What if Voltron, but it’s a gritty, surreal horror with no robots at all? (part 1)
(Content Warning: Sexual Assault, Cancer)
This memory hits me every once in a while, this... fuckin' impossible-to-find rare as hell anime that was on Teletoon when I was in high school that it feels like nobody remembers but me.
I only kinda sorta half-remember it. It's one of those 'fever dream' memories, like, did I even really see this show? There was never really a show where a woman was trapped in a haunted city and fortified a train to attack the tower in the center of that city so that she could escape her coma, right? It SOUNDS like a weird dream I'd have.
But I know it exists.
Because I found it. I found it by asking about it on a web forum in the mid 10s, back when web forums were a thing that existed, and someone responded with the right show, and I found the whole thing on YouTube, and thought "okay, now to watch it" and then didn't watch it, I left it, and forgot about it, for another decade, and forgot the name, and the forum, all details gone.
I forgot it again. But god dammit, this time I know that this slippery-ass piece of media actually exists.
I thought about it again today. For the first time in a long while. Now I know: I have to catch this memory while it's live, strike while the memory iron is hot, or I'm going to lose it for another decade.
This time, I could ask ChatGPT maybe? There's a lot of info in there.
I'm looking for a difficult to find movie. It's an anime, from over 20 years ago, that I caught on Canadian Teletoon. The plot of the movie featured a woman in a coma, existing in a dream world, where the inhabitants are fated to die at specific intervals. At the climax of the movie, an armored ... truck, or train car, is launched at a giant tower. I can't recall whether or not the woman wakes up at the end of the movie.
Unfortunately, though, no dice. It thought about recommending "Metropolis" to me a handful of times but visibly talked itself out of that. Best it could come up with was something called "The Place Promised in our Early Days", because it also featured a tower.
So I try... anime 90s coma in DuckDuckGo, and lo, fuckin' rights, someone 2 years ago had this same question, and even better: someone answered it:
A woman is in a car accident and winds up in a coma. While in the coma she dreams that she is staying in a strange hotel with her friends. They're visited at night by a little girl with a wolf who predicts when they'll die. "You will die in 3 days". They're fighting the townsfolk for some reason, I believe that one by one her friends disappear until she is all alone. Then she wakes up in the hospital and they're all there.
I believe this anime movie (or OVA) was part of a series, possibly a spin-off of a mecha anime. The name might've been something like "shogun". Was most likely made in the 80s or very early 90s
Thanks,
Yeah, that's the one... except I don't remember the ending being quite so rosy? Anyways, that's definitely it.
Way to go, humans.
Sengoku Majin Goushougun: Toki no ÉTRANGER (1985)
Oddly, when translated into English, they translate the Japanese but not the French, so it goes by "Goshogun: The Time Étranger" - I guess because it was also "Étranger" in Japanese. Look, the french word for "stranger" looks cool, that is plenty justification enough.
Like last time, I found it completely uploaded to YouTube, because this movie is old enough and unpopular enough that its copyright cops aren't really working hard to keep it down.
(this link may break in the future, links like this often do)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LLdgBGnj9ps
Now is the time! I'm going to watch it, and then I can really find out what the deal was. Is it as weird as I remember?
Actually, first, some context.
"Goshogun" makes it sound like it's part of a series, what's that?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GoShogun
GoShogun (戦国魔神ゴーショーグン, Sengoku Majin GōShōgun) is a Japanese super robot anime series created by Takeshi Shudo. It was produced and aired in 1981 in Japan, with a movie special released in 1982 and a film sequel, GoShogun: The Time Étranger or Time Stranger, in 1985.
So I think of this as "A Voltron", which sent me down a different rabbit hole - what exactly was "A Voltron"?
It turns out, it's kind of a catch-all term! Americans translated and edited together multiple, unrelated Japanese mecha anime to make the show "Voltron" entirely on the cutting room floor.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voltron
Voltron is an American animated television series franchise that features a team of space explorers who pilot a giant super robot known as "Voltron". This super robot was created when needed by smaller robots joining together, with the process of that unification varying over time. Produced by Peter Keefe (executive producer) and Ted Koplar through his production company World Events Productions, Voltron was an adaptation of several Japanese anime television series from Toei Company.
At the time, Japanese anime seasons were simply too short to air as North American kids' shows - let alone how often the content was too adult or too weird or full of references that American kids would find too confusing, so in particular shows from the 80s had a real tendency to cut multiple different shows together with a chainsaw to make something usable in the North American market.
I'm convinced that one of the early Japanese artists who came up with the "combined robot mecha" style was inspired by the British 60's show "Thunderbirds" - you know, a bunch of pilots, each with their own cool vehicle. What they added was the huge innovation: what if their cool vehicles COMBINED into a BIG ROBOT".
in America, the Voltron "foreign media chop and screw" technique would eventually metastatize into the 90s' "Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers", which was also pieced together from multiple shows and became a Gigantic Hit.
Perhaps looking at this fella you heard an insane guitar riff in your head. Go, go, Power Rangers.
Well, that's plenty of good context, "GoShogun is kind of a Voltron."
The Wikipedia entry for GoShogun indicates that it was a later iteration of the now very popular giant-combining-mecha kids' TV formula, so GoShogun was funny, irreverent, and kind of hyper-aware of the tropes of the genre.
Perhaps even funnier: the movie "Goshogun: The Time Étranger", set in the Goshogun universe and featuring the pilots of Goshogun does not contain a single transforming robot. It's not a big action-packed space fight romp.
Let's Get Into What Happens
Of course, you can just watch the thing yourself, but if you want it at hyper-speed, let me give you a little tour.
After wandering in the desert with some companions hidden from view, this woman wakes up in a single hotel room in a strange, foreign city, finding an honestly gorgeously rendered gun.
We cut to a different, futuristic city, where this same woman - we don't see her face in this version of the scene - is stuck in traffic.
"Curtis, you said that this movie didn't contain a single transforming robot!"
okay, it does, that one, the little toy one hanging above her dashboard, that's the one.
The traffic is because of bank robbers.
God dammit, let's fuck 'em up.
Doesn't this frame look great? This sunglasses shot looks just gorgeous to me. Look at that hand-drawn set of sunglasses.
The cops are startled by this. This car belongs to Remy Shimada, who was some kinda ... galactic hero pilot, 40 years ago? Now she's a 70-year old lady who still drives like a goddamned demon.
She easily runs these goons off of the road, but her health isn't doing so hot, and she ends up in a nasty crash.
Then, she has a weird flashback of her youth: her mother was a French prostitute and they were poor as hell.
This show is not shy about getting very bold with its camera angles.
Not terribly happy, and it only gets worse from there.
Just a reminder now, we are currently watching a Giant Mecha Anime.
She's rushed to hospital. This whole time, we're careful never to show her whole face: we only ever see pictures of Remy when she was young, never current Remy.
Remy doesn't have health insurance. Or any money.
Two team members were getting back together to meet Remy to talk about something important, but she didn't show.
Everyone (Remy included) honestly looks pretty incredible for 70-year olds - future space skin care and health care must be absolutely top notch. They're visibly older, but they look like they're in their 50s, not their 70s.
While we're at it, we pan over pictures of the original team when they were young, because - honestly, this movie came out 4 years after a single season of GoShogun aired, even people who watched the show could probably use a reminder of who the characters were.
When the heroes find out about Remy, each of them immediately drops everything to go be with her.
That's one of my favorite film tropes, by the way - the "cancel everything, I need to be on the first flight" moment.
The heroes assemble at the hospital, to find out that Remy, on top of her car crash, had some pretty late stage cancer. Future space leukemia.
Okay, "progressive leuko-isolation syndrome". Her blood is... lonely? I think it's safe just to call it future space leukemia.
Doing anything about it would take a specialist from a different hospital, but she's too sick to move, and they're not gonna go pull a specialist for some old lady with no health insurance.
Okay, so, I'm reasonably certain that this was what got me on board when I was a teenager. I had zero context, but something about this team of elderly heroes rallying together to kick the ass of a bitchy doctor to try and rescue an old friend? That feels emotionally satisfying.
Good thing one of their team members (not present) is the literal actual Surgeon General, now.
This guy, one of the more cartoony members of the team, is out in the woods, currently engaged in a dispute with another old team member, trying to get some unused land turned into a hospital.
"i want to turn your land into a hospital"
"no fuck off"
"i can just appropriate your land"
"i'll cut you"
But then the call comes in.
They need him, and fast!
So we get another "drop everything" moment.
YEAH I WANT TO SEE A SAMURAI FIGHT CANCER WITH A JET
This takes us back to... the weird haunted-ass city from before, and who we now can identify as a young Remy Shimada.
Remy opens the door to her hotel room, expecting that her friends are out there. In an "imagination" sequence it's made clear who she expects to find: the guys from earlier, but young. They're all young, here.
Are we in the past, then? Is this a flashback?
Instead of her team, she finds this little girl giving her a letter.
The letter informs Remy that she has 2 days to live.
"How you will die is shown within:"
2 days is also how long the doctor gave her.
The cancer Remy has in the real world was implied to be, like, future space leukemia, so the fact that her fate is to die surrounded by... blood cells? Her own blood? The art direction of this place is going to take on something of a "blood disease" theme.
So this isn't the past? It's... a kind of coma purgatory?
Back to the team: despite being able to marshal all of their significant resources, this is late stage leukemia PLUS a nasty car crash.
She's probably gonna die.
In another France flashback, Child-Remy is getting sexually assaulted by some child bullies.
Well, not quite, because Remy's more interested in wrapping her belt around her fist and completely obliterating them.
tee hee
Tagged anime, media