In October 2021, I joked to a friend that I would “write a research paper or something” about Garzey’s Wing for April Fools Day. Through the miracle of taking a joke too far, I actually did it. As a disclaimer, I am not a professionally trained writer of any sort. Consider the following essay the crazed ramblings of fool, if you so wish. As part of my research, I was afforded the chance to interview Justin Sevakis, the man who reminded the world that Garzey’s Wing exists, and is a hilarious mess. You can read the full interview here.
Making Sense of Our Convoluted Situation, or How Creative Burnout and Incompetent Localization Led To the Creation of an Anime Cult Classic
According to anime critic Bennet White, a cult film can be described as one where “creative decisions are made for the sake of themselves, rather than what will prove to be profitable” (White). In the context of anime, an infamously high cost, low return medium, such a title could be considered improbable. Despite this, a series of poor decisions, both domestically in Japan and abroad in the United States, inadvertently lead to the birth of Garzey’s Wing, a title often considered the anime equivalent to Tommy Wiseau’s so-bad-it’s-good film The Room (Greenall).
Yoshiyuki Tomino does not like Gundam. Despite his returns to the franchise with 1999’s Turn A Gundam and 2014’s Gundam Reconguista in G, Tomino’s relationship with the franchise he helped create, and its parent studio Sunrise have always been a mixed one at best, especially in the immediate aftermath of Tomino’s first exit from the franchise with 1993’s Mobile Suit Victory Gundam. When describing his work as a director to Animerica Magazine in February 2000, Tomino has said that on many of his productions, his role was to “take this boring robot story and make the best of it with the resources available,” (Karahashi 36) revealing how Tomino viewed his work at Sunrise, and can explain the burnout he experienced after Victory Gundam, and perhaps why for the first and only time since 1975’s The Adventures of Pepero, Tomino would develop an anime outside of Sunrise and Sotsu, choosing to go with BMG Japan and Sanctuary for his idea for a spinoff of his 1983 work Aura Battler Dunbine that would become Garzey’s Wing.
Despite what is commonly reported, Aura Battler Dunbine was not solely developed by Tomino. While he did write the novel series The Wings of Rean in which the world of Bryston Well was drawn from, Dunbine’s credits list both Yoshiyuki Tomino and Hajime Yatate, a pseudonym for the collective staff of Sunrise, as original creators. In addition, Tomino was not credited for the script on any of the anime’s 49 episodes (“Aura Battler Dunbine”). In comparison, Garzey’s Wing lists Yoshiyuki Tomino as sole Chief Director, Director, Script Writer, Storyboard Artist, and Original Creator. With Garzey’s Wing, Tomino would control the production from top to bottom, with no regard to economic feasibility, a trait he admired in American directors such as Stanley Kubrick and George Lucas (Karahashi 35).
Eerily similar to Lucas, then, was the final product. Similar to how “there was no one to tell [Lucas] ‘no’ at any stage” of production of his critically polarizing film Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace (Lussier), Garzey’s Wing can be seen as the portrait of a man attempting to execute his creative decision with little to no oversight. In his article Should Playwrights Direct Their Own Work? for the website Backstage, Elias Stimac argues that an outside director “can offer the vital ‘third-eye’ perspective” that a script may lack (Sitmac). Having come from the perspective of writing not only the original series of novels that defined the world of Bryston Well, but also a 49 episode anime set in the same world, making his perspective on what is “common knowledge” going into Garzey’s Wing very different from, say, someone who just saw the OVA in their local rental store. A “third-eye” is needed to reign in creativity, for the sake of both viewer understanding and conciseness, both of which Garzey’s Wing unfortunately lacks.
Best described as a 26 episode series jammed into a 3 episode OVA, Garzey’s Wing bounces from plot point to plot point, from main character to other main character, all while throwing out proper nouns and made up words at a breakneck pace. In under 3 minutes, Chris, the main character, is introduced, gets spirited away to another realm by a giant swan, picks up a pint-sized mascot character, is declared the chosen one, and starts fighting in a war. Maybe if one went into Garzey’s Wing with the background Tomino had, 6 novels, 49 episodes, and 3 OVAs worth of background information on the world of Bryston Well, the plot of Garzey’s Wing could be understood, but the Japanese public at large did not, with the most recent acknowledgement of its existence being a DVD release in 2000 from Pioneer LDC (CDJapan).
All of this may beg the question then, of why Central Park Media would license Garzey’s Wing for a 2000 VHS release in the United States under their U.S. Manga Corps label. According to former Central Park Media employee Justin Sevakis, the reason may have simply been one of ignorance. “[Central Park Media] wasn’t too careful about what they licensed… …they probably saw the Tomino credit and made a bid.” This slapdash behavior towards licensing and quality was not unique to Garzey’s Wing, with reviewers often considering their catalog of “variable quality” (“Central Park Media”). Often central to this critique of “variable” was the work performed in dubbing these anime into English by Central Park Media and their associated dubbing studios, with Garzey’s Wing often serving as a poster child of how poor “variable” could get.
At the time, Central Park Media would contract a number of different localization studios for their anime, often with significant differences in the quality of their output. Despite this, there was no attempt to assign shows to localization studios based on their projected quality until “much later” (Vi et al.). Additionally, the localization of Garzey’s Wing into English was split between two companies, a practice relatively common at Central Park Media. These practices led to a curious dichotomy wherein Garzey’s Wing received an excellent (or at the very least satisfactory) translation, but an actual dub best described as “infamously bad” (Wescott). Japanese to English translation and subtitling would be performed by Reiko Matsuo at New Generation Pictures, a highly regarded studio based out of Beverly Hills. On the other side of the country, New Generation’s script would be adapted into an English dub produced by Karel Havle and Christopher Sippel at the infamous Audioworks Producers Group, a small studio located in New York City, mere minutes from Central Park Media’s offices (“Garzey’s Wing (OAV)”). Audioworks had gotten their contract through their owner, Kip Kaplan, a “motorcycle buddy” of Central Park Media’s founder, John O’Donnell (Vi et al.). This unorthodox arrangement led to an English dub being produced by people who “genuinely did not like anime” (Vi et al.).
Featuring line reads that sound like it was the first time any of the voice actors had seen the script, to miscasts making a young girl sound like a gruff, middle-aged woman, the English dub of Garzey’s Wing must be seen to be believed. Deviating very little from the stiff-sounding and somewhat overly verbose subtitle script, characters are required to speak a mile a minute to convey the clumsy exposition and complicated untranslatable terms that make up a majority of Garzey’s Wing’s dialogue, with the remainder mostly being drawn-out screams from the protagonist, Chris. Even if Garzey’s Wing had been a masterpiece, the disaster of a dub it received would have still dragged it down to the mockable position it currently inhabits.
It is unclear what opinion the staff of Central Park Media held of Garzey’s Wing prior to and during the initial American VHS release in 2000, but by its 2002 DVD release, the series had internally become a joke. According to Sevakis, “everyone knew it was trash” (Vi et al.). During production, DVD authoring house Masterdisk presented a DVD menu that opens with three drawn out seconds of Chris screaming. “it made the DVD producer laugh… …so it stayed”, Sevakis recounts (Vi et al.). Perhaps this event is what would eventually lead Sevakis to write his 2007 article Buried Garbage – Garzey’s Wing for the website Anime News Network, in which he discusses the many faults of Garzey’s Wing, but concludes that Garzey’s Wing falls into the rare category of an anime so poorly made that it is entertaining again. Sevakis dubs it “the Battlefield Earth of anime,” referencing the poorly-received and often-mocked science fiction film from director Roger Christian.
Had Sevakis’ article come out earlier, little likely would have come of it, but 2007 was a landmark year in both popular media criticism and internet culture, owing to the rise of the “angry internet critic.” Originally popularized by James Rolfe’s Angry Video Game Nerd, a series of videos on the then-new platform of YouTube, an angry internet critic was equal parts Mystery Science Theater 3000 and “The Comic Book Guy” from The Simpsons, as they “used anger as a way to highlight [media] that was incredibly disappointing” (McGlynn). While riffing on anime was far less common than that of video games or hollywood movies, due to a combination of both a smaller audience and overly litigious Japanese copyright holders, a paradigm shift had still occurred. It was hip to make fun of bad media, and Garzey’s Wing was both entertainingly bad, and easy to acquire, as Central Park Media had reduced the DVD’s price to $10 by 2007 [14], hoping to rid themselves of a show that in theory, no one should want.With the passage of time since Sevakis’ article, Garzey’s Wing has developed something of a mythical status, frequently shown at anime conventions as an example of the worst anime dubbing has to offer (“SacAnime”). While perhaps not deserving of that title, it has managed to remain part of the popular discourse far longer than anyone likely expected it to. Central Park Media, the company that brought Garzey’s Wing to American shores, unfortunately did not last long enough to take advantage of this newfound popularity, filing for bankruptcy in 2009 (“Central Park Media”). Similarly, Audioworks Producers Group would exit the anime dubbing industry after their 2005 dub of Shadow Star Narutaru (“Audioworks Producers Group”). Rik Nagel, the voice of protagonist Chris, would star in just one more anime dub before switching to a much more lucrative career in photography (Nagel). When asked about Garzey’s Wing at a convention in 2003, all Tomino could say of his creation was that he “[didn’t] want to talk about it” (Sevakis). Those involved may be gone or have distanced themselves, but Garzey’s Wing will never be forgotten.
Works Cited
“Audioworks Producers Group.” Anime News Network, Anime News Network, https://www.animenewsnetwork.com/encyclopedia/company.php?id=607.
“Aura Battler Dunbine (TV).” Anime News Network, Anime News Network, https://www.animenewsnetwork.com/encyclopedia/anime.php?id=1188.
“Central Park Media.” Akemi’s Anime World, Marc & Akemi Marshall, 6 May 2010, https://animeworld.com/companies/cpm.html.
“Garzey’s Wing (OAV).” Anime News Network, Anime News Network, https://www.animenewsnetwork.com/encyclopedia/anime.php?id=951.
Greenall, Jonathon. “Garzey’s Wing: How Gundam’s Creator Made One of the WORST Anime of All Time.” CBR, CBR, 30 Nov. 2020, https://www.cbr.com/youshiyuki-tomino-gundam-creator-garzeys-wing-worst-anime/.
Karahashi, Takayuki. “Interview – Yoshiyuki Tomino.” Animerica, Feb. 2000, pp. 1, 36–37, https://www.animenostalgiabomb.com/yoshiyuki-tomino-interview-sailor-moon-fushigi-yugi-articles-animerica-february-2000/. Accessed 30 Mar. 2022.
Lussier, Germain. “George Lucas Says The Phantom Menace Is One of His Favorite Films.” Gizmodo, G/O Media, 15 Apr. 2019, https://gizmodo.com/george-lucas-says-the-phantom-menace-is-one-of-his-favo-1834054609.
McGlynn, Anthony. “The Complicated Legacy of The Original Angry Video Game Nerd.” Kotaku, G/O Media, 5 July 2016, https://kotaku.com/the-complicated-legacy-of-the-original-angry-video-game-1783119418.
“OVA Complete Collection Series – Bystone Well Monogatari Gaazei No Tsubasa Complete Collection .” CDJapan, Neowing, https://www.cdjapan.co.jp/product/PIBA-9004.
Nagel, Rik. “Contact Rik Nagel.” Rik Nagel – Photography, http://riknagel.com/contact.html.
“SacAnime Winter 2016 – Crispin Freeman on Garzey’s Wing.” YouTube, Google, 4 Jan. 2016, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UyY2YnPObpg. Accessed 30 Mar. 2022.
Sevakis, Justin. “Buried Garbage – Garzey’s Wing .” Anime News Network, Anime News Network, 20 Sept. 2007, https://www.animenewsnetwork.com/buried-treasure/2007-09-20.
Sitmac, Elias. “Should Playwrights Direct Their Own Work?” Backstage, Backstage, 5 Nov. 2019, https://www.backstage.com/magazine/article/playwrights-direct-work-1-40217/.
Vi, and Justin Sevakis. “An Interview with Justin Sevakis about Garzey’s Wing.” 28 Mar. 2022.
Wescott, Adam. “FEATURE: 25 Years Later, Garzey’s Wing Exists.” Crunchyroll, Funimation Group, 21 Oct. 2021, https://www.crunchyroll.com/anime-feature/2021/10/21/feature-25-years-later-garzeys-wing-exists.
White, Bennet. Anime Abandon: Elfen Lied. YouTube, Google, 14 July 2016, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xEh_TPxqM0g. Accessed 30 Mar. 2022.
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