Firestorm

Thanks to a heads up from Ken P I was able to get the first episode of the
Gerry Anderson inspired anime series Firestorm. The title says "From an
Idea by Gerry Anderson and John Needham." I enjoyed the show pretty much,
the copy i got was on a VCD and was cheap...pretty cheap. Played well on
my SAMPO and whoever made the disc put subtitles on it so I was able to
figure out the story from that. Quallty of the picture was good!

Very reminiscent of UFO (A Skydiver like submarine which serves as a base)
and Thunderbirds (A ship launches off the sub by sticking out of the water
and the ship is a ringer for Thunderbird Two). The fighter planes have
engine pods that reminded me of the space cruiser/police cars of Space
Precinct. The story was a little lame, the computer graphics interesting
enough to hold my attention but since I'm not 100% up on what's new or good
right now in Anime I have no idea if this is bad or good anime. I did get
the recent triple release of Kiki, Castle in the Sky and Spirited Away
though. We love Kiki and Castle (I think I like Kiki the best) and
Spirited Away scared the crap out of the kids! Great movie though.

Back to Firestorm

The main character of Nagisa Kisaragi reminds me so much of one of the
characters from the old show Battle of the Planets. I wouldn't have even
thought of BOTP if it weren't for the current Battle comic book I've been
buying. She looks a little like one of the guys on that show. Absolutely
no reference, visual or story to Space 1999 that I could see. Mostly,
Thunderbirds, UFO and maybe some of the other puppet shows like Capt Scarlet.

Worth checking out if your into new Gerry Anderson stuff but this show is
out on the fringes of his work. Beyond the actual "idea" I have no idea
what else Gerry contributed for the show. Hope they gave him and John a
nice check though! ; - )

Oh, the theme music was pretty annoying as well.

Here's an anime fans website with some pictures as well as bunches of cute
pictures from other shows. Scroll on down and look for Firestorm.

http://users.wpi.edu/~amgillet/jasc/newanime/newanime.html

and here's the shows Japanese web site with a picture of the sub that
reminds me of Skydiver with the Thunderbird two type ship launching up off it.

http://www.tv-tokyo.co.jp/anime/firestorm/

For those who would like to download and view this episode and many other
great anime series, http://www.animesuki.com/ is the place to start. You'll
need the BitTorrent client at the top of the page to get them.


Have fun.

Keith K.

----- Original Message -----
From: "Phil Merkel" <[hidden email]>
To: <[hidden email]>
Cc: <[hidden email]>
Sent: Friday, May 16, 2003 5:23 PM
Subject: [SHADO] Firestorm

good
> right now in Anime I have no idea if this is bad or good anime. I did
get Scarlet. it.

FIRESTORM is a 26-episode animation series, which is aired on every
Sunday morning in Tokyo, Japan.

Its episode titles are:
episode 1 'SF 9' aired on 6 April
episode 2 'Countdown' aired on13 April
episode 3 'Black Orchid' aired on 20 April
episode 4 'Carlo Morelli' aired on 27 April
episode 5 'Barracuda' aired on 4 May
episode 6 'Saberfish' aired on 11 May
episode 7 'Ocean Diner' to be aired on18 May...

Kaoru