davemerrill

Thursday was our trip out on the Seibu Line to Oizumi Gakuen. What's in Oizumi Gakuen? There's a movie theater and a mall, sure. It's also where THIS is...

Toei Animation Company, the people who brought you Captain Harlock, Mazinger Z, Galaxy Express 999, Dr. Slump, Fist Of The North Star, Sailor Moon, and Pretty Cure, among hundreds of other childhood-warping cartoons! This is where they do their thing. So we hauled out the directions Tim gave us three years back and set out from the train station in brain-warping heat. Next time I'm in Japan in the summer I'm getting a hat.

It's not a terribly long walk, you go down the street following the Galaxy Express lampposts...

and then you hang a left at "Toei Street". We missed Toei Street the first time around and went too far down the first road. In the heat. Tim, I don't think "Cosmo Station" garage is still there. Anyway we did finally make our way into the gallery Toei has set up for animation pilgrims.

Basically the gallery is a large room filled with repro posters of their films and a timeline of their television productions, with some cutouts of past and current characters either posing for photos or looming down from the rafters.

There's also this:

Giant forced-perspective Danguard Ace! This would look great in our living room.

Also what's groovy are the vintage models they built as guides for the animators:

Ken the Wolf Boy!

Cyborg 009!

Tiger Mask! These are accompanied by original cels, production artwork, scripts, and enough vintage Toei material to awe anyone like me who spent years poring over photos of the things in books. There's plenty of English in the museum for us non-Japanese reading visitors, too.

Don't ask me how Getta Robo Go gets translated to "Goldbang", I don't wanna know. Around the corner and down the hall they have another gallery full of licensed merchandise - a case full of DVD sets, another case full of toys and figures, and Dr. Slump characters imprisoned in a glass pillar:

Also a whole lot of limited edition Wonderfest kits of obscure Toei properties, like these guys from "30,000 Miles Under The Sea":

And the evil doll from the last episode of the '68 009 series:

So that's the Toei Gallery. I don't know if people as un-obsessed with old cartoons as I am will enjoy it as much as I did, but if you share my interests it's definitely worth a stop. And if you can figure out the bus schedule then take the bus, or a taxi, if it's hot.

On our way out we poked our head into an office to marvel at all the old character-branded stuff being casually used for its intended purposes as wastepaper baskets, etc., and I noticed this poster:

Whenever the rights issues of Candy Candy are cleared up, there's going to be a Candy Candy explosion. Mark my words. And when you get back to the train station, be sure to buy a drink from the 999 conductor!