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Anime Boston 2024: Bad Anime, Bad!
🕑 Added 2024-05-15 03:22:04 +0000 UTCNote: Due to the time-sensitive nature of our coverage, this will go live on the main Anime Herald site on May 16, 2024. We apologizes for the inconvenience.
Author: Samantha Ferreira
Editor: Samantha Ferreira
Introduction: Time Stands Still
Fifteen years ago, Brian T. Price became a part of the very fabric of Anime Boston when he hosted his Bad Anime, Bad! Panel at Anime Boston 2009. These events, which combined performance and a seemingly unending parade of dreck that even the most inebriated producer would have trouble justifying, quickly earned a reputation among a legion of con-goers. Masochists, thrill-seekers, rubberneckers, and folks who want to see just how far two dollars and a sandwich can get an animation studio gather year after year to see what Price manages to drag out of the proverbial, burning anime dumpster.
And, with each year, Price delivers. In 2016, he proved that creatures of the night could suck in myriad ways when he showed off Vampire Wars. Last year, he proved that "we have anime at home" is a thing when he screened Wonder of Frontier. Even so, Price's biggest claim to fame had to come about from 2012 through 2014, when he presented the entirety of Garzey's Wing, un-edited and uncut for time. During these screenings, he would coin numerous terms associated with the series today, including the now-iconic "Wandering Perspective Man."
This year, Bad Anime, Bad! returned to the Sheraton’s Grand Ballroom, which quickly hit capacity the year before. Attendees began to line up, some with unfortunate friends in tow, by 7:00 PM and quickly wound their way through the maze of pylons. By 8:30, the line had stretched around the floor, and up the stairs leading to the hotel’s third level.
The bar that tonight’s feature had to clear to avoid being the worst thing the people in line had seen all year, meanwhile, was somewhere under the floorboards.
As the clock struck 9:00 PM, a countdown began to play on the video screens that flanked the stage. As the seconds ticked away, AC/DC’s Thunderstruck started booming over the sound system. Hundreds of attendees filed into the room, guided by staffers holding rainbow glow sticks. The energy crackling through the room was undeniable, as the murmur of fans rose against David Evan’s cry of, "You've been... Thunderstruck!"
The song immediately gave way to Dio’s Rainbow in the Dark, as seated people chatted amongst themselves, waiting for the horrors of the evening to be unleashed. Meanwhile, the clock ticked down, unflinching, as each oppressive second slipped away before the crowd.
The mood shifted drastically as the thundering rock music gave way to the bouncy ‘80s synths of Walk the Dinosaur by Was (Not Was), as folks began bopping throughout the room. The ambient murmurs grew louder as some started singing along, while others began wondering what, exactly, Price was hinting at with the musical choices tonight.
At 10:20, the unmistakable opening chords from Rush’s Time Stand Still kicked in, and every seat in the house was finally filled. The chatter began to swell once more, as the countdown crossed the ten-minute mark. Some sang along with Geddy Lee's iconic lyrics, while others tried to solve the puzzle of the evening’s feature presentation
Amid the crowd, more than a few fresh faces could be seen, the light in their eyes belying their inexperience, as Price's annual horror show hadn't crushed their enthusiasm and squeezed their souls into something as hard and black as the finest coal.
But Bad Anime, Bad! Comes for everybody; deep down, everyone knew that, by the end of the evening, they would find commiseration in the song’s hook, “the innocence slips away…”
All the while, the stage remained conspicuously empty, as pink-and-blue house lights shone upon it. Price, meanwhile, came by and excitedly showed me a pair of homemade keychains that an attendee had gifted him, of a naked Chris and Falan Fa from Garzey's Wing. He was positively cackling, as Wasted Years by Iron Maiden blared on the PA. All the while, the time ticked down toward the two-minute warning.
The wailing chorus played once more as the timer ticked below a minute.
Finally, it was time for the show to start. As the final seconds ticked away, the audience began excitedly counting down.
Five… four… three… two… one.
Good Evening, Boston!
Suddenly, the house lights dimmed, and a cheer erupted, as the event’s announcer started warming up the crowd. "Good evening, fellow voyeurs of catastrophic cartooning," she proclaimed, as she broke into the safety procedures for the evening.
After the safety protocols concluded, the announcer instructed the audience to "look around you, look at the people next to you.” She playfully teased the crowd as she continued with a conspiratorial tone, “Want to know their secret? They all have a kink for bad anime.”
The audience erupted in applause, as the announcer chastised the room, crying out, “Go to therapy!"
A chuckle rose throughout the ballroom, as she continued, telling everyone in attendance to "Prepare the bleach for thine eyes, as I introduce to you your guide for this descent into anime hell!”
Price excitedly ran onto the stage as the audience cheered and whooped... then he ran offstage, prompting confused laughter. He quickly dashed back on, and grabbed the mic before bellowing “Good evening, Boston!”
Price paused as the crowd erupted once more. Once the applause had died down, he asked, “So, who’s here for the very first time?” He scanned the room, as roughly a hundred hands shot up. “Now,” he continued, “how many of you are here at the suggestion of a friend, or a relative, or some other person?”
About fifty hands remained in the air.
“They are not your friends,” Price deadpanned, prompting chuckles throughout the room. He explained that this is the twenty-fourth year of Bad Anime, Bad!, adding, “Next year, I'll have to pull a big-ass rabbit out of my hat!" A few chuckles could be heard, as he explained how Bad Anime, Bad! came to be, what constitutes a “bad” show, and other basic details about the overall event.
He quickly warned the crowd, “I do not pick on a show just because it is badly dubbed. It is too easy to flub a dub. It happens sometimes [...] but a bad dub really helps sometimes!” He punctuated the statement with a menacing laugh, and one couldn’t help but notice a few of the newcomers eyeing their friends suspiciously.
“But I digress,” he stated, a smirk playing over his lips as he asked, “Are you ready for pain?”
The audience yelled back with an emphatic “Yeah!”
“Are you ready for misery?!” Price bellowed, receiving an even louder “Yeah!” in response.
“Are you ready to hate the medium you love so much?" he asked, receiving a deafening “Yeah!” in response that rumbled throughout the room. Price paused, smirking. “Ah, like lambs to the slaughter,” he mused, before adding “Let us begin!”
The Main Event
As Price sat behind his notebook, he noted that the main event would follow “Rapsittie Street Rules”, referencing his 2019 presentation of Rapsittie Street Kids: Believe in Santa. “Do not look up anything about the title until it is done,” he warned, adding “You’ll ruin the surprise otherwise!” He added, “If you see someone trying to look something up about this, stop them!"
He paused for a moment and announced that he was changing the name of his production company. He had used the term “Tinfoil Pyramid Hats” for some years but felt that the name and its connotations were insensitive, especially in today’s climate. Instead, he would be rolling forward under the banner of “Wandering Perspectives Productions,” a direct reference to Garzey’s Wing’s “Wandering Perspective Man” character.
As for why he chose the name, Price joked, “Because, for some reason, Garzey's Wing has become a thing about here!” The audience responded with an emphatic “Yeah!”, as he cackled and replied with “You sick bastards.”
The screens on either side of the stage went dark for a moment before the Wolf Tracer Pictures logo appeared onscreen. A few people in the audience immediately groaned; there was this immediate realization that the company was the same one that produced the disastrous Rapsittie Street Kids.
A few nervous chuckles and noises of abject confusion arose, as the crowd wasn’t quite sure of what to make of the introduction. In it, a poorly rendered, CGI lizard slithered across a map that magically unfurled onto a table. Said table and the room it rested in were a lifeless brown and wrapped with a muddy wood texture that would even look terrible in a bad Sega CD game.
Price paused the video for a moment, to note that producer Colin Slater, who also produced Rapsittie Street Kids, passed away the month he screened Slater’s other ill-received special. “I don’t think I can take blame,” he remarked, “I know I can take credit, though!” A wave of sardonic cackles rose through the room, as the film started again.
A wave of giggles and chatter erupted as the film cut to the story proper, which opened with four blocky characters on a sailboat. The giggles rose to belly laughs as these automatons that people were intended to empathize with toddled and tottered around the stage.
Then the characters started talking.
Every single character in the film, from leading lady Troy (played by Heather Marie Marsden), to tough-talking Clive, to Jack, a character that can only be charitably described as a “Masshole,” spouting out painful dialogue, with accents that would make a budget dinner theater play seem like a Broadway show in comparison.
Through it all, Price regularly paused to interject with a biting snark, and a seeming disbelief that the movie was falling apart at the seams by the five-minute mark. This came to a head at the point when the cast arrived at the titular isle of dinosaurs. As Troy looked out upon an ocean that seemed to be made of raw triangle textures, she mused, “Look, out to sea… nothing! No ships, no land…”
The video stopped short, as Price exclaimed, “Nothing but unruly polygons!” The audience guffawed at the remark, as the playback resumed and Troy reunited with Jack and Clive.
Before long, the soulless automatons pretending to be humans found themselves shimmying over a wall, to behold a ship graveyard, populated by stock asset vehicles. Price paused the video and made a thoughtful expression. “This needs something,” he remarked. “Not quite a nudge, but a little something to make it better”.
He rewound the footage and replayed it, punctuating the reveal with a clip of the rapping dog from Titanic: The Legend Goes On. The audience chortled and applauded at the flex, before clapping along with the beat.
“I thought I made it better,” Price mused, before delivering an ominous “And for those of you who don't know, you will see. You’ll see!”
As the film continued, the room seemed to be a bit more warmed up. They giggled and chuckled as Price indignantly called out Troy trying to pass off jargon as new concepts, and begged the room to explain what the hell collapsible binoculars were.
That said, nothing could prepare anyone in the room for the cast’s first personal encounter with a dinosaur. The audience cackled and ugly-laughed as the camera hung far too long on the face of a gormless, dead-eyed brontosaurus that was eating the group’s shelter for some unexplained reason.
“Why does the dinosaur look kind of phallic?!” exclaimed an audience member.
Price immediately fired back with “You have a bit too much free time on your hands? Look, if you wanna see dinosaurs getting it on, we have Garzey’s Wing later!” A cheer arose from several members in the room.
Price fast-forwarded to the film’s first action scene, which was intended to be a tense showdown as the castaways fend off a pack of deinonychus to protect a baby triceratops. Instead, laughter arose throughout the room as Troye failed to shoot said dinosaurs with a flare gun, forcing her to skate-run away, because the software couldn’t handle actual running animations. This was punctuated with her jumping on one of the dinosaurs, Super Mario style, before bouncing up onto a rock just out of the dinosaurs’ reach.
The video paused once more, as Price pointed out that deinonychus were thought to be able to run 25 miles per hour, with a vertical leap of ten feet. He continued the film, which saw the battle end anticlimactically, as the triceratops’ mother arrived to chase away the predators. Troy and the baby triceratops shared an insultingly transparent bonding moment before Jack popped up behind the dinosaur to cut the treacle with an attempt at snark.
Price paused the video once more, to remark, “Now, a triceratops, it’s not a predator. It’s an herbivore. So are deer. Guess what would happen if you tried to sneak up on a deer? Your lifespan would get much shorter! But hey, They’re fwiends now!"
Another wave of laughter rolled through the room, and grew louder as the host pointed out that Troy has a set of tonfa and a holster on her belt, though she uses neither.
The film embarked on another failed attempt to create tension as a pteranadon scooped Jake up, and began carrying him above the forest canopy. Chuckles rang out as he meekly cried out, “Put me down! Gently!” and his blocky body ragdolled in the beast’s grasp.
Troy attempted to use the flare gun once more, taking aim at the pteranadon before firing. This time, a flare (well, a light source) launched forth and hit the dinosaur, allowing Jake to somehow wriggle free. “Who knows what happens when raptors grab onto their prey?” Price asked. He continued, explaining, “They have incredible crushing force and talons to match! They crush their prey so they die before they can wriggle free!" he added that the fall from above the canopy takes roughly twelve seconds and that humans reach terminal velocity in about that much time. So, ultimately, Jake was hurtling down toward the ground at about 46 meters per second.
“Please tell me he’s dead,” yelled a person in the middle of the room. Price just laughed quietly as he pressed play once more, and the screens filled with a shot of Jake whacking his crotch on a tree branch, before receiving a wedgie from another.
A pity.
Anyway, the crew caught up to a mysterious boy named Blake, who sounded like he smokes four packs a day. Price noted that he wanted to trim the scene, in which the cast finds mysterious cave drawings, but he didn’t want to deprive the cast of the film’s beautiful animation.
Specifically, he wanted to show the moment as the cast climbed aboard one of the ship husks that rests in ruins against the wall. The animators quite literally dragged the model and placed it onboard with no transition.
Anyway, the group stared at the hieroglyphs, and Blake somehow, magically, was able to translate them. “How do you know this?!” Price exclaimed as Blake recited his spiel. “Why do you know this?!”
Confused laughter and cries of “What?!” rang out throughout the room, as the story just grew increasingly unhinged. The group encountered stereotypical savages, which was quickly followed by a reveal that they were led by the captain who was piloting the boat at the start of the film, and that said sea captain was conveniently named “Captain Blood.” And, as plot contrivance would have it, Captain Blood can control the dinosaurs on the island with a magical horn.
As each reveal played out, Price’s incredulity seemed to amp up, as he expressed the same level of confusion as the audience in attendance.
The room burst into raucous, cathartic laughter and cheers during the film’s climax as Troye did a Matrix jump, complete with a time stop. The guffaws escalated, as Captain Blood dove headfirst into a time portal, taking the horn with him in an obvious sequel hook.
With the day saved, somewhat, the the castaways began building a raft to leave, it seems like everything is “Happily Ever After,” until Captain Blood bursts out of nowhere while riding a tyrannosaurus rex. The words “To Be Continued” appear onscreen as the captain laughs ominously. Price immediately snarked, “Oh, no it’s not!” as laughter rang out again.
As the credits rolled, the audience clapped along with the closing theme that went harder than it had any business going. At the end, Price did a cast reveal, ending with the reveal that “Mark Fuckin’ Hamill” played Blake.
Price revealed that he found the software that was used to make both Dinosaur Island and Rapsittie Street Kids. It was a primitive software named “3D Choreographer for Windows,” which was eight years old by the time Rapsittie Street Kids aired in 2002. He ran through a handful of demos, before proclaiming “Anicom went out of business,” to raucous applause.
A Change of Pace
The house lights came back on, as Price noted that the next pair of features would be a refresher. “For those who need an explanation,” he noted, “it'll fill in some stuff. For some who need nostalgia, well there you go!"
The first clip was the full “Party Time” segment from Titanic: The Legend Goes On, which features the introduction of the rapping dog. The new audience members groaned as they tried to make sense of the sheer incoherence of the moment. Veterans of the panel, meanwhile, let out sardonic laughs as the dog strutted, wearing a basketball jersey and toting a boombox.
The clip was punctuated with cheers, whoops, and applause, as Price moved immediately into a digest for Attack of the Super Monsters, a 1982 project by Tsubaraya Productions that blended traditional animation with rubber suit actors. Price last showed the full film in 2016, as a chaser to the dumpster diamond, Vampire Wars.
The audience giggled as dinosaurs made their appearance known with frantic jazz hands, but the overall reaction was a bit more muted than the previous clip. The crowd chuckled and cackled as Emperor Tyrannus, ruler of the dinosaurs, used his evil powers to turn a pack of dogs into evil crimson beasts. “And this is why I don’t watch Clifford,” Price snarked.
The clip ended a few minutes later, and the panel reached its midway point. Price announced that there would be a ten-minute intermission. "I don't drink,” he remarked, adding, “and even sometimes after this, I wanna!"
Wandering Perspectives
Following the intermission, Price announced that the next feature would be a new compilation cut of Garzey’s Wing. “It was like cutting off pieces of flesh as I made it,” he explained, “but I finally made a supercut of Garzey's Wing.”
The audience cheered and applauded, to which Price joked, “You really shouldn’t cheer this.” He added, “Any cut I made, it was like sacrificing a small child.”
He paused and looked around the room, asking, “Who has never felt the tender caress of Garzey’s Wing?” A few hands shot up throughout the room, as Price cackled and proclaimed, “Oh, you’re in for a ride!”
The hour-long feature was a compilation that would have made Yoshiyuki Tomino proud. Or, more eager to deny the existence of the series.
I’m not sure which, anymore.
As with every year, though, the room cackled and giggled at every line of stilted, wooden dialogue, and howled with laughter at the moment when a duck inexplicably carried Chris’ spirit to the world of Byston Well.
Price paused the footage a couple of minutes into the feature to stop on Wandering Perspective Man, a stocky, elderly male character. He bellowed, “There he is,” pointing at the screen while the audience cheered and whooped.
The host smiled and sighed, as he said, “There. Now, I’m dignified.”
As the footage resumed, the audience chortled at each nonsensical plot development and poorly animated transition, each of which was punctuated by Price’s signature sarcasm and snark. Those who could pry their eyes away from the on-screen horror show could see him gauging the audience from behind his laptop. A smirk played across his face every time one of his jokes landed, or when folks tittered at the on-screen nonsense.
The biggest pops, though, arose during the feature’s most baffling moments. Villain character Zaguzo’s inability to dismount a horse without killing it; Chris telling his comrades that he would stay if Byston Well had convenience stores; and one scene that inexplicably features a pair of dragons mating in the background.
At points, Price paused the footage and mugged to the group with expressions of exaggerated confusion. For example, in one scene, Chris attempts to attach explosive powder to an arrow. “Doesn’t work,” he bluntly intones. Falon Fa, Chris’ Fellario (basically a pixie) companion, explains that he should use the wax from her wings because it’s sticky. The camera then cuts to an extreme close-up of said wings, which are drawn in horrifying realistic detail. A low groan rang through the audience as Price smirked and said, "I'm going to just let that soak in for a second.”
Price's genuine incredulity in reaction to the onscreen nonsense, even years later, remains genuinely hilarious. Likewise, his caustic sense of humor hits with a visceral punch, that helps to turn a fun experience into a truly memorable one. Whether he’s calling out the Wandering Perspective man’s space-warping powers, or making a mockery of the OVA’s nonsense names and botched dub lines, one can’t help but be enchanted by the experience.
As the feature faded to black, Price rose and thanked the audience once more, before bellowing “Thank you, Boston! Goodnight!”
The audience responded in cheers and whoops, before they rose, themselves. Some made their way to the stage to ask questions of the master of mayhem; others chatted eagerly about the horror show that just unfolded; and others, still, talked up other awful anime that their friends needed to see next. No matter the case, though, it’s impossible to deny that everyone was smiling, and that, for another year, Price was able to turn the worst of the anime world into a genuinely priceless memory.
