First Spring Meeting: Ancient Miyazaki and Unconventional Magic [UPDATED February 3, 2012]

Anime of the Week: Mirai Shounen Conan (Future Boy Conan)

Email Content:

• This Weekend's Meetings
• Blog Updates (Winter Preview is up! More coming soon...)
  
• Anime of the Week

This Weekend:
Time: Friday and Saturday 7pm
Location: Maryland 110 (tentative)

Friday February 3, 2012
Lupin III: The Castle of Cagliostro
An ancient title directed by Hayao Miyazaki in 1979 prior to the founding of Studio Ghibli. Lupin III: The Castle of Cagliostro is Miyazaki's first feature film
Cagliostro has supplied the world with counterfeit money of all nationalities for decades, only surviving because of the global economy's strong dependence on the fake currency. When Lupin enters Cagliostro, he encounters its lovely princess, who is pursued by the Duke of Cagliostro's men. Lupin's information network reveals that the Duke not only plans to marry the princess against her wishes but also possibly finding a priceless treasure lost for centuries. With a damsel in distress and a long lost treasure, Lupin and co. find it difficult to ignore the opportunity to get involved.

Hoshi wo Ou Kodomo
Directed by Makoto Shinkai and produced by the same staff and animation studio that worked on 5 Centimeters per Second, Hoshi wo Ou Kodomo is Shinkai's latest film. Many claim this movie has an atmosphere comparable to that of Hayao Miyazaki's and Studio Ghibli's works.
Asuna lives a lonely life and spends most of her time listening to mysterious melody from her late father's crystal radio. One day she sets out for a journey to meet a certain boy again. However, her adventure forces her to experiences the cruelty, the beauty, and the reality of the world that she had isolated herself from.

Saturday February 4, 2012
One Outs
Episodes 1-8
43 year old Hiromichi Kojima is the cleanup batter of Lycaons in Japan's Pacific Baseball League. His constant training and practice eventually leads him to Okinawa where he meets Toua Tokuchi, a pitcher who can throw a 134 km/h (83 mph) ball and the king of baseball gambling. The gambling game is known as One Outs. Seeing Toua's skill, Hiromichi begs Toua to join Lycaons under the condition that Toua earns 5 million yen (about $45,000 to $50,000 US) for every out he pitches and loses 50 million yen (about $45,000,000 to $50,000,000 US) for every point he gives up. Hiromichi and Toua are voiced by Tsutomu Isobe (Dutch in Black Lagoon, Heinrich Lunge in Monster) and Masato Hagiwara (Akagi Shigeru in Akagi, Kaiji Itou in Kaiji), respectively. The show is directed by Yuuzou Satou (Akagi, Kaiji), composed by Hideo Takayashiki (Rainbow, Maison Ikkoku), and animated by Madhouse (Death Note, Card Captor Sakura).

Blog Updates
For those who are unaware, our website can be found at: http://jhu-anime.blogspot.com/
Winter preview is up. A couple other things coming soon as well once my laziness subsides.
Comments are open to all for suggestions, recommendations and the like. We encourage members to share their thoughts on topics regarding the posts as well as anything anime, manga, visual novel, light novel, and video game related. Thoughts on current titles or past titles are also welcome. As usual, any suggestions for the blog itself or how meetings are run are greatly appreciated.

Anime of the Week
To make this section more useful, Image of the Week has been changed to Anime of the Week where a different anime title will be featured in each week's email. The point of this is to discover what may be lost gems, obscure titles, underrated titles, or buried treasure in the anime world. These titles may or may not necessarily be shown at future meetings. Each title will come with a brief background.

While on the topic of 1970 titles this week, a long lost gem that will unlikely ever see an English US release is Mirai Shounen Conan (Future Boy Conan). One year before the death of American science fiction writer, Alexander Key, his novel titled, The Incredible Tide was adapted into the anime known as Future Boy Conan. Quite ironic to see that an anime based off a novel originally written in America is never brought over and continues to remain hidden from many anime audience member's line of sight because of its age. Mirai Shounen Conan is 26 episodes in length and ran from April to October in 1978.
The series is set in July 2008, when humanity is on the brink of extinction. An ultra-magnetic weapon destroyed half of the world in an instant, which led to the the Earth being thrown off its axis and forcing the continents to split apart and sink underwater. While many attempted to flee to space, their hopes were only shattered when no ship was able to clear Earth's gravity and instead were sent crashing back down only to vanish without a trace. One ship luckily managed to escape total destruction and landed on a small island that had not yet sunk. With little choice, the crew made the island their new home. A few years later, a boy was born; it was a miracle to see new life in this apocalypse. As a result, he became the light of hope for many and this is where his story begins.