Forum - View topicThe Mike Toole Show - Holding Out for a Heroman
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albanian
 Posts: 133 Location: UK |
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OK, so I'm a sucker for all things stanlee. I'm more than a little taken (visually, at least) by The Reflection. Yes, it's flawed in so many ways, but there is just enough about the animation to keep me fascinated and attentive - even if it is the fascination of watching a car crash. And certainly the insert song is one of the better ones.
I would also stand up for the glories of Heroman. Thank goodness for Crunchyroll - but it would be really nice to have a copy in my eager mitts. Please....... |
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EricJ2
 Posts: 4016 |
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Who's afraid of the Art of Noise? 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HPiqwvbegq0 (Ah, some of us children of the 80's haven't heard Trevor's name in a while, unless it was behind-the-scenes on somebody else's hit...)
It was hardly Stan's idea--The rise of Japanese outsourcing (with animator in-jokes) was everywhere on 80's network TV, especially in Saban and Sunbow-animated series, with the US companies getting less and less network budget to work with. The difference in style was one of the reasons the Thundercats were cooler than He-Man. 
I'm guessing it was after SLM's folding, but before his '08 projects, that we got the attempts to make superheroes out of other hard-up real-life celebrities, like superspy Ringo Starr, or Pamela Anderson as Stripperella? |
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Wyvern
 Posts: 1606 |
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It's a shame that Heroman never quite took off the way its creators hoped it would. It really is a fun all-ages show, with some above-average animation and a great sense of humor.
But the funnest thing about it may be how aggressively American it tries to be: the setting is a photogenic idealized California (and then later New York City) Heroman has an American flag design on his body for no good reason, and every character has at least one interest which Japanese folks would see as stereotypically American, like classic rock music, cheerleading, and football. Joey is even the son of a coal miner. American flags are used as scene transitions in the 1st intro sequence, and the 2nd intro ends with everyone posing in front of the Statue of Liberty. It's a bit like if an western company wanted to sell a show to Japan, so they made all the characters samurai sushi chefs who love karaoke. |
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GoldCrusader
Posts: 1023 |
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Heroman was super fun! It's really a shame silly stuff stopped it from being dubbed.
Ultimo is also great. I need to read the 2 last volumes. |
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Animegomaniac
Posts: 4161 |
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Stan Lee, great creator or just a guy who's so good at promoting ideas that he can even sell his own ideas to himself? I lean towards the creator side, especially character definition development through dialogue. And no where is that more prevalent than his run on Dr. Strange or more exactly, when his run ends and other writers have to come up with purple prose dialogue for a Vincent Price lookalike who chants spells in alliterative rhymes. None of that is easy, who'd guess?
So what I think he's good at is coming up with a voice and making a series that builds around that. There's the ones that work, Spider-Man, Thor, The Thing of the Fantastic Four and a lesser extent Ironman and Captain America but then there's the Hulk and Ant-man. With the Hulk, Lee couldn't decide which kind of voice to use and it was later writers who came up with basic "Hulk Smash!"... Lee loves monologues, what a shock I know so he kept coming up ways for the Hulk to speak and speak and not punch and punch. Like giving Hulk Banner's mind more than once or making Hulk smart in his own right. One variation he came up with is the "jerk Hulk" who is downright rude and usually nastily sarcastic. He was used in the first Avengers comics which I like but never caught on as a main character persona in his own series which went through a number of fails prior to the "Hulk smash!" years. The Jerk Hulk persona, used in A:EMH, would work great as a movie version and it seems like it'll pop up in the next Thor movie. Hank Pym, the Ant-man... Lee tried and tried but never managed even to sell himself on the character. Never came up with a full cast, never came up with a voice... never even settled on a name as Lee himself was responsible for Ant-man, and Giant Man from Ant-man's own series and Goliath in the Avengers. Roy Thomas later turned him into Yellowjacket... and Hawkeye into Goliath because... bows are lame?... and then promptly buried the character as quickly as he could. So with all this, I could imagine Lee of the 60s as a successful manga editor and dialogue scripter. These days... creator of creative common cameos. |
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EricJ2
Posts: 4016 |
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The next Thor movie was (unofficially) taken from the print-comic "Planet Hulk" story written during the height of the Jerk Hulk era. And yeah, what a jerk. Looks like the movie will be trying to bridge the gap between homaging the story's original Jerk Hulk who could make complete obnoxious sentences, and the classic "Hulk smash" Bride-of-Frankenstein style of sympathetic limited sentences. Sort of the "Mongo only pawn in game of life" style, which seems to work well for Marvel's post-Guardians MCU vibe. |
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DangerMouse
Posts: 4006 |
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Yeah, I'm surprised it never aired, and I wish we had at least gotten blu-rays (and a dub) for Heroman, it was fun, and BONES' animation for it was pretty gorgeous.
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Levitz9
 Posts: 1022 Location: Puerto Rico |
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I really wanted to like Ultimo, back when I first read about it in Shonen Jump Magazine. I loved the idea of Western and Japanese artists collaborating, and who better than Stan Lee right?
I ultimately think Ultimo works more because of Hiroyuki Takei's influences and less because of Lee. Takei is, in my opinion, very understated as a creator as far as his works go. Shaman King is a very well-paced adventure, and a lot of that fun, wild energy and design went into Ultimo. The villains look like people you'd love to hate, and the heroes all have a degree of "cool" to them, even if they're short and kinda dumpy-looking. I never read more than the first volume (it's all SJ ran in their magazine), but I always did want to read more. Just a shame about what happened to that one character in Ultimo that spoiler[was gay but handled poorly]. Speaking of Disney  : the one story I'll never get over is how, at one point, Disney was in talks with Media Blasters for the television rights to GaoGaiGar. According to the times Media Blasters were on ANNCast, we were this close to seeing it happen... then Disney pulled out and went with Naruto Shippuden for whatever reason. A real shame; outside of GaoGaiGar's attack being named "Hell and Heaven", that show was made for Saturday morning broadcasts in the US.
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SkerllyFC07
Posts: 108 |
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While is a big. damn. shame. that Heroman never was broadcasted in TV in the US(where it SHOULD have arrived after Japan), or wasn´t dubbed there, the series was dubbed, and broadcasted even, in Latin America. It has a dub produced in Colombia, and the series was broadcasted on Jetix LA. The countries that broadcasted the series were Peru, Chile, Argentina, Mexico and Venezuela. So we LatAms can at least say something about it. But even then, not much of us knew, or know much about the series. If you want to know a bit about it, you can read here: http://es.doblaje.wikia.com/wiki/Heroman, although the site is in Spanish.
For having Stan Lee as a creator, and for his popularity and reputation, both Ultimo and Heroman are products only a few comic book readers and anime viewers, let alone those casual audiences, know anything about. |
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Shar Aznabull
 Posts: 236 |
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I remember seeing a few of those Heroman dub clips and being surprised by how not terrible it sounded for a SEA dub, to the point that I wondered if it was actually something produced elsewhere. Now, where's my coffee?
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FukuchiChiisaia
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There's a time when I woke up in the morning suprised that Heroman is aired in my country (Indonesia) with Indonesia dub.
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lostbirdinatree
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Oh gosh, Heroman. I came for the Stan Lee cameo and BONES, and couldn't stay past one ep. Stan Lee x BONES sounds like a winning combo in my eyes because I love BONES and I love superheroes, and visually Heroman is a winning combo, but...it hit the roadblock between "anime" and "cartoon" I've tried so hard to raise over the course of my anime-watching life.
I'm liking The Reflection a bit better, but that's because even though it skimps on animation, it's at least a unique watch...like a poor man's Concrete Revolutio without politics and with the setting changed. Ultimo was at least cool, although calling your Evil Robot "Vice" is as cliche as they come. Still need to catch up on the series, but what the hey. |
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MrTerrorist
Posts: 1348 |
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I have watched the Heroman dubbed on Disney
Malaysia once and the funny thing i noticed is that the channel censored the teacher Ms Vera Collins boobs.[/u]
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CatSword
 Posts: 1489 |
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Disney has made some dumb anime/programming choices. Instead of Naruto Shippuden and some other randomness they syndicated (The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air? Really?), they should've aired Heroman, GaoGaiGar, and Stitch! in its entirety (they showed the first four episodes over one week during weekday mornings while kids were in school...why the hell did they bother?).
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Primus
 Posts: 2827 Location: Toronto |
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Unfortunately, the treatment of Heroman and Stitch (which, let me add, they dubbed the entire TV series and the specials in LA under SAG) are kind of the norm when it comes to Disney's Asian productions. Marvel Disk Wars: The Avengers also got an LA dub and it only wound up in South East Asia. They launched a new Stitch series in China earlier this year and despite that show's original language being English, it's apparently only set for release in Asia. I fully expect the same to hold true for Marvel Future Avengers.
Maybe some of them wind up on that Disney streaming service to fluff up their HD content totals.Heroman, though, probably won't. The dub for that got the third party show (Kaito Joker, Big Shot Tsukara, Line Town, etc.) treatment from Disney. I'm not sure they'll be eager to share it. |
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