Salamander

This anime is a three part OVA (original video animation) series produced by Pony Canyon, a semi-famous anime company, for Konami back in late 80's. Vol 1 & 2 were made in 1988 and vol 3 in 1989 and all 3 volumes are long out of print. In the 80's OVAs were still fairly uncommon things. The very first OVA, Dallos was released in 1984, if my memory serves correct. Due to their expensive price, only fans really buy OVAs. Casual viewers will rent them at a video store, which is a lot cheaper than buying one of the videos (see below.)

By the way, those characters in the title mean "sand", "net", "wide", "snake". The are not supposed to have a special meaning together. They were selected 1) to get the "sa" "la" "man" "da" pronouncation out of the characters and 2) they looked cool. This practice is common in titles in Japan.

Salamander is based on the arcade/nintendo game of the same name. Salamander was renamed "Life Force" in the United States, but all the European release kept the original name. Each video contains one 50 minute video. This title was released on both VHS and Laserdisc. A few months ago, a person randomly emailed me asking "hey, do you know where I can find Salamander (Life Force) the anime?" I replied in the negative, but then I started surfing online at some Japanese import stores (as a big anime fan, I know a few :) ) By sheer chance, at animejungle.com they had all 3 volumes on LD, barely used, with the inserts [large pieces of artwork inside the LD jacket- LDs are the same size as old records. They lacked their obi, which is a slash on the side naming the title and price]. The price was $125 + shipping to the United States. This is a pretty good deal because each disc originally cost 7,300 Yen, about $63 EACH! Needless to say, being a big NES fan, I had to pick these up. Later, I emailed the fellow and relayed the story, and apologized for buying the laserdiscs.

However, I did not feel bad about the potiential betrayal.

The Laserdiscs and Japanese VHS tapes are Japanese language only with no English subtitles. All 3 episodes were released in the United Kingdom with English subtitles. Unfortunately, these videos are also out of print as well as in PAL, the UK video standard, and I neither have a PAL TV, PAL VCR, or a signal convertor... then again, the subtitles would have been in British English and contained weird spellings like "humour" and such. Oh well :)

As for the anime itself... Salamander is neither bad nor good. It fits right in the middle of the "it's OK, but I couldn't say I liked it" field. The anime was produced by the same team that made Science Ninja Team Gatchaman (G-Force and Battle of the Planets) and Area 88: the anime (U.N. Sqaudron). I'm not so sure about Gatchaman, (as I remember it being a pile of shit about weird people who couldn't act in bird suits) but I thought even the mediocre Area 88 was better than this. This the source material is a video game, Salamander already had a lot going against it. At least in anime based off street fighting games, you have a lot of characters to work with. With Salamander, you have a soundtrack and... um... things blowing up.

Which is not to say there isn't spacey action in Salamander, but everything about the production is fairly mediocre. Even though the character designs are done by Mikimoto Haruhiko, legendary patron saint of hot anime girls, the characters here don’t look very representive of his work on Macross, Orguss, Gunbuster, or Gundam 0080. Unfortunately, Salamander was made smack-dab in that period of the 80's where anime still LOOKED grainy 80's and didn't have the more refined of the early 90's- although it is possible it wasn't a very high budget production. But given the very low market for OVAs in the 80's, it seems unlikely. Even the space combat scenes don't look very busy, especially compared to TV series of the early 80's such as Macross ('83) and Gundam Z and ZZ ('85-6), which is pretty insulting since TV budgets only a 1/4 of an OVA's.

The basic plot of the series is that Lord British, ruler of a small planet, discovers the famous Moai statue in space. He leads an operation to bring it down to the planet, but soon after setting up the statue, on a nearby planet a huge Dragon awakes. His awakening triggers all sorts of natural diasters on Lord British's planet, so he sends space fighters to the planet. However, all the craft are shot down by strange bug-like spaceships. Finally, Lord British assembles a team of crackshot pilots, and with himself as commander, enter the planet to destroy the Dragon. Most of the planet's designs are based on the video game, and rendentions of the video game music fill the background. What happens next is fairly predictable, as you can imagine. The remaining two episodes deal more with invaders from the Bacterium Empire.

Unfortunately, beng predictable, having flat characters, and so-so animation and mecha action, Salamander is a pretty forgettable series. I only bought the discs because it was based off the NES game. Still, I am glad I bought the discs. Right now I am having them translated by Maya, my Japanese friend who is flequent in both Japanese and English, and I plan on subtitling the discs. Even though that I only have 1 year experience of formal Japanese language classroom learning (and 3 years of watching shitloads of anime), Salamander wasn't hard to understand, as it wasn't a dialogue driven story anyway, Due to its age and low-marketability (being old and based on a name most people have forgotten), it would seem unlikely a United States DVD release would ever occur. Then again, the old 1988 series Y's I & II (based off the RPGs) is being released in the US so you never know. Personally, I'd much rather see Salamander 2, the 1996 arcade game, appear on a console in the states. Until then, I will be happy with what I can get. As so-so as Salamander is, Konami seemed to have learned from its mistakes. In 1999, the company released Twinbee Paradise, a 3 part OVA based off the 1991 arcade game [talk about delays...]. The series was a hit and spawned about 60 drama CDs and soundtracks. At least it's something to look forward to.

Salamander Pictures