To celebrate getting to the 200th Ongoing Investigation (which I’m still pretty sure only like half our readers understand) we decided to open up what we talk about in the post to the readers like we did with the 100th. This time we had a poll to help reduce the number of suggestions of shows one of us has already seen (and avoid having people suggest we watch Little Busters!, Oreimo, or something equally repellent). We still got a bunch of requests for Oreimo, but luckily other things won out.
Future Boy Conan (eps. 1-4) was the oldest series (1978) on the list and a very popular choice by readers which kinda made me happy.
The series style will seem very familiar to any Ghibli fans; character designs, flying machines, etc. Future Boy Conan immediately felt very proto-Laputa specifically too, especially the relationship between Conan and Lana. This was definitely not a bad thing.
At the beginning, Conan was living on a tiny uncharted island with his grandfather after the world had gone to hell. Lana washed ashore after escaping from some baddies. But then they showed up and stole her away leaving Conan to try to find his way to her in wide open ocean.
The world outside is a harsh but exciting place as Conan sets off in his small handmade ship which brings him to another island and one step closer to Lana.
Things progressed at a rapid pace and not at all in the ways I expected for the show. I’m certainly curious to see where it is headed.
What I liked best about Future Boy Conan was the true spirit of adventure that was present in each episode. Conan was fearless, resourceful, loyal, and damn strong! Heck, he took on (and kills) a shark in the first scenes we saw him in.
Random note, we watched the BD version which looks really crisp and the color was great.
I have always been curious to watch Future Boy Conan if for nothing else to see what Hayao Miyazaki could do when he was still in his prime when he worked on his only full TV series. The show itself has always had a bit of a legendary reputation in a small circle of people in America who revere it as a little known classic. On the other hand in Japan it seems like one of those series that inspired a whole generation of current animators. With a strong pedigree and the knowledge that Isao Takahata was balancing out Miyazaki it seemed like a good choice for the list. Thankfully the show has lived up to the decently high expectations I had set for it in my head.
The first thing to note is the budget and animation on the show seems quite high for a TV series. It is not quite at the level of a full on Ghibli movie but for a 26 episode TV series it impressive. You can tell a good deal of love and care went into animating this show. And since we were watching the Blu-ray version it came through looking crystal clear. It probably did not look this nice when it first played on TV. But the character designs, character types, and themes clearly mark this unmistakably as a Miyazaki directed TV series.
Conan (the Future boy not the detective) is your stock plucky but naive shonen hero. He is also crazy strong but I suppose you can’t be a 98-pound weakling in a post apocalyptic world. Conan kills a giant shark and throws car size boulders with only a small amount of difficulty. He is hardly the most original character in that respect but he is fairly likeable in a very Monkey D Luffy fashion. His first friend on his journey Jimsy is a bit more of a burden than an asset but thankfully while being a bit rough around the edges he is a decent counterbalance to Conan.
Captain Dyce is definitely an odd duck in his mood swings towards Conan. He goes from being indifferent, to straight out trying to murder him several times, and then settles on rather harsh but considerably less homicidal when he finally captures him. If Captain Dyce killed Conan it would have ended the series rather abruptly but it seems odd for Miyazaki to make the Captain so blood thirsty and then dial it back just as quickly.
You can see that much of the series would go on to greatly influence Castle in the Sky. While there are many significant differences between the two the echoes from Conan that go on to shape Castle in the Sky are unmistakable. The relationship between Sheeta and Pazu was clearly a refinement on Conan and Lana’s relationship. And the post apocalyptic vibe and themes or environmentalism and the futility of violence are very much the same even if Laputa’s world has recovered to a far greater extent. I’m curious to see how much more Castle in the Sky borrows from its older brother as I watch more Conan.
But I assume that out of the three series we watched we are most likely to continue watching this series. I’m curious to see how well Miyazaki does with a longer form of storytelling. So far he has done a good job of it. I hope he can keep it up.
The Ongoing Investigations are little peeks into what we are watching and reading outside of our main posts on the blog. We each pick three things that we were interested in a week and talk a bit about them. There is often not much rhyme or reason to what we pick. They are just the most interesting things we saw since the last Ongoing Investigation.
Reverse Thieves 