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Hey, everyone! I have very exciting news to share. (Well, I find it exciting, and I suspect a few of you might as well. Some of you might roll your eyes, but it’s all good.)
A couple of weeks ago, I finally ordered a DVD/VHS combo recorder/player. It came in last week, and I tried it out tonight with one of my Japanese PoDW VHS tapes, and it worked really well!
I now have a DVD copy of the Japanese equivalent of the Dark Water miniseries. (And this also answers that query from a few posts back, for the end credits for episodes 1 and 3, as it includes the credits for each of the 5 episodes.) It’s also now possible to make DVD copies of the English-language Dark Water miniseries and The Saga Begins.
This opens a lot of doors (or at least leaves the doors ajar, as the one big doorjamb left is time…I’m quitting my job and moving to Pittsburgh within the next month!). I can capture DVDs of the various PoDW videos I have been wanting to digitize for years, and I can also rip screenshots and video clips for the site, especially of the more rare content, like the Dark Water opening (though it’s already on YouTube) and the cut scene from the end of “Dishonor,” as well as screencaps of the differences between DW and PoDW.
And…time permitting, once again…I may be able to offer DVDs for sale. (I’d been avoiding trying to make money off this site for many years, but I’m looking for fairly painless ways to make some side cash while I’m in grad school. Google Ads is something else I’m thinking about trying.) We’ll see how it goes, though. I have no idea if they’d be bare-bones, or if I’d find the time to create disc art and DVD covers, but I’m thinking about it.
Man…so much potential, so little time. But this is still a big stride forward, after all these years of stagnancy!
Hey, everyone–how are you doing?
So as I mentioned in the last post, I will be starting grad school this fall. I’m attempting to set a goal for myself, which is to make a substantial update to the site (and not just the blog) before school starts at the end of August. We’ll see if I can do it–I really hope I can because there’s a lot I would like to clean up and consolidate. Not to mention, I really don’t know if I will have time to make any big updates to this site during my two years in school (something tells me Carnegie Mellon isn’t the easiest of schools…), and I don’t want to let this site become more stagnant than it already has (the date in the header and footer still says 2007!). The biggest constraints that come to mind are time and my aching right wrist…we’ll see how it goes, though.
To those of you who have continued to stop by and who’ve taken a moment to send me a note recently–thank you so much. Life has been really busy (between preparing to start school, move, and leave my current job and my life here in Atlanta) and your kind words have really lifted my spirits. :)
Some PoDW-related stuff…
- There are several very cool items on eBay right now: several gorgeous cels from The Quest (ep. 1) and a storyboard sketch sheet (!!!) from Dishonor. (ep. 2) The cels are $70 each and the storyboard sketch sheet is $80. These are the best cels I’ve seen available for purchase in years, so if you can afford them, go for it.
- It’s been pointed out to me (hi, Mugetsu!) that the five seals you see tiling down the page, the ones from the end credits of episodes 1-13, are not available for download anywhere on the site. CRAP. Sorry about that! Here they are: the seals from The Quest, Dishonor, Break-Up, Betrayal, and Victory.
Some animation-related news…80s Fever is in the air again. I heard a rumor (hi, Ryan!) that the same people who released Mysterious Cities of Gold on DVD are thinking about releasing Spartacus and the Sun Beneath the Sea. (I have not seen either of these, but from all the e-mails that have come in, a bunch of you have and were very fond of both these shows, so…heads-up!)
On top of that, according to Johane Matte (a.k.a. Rufftoon), an animation artist who did storyboard work on Avatar, there are plans for a sequel to Mysterious Cities of Gold–apparently there have been rumors about this for a while now, and other failed attempts, but she seems to believe this stands a chance of happening.
I couldn’t help but read that and feel a little discouraged. It’s great that so many other beloved shows are being rediscovered, but why not this one? There are so many thousands of fans out there who have such fond and strong memories of this show. I know I haven’t really done anything to organize or mobilize the fans, besides attempts at messageboards and the like (though I’ve thought about it more recently)–my emphasis has been more on digging up information about the show around the time of its production and posting as much as I can find. There’s a petition on petitiononline.com with thousands of signatures, but who’s doing anything with it?
When looking through old e-mails, I came across a mention of a posting on a messageboard a couple of years back where somebody claimed that the PoDW master reels in the Warner Bros. vault had been badly damaged, and that’s why they haven’t been released on DVD or otherwise revisited yet. As far as I know, that’s only a rumor…but it’s kind of sad that wholly unsubstantiated rumors are all we have to depend on. If that news were true, that would be terrible, but at least it would be a concrete reason. It’s hard for me to fathom that people could just blithely overlook this show, considering the loyal fan base and how many people do remember it.
It figures that within an hour of writing my last post, I discovered the Scan to OCR feature on my scanner, and it works really well, though it’s a bit time-consuming. So…just ignore my question in the previous post. (But still do read the post, as there’s another question there that I hope some of you may be able to answer!)
I’ve scanned the cover, the introduction/information pages, and character sheets 1-6. They are available here, as hi-res scans. (I must say, these character designs are kind of cheesy…)
It will be a while since I can put together the text and images into a PDF. But at least I can start to get the files up for those of you who want to look through them. With any luck, I can scan a few a night.
I am so anxious to work on this site. I have so many updates to put up, but I really want to clean up the code and possibly redesign the site all over again before adding to the content clutter. (Though maybe at some point I can at least update the copyright date to say 2009. Good grief.) I’ve put a fair amount of time into trying to organize the content more logically, reduce some sections and introduce some new ones. But I’m juggling several projects at work and have plenty of other stuff going on, and before long I have to start preparing to move to Pittsburgh. Hopefully I can find some time this summer before the move to get some good work done, finally!
EDITED TO ADD: while scanning more pages, I started browsing YouTube and made some pretty awesome PoDW finds:
PoDW theme, on guitar and violin – wow! Some intonation issues, but this is a great effort, and the arrangement is actually very folksy and pretty! I’m assuming the musicians are Romanian, since they use the Romanian show title. Wow…I am so happy to have stumbled across this little gem.
Japanese opening theme music – I can’t stop cracking up. This is so bad it’s great. (I believe I’d linked to this a while ago, but it’s been a while!)
PoDW opening in Russian. I love coming across clips of the show in other languages.
Soul Caliber 4: PoDW mods – someone created Ren, Ioz, and Tula with the Soul Caliber 4 character editor (as well as characters from other shows/series). The PoDW bit starts around 3:15. Pretty cool!
Hello! I’m still alive…just busy, as always. (I am still behind on my e-mail–sorry!) I come to you with two requests, one from a fan and one from me (also a fan, but…you know what I mean).
The first request…
Jeffrey is wondering…do any of you have the original end credits for episodes 1 and 3? How about the original end credits for the Fox run of the show?
This is a trickier question than it seems. Many of you know of those seals that appear in the background of episodes 1-5 (the same seals that run down the sides of this website layout):
1. The Quest: an octopus (the seal of Octopon)
2. Dishonor: the island with the moon overhead (the Island of the Pale Warriors/Atani?)
3. Break-Up: a crown, wings, and shackles (symbolizing Pandawa)
4. Betrayal: a woman’s face, half revealing the skull (symbolizing Tula’s betrayal)
5. Victory: three human hands and one monkeybird hand forming a peace symbol
However, on the Boomerang airings of the show, and some (all?) of Cartoon Network’s airings as well, the credits that appear with The Quest are actually the credits for Dishonor–the island crest is visible in the background. And the credits that appear with Break-Up are those of Betrayal, with the woman seal in the background. (I never realized this mistake till he kindly pointed this out. I am astonished to have not seen this mistake(?) before.)
Do any of you have any video clips, DVDs, VHS tapes, etc. that have the proper credits for The Quest and Break-Up? How about the credits from the original Fox run? Jeffrey is eager to access the original credits for each episode (and now I am, too!). Please do let me know if you can help out.
Next, my request…
After long last, I have finally started to complete work on the digital copies of the PoDW RPG module and World Book. Many people have asked me about these over the years, and I just couldn’t start working on them for one reason or another. I am truly sorry about that. But now that I’ve gotten into grad school for the fall, I feel more of a sense of urgency to update this site before I most likely drop off the face of the earth for 2 years. As it is, the next 3 months before I move and start school are going to be extremely busy.
It turns out the World Book has a lot of gaping holes in it that I (in my RPG-ignorant state when I typed it up years ago) figured people could just make up as they went along, but I finally see how helpful it would have been to have all those stats and additional info I’d cut out. I will be posting the full version in PDF format some time soon…it’s not a huge undertaking but it is time-consuming.
As for the character sheets, there are 105 of them, and this is where my request comes in. Would you be willing to help type them? I have a scanner, and I can scan the pages in, but they will be image files and very large (way too large to generate a PDF from), and the thought of transcribing over 100 images fills me with dread. That’s precisely why I haven’t attempted this before–it’s a ton of work for one person to do and I just haven’t had the time to start on it.
What I propose is this: I will start scanning the images and put them in a directory and post the link here. If you would be so kind as to volunteer to type up one or a few pages, comment on the thread in question with the pages you are doing, and e-mail me your transcriptions, with the page name/number in the e-mail title. I will compile them into a PDF (and eventually create a standard HTML version, too), and in the meantime, the images are also accessible to everyone.
It’s rare that I put out a call for help like this, but this is something dozens of people have asked for, and I feel horrible for holding out on you guys. I have always prided myself on putting every bit of media and information I receive on the site, but over the last couple of years it’s all been piling up. It would mean a lot to me and to many other interested fans if you could take a few minutes and help out. :)
As always, thank you for sticking with me and supporting the site. This show is now officially 18 years old, and you guys are just as awesome and supportive as ever, and I can’t thank you enough for that.
Because I run a website devoted to a classic 80s/90s animated series (actually, 1991-1993, but it’s often lumped in with the 80s due to the nostalgia factor), over the years I’ve gotten a number of inquiries about other animated shows from that same period. Usually I have to regretfully inform the enquirers that I can’t help them out.
One of the shows that a lot of people have asked me about over the years is The Mysterious Cities of Gold. It’s actually an anime series that was dubbed into English, and I think at least part of it has been on YouTube for a while–I never watched it when it was on TV, but I did watch the first episode on YouTube and thought it looked pretty cool.
Well, Mysterious Cities of Gold fans can now rejoice, because the show is being released in the US on DVD on April 7th. There are even two editions, regular and deluxe. Check out the press release, courtesy of tvshowsondvd.com.
(Oops…I guess I’m behind the times, because it came out in the UK last year on DVD, and there’s been a French release, too. Still, hopefully this helps someone out!)
I haven’t checked the tv.com PoDW section in a while, and there have been some definite updates–namely, the trivia section.
My first reaction: WHOA. Who wrote this? (I have a few theories, based on the main contributors listed there, a number of whom have contacted me through this site over the years.) Whoever it was is incredibly perceptive because s/he’s noticed a lot of stuff I have never seen or realized in the many times I have rewatched these episodes.
My second reaction: On the whole, it’s more of a bloopers/errors/continuity-questions page, but still fun. :)
And a question: The second point under “The Beast and the Bell” references an interview “four years ago” with a writer who worked on this episode. Which writer? Where is this interview from and who conducted it, and was this really done as recently as 2004-05? (I’ll eventually start asking around on tv.com, but if anyone reads this who knows the answer, I would really appreciate if you could tell me!)
And I’m still looking for any suggestions or input from all of you, as per the previous post. Thanks again!
I have finally finished my graduate school applications (YAY!) and have free time to pursue personal projects again–including this site!
This is where I turn to you. I have two broad questions, and I really would appreciate if all of you could take a few minutes to answer these, either in the comments or by e-mailing me.
What do you want to see on this site? It could be something I’ve been promising to add for a long time (there are many such things) or something totally new.
Are there any questions you have about any aspect of the show that the site doesn’t already cover? (Besides “how was the show supposed to end?” because that question doesn’t have an answer. :P) Questions on characters, merchandise, plot, production…anything at all.
And general feedback is always welcome–what you like, what you don’t like, what’s broken, what rocks your world, and so on. (I just realized today that there are a ton of broken links in the image navigation section…ooops.)
As always, thank you for your feedback and your constant patience and support! I truly appreciate it!
Oh! As a quick addendum to the previous post, about racism in Avatar…it looks like Jesse McCartney is out as Prince Zuko in Shyamalan’s* Avatar film (THANK GOODNESS), and Slumdog Millionaire’s Dev Patel is in. Though I really liked Patel in Slumdog, this still isn’t good enough, because it’s like they’re trying to appease the protestors by throwing in one token dark-skinned dude somewhere, and the good guys are still white and the (ambiguously) bad guy’s still a minority…and not even the right minority, since the Fire Nation is very obviously East Asian! Not to mention, pretty much the only other way you’ll see minorities in these films are in the form of extras with no lines. (Check out this appallingly ignorant statement from the casting director of the film. Since when do Koreans wear kimono? Oh, wait, but they all look alike, so nobody cares, right?)
* if you reference M. Night Shyamalan in your comments on this site, please do me a favor and don’t mock his name just because it’s “strange.” As unhappy as I am with his decisions as of late, both our last names are of Tamil origin and we both hail from the same region of southern India, so his name is no stranger than mine is. I cringe any time I see “Shamalamadingdong” or any variant thereof because it reminds me of all the times people either accidentally or intentionally butcher my name or just don’t feel like trying to get it right.
Happy New Year!
I’m taking a break from working on grad school applications (the first two are due Monday, the rest in February) to post; with any luck I can manage a website update sometime in late February or early in the spring (yikes…). I guess I didn’t have a chance to post again before 2008 ended, but that’s all right. I hope this year brings good things for all of you, and I just want to state again how grateful I am for your continued support and encouragement of this site and of me.
Anyway, moving on–there was some news (not PoDW-related, but animation-related) within the last couple of months that I wanted to bring up here. It’s a bit old now, and I didn’t really think a whole lot about it at the time, but I’ve been reading a bit about it today, and the more I think about it, the more upset it makes me.
M. Night Shyamalan is creating a trilogy of films based on Avatar: The Last Airbender. (This isn’t the problem, FYI.) I don’t know about you all, but I think this is one of the most finely crafted animated series to make it big in many years. A big part of its appeal to me was the attention to detail the creators have paid to ensuring that the Avatar universe is heavily Asian-inspired and completely faithful to the cultures it draws from. The characters’ ethnicities and clothing, the architecture, the food and drink, and the overall philosophy is rooted very heavily in Asian, Inuit, and South American traditions and styles with a twist of steampunk thrown in (the Fire Nation’s naval technology). Bryan Konietzko and Michael Dante DiMartino were very heavily inspired by Hayao Miyazaki and Studio Ghibli, and they spent years on world-building, working with people from the cultures they were trying to convey to ensure authenticity, and employed a multi-ethnic cast and crew to make this refreshingly diverse universe as solid and true as possible.
And it was fantastic: the characters are obviously internationally inspired, and they don’t play into stereotypes, the way Asian or minority characters tend to in so many TV shows and films. The characters in Avatar are normal human beings, and have attracted the attention of fans all over the world because of what a breath of fresh air it is to see the diversity that exists in our world portrayed so warmly and respectfully. I thoroughly enjoyed watching the show and trying to identify all the different world cultures they incorporated into each new episode, and they treated every single one with the utmost respect. As a 1.5-generation Indian myself (I was born in India and grew up in the US), I became really nervous when they introduced Guru Pathik, but I really had nothing to worry about–his character was solid and wonderful, and not at all an Apu-like caricature, which is how Indians have almost always been portrayed for many years in the media.
This does have a PoDW tie, actually, because the cast of PoDW is completely multi-ethnic, not just in skin color but in facial structure, accents, clothing, and more. And while the world is quite fantasy-heavy and plays with pirate legends and references, there are some undeniable ties to various countries and cultures in the designs of the characters and locales. Many of the people I’ve talked to through this site, and many of the comments I’ve seen on other sites, have pointed this out as something very positive and refreshing.
Anyway, about a month ago, the casting for Shyamalan’s Avatar films was announced–and the main characters are all white.
Yikes…hello! It’s been a while. I promise I’m not dead–just very busy. Retaking the GRE, occasionally studying for level 2 of the JLPT, and working on grad school applications and my visual portfolio…plus playing catch-up at work this week because I was sick and out of the office for two days…I haven’t had a lot of time to myself lately.
I did begin some work on reorganizing some aspects of the site, and my Designy Sense (meant to sound like Spidey-Sense…pardon me, it’s been a long week) is really tingling. One thing that’s been bugging me for months is that the Mac and PC versions of the same fonts behave differently, so because of the differences in Verdana between the Mac and PC, the navigation is totally wrong on the Mac.
I’m almost tempted to attempt another redesign and try to stick it in my portfolio, though there’s the whole constraint of “pretty portfolio site” =/= “caters to all users.” Eh, we’ll see. I really wish I were a better web developer, so I could generate the content dynamically and not have to change over 50 separate HTML pages individually (did you notice that the copyright statement still says 2007? yeah…). I like to do it all myself and not rely on some generic CMS that dictates the site’s layout, too.
And I am seriously behind on my e-mails. I’m really sorry about that.
Okay, something related to the show: I was rewatching episode 1 (I created my own DVDs of the show thanks to iDVD on the Mac, which rocks) and picked up on something during the rhyme-in-runes that Alomar shows Ren.
Thirteen Treasures of Ancient Time
Thirteen Lessons of Rule in Rhyme
“Lessons of Rule.” Once that phrase registered for me, it immediately brought to mind this article, and specifically, this quote:
“Sailing in a vessel called the Wraith, Ren tries to locate “the Thirteen Treasures of Rule,” which are qualities such as perseverance, strength, grace, generosity, kindness. They are, said Kirschner, the qualities that will make Ren more qualified to take over his father’s position as king of Octopon.
Kirschner sees the story as a mirror of life and the search for the power that lies within a person.
“It’s an action-adventure that’s certainly a swashbuckler,” said Kirschner. “The story is about a boy who’s thrown into a situation beyond his control: He has to bring back the Thirteen Treasures of Rule. At the end of the story, Northern Wind touches him – and it’s his father’s voice – saying, `Come home.’ This amazing journey was not to collect these treasures, but it was what they signified. He moves that much closer to being a true ruler with the qualities it takes to preside over a people.”
I’m not sure how many of you ever did happen to see that article, but it’s a rather telling one–that quote in particular.
Hopefully I’ll post again this year, and I hope you all have a great weekend!
Very short notice, but while I (probably) won’t be at the convention, I will be at the parade this morning with my friends, wearing a b&w PoDW shirt I had made in college years ago and brown capris. (I’m Indian, too.) Come look for me!
(I’ve now broken my tradition of posting something on my birthday every year, which was yesterday. 27 years old…wow. This site’s been with me for a very, very long time.)