Seishun Shitemasu, a Bunch of Guys with a VCR

BREAKING: Interview with Seishun Shitemasu founder Peter Payne

2010-02-18T00:44:00.000-08:00

Looks like I'll be on the Geek Tragedy podcast, in case you want to hear what I sound like. Details to follow...

Off-season, 2005.

2005-09-14T19:48:00.000-07:00

It's been a long summer, filled with great anime conventions from coast to coast. This year we managed to get to all of the major ones, from Expo to Otakon, and the points in between. And then all of a sudden it was over: summers fly, winters walk.

Now it's time to look ahead to next year, working on new projects and hopefully giving a bit more attention to the blog. There's a lot of time where there's just nothing going on, and when there is, we're too busy. Blogger's remorse.

The first thing on our plate is getting a finished version of City Hunter on Fire. After its less-than-stellar reception at ACen (I seem to recall "Well, it wasn't the worst thing I've ever seen," being the best review), I've been hesitant returning to it for cleaning up. It has several flaws, though fundamentally it's not the material so much as the presentation. Most prominently is that the muddiness of the audio, especially on a large-room system but equally damaging are points left from the original where there is just no action: things like ten-second pans across a view from a window. Looking at the problem with fresh eyes makes you begin to understand why Macek cut bizarre snatches of apparently-inconsequential shots from Robotech's parent shows.

To this end, we sat down with the FCE files over the weekend and made some cuts, mostly non-dialogue snippets that probably won't be missed, or even noticed. When that version is done we will clean up the audio with a mind for better-than-home-tv play. These are the important lessons; it's been a long time and so many rules have changed since the titular Bunch of Guys with a VCR days.

We'll also be working on new projects for 2006...

Moving right along

2005-08-05T19:18:00.000-07:00

Just a new post to let you know we haven't abandoned the site. We do get awfully busy with the con scene in the summer, and this year was really a mess, with A-Kon, Anime Expo and Comic Con, which went really well. This year we'll be at Otakon too, so if you read this in time, do stop by.

If you're looking for a site with more regular posts, mosy on over to my personal blog. If you want to drool over a ton of cool Gunbuster anime stuff, we also recommend this fine site.

Come see the Seishun Shitemasu staff in person at Project A-Kon 16!

2005-05-27T03:12:00.000-07:00

We'll be at A-Kon soon, will you? A-Kon is one of the longest-running anime conventions in the U.S., in its 16th year, and we always make a special trip all the way from San Diego, or in the case of Peter, from Japan, to enjoy the excellent fan atmosphere there. We hope you'll be there this year! You can get all the information you need on their official site here -- don't forget to see the official A-Kon TV commercial here, too!

In Production: City Hunter on Fire

2005-05-08T12:58:00.000-07:00

The eleventh production by Seishun Shitemasu. Currently in-progress for a summer '05 release.

This one has been a long time coming. We'd made period pieces for the 60s, 70s, and 90s. An 80s riffing was inevitable, though rife with delays. There are few shows set firmly in a "real" 1980s setting (and Megazone 2-3 has been almost literally to death) . In the early 90s, I'd heard of these great episodes of City Hunter 2 chockablock with betrayal, angst, and a fine mexican standoff in the end. With the proposed title (Max's idea, apparently) of City Hunter on Fire, we were set with source, concept, and style. To paraphrase another icon of the early 90s: Everyone else is aping Tarantino, why can't we?

Back then the only source of such an (at best) second-tier series of length was somehow getting an LD set from Japan. It never happened, for various reasons. Years passed. Anime became a huge almost-mainstream sensation in America. Like plutonium, it's now available at every corner drugstore. During one of those weekend impulse-buying sprees I saw that ADV had helpfully released City Hunter in their economy format used for vintage releases that no one in particular is clamoring for. I rooted through my old email and found the note that listed the episodes from CH2. With no sense of urgency, I watched the source for this long-backburnered project.

Good thing. The episodes in question were not at all what I had in mind. The Mexican standoff is closer to a bushido standoff. The villain, an old friend of Ryo's, looked like Macaulay Culkin playing Fred from Scooby-Doo. And then there are the ever-present liabilities of the show: lecheries, mokkori, and hyperspace hammers that fans of this show cannot get enough of.

Still, while nothing in that set of 25 episodes particularly interesting, I was really fond of the title. I thought maybe something else could be used. Over the ecourse of several months I bought the rest of the dvd sets. Having finally caved in and bought a mac like the rest of the SS alumni, I saw it was now fairly simple to splice footage from across the two series into one coherent episode (City Hunter 3, cheap and off-model, could never pass for the same show).

After another 75 episodes, I found the right episodes for the core plot in the two-part closer of City Hunter (first series), the one with the Lodoss Mafia. The tone of the script shifted a lot, but became more firmly 80s. It's become much more of a Stephen J. Cannell-style show. With a lot of John Hughes thrown in.

Playing around with Final Cut took up a lot of the last six months, but I learned something about the production end of digital editing. I spliced in scenes from four other episodes for footage that casts a different light on the Kaori-Ryo relationship. Mulder and Scully have nothing on these two for unrequited tension. Be that as it may, out of a hundred episodes there's a scant five usable minutes of them conversing politely without aid of a mokkori joke or hyperspace hammer.

Real production began in January, and principal photography (read: dubbing) was completed on April 6th. It is now figuratively in the hands of Dr. Teeth and the Electric Mayhem, and remains on track for a premiere this con season.

We have finished the voices and music post, and it should be burned to dvd by wednesday.

Welcome to Seishun Shitemasu Productions!

2005-04-06T08:16:00.000-07:00

Welcome to the Seishun Shitemasu Productions. Seishun Shitemasu (a word we picked up from anime) is a group of fan-dubbers, who take mild-mannered anime edit it, dubbing in our own voices to make something hopefully more fun and bizarre. We hope you like our newly redesigned website. For information on our productions, check out the links on the right side of this page.

How can I get copies of Seishun Shitemasu Productions?

2005-03-22T06:19:00.000-08:00

How can you get copies of Seishun Shitemasu Productions?

That's an excellent question. We're not sure what the answer is, but "sometime, somehow, soon" would be a start. Currently, all of our productions are remastered on DVD and are in a form we could actually distribute them to fans who would like copies. At the present time, we're going to do a little more fine-tuning, and we also plan to add directors tracks to our productions -- god we love Final Cut Pro. Watch this space for more information!

Seishun Shitemasu Influences

2005-03-20T06:26:00.000-08:00

All the good ones. All the other ones.

Of everything, two influences have to stand well above the rest. The direct, and if I may be somewhat hyperbolic, life-changing factors.

Robotech: It's full of atrocious dubbing and horrible editing, pacing, and writing choices, and doomed to die slowly as the sequels were mismanaged. Yet at the time it was as good as any anime could ever be. Most of us would never have met without it.

PineSalad Productions: Imitation, meet flattery. Not the original parody dubbers, but the first we ever saw. And the work stands the test of time; all of us laugh out loud when watching "How Drugs Won the War" for the 923769th time. It led us directly to what you see here.

Major influences

Airplane!
Dynaman
MTV
Star Trek
Star Wars
Twin Peaks

More information coming soon!

Picture Archive

2005-03-19T06:17:00.000-08:00

Notes by Peter

Welcome to the Pictures Archive Page, the page most likely to be removed soon as the other Seishun guys tell me to take these damn old pictures down. Enjoy them while they're up!

This is a picture of me dressed as Totoro. This was in 1990 so I was really bleeding edge. This picture appeared in an issue of Animage which I have.

This was our trip to Anime Con, held in 1991. It was a momentous time for all of us, a mythical Easy Rider type journey for our geeky generation.

A picture from Anime Expo, in 1992, the first show held under that name. Here I am my boy's high school uniform, which I'd just bought in Japan.

A full hotel room of fans from the early 90s.

Our beloved Seishun Shitemasu T-shirts and my jacket. I still have it.

Me in Japan, kanji sheets on the back. This was where I lived in 1991.

Max, Phill and Josh, visiting me at work at SDSU

Chris Lockwood at an early con

Voltron II: The Lost Episode

2005-03-17T06:14:00.000-08:00

Presented in 1995 by Seishun Shitemasu - a Good Enough Production. Liner notes by Josh

Galactor is bringing the smack for his captives!

Voltron: The Lost Years is a prequel to Voltron: Hell Bent for Leather, building off the conceit that all five-member hero teams are comprised of the same characters: level-headed, somewhat boring leader, hotheaded second, fat guy, chick, and kid. Gatchaman's famous fashion sensibilities made this our "70s" production, bringing us to three decades of cheap throway gags. As usual, our penchant for anachronisms shined through with both music cues and totally inexplicable references to forgotten 90s pop songs.

Kurt, the original lead singer of Gasp, before Courtney had him killed, and Mark, our leader.

Much like Hell Bent for Leather, this was one of those favorite Battle of the Planets episodes, primarily for the ludicrous image of Zoltar (...Berg..Galactor..) grooving to the rock music with the big headphones somehow in place over the pointy ears of his headpiece. By the time we did this, the only easily-available Gatchaman was in the form of G-Force reruns on the early Cartoon Network. Thus the return of the SS bug in the corner. Also, at the time this was the only production using just one episode for source material (but would not remain so for long).

The script was written largely by committee, abetted by the horrible animation, fashions, and the inexplicable choice of base under a humor-friendly location like Lake Titicaca. My favorite parts include the "irony" joke late in the show regarding harm to the hostage musicians, and Dread Lord's hilarious ad-lib about the Holocaust. Post-production went quickly, and we premiered at AnimeAmerica that year. Haven't been to a bay area con since...

Princess discovers the hidden base! and: Lucas with the lid off? WTF, Doc!

Fox Force Five: Chasing Minmei

2005-03-13T06:15:00.000-08:00

A Good Enough production, 1996.

Liner Notes by Josh

Yes, this show was the most popular topic of discussion on rec.arts.anime at the time. Sailor Moon, that is, not F3.

Fox Force Five: They stand for love! And Merchandising! The mega-successful Fox Force Five commands three of the most popular, ratings-grabbing television elements of the 90s: cheaply produced sentai shows, post-ironic dialogue-based humor, and lesbians, lesbians, lesbians. It's a throwback to the Seishun of the early 90s, when Ranma was just coming out of the closet and a battle royal involving aliens, nazis, and that scourge of fandom, filkers. Are there any filkers left now? If produced today, the villains would certainly be furries.

Minmei, Blunt, and Chronic.

The last production of the 1990s, and almost our last production, period. It was the start of a new summer, and having spent the previous five early summers working on these, we decided to go ahead with our tenth production. From the beginning it was meant to be something quick and/or dirty, a production that would truly earn the Good Enough name. The story elements are a perfect snapshot of all our preoccupations at the time, chiefly alt-rock, Kevin Smith movies, and furious contempt for the darling show of its day, Sailor Moon. For years most of us regarded Ranma as a mild embarrassment. Now that's the level we were shooting for. Ranma, not mild embarassment.

The production itself was somewhat fragmented. You'd think having a combat-heavy 23 minutes would write itself with throwaway lines, but this turned out to be far from the case. I seem to remember spending the better part of two weekends trying to get it cooked into a rough form that we cold start dubbing from, having false-started on the dubbing at least once.

None of us had ample time to work on the project -- we were all going our separate ways (just like in Robotech episode #75!) with jobs, girls, bands, etc, and once the script was done I had little involvement with most of the dubbing. No matter how I try I can't recall being at more than one session though I know it took at least three. The cast was notable in its time for featuring five actresses, none of whom needed to double up on their parts (a high-water mark we may never achieve again). With no one else wanting to do it (and with no other roles to my name), I took the bit part of Captain Kotex, and further talked myself into a corner by not writing his lengthy episode-closing monologue until the mic was on. It shows.

What a show, that Sailor Moon...

Ten years on, F3 figures highly in my top-3-least-favorite productions list, its slot depending on my mood. Time has not been kind to it, though like Ranma it seems to have a number of fans.

Anime Bites

2005-03-11T06:14:00.000-08:00

Produced in 1994 by Seishun Shitemasu - Liner notes by Josh

Mmm.. early CG titles. The Shinjuku loft is a hipster spot in Seattle. Really.

In 1983, popular legend has it that Brandon Tartikoff, the then-president of NBC, scribbled a note to himself during a meeting: "MTV Cops." This would later become fully realized as "Miami Vice."

In 1993, remembering that anecdote, the small thought "90s anime" came to me. I wanted something in the Singles or Reality Bites vein, with grungy music and a lot of 20 somethings jamming around and not doing much of anything.

From Left to Right: Spoonman, Eddie, Sid, Jacques, and Karen.

As Con season approached in 1994, and again with not much else in the way of obvious ideas, we started to scour the earth for footage that would serve our purposes. Something that was well animated and preferably off laserdisc and still met the plot requirements. I scanned the Anime Resource Guide from AnimExpo 1992 (Hey, those things were useful after all!) and came across the To-y entry. I'd vaguely remembered watching it years before. Sometime in the 80s, proto-Seishun member Chris Lockwood, now living the high life in Tokyo and wisely distancing himself from us was big on To-y and he had loaned me his copy. Upon reading the synopsis anew in the ARG I knew we'd found the footage.

I must admit, To-y looks terrific, and still seems quite modern despite being nearly eighteen years old at this writing. Nicely stylized music interludes, slick animation. And perhaps best of all, it's an obscure title. And even today, the English rights remain unsold, and our version remains the definitive English version! Ha!

Rocking out to Lucy's Fur Coat, I think.

So we worked on it for most of June of 1994; we snipped out a few scenes here and there but by and large kept the original plot of To-y intact. Anime Bites was less a parody dub and more a humorous remake of the original, one that even fans of the original didn't hate much. Yes, we ratcheted up the sex and drug jokes. The "Kurt Cobain" joke, which felt like it had perhaps minutes of shelf life, continues to elicit nervous laughter, some ten years later.

Quick! Pretend you're Kurt Cobain...

Still, the most important element of Anime Bites was the music. Any 90s movie worth its salt requires a good soundtrack, and since we were unconstrained by budget we could use music from any source. Much of the soundtrack ended up coming from other soundtracks: The Crow or Singles. Both of these discs are full of great (and now, largely forgotten) tracks by the big names. In keeping with Bites' superficial similarities, virtually all the important scenes are scored from Singles. Rounding out the music were several tracks from local acts, as at the time San Diego was being widely trumpeted as the "next Seattle." I'd wanted to use some Nirvana for balance with the three Pearl Jam tracks, but, well, but neither track I'd planned on quite worked out (for the record, I was hoping to use Drain You, off Nevermind somewhere, and we slated Endless Nameless, the hidden track on the first pressing of that same CD for the "Hey, they're tight tonight" scene. The Deathtongue reference, brilliantly recorded by Max and Phill, works better?).

Courtney or Karen, who would you choose?

Of all the productions made during the second life of Seishun Shitemasu, I think Anime Bites came closest to our vision, and so remains a personal favorite for many of us.

UC:0069 - The Jion Years

2005-03-10T06:13:00.000-08:00

Liner Notes by Josh

Zaku, Cadillac of the stars!

Another in our long-mileage series of concepts that we came up with while sitting around in a room asking one another 'So, what're we gonna do this year?'

This particular time, Adam dealt out one LD from his collection after another, and we'd vote on it. As it turns out, the actual list of titles was relatively small. Gundam 0083 was the Big Thing ™ at the time, and while Adam owns all the episodes (plus that ultra-rare bonus 7" LD, one we ended up using as surprise footage for RIV) I know I for one wasn't too enthused about making a comedy out of 0083*-- and probably most of the Gundam fans (an overly serious lot if there ever was) wouldn't enjoy it much, either.

Even so, Gundam was ripe for parody use. It's a sacred cow that no one had dared touch (nor have they, since). Thus any alternate use of the footage would have to be used with some respect, or at least use footage from a Gundam show that no one much liked.

Acting ensign Kou Uraki, Jion Liberation Movement.

Back then, there wasn't much outside of the main tv series to use. In point of fact, there were only three possibilities: The aforementioned 0083, 0080, and F-91. The question you're asking yourself now is, "So why 0080 and not F-91?" Well, we all hated F-91. To the point that no one I know has willingly endured it since its release. Discounting that, its isolation from the rest of the UC calendar is problematic; back then all other Gundam shows were firmly set in the One Year War period, and the shared continuity is a huge boon for jokewriting. 0080, on the other hand, fits nicely into the early Gundam universe, contains a relatively small amount of actual mobile suit combat and as a huge bonus, large degree of interpersonal scenes -- best of all, involving children!

I believe it was Phill who came up with the Wonder Years take on the subject, which opened up a whole slew of 60s cliché jokes and music ideas. I later added the idea that it be the story of a young Kou Uraki from Gundam 0083, and if you fudge your UC history a little bit it seems plausible he was of that age in UC0069 -- which, gosh darn it, happens to have a humorous context as a bonus.

Kou, peeping at Slyvia.

So we had our concept and one of our characters. Using some of my Gundam knowledge (mostly gleaned from Operation X's 0083 subtitles and the two issues of their U.C. Herald fanzine I stole from Adam) I populated UC0069 with established characters and set upon inserting a few background Gundam jokes into the throwaway lines.

Voice acting proved interesting. First, since I am the standard choice for narrator/voiceover work, we needed someone else with a high voice to play young Kou. Enter our first turn trying it as the Japanese do it, using a woman for a young boy's voice.

One thing that chagrins me to this day is that one of our voice actresses didn't let Neil Patrick Harris pick up on her. On the first day of dubbing, it seemed he was at the La Jolla playhouse, where she worked during that summer. She claims (I have no proof this ever happened, but it sure makes for a good story) she caught old Doogie Howser himself checking her out. If she'd only played him into her hands long enough to bring him by to dub a few lines, UC0069 would have one more place in the history books. But she didn't. For the record, I always think of him as being Amuro -- instead he was one of my less inspired performances.

Lucette, Amuro, and Kou.

[Peter would like to cut in here to mention that Josh and the actor who played Doogie Howser have the same birthday, June 15th. To make it more ironic, Chis Lockwood ALSO has the same birthday. Josh would like to mention: I do not think that word means what you think it means.]

List of explanations

Kou's mom's carrot fixation would, of course, later tie into his aversion of the orange roots in 0083.

"Zaku! Cadilliac of the stars!" -- a result of having seen Empire of the Sun a little too soon before making this.

The Nosehair/"X" dialogue from that park bench scene is partially the result of watching the "X" scene in "JFK" about four times back to back. While it probably doesn't show the influence beyond a superficial level, I still think of Don Sutherland and Kevin Costner when that scene begins.

The entire "Dungeons and Dragons Generation 2" ad was something I'd wanted to do for ages, at least as long as I was aware of Lodoss War. Glad it worked.

Aside from the Basque Ohm reference, the rest of the news anchor's report comes from a pastiche of Frank Miller comics -- most notably Give Me Liberty and The Dark Knight Returns.

The most obscure reference of UC0069 is the final scene between Bernie and Kou. "Nights in White Satin" plays on in the background, which is a tribute to the final episode of the Sonny Steelgrave arc from Stephen J. Cannell's great 80s show, Wiseguy. Despite some inherent 80s cheese in the early episodes ("Dave already killed one frisbee. We kill another, and we all gotta move t'Tibet for the win-tuh.") -- and some extremely thick homoerotic themes in that particular episode -- the finale between Sonny and Vinnie remains one of my favorite TV episodes of all time. If you buy the DVD though, forget it. They couldn't afford the rights to the song and put some placeholding synth music there instead.

Before my time, Kou. Like honor.

* Despite the implication, Bernie survives the Sydney Colony drop. After making 0069, the idea occured to me for a 0083-based sequel to 0069, a sort of 'Big Chill' deal where Kou would finally feel the disillusionment Bernie apparently does. If that ever is produced (fat chance), Bernie would become Lt. Burning of 0083 fame. Trivia: the letter Burning receives posthumously from his wife in episode #8 of 0083 was from his wife, Sylvia Burning, thus providing a retroactive name for Sylvia in 0069.

The last piece of music in the episode proper, "The Song Remains the Same," by Led Zeppelin, was a serendipitous bit of luck. We finished UC0069 in the PARC Oakland Hotel on the first day of AnimExpo '92. However, we were stuck with a somewhat reduced selection of CDs for music choices since we only had what Phill and I brought on our road trip up from San Diego. After NiWS, is my favorite piece in the whole show.

UC:0069 Shouldn't be a "Good Enough" production, but it was the first SS production developed entirely outside of Peter's influence, so I think we all somewhat consciously didn't want to infringe on the name. That would have to wait for Anime Bites.

Voltron: Hell Bent for Leather

2005-03-10T06:08:00.000-08:00

Liner notes by Josh

Produced in 1992 by Seishun Shitemasu (a "Good Enough" production)

Voltron and Judas Priest -- what's not to love?

In 1991, USA network started airing a pre-Robotech favorite of mine -- Voltron. I immediately set upon taping episodes, waiting for that perfect one that could be dubbed. It was my creative baby from the beginning, and since nobody else had any good ideas, we threw it into production during the couple of weeks we had between Peter coming back from Japan and AnimExpo '92. I always had mymind set on "The fast red robeast" episode, but kept occasional other episodes on tape as well, just in case. Since USA didn't seem to be airing episodes in order,(I do not think they ever showed the episodes where Sven returned, or the series-ending arc where they finally decide to just go and "kill the fuckers.") it was a continuing saga of hoping for that elusive gift from the "Voltron fairy."

General Leonard played by Peter, and yet another voice for old reliable Debbie

Eventually, of course, the episode aired and we went ahead. My original concept was to do what Dynaman had done years before; goofy, irreverent giant robot stupidity. Max had wanted a heavy metal soundtrack (ask him about his dream dub of Iczer-1, sometime) and Peter insisted on mixing together more than one episode of Voltron. We settled on one I'd never seen before the USA airings; this is where the "General Leonard" subplot came from. It all spliced together fairly well: it's difficult for me to remember what either separate episode is like. Then again, this is Voltron I'm speaking of, hardly a show that rivals Evangelion for its plotting...

Max played Dread Lord , and I did great as Acroyear (Micronauts reference, anyone?)

A few more items...

If I was unable to obtain the Red Robeast episode, I was actually planning on using one with a robeast that looked suspiciously like a turtle as "Voltron vs Gamera," -- probably just as well for all of us that it didn't pan out.

Some of the dialogue is verbatim from the Voltron episode: Haggar's "My magic can easily change the color to red -- but I don't do windows," and Lothar's "I'm afraid he didn't make a very good landing…if he comes out of that, I don't think he'll be flying again for some time." We added the scream.

Let's fight the good fake fight

At least at one time, I felt I could do a not-shabby Worf voice ("Good tea. Nice house."), and I figured it'd make a good villain voice. The incessant Shakespeare quotations are a tribute to the highly cultured Klingons of the then-current Star Trek VI. For verisimilitude, Max sat in a corner grepping nice lines out of Signet's Three Great Shakespearean Tragedies. The only snag with this approach is Worf speaks very slowly and deliberately, and I had to drop some, nay, all, of the nuances of his mannerisms to sync with the mouth movements. Still, aside from an overly enunciated "and we'll (more like "wheel") not fail," I don't have many complaints with one of my larger voice roles…

Despite the cheery closing narration, we'd resurrect the Voltron Force characters later, in The Lost Episode…

Another "good enough" production is completed

Robotech IV: Khyron's Counterattack

2005-03-09T06:10:00.000-08:00

Tiny Liner Notes by Peter

Look, black and white anime -- it's art!

Intended to be the Ultimate Production, the bold, ambitious Robotech IV turned into a bit of an albatross around our necks. Based on the excellent final chapter of Gunbuster (the one in black and white), Robotech IV details the return of the evil Zentraedi Khyron, played by the stupid evil alien from Macross II. It turns out that he somehow managed to survive the last battle above Macross City at the end of the Macross saga in Robotech, escape out into space, and rally the last of the Zentraedi around him, all while conveniently not letting anyone know of his existence for the past 50 years (contrived, we know).

Pay no attention to the radically different character designs behind the curtain!

Again the themes laid down in the fanfiction that Josh and I co-wrote return -- the Lisa/Minmei/Rick and Lisa's revenge themes, the Lunk/Annie having sex themes. The challenge to turn something completely unrelated into Robotech was thrown down before us, and we accepted the task.

Khyron and, er, Koazonia, a circular reference to Miriya having a daughter named Komiriya and, er, nevermind...

I conceived of Robotech IV after I'd come to Japan, and we organized and started dubbing on one of my first trips back. This was before I started running J-List, back when I had excess brain cells available for "creative" stuff like this, and for a time I was effused with Seishun Shitemasu energy. I think, too, it was the nagging desire not to be totally cut off from all that'd I'd known, all the fun times we'd shared making these silly things -- when gaijin to go live in Japan, they usually plan on going back right away to go to graduate school (why I have no idea), but in my case, I wanted to keep dubbing.

Annie battles Khyron, putting peppermint against Protoculture!

From the start, this was going to be an ambitious production. Having had quite a bit of experience dubbing in the past, we were careful to avoid doing what we'd done wrong in KOR:TAS (i.e., being too high-brow in our concept) while keeping true to the Robotech III-model that had been so successful in the past. Because the last episode of Gunbuster is black and white, we had to make the other footage black and white; because Gunbuster is letterboxed, we had to do the same for all the other footage. The result was something that was pretty cool, although not exactly ingeneous. But, working on consumer VHS equipment in the early 90s, it was certainly a lot of work.

The Lisa sub-plot. Lisa arranged for the Gunbuster afterburners to "malfunction" with BD's help

Because we had to have the characters fighting a villain with a face and a personality, Khyron, we had to some fancy stepping to make the footage come off. It was hard, but I think, IMHO, that the basic footage-side of things worked. Since Macross II sucks so totally, I am glad we were able to rip out some useful parts. The "climax" between Annie destroying the large, not-very-Zentraedi-looking ship with Khyron came out rather well, IMHO, considering they were completely unrelated.

We bought the Mospeda LD box set for $500 just to show our fans this scene of Annie flashing her panties to Scott

We dubbed it once, and had it almost finished, in time for a sneak-preview at the San Diego Comicon Seishun Shitemasu party in 1995 (there are a few "world premiere" T-shirts out there, too -- if you've got one, maybe you can get $200 for it on eBay). The music and sound effects weren't finalized, but things seemed on track to get this sucker out the door one of these months. Except that during production, the Amiga soundboard we used for all the mixing and post had been fried, and in its crippled state making something worthy of Robotech III was impossible. So we tried to find a solution.

More great scenes that helped our sub-plot along

However, many years would pass before we ever got the production off the ground. I have memories of emailing Max (the post-production guy) and Josh (the director) saying, hey, is R4:KC going to be ready for previewing at this year's Con, or what? and getting a negative answer. Then the production was re-started, and Josh, writing about himself in the third person to spare us a full rewrite of these liner notes, overhauled the script while leaving the plot more or less intact, polishing Peter's original dialogue and taking out his incessant Wrath of Khan quoting. Dubbing quietly, without fuss, principal photography on R4 wrapped sometime around 1999. Post production was still slow, but progressed nevertheless. During the 2004 con season, Max surprised me by showing me the 99% completed production on his Powerbook, which he'd been working on in secret. Finally the Albatross was gone!

Can Annie and Minmei take the Matrix of Leadership into the Core in time?

Taking nine years to do a production is an awful long time. While I'm glad we got it done, and I'm pleased with it overall, the bummer is that in that time, several other worthy dubbing groups have gone ahead with productions that are beyond anything we could have done back then. Still, we hope that this, the final chapter in our long love affair with Robotech, which consumed thousands of hours across two decades, is enjoyed by fans out there.

Ranma 1/3: Notes from the Closet

2005-03-08T06:08:00.000-08:00

Tiny liner notes by Peter

Ranma 1/3: Notes from the Closet was our attempt at trying the other side of the "good taste" spectrum, and was also our first "good enough* production," in which we strove for, ah, randomness and knee-jerk humor rather than quality and consistency of scriptwriting.

This was our first "good enough" production, if memory serves

It was some months after Robotech III: Not Necessarily the Sentinels, and we were pining for something to dub. We'd long wanted to dub Ranma, and after a trip to Asahi Video, the local Japanese video store in San Diego, we finally got some footage to work with. Thinking way, way back, there was a time when we liked Ranma, back when it was "edge." But Ranma 1/2 was the first show to attain massive popularity among then-mainstream anime fans, and this somehow annoyed our "indie" sensibilities, causing us to turn on the show. The result is one of our "lowest" productions ever.

Can Ranma overcome his gay tendencies and confess his love to Akane? Or will Genma and Soun get it on?

I think, in retrospect, that R1/3:NFTC was good, but cheesy. We all were, at the time, not quite dekiagatteiru as they say in Japan -- in short, we were not wholly adult, still very immature. Our white, middle-class penchant for making jokes out of drugs, homosexuality and Carl Macek was quite funny in 1990, when the words "political correctness" weren't even coined yet (no, really). Now, thinking back, it's kind of silly -- Carl Macek, for example, is an old man now, and no longer worthy of the mocking of anime fans, even level 10 anime fans like us. Alas. As you can tell from the soundtrack, we were into Rocky Horror at the time, and some of that film colored this production, especially the gay stuff.

Nothing beats a cup of Columbian after a line of Columbian

As in Robotech III, you can see the Twin Peaks air dripping off this production, in our choice of music, vocals, and dramatic motifs we chose. In 1999, at this writing, this seems silly beyond words, but when Peaks was on the air it was glorious. We would -- really! -- buy doughnuts and line them up in front of the TV as we watched the new episode, then get sick of eating doughnuts later. Twin Peaks ushered in the 1990s for us, so we tried to do it honor through our work.

These battle scenes were almost too easy to mock

Despite the low-brow humor and problems with the story, I refuse to hate this production. It was the first successful blending of pornographic anime and parody dubbing, and the last, as far as I know. We mocked Ranma and Ranma fans, by making them think we were doing a tribute to their favorite show. It was fun, had lots of base, gross humor, and was deep enough to excite the intellects of the Seishun Shitemasu members for a time. In short, it "could live."

Will Ryoga get the girl in the end? Or will Ranma find a way to turn it around

* The name comes from a practice begun during Robotech III, where lines that were starting to stray in performance or timing were considered "good enough." After the first try at dubbing R3 fell apart, we recognized that "good enough" line readings would irk us forevermore if allowed into the final product. Conversely, with Ranma meant to be rude and crude, we opted to make "good enough" the level of the bar. And so "good enough" tags are generally used on our comittee-scripted gag shows.

Robotech III: Not Necessarily the Sentinels

2005-03-07T06:05:00.000-08:00

Tiny Liner Notes by Peter

A worthy production from the start, Robotech III was our answer to the Sentinels

What I consider my crowning achievement as a "fan-dubber," Robotech III: Not Necessarily the Sentinels was the most worthy production I did -- if the other members of SS agree, I would say, that Seishun Shitemasu did, although they probably won't.

Again, this production can trace its roots back to a simple conversation had while watching anime. We were at a SCAN meeting (this is the monthly anime club that met at SDSU, back when the dinosaurs roamed the Earth), sometime in 1988, enjoying the excellent Gainax production Aim for the Top, Gunbuster and I started postulating that Amano could be Minmei, Noriko could be Annie, etc. The generation reaction was, "Shut up, Pete, we're trying to enjoy the anime," and so I said no more, for a year or so. But after Seishun Shitemasu was formed, I eventually decided to make the "ultimate sequel to Robotech" a reality.

The core joke of the production, that Noriko is Annie from the Mospeda universe

In a way, Josh and I were just making an anime version of a fan-fiction we had written back in the late 80's called Robosmut. Written on several local San Diego BBS's back in those days when there was no Internet in its present form, Josh and I amused ourselves by co-writing (with several others, with dorky names like Bumblebee, Robin Hood, Werewolf, Captain Goodvibes), in which we detailed the adventures of the famous Robotech characters after the end of the series. Remember, this was back when Robotech was red-hot, and we were all on the fringe of a great wave of anime fandom, and needed to express ourselves in some way -- but we couldn't draw doujinshi, so we wrote fanfic. This was also back when we thought Harmony Gold's "The Sentinels" sequel to Robotech would actually be produced (I remember watching the daily reruns so I'd be able to catch it when it started, bwa ha ha), so our anticipation for the continuation of Robotech was also fueling our fan-fiction. Since we were undersexed teenagers, we naturally wrote about sex. Many of the story element that made it into R3:NNTS (Rick's divorcing of Lisa and going to Minmei, Lancer's homosexuality, Annie and Lunk's sexual relationship), came from Robosmut.

Lancer's homosexuality wasn't a very interesting sub-plot, but I liked the joke about coffee killing off the Invid Simulagents

Editing of footage began. We based R3:NNTS on Aim for the Top, and throwing in a healthy dose of Mospeda, going out of our way to dig around for footage that didn't make it into Robotech, so it would seem "new" to fans who didn't know as much as we did (all the new footage was taken from a Mospeda special that has got to be rarer than fuck these days, unless they've released it with the boxed DVD sets). It had a "high" story in that it took the Robotech characters in bold new places and allowed us to experiment, so it appealed endlessly to all of us. After one false start (a flaky crackwhore voice actress spaced on us, so we had to go back from the beginning a few months later), dubbing commenced. We were fortunate to find a former radio DJ from Arizona who provided some of the most professional voice acting we'd known up to that point (even if she mis-pronounced "ganbatte ne, Annie").

The bath scene -- they have these yellow Karorin buckets in Japan by the way

R3:NNTS was the first thing we did that had a "post production" phase. Basically, we laid the voice track down, then went back later and mixed it with music and sound effects later. We made certain small mistakes, however, which caused an annoying "buzz" sound to creep into the production (which is almost totally gone now, thanks to the efforts of Max). Also, because we used the original tape for the voice dubbing, the tape became stretched, causing some video glitches. Well, excuuuuse us.

Robotech III premiered at Anime Con, the predecessor to Anime Expo, back in 1991. This history-making convention was attended by the likes of Haruhiko Mikimoto and Yoshiyuki Sadamoto, who had created the characters for Nadia and Wings of Honneamise and would go on to do the same for Evangelion. (I accidentally hit on his wife during the show.) The response from fans was incredible, and we got more requests for tapes than we knew what to do with. We got an incredible "ego stroke" (to use a Pam Buck-ism) and were thrilled with the production. We even gave a copy to Toshio Okada of Gainax, who didn't seem to care. He was later arrested for tax evasion.

Deep plot twists, heavy with Twin Peaks BGM

After I'd gone to Japan, the tape started to self-destruct, so Max had to re-master it all from scratch. He laid down the audio, got his hands on the original video sources, and put them down in the same order as my original. Two of the music videos were removed due to the inability of getting footage again (which Josh called "rather 'Jetsons the Movie' of me"), and taking out at least one joke that I loved (the original Giant Robo theme song playing at the Gunbuster rises out of the Excelion) due to the lack of the music anymore. However, it was an improvement, with new sound effects, much better video quality, and much less of the annoying buzzing.

A musical flashback scene, and Annie's labia

Robotech III: Not Necessarily the Sentinels was one of the most successful and satisfying productions we ever did. It earned many laughs, provided many with inventive humor, and even got a pretty girl to talk to me at a con once. It received kudos from many fans, and even caused one of the two writers that made up the Robotech novelist Jack McKinney (the "Jack" one, also known as James Luceno, who now writes hack novels in the Star Wars universe) gush "Wow, full frontal nudity in anime, how did you manage that?"

Never has so much fun been gotten out of a Transformers the Movie soundtrack

Kimagure Orange Road: The Akira Story

2005-03-06T06:06:00.000-08:00

Tiny Liner Notes by Peter

Welcome to my "Star Wars Christmas Special"

If you ever have instance to direct a film, be it live action or animated or whatever, I hope to God you don't ever turn out a KOR:TAS. This production is to me what the Star Wars Christmas Special is to Lucas, what 1941 is to Spielberg, and what Robotech: the Movie is to Carl Macek if I may be forgiven for including myself on this list. A direct result of my fixation with Orange Road (one of the finer anime series to come out of the 1980s) and my desire to so something "intellectually satisfying" within our chosen medium.

The second production of Seishun Shitemasu was conceived while I was working at a bank (Great American, who got swallowed up by Wells Fargo back in 1990), xeroxing copies of some important document or another. Xeroxing documents for 8 hours a day is not a terribly demanding activity; you can do it and compose symphonies in your head at the same time. Listening to my Color Heart CDs while working (ah, natsukashii...), I got the idea for our next production, and off I was running again.

Kyosuke and A-ko are related to each other, which is why she has powers -- get it?

KOR:TAS was loosely based on the Kimagure Orange Road Role-Playing Game, something I had written a year before. Unlike the other Seishun guys, I was never a "gamer," and thus had no business trying to create a dice-and-paper RPG, but this didn't stop me in the least. In this RPG, I postulate that Akira (of the Katsuhiro Otomo film by the same name) could have been the son of Ayukawa and Kyosuke from Orange Road, since the age actually works out pretty well, if you use the timeline from the manga rather than the animated series, or something like that. If they got married and had a son, he'd be born with powers, and, my theory goes, could have been the Akira that takes out Tokyo in 1999.

Mother Madoka and her son Akira (played by Kyosuke's cousin Kazuya)

I remember very clearly while starting on my "creative arc," imagining how the story would have to be, picking out of my memory what footage I'd need (since the anime we used were all eminently familiar to me at the time) and conceiving of the script as I went along. Fresh from our success with Laputa II, I was unstoppable, and never thought to consider that it all might just suck balls.

Getting more and more into production mode, I rented most of the videos from the Comic Gallery (legendary anime & comic shop in San Diego), and I laid down the footage. It was an extremely "deep" production, consisting of the widest spread of unrelated anime footage in ever production we've ever done, or in any similar anime-dubbing production I've ever seen since. Orange Road (both the series and the movie), Akira, Project A-Ko, MZ23 I and II, Patlabor, and other footage, all stewed together in a highly cerebral production which, to my mind, perfectly expressed the "high concept" of what we wanted Seishun Shitemasu to be (but it still sucked).

A semi-interesting side-story: Hikaru-chan enlisted in the SDF and learned to drive a Patty Labor

Besides the "Akira is the esper son of Kyosuke and Ayukawa" theme, I built on another aspect of the KOR RPG, the postulation that all anime characters that have any special abilities whatsoever are actually related to the Kasuga clan. Thus, A-Ko is really a long-lost member of the Kasuga family, and that's where her powers come from (by extrapolation, Superman and Wonder Woman are somehow related to the Kasuga's esper lineage, too). Mai the Psychic Girl (god, does anyone remember that? What crap...) and any anime character that has supernatural powers is likewise related to the Kasugas or Orange Road.

Holy Robotech the Movie, Batman -- BD is going to take over Japan and capture espers!

In any event, the result was........a total flop. KOR:TAS was an dog of a production that looked good on paper, or summarized in a paragraph -- but which utterly fails as a 45 minute production. The jokes are too hard to get, the edits are too harsh, the footage I drew from too different -- and in the final analysis, I've only met a few people who said they gave a damn about KOR:TAS, and I'm including all the other members of SS when I say that. Not being a very good production, KOR:TAS threatened to set Seishun Shitemasu on a dangerous "reverse Star Trek" path of having every other production suck (every even production, instead of every odd one). Looking back, what we should have done was create a 2 minute trailer, like we did with The Liberal Fist (Kenshiro as George Dukakis, the guy who lost to George Bush I in 1988, in case you weren't born then). But we didn't.

Akira is gone -- a call from BD

In the final analysis, I don't totally hate KOR:TAS, although I'm disappointed with my inability to tighten things up before going ahead with the production. It was like a fine doujinshi -- an expression of love and respect for the target work -- since "imitation is the sincerest form of flattery" (although I've been an expat in Japan so long it took me about four minutes of deep thought to recall that idiom). In a way, KOR:TAS is the perfect production: if you don't like it, I can say, too bad, you're not deep enough to "get" it, and go off feeling "exclusive" because I'm part of a small group of people who can understand this difficult production. Very convenient, really.

Destiny can't be averted, and Tokyo is destroyed

I have just one regret about KOR:TAS, which is that I didn't think of a good joke I could have put in it. In the Orange Road Movie, Kyosuke and Madoka go see a movie (the first Touch movie, a funky anime-within-an-anime vortex to delight the senses). Meanwhile, in Project A-Ko 4 there's a hilarious spoof of the Orange Road Movie in which the Hikaru-character goes berserk when the Kyosuke-character breaks up with him, throwing him into the water in high anime style. I've always wished I'd tied these two scenes together, having Kyosuke and Madoka go watch this movie with shock on their faces at what they're seeing, but the stars weren't aligned.

Laputa II: The Sequel

2005-03-05T06:04:00.000-08:00

Tiny Liner Notes by Peter

The beginning of SS began with Sheeta, who just got back from the Bahamas after divorcing Pazu (yes, I know...)

Laputa II: The Sequel grew out of a conversation that Adam and I had while watching the first four episodes of Nadia of the Mysterious Sea (which we'd rented from Asahi Video in San Diego, a Japanese video shop) way back when in 1989 or so. To latter-day anime fans who are spoiled by "licensed" anime we snort our noses in humor, since this was even before Tower Records started its vaunted anime section. We watched our anime in Japanese, damn it, and we were so cutting edge no one knew what the hell we were talking about half the time.

Of course, Nadia of the Mysterious Sea was already intended to be a parody of Miyazaki's well-known anime films, so it was no great mental leap to say that Nadia was Sheeta (with a Coppertone® Tan), that her Blue Water was the levitation stone, and so on. But there it was. We had an idea, and I happened to be at a place in my life where I had a lot of free time (I was a poor college student at San Diego State University), so I could devote time to the project. More importantly, my mother had recently purchase a Hitachi (then) high-end four-head VCR with audio and video dubbing capabilities. This VCR would serve as the VCR in "a bunch of guy with a VCR™" until it ceased functioning sometime in 1995.

Goober, Gomer and Iczer 2

Nadia had just come out, so I only had the first four episodes to work with. Fortunately, they were good episodes, and I spliced together a nice 45 minutes of footage, wrote up a script (I believe I was still using my Atari 520ST), and called the group together.

For some reason that escapes me, my mother was out of town for some long period of time, and so we were all pretty much free to trash my house while we dubbed the production. If you're really lucky, you've got a copy of L2:TS that has the "making of" footage tacked onto the end, showing all of us dubbing, amid beer cans, papers, CD cases that we clacked together to make sound effects, and annoying girlfriends we're no longer with. Josh will no doubt disagree with my use of the Royal "we" here, but these are my tiny liner notes, not his.

Of course, if you haven't seen Mr. Miyazaki's excellent film Laputa, you won't understand any of this

Dubbing was finished, complete with sound effects and music. We were in a hurry to get it done in time for the SCAN meeting that Saturday (SCAN is the anime club in SDSU which we all used to care about, back when anime was so fringe -- we wanted to change the name to the Society for the Promotion of Anime and Manga, but it didn't work out). We got it there in time, and it was viewed to the general enjoyment by thirty or so members. Except for a few scenes that needed to be redone (turn DOWN the volume on the 'Star Trek bridge sound effects,' Peter). We made some changes, borrowing the famous Pam Buck in what would be her only dubbing participation in a project of ours, and then it was finished.

The indefatigable Captain Nosehair

I'd say that L2:TS was good for what it was -- a silly attempt at dubbing "just like Pinesalad." We hit on many themes that would come back again and again -- taking an unrelated anime and making it into something else, bringing the "unknown" into the realm of well-known anime characters, As a person, I have a sense (however misplaced) of my own intelligence, and making a production that stretched he mind to see around corners and accept one anime character as another was compelling to me.

Using video titling to make jokes was really cutting-edge for us at the time

"He really does look like that man in Robotech..."

The Seishun Shitemasu Team

2005-03-02T05:53:00.000-08:00

Meet the Seishun Shitemasu team! Here is the primary list of voice actors used in our productions.

Peter Payne

Roles: Jean Luc Macek, Kyosuke, Emperor Akihito, Ranma, Admiral Rick Hunter, Lancer, others

Peter, the founder (more or less) of Seishun Shitemasu, was born in Maryland, lived a year in New Zealand when he was six (mainly getting beaten up for being a Yank), and moved to San Diego, CA at the age of 11. Effused with a deep interest in Japan and Japanese popular culture from an early age, Peter decided to learn Japanese when he started SDSU in 1987. Not content to just like the country, he pulled up stakes in 1991, and has been living in Gunma Prefecture, right in the center of Japan, ever since. He quit his job as an English teacher to start J-List. To see pictures of him now, as well as a map of Japan showing where he is, see the "about J-List" page. If you like Japan and are interested in some of the various articles Peter has collected over the years (including his Kimagure Orange Road novel translations, his "generic guide to teaching English in Japan" and the definitive "you've been in Japan too long when..." list, see his personal homepage.

Josh, AKA...

Pete Martell
Greg West
"The" Erma Landers
"The" Jake Bloodsucker
Nathan Wind
Allesandro Allegre
Vic Colfari

Roles: Goober, Admiral Reinhardt, Ryoga, others

And probably many more. We tended to take the non-union multiple-pseudonym style of the Intersound crew and cycle names with ridiculous regularity. I preferred writing to directing and voice acting; after Peter left for Japan Phill and I split the writing duties on virtually everything after Hell Bent For Leather. I re-wrote Robotech IV and much later wrote the script for City Hunter On Fire.

I stayed out of the lead-character roles in the voice acting as I never felt I had a natural aptitude for it the way Peter or Debbie did. Many of my roles amounted to little more than cameos. Goober, Reinhardt, Ryoga, Acroyer, the Narrator of both Voltron and UC:0069, and Spoonman (twice). And many others who're even more trivial.

Max Callahan, AKA "Dr. Teeth and the Electric Mayhem"

Debbie Callahan, AKA "Occupant"

Roles (Max): Gemma, Scott Bernard, others
Roles (Debbie): Hikaru-chan, Akane, Annie Labelle, nearly every female role since we didn't know any girls then

Max and Debbie are the heart of the Seishun Shitemasu group, always there for the good times and bad times during a dub. From the beginning, Max was our tech guy, mainly because he had a sampling keyboard and none of us did. Debbie has been a valuable member of the team, by virtue of her sex, by which we mean her being female. As one of the few women we could stand to be around for any length of time, she has done probably 70% or more of our female roles.

Phill "Captain Nosehair" Sunbury

Roles: Captain Nosehair, Dr. Lang, weird witch thing

A core member from the start, Phill has always been an integral member of the team, providing important voices as well as input on the productions. Now he's a programmer and plays poker.

Chris "Kill the Bug Eyes" Lockwood

Roles: Gomer, Captain Gloval, others

A friend of the group who appeared as a voice actor in several productions. His contributions to the Seishun Shitemasu cause were hampered by his physically being in Japan during some of our most productive years. Like Peter, a major Japan Nut, he now lives in Japan, doing translation and trying to fend of Japanese women who keep trying to marry him. His major hobby is driving around Japan on his BMW motorcycle that he just bought, and wrecked in the former Soviet Union. Here, Chris drinks with Japanese friends, and says "Yoku dekimashita!" (which is an odd reference to a commercial for Nova, an English conversation school, which you won't have seen, and it was from 1992 anyway).

Chris's bike, which he rode to Kazekhstan and wiped, requiring a long stay in a Russian hospital

Adam "Ataru" Chaney

A close friend to everyone in the Seishun Shitemasu group from many years ago, Adam was an important source of information, and more importantly, a source of anime tapes for us to dub from. Back in the wooly days of the late 80's, when no anime was commercially available at all, Adam had a respectable collection of 300+ anime tapes. Adam now lives in San Diego with his wife. We think he got tired of anime and sold it on eBay.

And many unseen unknowns out by the cabin...

For First Time Visitors

2005-03-01T06:03:00.000-08:00

Notes by Peter

Welcome to the Seishun Shitemasu Productions official website, now updated and transformed into a cool blog as well. We hope you like the new site which we've managed to put together for you

Our first two productions, done at the start of the 1990s...

What is Seishun Shitemasu Productions? We're a group (they'd say "circle" in Japanese) of fan-dubbers who edit anime together and make new productions that are hopefully entertaining. The name comes from the opening credits of Kimagure Orange Road (an 80s anime series about a family living in Japan that secretly has esper powers), and it literally means "living the springtime of my life." Since those wacky bygone days when we spent our late teens/early twenties hovering over Radio Shack microphones (which we promptly returned when the production was done, thanks to Radio Shack's unlimited return policy) were truly the springtime of our lives, the name was a good one.

Robotech III and Anime Bites were two of our best creations

As you can read on the Seishun Shitemasu Influences page, Seishun Shitemasu came about in imitation of the works of Pinesalad Productions, the groundbreaking Los Angeles fan-dubbing group that made a strong impression on us when we encountered Pam Buck at the San Diego Comicon one fateful July in 1987. It was an impressionable time for us, and Pam made quite a mark on us that can be seen in all of our productions if you know where to look. (Hint: the phone-ringing "do-do-do-do-do" song is a big one.)

Sometimes we decided to turn off the Quality Control and do "Good Enough" productions

Like any organization, we went through our various phases. There was the "Peter phase" when I was the leader of the group. Then I went to Japan to live, returning home every year to attend anime conventions (it's a pretty good life I lead, I confess), and Josh accepted the mantle of leadership, making many interesting productions that combine his wit and intelligence. After years of rest, while we waited for technology to evolve to the point where our visions could be realized (yet another attempt by me to George Lucasify our group), or perhaps because we got lives in the meantime, we're finally ready to start making new productions. What will the future hold for Seishun Shitemasu?