline of 363 days. Standing between the crew of the Yamato and their goal are the innumerable and more technologically advanced fleets of the Gamilas and their ruthless commanding officers, led by the smug Leader Dessler, so any way one cuts it, things look pretty goddamned bleak.

The Yamato leaves the Earth and the countdown begins.

One of the things that made SPACE BATTLESHIP YAMATO a timeless classic is that its 26-episode length affords the creators time to give the story room to develop, allowing the viewers to get to know and care about the characters and their plight, and it's simply impossible not to want the crew to win and save their — our — homeworld from a slow and horrible death. The seeds for what was to come are firmly planted during the first nine episodes, a run that introduces all of the principal characters, shows us the gathering of the crew and the building of the ship, their solemn departure from Earth with the realization that theirs is a do-or-die quest and that the final fate of humanity hangs on their shoulders, several harrowing space battles with the Gamilas, and assorted interpersonal angst, all before they even get out of our solar system. There's a lot going on and it's all fueled by a compelling cast:

• Susumu Kodai, Daisuke Shima and Yuki Mori

(L-R) Daisuke Shima, Yuki Mori, Susumu Kodai: as classic to Japanese sci-fi fans as Kirk, Spock and McCoy are to us Yanks.

The show's protagonist is young cadet Susumu Kodai, a hotheaded pilot who burns with anger and grief over his older brother Mamoru's death at the hands of the Gamilas while under the command of Captain Okita. We see him grow and mature over the course of the series, and he is accompanied through all the horror and tribulations by Daisuke Shima, Kodai's best friend and the ship's helmsman and chief navigator, and Yuki Mori, initially the ship's nurse — and one of the apparently minute number of female crew members — but also filling multiple roles, including scanning, making calculations and other aspects vital to the success of the mission. She's also Kodai's love interest, but she conducts herself as a total professional.

• Captain Juzo Okita

The aging, battle-hardened ship's captain who is wracked with guilt over the death of Kodai's elder brother during an early skirmish with the Gamilas near Titan, one of the moons of Saturn; the elder Kodai's sacrifice allowed Okita's flagship to return to Earth and therefore live on to possibly defeat the enemy. Now leading the mission to Iscandar, Okita vows to live to once more see the planet of his birth, but while his heart is stout, his body is old and his time is running out...

• Doctor Sado

The sake-guzzling ship's physician and chief source of comic relief, Dr. Sado does what any sane person would do when faced with a scenario as bleak as this: he stays perpetually drunk and is virtually never seen without a huge bottle of sake in hand. He even memorably gets sloshed in deep space while the Yamato is stopped for repairs, actually managing to imbibe while clad from head-to-toe in a space suit.

Dr. Sado, boozing it up while in orbit above Pluto.

Sado's drunkenness was altered for the American version by stating that he was constantly guzzling soy milk for health-related purposes, but we all knew better. Though drawn in a wildly comedic style that has him resembling a shaved gorilla, Dr. Sado is the rare comic relief character who is never annoying and instead frequently comes off as an understandably sad everyman whose drunken excesses cushion his crushing fear and melancholy. He's pretty much my favorite character.

• Analyzer

Also mostly comedic but played utterly straight, Analyzer can be seen as the direct antecedent to R2-D2. Capable of many functions and possessed of great bravery, this robot is another in the long line of very "human" automatons, even going so far as to volunteer his services on the mission to Iscandar with the intent to "prove" himself. His fatal flaw, however, is his uncontrollable lust for Yuki, and his frequent molestation of her is flat-out sexual harassment that some may find quite offensive. (Needless to say, that aspect of his behavior did not survive in the American edit.) Often paired with Dr. Sado, Analyzer's progress during the series is both intriguing and heartbreaking.

• Shiro Sanada

The Yamato's science officer and the resident "big brain." The guy's a serious thinker whose ideas frequently pull the crew's fat out of the fire, but he doesn't make much of an impression until the ninth episode, when he suggests the kickass "asteroid defense" (more on that shortly). There's a lot more going on with Sanada that will be explored in subsequent episodes.

• Leader Dessler

The smooth military commander of the Gamilas forces, Dessler is a smug prick who is utterly sure of his own power. Unfortunately for him, time and again he severely underestimates the human spirit and will to survive (and kick ass), much to his chagrin and growing frustration. But what is this guy's beef with the Earth, and why is he out to wipe out the human race? All will be revealed in subsequent installments...NOTE: the shot of Dessler seen here is from the first nine episodes, during which there was some sort of mixup on the part of the show's cel-painters, so the familiar blue skin tone of Dessler and the other Gamilas was rendered as conventional Caucasian pigment. I'm curious to see if there's any attempt at explaining this away in the later episodes.

The thrust of the first nine episodes is getting the mission off the ground and each step in that goal holds the viewer riveted. Among the highlights:

• A jingoistic flashback to the Yamato's WWII glory days that was deleted from the U.S. version.
• The introduction of what's essentially a holodeck, some thirteen years before STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION.
• The parade of the crew as they embark on the mission, an event met by the public with equal parts hope and fear that the soldiers are simply running away from a slow death to be shared by the rest of the populace.
• The explanation of how the "ripple engine" works, namely that space can be perceived as a series of ripples like waves — hence the English translation as the "wave-motion engine" — and that space between the peaks in the ripples can be warped and skipped over, vastly reducing travel time. For example, when the ripple drive is first attempted, the Yamato makes the jump from Earth's moon to Mars in roughly a minute. The one snag is that the jump can only be made when the two points in space are in perfect alignment, otherwise the Yamato may end up stuck between dimensions forever.
• The first deployment of the completely fucking devastating "ripple cannon" — known by the far more butch moniker of the "wave-motion gun" in the U.S. version — is spectacular and shocking, to both the crew and the viewer.

Look no further than this for the roots of the Death Star.

Clearly meant as an analogy for nuclear weaponry, the cannon's initial deployment completely annihilates a floating continent over Jupiter, an effect so devastating that Captain Okita decrees that it only be used when absolutely necessary, because no one has the right to destroy the universe's wonders willy-nilly. Appalled by the weapon's power, the crew wholeheartedly agrees with his order. Coming from the storytelling point of view of the only culture ever to experience the horror of nuclear warfare firsthand, this sequence is very effective and genuinely chilling.

• The first nine episodes end with a harrowing three-chapter faceoff between the Yamato and a Gamilas base on Pluto as the ship prepares to leave our solar system. Initially intending to avoid combat that may slow down the mission's progress, Captain Okita changes his mind when he discovers that the Pluto base is the source of the radioactive meteors that have been killing the Earth, so he orders that base destroyed. But once again things are not easy for the Earth Defense Force: they have to destroy the base without using the ripple canon, and that will be a stone-cold bitch, largely due to the opposition having the "reflector cannon" — translated in the U.S. version as the "reflex gun" — a beam that is focused and amplified by a planet-wide series of mirror-equipped satellites. During the course of that sub-mission, the Yamato sustains heavy damage and several casualties before a stealth assault team led by Kodai manages to sneak down to the planet's surface, infiltrate the base through a ventilation port and blow the shit out of the weapon and the base. When the surviving Gamilas flee, including base leader Shiru, Leader Dessler makes it clear that they'd better not even think of coming home unless they engage the enemy in what will obviously be a potentially suicidal face-saving conflict. Resigned to his fate, Shiru orders his men into the fray, only to face complete and utter defeat when the Yamato employs Sanada's brillaint "asteroid defense." This entails remote controlling the asteroid field the Yamato had hidden in (to evade the Gamilas sensors and buy enough time to effect repairs) and use it to form an adjustable, rotating ring-shaped shield that can handle the enemy missiles and ray-weapons while the Yamato unleashes a barrage of its own.

The start of the "asteroid defense" strategy.

After vanquishing the Gamilas forces at Pluto, the Yamato survives its first true gauntlet and takes its voyage beyond the solar system, leaving 338 days in which to get to Iscandar and return with the Cosmo Cleaner-D. And so ends the first third of the seminal space-epic.

Wow!

I'd forgotten just how good this show is, and I can't wait to get back to it. Though suitable for those age ten and up, SPACE BATTLESHIP YAMATO is by no means a kids' show and it's one of the bleakest examples of TV anime out there, perhaps the chief aspect that appealed to those of us who discovered it thirty-one years ago. Even censored, the material was quite strong, and it's a gas to see it un-neutered.

UMGAWA!!!

 From 2005.

Every now and then I lose all hope for the entire human race and I need a dose of the unwavering moral certainty put out by superheroes and what they represent, especially the pre-1960’s variety of good guys.

 Back in the days there were no real shades of gray to our heroes. You were either a good guy or a bad guy. It was that simple. Some were more violent and cynical in their methods than others — the Shadow and the pre-Robin Batman spring immediately to mind, since both did not hesitate to send villains to join the Choir Invisible — and others handed out ass-kickings that came from a more primal, earthy standpoint, such as Conan, Billy “The Mucker” Byrne, and Enkidu, co-star of the Mesopotamian epic of Gilgamesh (how can you not get with a superhuman wildman who is civilized in no uncertain terms by the twin influences of friendship and serious pussy?). But none of those resonate in my estimation quite like Tarzan of the Apes, so today I went out and finally got my paws on the boxed DVD set of the first six MGM films about him. 

I have absolutely fucking loved Tarzan for as long as I can remember, one of the very few things my father and I had in common, and I still smile at the memory of my dad telling a five-year-old Bunche about how the word “Umgawa” was the jungle lord’s all-purpose word that could literally be applied to any situation whatsoever and work like a charm, a fact proven time and again throughout several of his films from the early 1930’s through around 1948. Perhaps my father’s one positive lasting influence upon me was spurring my interest in the heroes of his youth, especially Tarzan and Buck Rogers in the Twenty-Fifth Century, both of whose comic strips amazingly launched on the very same day in 1929 (although both had first debuted in pulp magazines years earlier)… 

But I digress. 

Moving to the hostile and racist land of Westport, Connecticut in the summer of 1972 — I had just turned seven — I had no real friends save the little blonde girl across the street, Nora, would play with me in the vast, untamed swamp near I-95, and our favorite game was “Tarzan and Jane,” a much more interesting variation on “House.” I remember Nora in her Jane persona loving the idea of having a husband who was some wild jungle guy and a “child” who was a stuffed bear who also doubled as “Cheeta" the chimp, and complaining about how she and her mate were always more or less naked, and noting her strange interest in nudity in general, but we were clothed throughout all of this innocent kiddie role playing. Without even intending to explore its meaning we had hit upon one of the most intriguing elements of the cinematic Tarzan/Jane dynamic, namely that the two were primal, sexual creatures whose relationship was in no way prurient, just fun, innocent and utterly natural. Sadly, Nora moved away a few months later and I would not have any friends who had any kind of imagination for several years to come (plus I would have loved to have borne witness to the beauty that I’m certain she became). 

During the 1970’s in the Connecticut area, kids got their education on Tarzan from weekly Sunday afternoon screenings of films about him on New York’s Channel 5 — and the seldom-seen reruns of the Ron Ely television series from the 1960’s, which was not bad — and I can honestly say I saw all of them, but the details of many of the earlier entries faded from my childhood memories and were only awakened and really understood when seen again from a grownup perspective. Cases in point: TARZAN THE APE MAN (1932) and even more so TARZAN AND HIS MATE (1934), both films from before the hypocrisy and bullshit of the Hayes code (look that one up on Google; way too much to cover here). 

The first two of the MGM Tarzan flicks are violent as hell, politically incorrect to an alarming degree for modern viewers (depictions of Africans back in those days were less than flattering, to say the least), and surprisingly hot when it came to the Tarzan and Jane romance. What really blows me away upon seeing the MGM entries nowadays is how wrong I was in my original assessment of the films. As a child I loved them but upon getting older and reading creator Edgar Rice Burroughs’ novels I was shocked to find the jungle lord was extremely articulate, fluent in several languages (French was his first non-simian tongue), and that Jane was a blonde American rather than the British brunette of the movies, and I perceived those deviations from the source material to be both insulting and a flagrant example of dumbing down some really great stuff. Well lemme tell ya, sometimes things that are altered for the movies can work out to be exactly right for the onscreen medium. The casting of non-actor and badass of the 1924 and 1928 Olympics, Johnny Weissmuller, proved to be brilliant since his Tarzan exhibited an animal wariness and athletic physicality that I honestly do not believe could have been gotten across by a stage or screen thespian. And don’t get me started on the absolute perfection of Maureen O’Sullivan’s Jane. Here was a love interest who was not only utterly lovely, but she was every bit as savvy and fearless as Tarzan (once she said “fuck civilization” and started swinging through the trees), and was also the kind of lady that guys just plain love and unless some ass-kicking on a rubber crocodile or rallying of an elephant herd was needed, Jane was pretty much the brains of the operation. Pretty radical for the 1930’s, I think. 

The first two of the MGM Tarzan flicks really focus on Jane and her rebirth as a “natural” woman after accompanying her father on a quest for the mythical “Elephant’s Graveyard,” a site that exists on a remote African plateau that also happens to be the home of Tarzan. In TARZAN THE APE MAN our nature boy abducts Jane from the safari, strictly out of innocent curiosity, and when he hauls her up to his tree home Jane is terrified — as is the audience — when it appears that Tarzan’s rough attentions are a preamble to rape rather than a desire to check out someone who is obviously different from him, different in a way that he has never encountered since he is the only human where he resides (or so we are supposed to believe, despite an abundance of black people all over the goddamned place). Jane soon realizes that she is in no danger, and begins to warm to the ape-man, openly voicing how hot she thinks he is and her relief at the fact that she can make such statements since he can’t understand her nattering in English. The smoldering gazes between the two are volcanic in their heat, and pretty soon Tarzan scoops Jane into his arms, looks up at his tree and nods to her as if to ask “Are you feeling this too?” Jane buries her face in his neck in silent agreement and the two retire to the arboreal love-nest, at which point the scene fades out and the screen goes dark for a surprisingly long time… When next we see Jane, she is unusually relaxed for a 1930’s movie heroine and embraces the Big Guy while blatantly expressing her obvious pleasure in his unrefined charms. It’s plain to even the most obtuse member of the audience that the Beast With Two Backs has been made, and by the time the story winds up Jane has ditched both the English stiff who digs her and the British notion of modest social propriety in general for the wild life with her loincloth-clad Lothario (and his chimp companion Cheeta). 

The sequel, TARZAN AND HIS MATE, is considered by many — including your humble Bunche — to be the best Tarzan movie ever made, and is chock full of all the excitement, sex, and violence that one could want in a movie even by today’s standards, so when it came out back in 1934 it raised a major ruckus. This time around, a party of irritating British shitheads arrive at Tarzan’s escarpment with the intention of returning Jane to England since there is no way that any sane white woman would enjoy being out in the wilds of Africa, what with all the animals, heat, Negroes, and that smelly, yodeling white guy in the leather banana-hammock. Well, they are in for a big shock when after hiking up the dangerous mountain face for the first half-hour of the movie, they find Jane not only happy to the point of lunacy, but also clad in as little as Hollywood would permit in 1934, an immodest state that she doesn’t even notice since she’s having the time of her life and has absolutely no intention of fucking up such a good thing by going back to Blighty (I told she was smart!). On the other hand, Tarzan is proven to be an attentive, playful and considerate lover, and since he does not bear the taint of uptight Western bullshit-as-values he is not jealous of the former suitor of Jane’s who has lead the expedition to find her since he knows that they are perfect mates and that nothing short of death could part them. Tarzan’s almost entirely silent love for his woman is truly powerful to behold, and when both characters are looked at as archetypes for both genders — the non-verbal he-man type and the talkative nurturer — their enduring appeal can be readily understood, an appeal made that much more interesting by the plainly illustrated fact that Jane is obviously the real power in their dynamic.

The thing really stuns modern viewers when they see TARZAN AND HIS MATE is the obvious sexual and loving relationship shared by the protagonists, and the fact that such a situation was seen in a major Hollywood film from 1934. There are a couple of scenes wherein we encounter our heroes after a night of flaming osh-osh and Jane is sexily nude under some sort of animal skin, lovingly gushing to Tarzan, and let us not forget the infamous nude swim scene in the river where we see a crystal clear bare-assed Jane (another Olympic swimmer doubling for Maureen O’Sullivan) and the lord of the jungle innocently frolicking together in the same way that couples do if they happen to be nude and not engaged in the aforementioned flaming osh-osh. I could go on about all of this, but I’d like to let the following user comment from the Internet Movie Database say it all for me: 

Author: (tom_amity@hotmail.com) from Lincoln, Nebraska, 2/2/2005 

Hard to believe, perhaps, but this film was denounced as immoral from more pulpits than any other film produced prior to the imposition of the bluenose Hayes Code. Yes indeed, priests actually told their flocks that anyone who went to see this film was thereby committing a mortal sin.

I'm not making this up. They had several reasons, as follows:

Item: Jane likes sex. She and Tarzan are shown waking up one morning in their treetop shelter. She stretches sensuously, and with a coquettish look she says "Tarzan, you've been a bad boy!" So they've not only been having sex, they've been having kinky sex! A few years later, under the Hays Code, people (especially women) weren't supposed to be depicted as enjoying sex.

Item: Jane prefers a guileless, if wise and resourceful, savage (Tarzan) to a civilized, respectable nine-to-five man (Holt). When Holt at first wows her with a pretty dress from London, she wavers a bit; when Holt tries to kill Tarzan, and Holt and Jane both believe he's dead, she wavers a lot. But when she realizes her man is very much alive, the attractions of civilization vanish for her. And why not? Tarzan's and Jane's relationship is egalitarian: He lacks the "civilized" insecurity that would compel him to assert himself as "the head of his wife". To boot, he lacks many more "civilized" hangups, for example jealousy. When Holt and his buddy arrive, Tarzan greets them both cordially, knowing perfectly well that Holt is Jane's old flame. When Holt gets her dolled up in a London dress and is slow-dancing with her to a portable phonograph, Tarzan drops out of a tree, and draws his knife. Jealous? Nope. He's merely cautious toward the weird music machine, since he's never seen one before. Once it's explained, he's cool.

Item: Civilized Holt is dirty minded. Savage Tarzan is innocently sexy. As Jane slips into Holt's lamplit tent, Holt gets off on watching her silhouette as she changes into the fancy dress. By contrast, after Tarzan playfully pulls the dress off, kicks her into the swimming hole and dives in after her, there follows the most tastefully erotic nude scene in all cinema: the pair spends five minutes in a lovely water ballet.(The scene was filmed in three versions--clothed, topless and nude--the scene was cut prior to the film's release, but the nude version is restored in the video now available.) And when Jane emerges, and Cheetah the chimp steals her dress just for a tease, Jane makes it clear that her irritation is only because of the proximity of "civilized" men and their hangups. Where is the "universal prurience" so dear to the hearts of seminarians? Nowhere, that's where. Another reason why the hung up regarded this film as sinful.

Item: The notion that man is the crown of creation, and animals are here only for man's use and comfort, takes a severe beating. Holt and his buddy want to be guided to the "elephant graveyard" so they can scoop up the ivory and take it home. They want Tarzan to guide them to said graveyard. You, reader, are thinking "Fat chance!" and you're right. He's shocked. He exclaims "Elephants sleep!" which to him explains everything. Jane explains Tarzan's feelings, which the two "gentlemen" find ridiculous.

Item: Jane, the ex-civilized woman, is far more resourceful than the two civilized men she accompanies. Holt and buddy blow it, and find themselves besieged by hostile tribes and wild animals. It is Jane who maintains her cool. While the boys panic, she takes charge, barks orders at them and passes out the rifles.

Item: Jane's costume is a sort of poncho with nothing underneath. (The original idea was for her to be topless, with foliage artistically blocking off her nipples, which indeed is the case in one brief scene.)

Lastly, several men of the cloth complained because the film was called "Tarzan and His Mate" rather than "Tarzan and His Wife." No comment!

Of course, Tarzan, who has been nursed back to health by his ape friends, comes to the rescue, routs the white hunters, and induces the pack elephants and African bearers to return the ivory they stole to the sacred place whence it came. The End.

So there you have it. An utterly subversive film. Like all the other films about complex and interesting women (see, e.g., Possessed with Rita Hayworth and Raymond Massey) which constituted such a flowing genre in the early 30's and which were brought to such an abrupt end by the adoption of the Hays Code.

The joie de vivre of this film is best expressed by Jane's soprano version of the famous Tarzan yell. A nice touch, which was unfortunately abandoned in future productions.

Let's hear it for artistic freedom, feminist Jane, and sex.

Very eloquently stated, I think, and how can you not immediately want to see a film condemned by The Church? So yesterday, after having a great non-barbecue lunch at the lower East Side’s esteemed Crif Dogs (a repast of two chili dogs and a side of tater tots), I bought the Tarzan DVD set and have set about enjoying my two days off by watching Tarzan flicks until I go mad in an effort to restore my faith in humanity; it is now 4:07 AM on Tuesday morning, and I’m still at it, and ya know what? These journeys to that otherworldly cinematic Africa are doing me a lot of good, and I hope to someday find the right Jane to complement my own inimitable Tarzan. Wish me luck.