Ambassador Magma
 Mike Toole  rates it:    

Tezuka Productions have been spoiling me with good stuff for years. After all, it was they who greenlighted the phenomenal Metropolis, they who produced one of the greatest OVA series of the 1990s in Black Jack, they who have given life to artful, exciting cartoons like Jungle Emperor Leo and asyet unseen-in-English treasures like A Tree in the Sun and the brand-new Astroboy. The funny thing is, Tezuka Productions-- a company that sprang forth from the ashes of the bankrupt Mushi Pro, Osamu Tezuka's first animation studio-- also produced their fair share of duds. And boy, Ambassador Magma is one hell of a dud. Given the strength of the original material and the talented staff producing the animation, I'm amazed at just how rotten it is.

Ambassador Magma began life as one of Dr. Tezuka's hundreds of popular manga series. Its titular hero, Magma, was a superhero seemingly tailor-made to fit the desires of an easily-excited six year old-- he was really big and strong. He had cool antennae. He could shoot missiles out of his chest. And, perhaps best of all, he could transform into a giant rocket and fly anywhere he wanted. To top things off, he was covered in gold-- fourteen carat gold! The comic series was popular enough to spawn an equally popular live-action children's show, which actually made its way to the English-speaking world under the title Space Giants. if you're somewhere in the neighborhood of thirty years old or older, you might have caught it when it was running in syndication.

This early 1990s OVA release may have the benefit of being animated rather than relying on clunky costumes and sets and cheeseball special effects, but it's unbelievably dull. The series opens up with a voiceover, featuring a heaping helping of bullshit mythology courtesy of one Steve Blum, who sounded a lot less confident and credible ten years ago than his star turns as Cowboy Bebop's Spike and The Big O's Roger. According to the narration, the forces of good and evil, embodied in the heroic Magma and the evil Goa, fought titanic battles in ages past, but have each been sealed off for thousands of years. The plot kicks in as Goa re-awakens. Apparently, both himself and Magma are inextricably linked to normal humans-- in the case of Magma, the human counterparts are folks from the Asuka clan. Goa immediately dispatches his minions to collect Miki, the youngest daughter of the family, because her death would mean Magma's resurrection.

It kinda doesn't make much sense, but I'd be willing to accept the bullshit mythology angle. The trouble is, Ambassador Magma has all sorts of other problems that drag it farther and farther down the scale. First of all, the dub is a really early one from the talented gang of actors and directors in Los Angeles, so everyone yells their lines at the top of their lungs. Goa is supposed to sound menacing, but to me he sounds kind of like Bender from Futurama-- doubly unfortunate, as the role in the Japanese version was played by Toru Ohira, the exact same guy who voiced Goa in the original live-action TV series. Goa is a pretty preposterous villain, as well-- he never really gives off anything like menace, he mostly just hides in his cave, laughs constantly, and occasionally kills his minions for no apparent reason. He seems to be fond of the whole "laugh so your henchmen will uncomfortably laugh with you, then suddenly BURN THEM TO ASHES" approach.

Then there's Magma, who does indeed look pretty cool in this new version of the story. There's just one problem-- out of the three episodes on the first volume, Magma only really appears for about eight minutes in the second episode, and for the duration of his appearance, the animators seem intent on showing, again and again, the really cool sequence wherein he transforms from a humanoid robot into a futuristic rocket ship. At no point, however, does he open the hatch on his chest and fire dozens of missiles, which really ticks me off-- I paid good money to see those missiles. Also, Magma's voice sounds like a bored man run through a bunch of effects filters-- there's no air of authority or power. If you ask me, Magma should totally have a voice like that of the Jolly Green Giant, but he sounds like like a giant golden robot version of Ben Stein. He speaks with no authority whatsoever-- it's as though his dialogue, while uttered in ALL CAPITAL LETTERS, is curiously devoid of any sort of punctuation.

The rest is all wrapped up with Goa's laughter, Miki's plight, and the involvement of the actual protagonist, a nice kid named Mamoru. Mamoru is a childhood friend of Miki, or something, so he's intent on protecting her from a death that would, nevertheless, result in the resurrection of Ambassador Magma, Hero of Our Nation. Unfortunately, he's not really good with the whole protection business, despite the fact that "Mamoru" means "to protect"-- he's about as good at protecting Miki as the pusher robots are at "protecting" Grandma. Miki eventually meets her doom (after reassuring Mamoru with the line "Our descendants died for this!") in an annoyingly non-violent manner. It would have been way cooler if Magma had to eat her brains to be resurrected. Only Mamoru remains, earth's only remaining link to the emerging Ambassador Magma. So what does Goa do to try and annihilate the boy? He dispatches a really mean dog.

The evil, super-powered Doberman Pischer is really the best part of Ambassador Magma. Not only can it fly and rip through steel, but the dubbed version replaces the generic dog bark sound effects of the original with what sounds like Barney Gumble trying to make really scary dog noises. But the unintentional hilarity of Mega-Dobie is a poor antidote for Ambassador Magma's lame animation, horrible dialogue, and incoherent plot. You know a series has problems when the flashback sequences reference events from the same episode, and Ambassador Magma employs this cheap trick multiple times. Combine this with a backstory that's little more than a pale copy of the whole Lensman thing (where Goa = Boskone and Magma = Arisia) and you have an alarmingly shitty series. Ambassador Magma goes on for thirteen episodes. I could not imagine sitting through all of them. Just the first three, aside from the dim flashes of comedy from the belching superdog, are insufferable pieces of trash. Ambassador Magma just might be the worst Tezuka animation ever made.

Added:  Saturday, October 18, 2003

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