HG101 Digital Archive Project - Zillion

The HG101 Digital Archive Project already hit its first stumbling block. Originally I had anticipated on storing all of these on my Fileplanet account, a holdover from the IGN/Gamespy hosting days of a few months ago. I was under the impression that we would keep these accounts, but no - the server was simply turned off last week without them telling anyone. All of the files are still accessible, but we can't upload anything more. The public upload utility is still there, though, which I think I'll have to use, going forward. Fileplanet has always sucked, but it's also more reliable than Megaupload, whose links haphazardly disappear for any number of arbitrary reasons.


But, we'll work with it! I recorded and encoded the first two episodes of the Zillion anime. For quick reference, Zillion was apparently some kind of laser tag toy from the mid-80s, which the anime (and video games) were tied into. Despite obviously being essentially little more than advertisements, I've always held a weakpoint for it, because those little doodles in the SMS game manual was essentially my introduction to anime. I was disappointed when I saw the anime and found that JJ, the awesome guy from the game, was kinda of a weenie in the show, but hey - Apple and Champ are still badass, those guns still look cool no matter how cheesy they are, and the Norsa (or Noza as they're called here) are still pretty badass. The anime shares a lot of music with the game, too, featuring vocal 80s J-pop renditions of much of the soundtrack.


Although there were numerous episodes televised in Japan, the US only got a handful - five tapes with a single 20 minute episode each, and a sixth tape with a 40 minute OVA. They were dubbed by Streamline Pictures, the same guys responsible for Macross and basically any of the anime distributed in the US during the 80s. The dubbing is actually quite good and they're still fairly watchable. Please enjoy. The Japanese episodes are also being fansubbed over at Anime Classic, so you can look forward to the episodes not released in English.

Just keep in mind that the quality on the second episode is a little sketchy near the end due to the iffy tape I have. The only VCR I have has a tendency to display a large ugly "VIDEO RECALIBRATION" message whenever it gets too staticy, which pops up a couple of times. It's annoying, but better than watching them on Youtube, at any rate.

Episode 1 - They Call me J.J.
Episode 2 - Hang Fire