Episode 20: Harlock Saga and Rhinegold

Turn your 2020 frown upside down with some opera – the space kind and the regular kind. In 1995, Operavox created a half-hour cartoon about Richard Wagner’s Rhinegold. Four years later, Leiji Matsumoto created an anime miniseries about the same opera, added some space pirates into the mix, and called it Harlock Saga.

How do the adaptations fare? Can you squeeze an almost 3 hour opera into a 30 minute block? Does putting everything in space actually work? Why are there so many pipe organs in the anime?

We cover all this and more in our 20th episode. Give us a listen – what else have you got going on?

Episode 15: Mobile Suit Gundam and Star Wars

 

In this month’s episode the PodCastle crew looks back at the humble origins of two iconic science fiction mega-franchises with 1977’s ripping space opera Star Wars and the three film theatrical compilation of Yoshiyuki Tomino’s 1979 television mecha series Mobile Suit Gundam.

In the years subsequent to their release, the aesthetic and narrative conventions of the science fiction and mecha genres would each be irrevocably transformed by the imprint of these two pieces of art. Is it now possible some 40 years later to disentangle and appreciate their value as individual pieces of art from their larger cultural legacy? How does one guide a Zaku into a death pose when being cleaved in twain by a giant beamsaber? Will Bright Noa’s urge to slap his underlings ever be satiated? All this and more on an exciting episode of Podcastle in The Sky Spaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaace!