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The Mike Toole Show - Christmas Special Forces

I've never understood this obsession with endless narratives about the need to "save Christmas." When has Christmas ever been in danger?

Seriously, if the Alf Christmas special couldn't kill it, nothing can.

Nah, in the end that was a saving Christmas story too. Most such hold that stopping Santa = Christmas destroyed, but the Grinch showed that nothing can harm Christmas and proved my point that it has never needed saving. Not even from Martians.

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Seriously, if the Alf Christmas special couldn't kill it, nothing can.

I'm almost afraid to ask, but... is it even worse than the Star Wars Christmas Special?

Quote:

Seriously, if the Alf Christmas special couldn't kill it, nothing can.

I'm almost afraid to ask, but... is it even worse than the Star Wars Christmas Special?

I get tired of their noncommittal "We'll see" and then nothing is ever done and there's 0 communication that anything is in progress. I find their communication skills very lacking.

Well, ymmv of course. It doesn't have Chewbacca's dad watching VR porn, but it does have death, abandonment, suicidal depression, and a child with a terminal illness (complete with In Memory Of title card at the end). Read up and decide for yourself.

All of these were underwritten by Rankin and Bass, and written in the US (usually by a fellow named Romeo Muller), but otherwise created almost entirely in Japan.

Of course, the Japanese aspect of these stop-motion specials wasn't specifically obscured—you could still find Mochinaga's name in the credits—but it was brushed aside in favor of highlighting the studio name and celebrity voice stars that populated the productions. Rankin and Bass would talk unctuously about how hard everyone worked on their specials, not noting that, in terms of production design and animation, “everyone” was mainly Mochinaga and his assistants, Ichiro Komuro and Akikazu Kono, who'd eventually take over directing the stop-motion fare for Rankin-Bass.

Not every Rankin-Bass cartoon show would involve Hara—the well-liked 1969 Frosty the Snowman special was the product of Mushi Production, with animation direction supplied by none other than Osamu Dezaki. I like living in a world where Dezaki collaborated, in a strictly secondhand fashion, with Jimmy Durante.

Getting back to the business of Christmas specials, Topcraft got busy with stuff like 1974's Twas the Night Before Christmas, in which the credits mention “cinematography” by Tsuguyuki Kubo, who actually served as director and character designer for the show!

The important thing is, this means that technically there is an anime feature starring Geroge Gobel, star of The George Gobel Show.

Unlike a lot of these specials, this one aired fairly concurrently in Japan, on TV Asahi—the country had to wait years for earlier stuff, like Rudolph. But they edited Stingiest Man in Town down a bit for the Japanese telecast, by about five minutes. Man, don't you hate it when a local company decides to trim a foreign-made production?!

The studio kept going for a while after Nausicaä's success, with their final production being The Adventures of the Little Koala—a show produced by Tohokushinsha, made specifically for Japan.

but their final stab at an animated Christmas special was 2001's Santa Baby, an Eartha Kitt vehicle that featured work by a young screenwriter named Suzanne Collins. But hey, it was still produced with Japanese talent! Rankin-Bass kept using talented anime creators, right to the end.

At the very least, I figure we might someday see an anime special that's good enough to cause a huge swath of the population to be seriously upset when the TV networks try to stop airing it, like what the people of Sweden did when SVT1 tried to take away their Christmas Donald Duck cartoons. I want an anime special to have that kind of staying power!

I doubt you'll ever see them, the same way you'll likely never see a Cultural Festival episode of an American show set at school. Both are deeply rooted in and a product of their particular cultures.

It really blew my mind when I started getting into this fandom and learned that the specials that form the heart of the modern American Christmas mythos were almost universally created in Japan. Growing up, we had a ridiculously well-worn VHS that my parents used to tape the TV airings of just about every special you could think of (anyone remember CBS's awesome "Special Presentation" intro?),

and along with the Grinch and Charlie Brown, it was pretty much all Rankin-Bass. So I guess thanks to Japan for making this time of year fantastic.