🚀 go-pugleaf

[traaaaaaaansmute!]

	The explosion of the shuttle reminded me of a nearly identical
scene in the first series of the Japanese show _Gatchaman_
[the edited for American TV version was called _Battle_Of_The_Planets].
Anime has two books consisting of cels from the first Gatchaman
movie, in comic book form (they wrote in the dialogue and sound effects,
in Japanese!)

	Quickly, here are the characters (for few of you follow this
as closely as I do)
	G-force, the Scientific Ninja Team consists of:
             Japanese	English name
	#1 - Ken	Mark
	#2 - Joe	Jason
	#3 - Jun	Princess
	#4 - Jin-pei	Keop
	#5 - Ryu	Tiney
	Their leader/trainer is chief Anderson.
	The robots were not in the original series.  They were added
to the American series to fill the time deleted due to violence, and
to explain discontinuities and other drivel.

	In the first book, there are the usual fights with the Spectar
agents (they are the scientific ninja team after all) and they are
introduced to a gentlemen in a red outfit.  He turns out to be
Ken's father, who was presumed dead from a plane crash.
Father and son are reunited after taking the enemy base.

	In the second book, Ken and his father are arguing
and with tears in his eyes, Ken's father throws Ken out of his way
to board the [presumably] enemy vehicle.  Ken is tearful too.
Since I don't read Japanese and have few translations, they may
know that this is a suicide mission.  The vehicle takes off
with the G-force watching.  Ken's father has a flashback of Ken
growing up, then has a terrified look on his face as the ship
(now rather high in altitude) blows up in a huge white ball
which fades to nothing.  The next two pages show the G-force team
crying at the loss of their comrade.  Anderson, at the headquarters,
gets the message and all the people at the meeting mourn the death.
The story goes on from there, but I won't go into that now.

	I just wanted to point out that Japanese animation is more
realistic than American since this scene so closely resembles
the real event we just experienced. (rocket = shuttle,
G-force = family&relatives, Anderson = Regan, meeting = congress).
In Japanese animation, characters die, just like real people.
The American censors don't allow this, which is why the robots were added
to say things like "of course Ken's father escaped in the nick of
time" or "of course, all those enemy agents in the control room
got out before the base was blown up".  Despite this mini-flame
of american tv, I wished to point out cultural differences.
Have I succeeded?



				Jeff 'turning Japanese' Skot
				{ihnp4 | mcnc | allegra} attunix ! jeffj