June 07, 2019
Yesterday's Future TODAY!
Way back in 1994 KSS released an OAV* series called MIGHTY SPACE MINERS. Because the world is suffering, it was cancelled after 2 episodes. I picked up a VHS** copy when it came out, largely because the character designs were, even in 1994 kind of retro looking.
However, it impressed me at the time as a remarkably hard sci-fi kids show. Despite a few minor inaccuracies the shows "hardness" rating is arguably higher than even The Expanse. I particularly like that the hardscrabble asteroid miners don't live in some nightmare man-camp like Outland, but in a very pleasant Stanford Torus built into their asteroid, and the fact that the kids space helmets are the equivalent to a modern day smartphone/personal assistant and pet...because in their culture, a child's earliest lesson is that one must never be without one's helmet.
Because space will KILL YOU!
Dead.
They don't shy away from that. This show is like a Heinlein juvie.
A DVD was eventually released but it's long out of print. Used copies can be purchased on Amazon for $103 US. I've been looking for this thing for years and was surprised to find it complete and dubbed on You Tube. The fact that it...ends... is really annoying, but, pig-headed kids show protagonist notwithstanding, it's a damned good 55 minutes until it leaves you hanging.
* Original Video Animation. Shows of odd length or of lower quality than films but higher quality than TV were once released on tape or disc and rented or sold from "video stores".
**Video Home System an audiovisual storage medium reminiscent of an audio cassette...wait...you've never heard of that either... OK, it's similar in principle to a DVD or Blue Ray or a gaming cartridge(?)... Um... Anyway it uses ferromagnetic material coating plastic tape as a data storage medium that is magnetically programmed and/or read as it is mechanically indexed via two spools in a manner similar to Egyptian scrolls....uh..you had to play the tape end to end to access the AV data and you'd get charged a fine if you didn't rewind them when you returned them to the video store...
Forget it. It was a different world.
However, it impressed me at the time as a remarkably hard sci-fi kids show. Despite a few minor inaccuracies the shows "hardness" rating is arguably higher than even The Expanse. I particularly like that the hardscrabble asteroid miners don't live in some nightmare man-camp like Outland, but in a very pleasant Stanford Torus built into their asteroid, and the fact that the kids space helmets are the equivalent to a modern day smartphone/personal assistant and pet...because in their culture, a child's earliest lesson is that one must never be without one's helmet.
Because space will KILL YOU!
Dead.
They don't shy away from that. This show is like a Heinlein juvie.
A DVD was eventually released but it's long out of print. Used copies can be purchased on Amazon for $103 US. I've been looking for this thing for years and was surprised to find it complete and dubbed on You Tube. The fact that it...ends... is really annoying, but, pig-headed kids show protagonist notwithstanding, it's a damned good 55 minutes until it leaves you hanging.
We need to start a write-in campaign to get Jeff Bezos to buy this one and finish it, because this is a really good story.
* Original Video Animation. Shows of odd length or of lower quality than films but higher quality than TV were once released on tape or disc and rented or sold from "video stores".
**Video Home System an audiovisual storage medium reminiscent of an audio cassette...wait...you've never heard of that either... OK, it's similar in principle to a DVD or Blue Ray or a gaming cartridge(?)... Um... Anyway it uses ferromagnetic material coating plastic tape as a data storage medium that is magnetically programmed and/or read as it is mechanically indexed via two spools in a manner similar to Egyptian scrolls....uh..you had to play the tape end to end to access the AV data and you'd get charged a fine if you didn't rewind them when you returned them to the video store...
Forget it. It was a different world.
Posted by: The Brickmuppet at
02:45 AM
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1
YES!! This is one of my old favorites. It was criminal that it wasn't finished. Hard SF anime FTW.
Posted by: Ed Hering at Fri Jun 7 10:17:32 2019 (/cXdK)
2
By the way, you can find this and many other old anime on BakaBT* torrents, though they only seem to have the subtitled version.
*note BakaBT these days is a private tracker and not the most convenient to get access to, but still possible.
*note BakaBT these days is a private tracker and not the most convenient to get access to, but still possible.
Posted by: StargazerA5 at Fri Jun 7 11:56:35 2019 (jl9eJ)
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