After spending last week helping Nathan fight a PR war that makes my flame wars look like playground scuffles, I’ve finally finished my Jimmy’s Notes blog. Thankfully, we did have some content last week with a third bonus episode.
As you’d expect, being a former NASA engineer, I had a lot to say about Nathan and Luke’s discussion of Battle in Outer Space. Some of this I wish I’d brought up on the air. (I’ve been slacking off on that lately. This should be remedied). Anyway, that’s because Battle is the middle entry in Toho’s “pseudo-trilogy” (the first being The Mysterians), and is one of my favorite Toho tokusatsu films. Although, some of these bullet points were assignments given to me on the air by Nathan, so I’m contractually obligated to research them (something else I should try to do on the air more).
So, as Luke loves to say on Earth Destruction Directive, “let’s get into the notes.”
- Ambrose Bierce is the author of the short story “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge.”
- The Japanese title for Ebirah, Horror of the Deep actually translates as “Big Duel in the South Sea,” not, “north sea,” Luke.
- Okay. Ignore the third entry in the “pseudo-trilogy.” It’s only subtitled “The Jimmy From NASA Story.” 😛
- Just to clarify: Nathan wasn’t saying The Mysterians took place in 1965. He was saying Battle in Outer Space took place in 1965. There seemed to be a little confusion.
- Nathan and Nick (Hayden) talk about gaishan, which seems to be somewhat similar to nimowashi, in episode 6. (I hope I spelled those right).
- The Sears Tower is now called the Willis Tower.
- Did Luke make a Freudian slip and say, “Nude Japan Wrestling,” and not, “New Japan Wrestling”?! That’d be, well, a whole other promotion. That hopefully is just about getting back to how the Romans wrestled back in the day….
- It’s hard to say if gravity and absolute zero are connected. Absolute zero, from what I can gather, is more of a mathematical concept than a scientific one. It’s never been achieved and probably can’t. Some say gravity isn’t affected by temperature while others say gravity would cause some release of energy, which creates heat as a byproduct and prevents absolute zero from being reached. It’s all theory, and this film was based on now outdated science (as Nathan pointed out). You can read more about gravity here.
- One day, I will have the P-1 in my garage. It’s second only to the Gohten for me, and I can’t get that one, either. You’d think one of the people who helped build it and now has a huge garage to house it would have enough clout to acquire it. Oh well.
- It’s “Takarada” not “Hakarada,” and “Kubo” and not “Kube,” Luke. 😛
- Wow, Nathan was way off with Yoshio Tsuchiya’s filmography. He was in 1954’s The Invisible Man (Toho), Godzilla Raids Again (1955), Varan the Unbelievable (1958), and The H-Man (1958). Mind you, he played minor roles, but still, he did have tokusatsu credits between The Mysterians and Battle in Outer Space.
- Yes. NASA has the memory of a goldfish when it comes to the Gohten. Or have I fallen into a bizarre parallel universe? 😛
- Why don’t I work at JAXA? It’s a long story. I’ll tell it to you over a few drinks. Or after a few drinks. Maybe.
- Luke and I had a good time in Malaysia. We stopped at this little “hole in the wall” restaurant in Kuala Lumpur where he tried some teh tarik and nasi lemak. We had to hightail it out of there because of…local trouble. (There are reasons I said during Nathan’s stream Friday that I’m not allowed some countries…).
Nathan’s Leftover Notes
- It’s interesting hearing the foreign news reports “dubbed” in Japanese.
- The stuff with Dr. Achmed is very X-Files-ish.
- We see reps from India, F.R. Germany, Canada, and the Philippines. All dubbed in Japanese. The Canadian was played by actor frequently seen in Toho films. Terrible actors. (Japanese rep is Ryo Ikebe from Varan).
- S250 = adamantium?
- You know, these aliens blew up a space station, and you’re wondering if they’re peaceful. Just saying.
- It’s a Walther PPK!
- Give him the gun. Surrender. Then take it back and take a hostage? What?!
- Did the ship just fly away after zapping Dr. Achmed? Was he teleported or vaporized? (Teleporters are dicey technology, let me tell you. -Jimmy)
- How’d they figure out all this stuff about the Natal between scenes? (They read the script. -Jimmy)
- Jimmy built a model of the SPIP as a kid. (Yes, that is true. –Jimmy)
- Somehow, the g-forces are more intense than that. Is one guy stretching his face with his hands to simulate it? Their grimacing faces, says Galbraith, were a clichéd prediction that proved groundless. (G-force is something to scoff at, man! I should know. That’s why the Gohten was designed to resist it. -Jimmy)
- Cool transition from shot of Earth to the moon.
- Iwamura just magically breaks free, huh?
- Ifukube’s music helps make these long sequences of exploring the moon go by faster.
- The Natal base looks like siren.
- The music when the SPIP crew attacks the base would be reused later in Godzilla films and become synonymous with it.
- Dude has a rifle that can take out a Natal fighter! (I want this gun. For scientific purposes. -Jimmy)
- Like Shiraishi, who served the Mysterians, Iwamura finds redemption in heroic sacrifice.
- “Scientists lead the way.”
- When the SPIP returns, the characters vanish.
- The world comes together to pool its resources to build a combat rocket. Houses in Space Center in Texas. Houston? (That’s a nice place. I liked hanging out there. No problem. 😛 -Jimmy)
- There is a little regret expressed over putting humans in rockets built for war. Very Japanese and Honda.
- A Natal ship was in the office of the UFO Club president in Ghidorah the Three-Headed Monster. (That guy is nuts! 😛 -Jimmy)
- I could see this getting remade. Perhaps with better character work.
- The futuristic space center was actually the recently built Japan National Sports Center.
- Tsuburaya reused the Mysterian ship models for the Natal.
His Notes from the Ishiro Honda Biography
- This marked Honda’s abrupt transition from a two-track film career to exclusively genre films.
- “We tried making this film different in several ways. The Mysterians was a bit more fantastic in concept, so rather than filming with attention to realism, we made a lot of bright colors…In [Battle], our big point was to realistically portray how people would respond to an alien invasion. We simulated a real invasion.” –Assistant Director Koji Kajita
- Given that The Mysterians was high on plot and this is high on action and thin characters, does this make it a prototype Heisei film? 😛
- The film was released three weeks before the controversial Security Treaty (AMPO) was updated. This is reflected with American and Japanese astronaut crews. It’s also seen in this idealized world where the whole anti-Natal project is centered in Tokyo, showing Japan as an international player.
- Real world science is in the film. The gravity beam was based on an article in a science journal that said an object’s gravitational pull could be negated at absolute zero. The spacesuits were modeled after cosmonaut suits. The rocket fighters were inspired by X-15’s, which had been unveiled by the U.S. in June 1959 (six months before the film’s release).
- Honda and Tsuburaya cut some corners because of budget constraints. The attacks on Venice and the Panama Canal were illustrated unconvincingly instead of being depicted. On the other hand, the flying saucer attack on the moon was a less ambitious scene in the script. I guess they just allocated funds from one thing to another.
- Toho’s founder died in 1957, and the studio was controlled more by the massive Hankyu Corporation, which had a stronger focus on the bottom line. This led to tighter budgets (as seen during the filming of Battle in Outer Space), and a greater focus on genre pictures due to their popularity. Honda would leave behind the dramas and light comedies he’d been making.
His Notes from Stuart Galbraith IV’s Book
- Astronaut hats look like shower caps.
- American editors removed the crowd’s line of “Banzai!” (Probably because of Japanese suicide soldiers).
- Says the film exceeds American invasion films in showmanship and visual excitement.
His Leftover Space Race Notes:
- “Space exploration served as another dramatic arena for Cold War competition. On October 4, 1957, a Soviet R-7 intercontinental ballistic missile launched Sputnik (Russian for “traveler”), the world’s first artificial satellite and the first man-made object to be placed into the Earth’s orbit. Sputnik’s launch came as a surprise, and not a pleasant one, to most Americans. In the United States, space was seen as the next frontier, a logical extension of the grand American tradition of exploration, and it was crucial not to lose too much ground to the Soviets. In addition, this demonstration of the overwhelming power of the R-7 missile–seemingly capable of delivering a nuclear warhead into U.S. air space–made gathering intelligence about Soviet military activities particularly urgent.” (History.com)
- Japan:
- “Japanese space development was started by Tokyo University professor Hideo Itokawa. Many aeronautical engineers lost their jobs after World War II as aircraft development was banned under the US Occupation of Japan. This changed after the signing of the San Francisco Peace Treaty in 1951, which once again allowed the development of aviation technology. The seven-year stagnation of Japan’s aerospace industry had seriously harmed Japanese technical abilities.[1][2] To address this, Itokawa established an aviation research group at the Institute of Industrial Science of the University of Tokyo. This institution succeeded in a horizontal launch of the Pencil Rocket on 12 April 1955 in Kokubunji, Tokyo. The dimensions of the rocket were 23 cm (9.1 in) in length by 1.8 cm (0.71 in) in diameter.[3] [4]” (Wikipedia)
- “Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA)…was formed on 1 October 2003. … Before the merger, ISAS was responsible for space and planetary research, while NAL was focused on aviation research. NASDA, which was founded on 1 October 1969, had developed rockets, satellites, and also built the Japanese Experiment Module. The old NASDA headquarters were located at the current site of the Tanegashima Space Center, on Tanegashima Island, 115 kilometers south of Kyūshū. NASDA also trained the Japanese astronauts who flew with the US Space Shuttles.[6]” (Wikipedia).
This was fun. But then again, I’m a sucker for space movies.
Join us next week when Bex from Redeemed Otaku discusses Rebirth of Mothra with Nathan in the first of a sub-series of episodes we’re calling “The Summer of Mothra.”
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