Dallos

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Original video animation
title Dallos
Original title ダ ロ ス
transcription Darosu
Country of production JapanJapan Japan
original language Japanese
Year (s) 1983-1984
Studio Studio Pierrot
length 30 minutes
Episodes 4th
genre Science fiction
Director Mamoru Oshii , Hisayuki Toriumi
idea Hisayuki Toriumi
script Hisayuki Toriumi, Mamoru Oshii
production Yūji Nunokawa
music Ichirō Nitta, Hiroyuki Namba
synchronization

Dallos ( Japanese ダ ロ ス , Darosu ) is a Japanese four-part anime series from 1983 to 1984. It was the first anime ( original video animation ) in Japan to be produced directly for the home theater market .

action

In order to solve its most serious problems of increasingly scarce resources and overpopulation, the earth decided to colonize the moon. On the far side of the moon, the colony of Monopolis emerged, whose rich mines heralded a new era of prosperity on earth, while the colonists practically do slave labor, are constantly monitored and have little of this wealth. Among the third generation of colonists at the end of the 21st century, who no longer have any connection to their earthly homeland, more and more efforts for freedom are stirring that are slowly moving towards an open uprising.

Remember Bartholomew

17-year-old Shun Nonomura ( シ ュ ン ・ ノ ノ ム ラ ) is once again deeply absorbed in his handicrafts with a gripper, while girlfriend Rachel ( レ イ チ ェ ル , Reicheru ) is bored of his lack of attention. Both are suddenly attacked by a police dog who is part of a raid looking for the leader of a guerrilla movement, Dog McCoy ( ド グ ・ マ ッ コ イ , Dogu Makkoi ). Shun can fend off this with his gripper arm and makes his first acquaintance with Dog McCoy, who in turn is impressed to use the mining tools as weapons.

The next day, Shun and Rachel go to the spaceport, as there is a rare visitor from Earth there: Melinda Hearst ( メ リ ン ダ ・ ハ ー ス ト , Merinda Hāsuto ), the daughter of the presumably future President of the Earth Federation, and fiancee of the military commander of the colonial government, Alex Leiger ( ア レ ッ ク ス ・ ラ イ ガ ー , Arekkusu Raigā ). There were violent protests during which Shun was picked up by the police and brought to Leiger. Leiger quickly realizes that Shun is innocent, but still has him locked up because he later wants to talk to Shun about his brother, who seven years earlier was the supposed ringleader of the Bartholomew incident - an attack on a police unit - and for life Forced labor on a Saturn penal colony was convicted. McCoy frees his men from prison, including Shun, who was in the same cell.

Leiger later goes on an inspection tour to show Melinda the lunar colony. They are attacked by McCoy's guerrilla fighters with converted mining equipment, with Shun joining them. The insurgents manage to take Melinda hostage.

Dallos Hakai Shirei!

Shun joins the insurgents mainly to talk to Melinda about the earth. At the same time, due to the successes of McCoy's guerrilla fighters and Leiger's hard line, the sympathizers of the uprising increased and there were daily attacks against the colonial government. But even within these there is resistance to Leiger and in particular Vice Consul Katerina ( カ テ リ ー ナ , Katerīna ) pleads for a policy change to come to an understanding with the rebels. But McCoy is also frustrated because his actions do not have the intended effect of forcing the Earth Federation to react, as the colonial government is more or less hiding the uprisings from them.

Rachel, in turn, is concerned that Shun is constantly with Melinda and visits the park to clear her head. There she meets Leiger, who is taking a private walk, who asks her why the colonists can look ahead despite the harsh conditions. Rachel replies with Dallos, an artificial structure. This was probably built by the earlier scientists who were on the moon before the colonists. For the early colonists on the back of the moon, where it is impossible to see the earth, Dallos was a symbol of their home earth, as well as a protective fortress, and is therefore especially revered like a god by the older colonists. Leiger then rightly suspects that the rebels have their headquarters in Dallos and there is a bitter struggle for and in Dallos that is then largely destroyed. During the fighting, Shun and Melinda fled through the catacombs with Melinda, where they met Rachel and Shun's grandfather, who were both looking for him, and later Leiger, where the catacombs collapsed due to the destruction.

Bōkyō no Umi ni Tatsu: Act I

With the destruction of Dallos, more and more colonists lay down their work. McCoy tries to persuade the elders to call a general strike and take over government so that their fight finally gets down to earth. They are vehemently against bringing the fight to Monopolis or harming the earth by stopping the mining work, since they belong to the first generation who still experienced and participated in how the earth once scraped together its last economic resources and made great sacrifices, to enable the colonization of the moon. McCoy cannot understand this again, as this has nothing to do with his, the third generation.

Shun's grandfather was injured when the catacombs collapsed, so that he, accompanied by Melinda, wants to take it to the hospital. On the way there, they are picked up by McCoy, who was informed about it by Rachel, and wants to prevent Shun from falling into the hands of the government and divulging secrets as a member of the insurgents. Shortly thereafter, they see the government destroy their street block, killing Shun's mother. This action planned by Vice Consul Katerina to remove Leiger from his post is, as expected of him, the last drop that overflows the barrel for the colonists, so that the elders also agree to the general strike.

Leiger learns that Dallos repaired himself independently and that the insurgents also used this as a base again. Leiger had also previously requested a battalion of Federation soldiers, so that both sides are now preparing for the great battle. Katerina, in turn, blackmailed the police chief with the fact that he was the actual perpetrator of the Bartholomew incident, and gave him the order to kill Leiger in the ensuing turmoil.

Bōkyō no Umi ni Tatsu: Act II

In the end, there is the final battle in which the insurgents achieve initial successes due to their superior numbers and the advantage as defenders, but are ultimately inferior to the well-trained Federation battalion. At the height of the battle, Dallos, a self-learning machine, activates and attacks both sides in self-defense, which are practically wiped out, with Vice-Consul Katerina and the police chief perishing. When Dallos' moves towards Monopolis, the previously reluctant Consul General, as the highest Federation representative on the moon, orders an emergency and the immediate cessation of all fighting, whereupon Dallos ceases his activities.

Shun and Leiger meet within the Dallos, with Melinda standing up for him at Leiger. Leiger allows Shun to fulfill his grandfather's last wish: to see the earth again. On the flight there, they see an abandoned colony, where his grandfather tells him that there were other cities before Monopolis, but that they fell victim to various disasters, which is both the reason for the refusal of the first generation to fight, and that the terrible sight of which is the cause of why the colonists are not allowed to leave Monopolis except for work. Finally they reach their destination: the " sea of homesickness" on the front of the moon - a huge cemetery with a view of the earth in which the first colonists are buried, so that they can at least see their homeland forever, if they were not allowed to return . After his dream is fulfilled, Shun's grandfather dies.

Shun decides not to be idle any longer and to join McCoy to fight Earth. Rachel also joins the independence movement after the death of her parents. Knowing that Dallos can repair himself, the colonists go back to their daily routine. Melinda returns to earth and wants to work for a peaceful improvement of the lunar conditions. And after the battle, the Earth Federation finally perceives the lunar colony as McCoy expected, declares to give up its "leniency" towards the colony and from now on to take action against all radical elements.

publication

The Studio Pierrot series was designed by Hisayuki Toriumi , who wrote the scripts together with Mamoru Oshii , based on Robert Heinlein's novel The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress . For Mamoru Oshii, Dallos was his second directorial work after Urusei Yatsura: Only You , with his mentor Toriumi supporting him as a director, but not being mentioned in the credits for this position. The animation management and the character design were with Toshiyasu Okada and the artistic direction with Mitsuki Nakamura.

The open end of the series is attributed to the fact that Dallos was originally planned as a television series, but due to the surprise success and the extension of Mahō no Princess Minky Momo, the planned program space was no longer available, so the decision was made to cut the series to four episodes directly to publish on VHS. Dallos became the first original video animation. The series was distributed by Bandai between December 1983 and July 1984, with the second episode appearing before the first and the third part being split into two acts or episodes:

  1. Remember Bartholomew ( リ メ ン バ ー ・ バ ー ソ ロ ミ ュ ー , Rimembā Bāsoromyū ; “Think of Bartholomew”), January 28, 1984
  2. Dallos Hakai Shirei! ( ダ ロ ス 破 壊 指令! , Darosu ~ ; “Dallos Destruction Order !”), December 21, 1983
  3. Bōkyō no Umi ni Tatsu: Act I ( 望 郷 の 海 に 起 つ ACT I ; "Getting up in the Sea of ​​Homesickness: Act I"), April 29, 1984
  4. Bōkyō no Umi ni Tatsu: Act II ( 望 郷 の 海 に 起 つ ACT II ; "Rising in the Sea of ​​Homesickness: Act II"), July 5, 1984

Production costs were around 100 million yen (around € 570,000 today). In 1985, the four 30-minute episodes were cut into an 85-minute film called Dallos Special , with 50 new scenes being added.

In the USA, Dallos Special was released in 1991 on Celebrity Home Entertainment's children's label Just For Kids with English dubbing under the title Battle for Moon Station Dallos . The four-part OVA series was released by Discotek Media on DVD as Dallos with English subtitles in 2014 and streamed by Crunchyroll in May 2015 .

synchronization

role Japanese speaker ( seiyū )
Shun Nonomura Hideki Sasaki
Alex Leiger Shuichi Ikeda
Dog McCoy Tesshō Genda
Rachel Rumiko Ukai
Melinda Hearst Yoshiko Sakakibara
Shun's grandfather Mizuho Suzuki
Vice Consul Katerina, narrator Kōji Nakata

reception

10,000 copies of the first episode or VHS were sold and 20,000 copies of the whole series.

Jonathan Clements and Helen McCarthy see the series as a copy (“unremarkable rip-off”) of Heinlein's novel, but praise the script, which was implemented only mediocre. However, the final scene of the awe-inspiring view of the distant earth makes up for a lot. However, the inadequate artistic and craftsmanship quality does not diminish the importance of the work as the first production directly for the video market. This new market opened up new audiences and new artistic and financial opportunities for the anime industry in the years that followed.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c Jonathan Clements, Helen McCarthy: The Anime Encyclopedia: A Century of Japanese Animation . 3. Edition. Stone Bridge Press, 2015, ISBN 978-1-61172-909-2 , entry: Dallos .
  2. ↑ a b ア ニ メ 様 365 日 [ 小 黒 祐 一郎 ] 第 157 回 『DALLOS』 . In: WEB ア ニ メ ス タ イ ル . June 30, 2009, Retrieved May 30, 2015 (Japanese).
  3. ↑ a b ビ デ オ ソ フ ト 新 し い 波 (上) オ リ ジ ナ ル も の ガ ン バ ル . In: Nikkei Sangyō Shimbun . August 8, 1985.
  4. ↑ Battle For Moon Station Dallos aka Dallos. In: Anime Bargain Bin Reviews. Retrieved May 30, 2015 .
  5. ↑ Discotek Adds Devilman TV, Cardcaptor Sakura Film, Jin-Roh, Dallos. In: Anime News Network. July 16, 2013, accessed May 30, 2015 .
  6. ↑ Crunchyroll Adds DNA2 Anime to Catalog. In: Anime News Network. May 30, 2015, accessed May 30, 2015 .
  7. ↑ 若 者 ―― ア ニ メ ビ デ オ は オ リ ジ ナ ル で . In: Nikkei Ryūtsū Shimbun . October 21, 1985, p. 23 .
  8. ↑ Jonathan Clements: Anime - A History . Palgrave Macmillan, London 2013, ISBN 978-1-84457-390-5 , pp. 159 f .