Breaking It All Down: the ‘Zine – Is Edited and Written by Alexander Case
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Issue 7 - August 2015 Jose Sanchez was born and raised in Miami, Florida on March 10,1968,where he still lives today with his wife Aliana. At the age of six, he was introduced to fingerpainting. By first grade, he had picked up his first pencil, but it was not until the summer of 1977 when Star Wars hit the movie screens across America, that his imaginative spark was truly ignited! Like so many other people that were influenced by the cult phenomenon, he was too. So much so, that this led him to seriously explore and develop his talent for creating art further. As time has gone by and he has honed his skills, he has been notably influenced by the works of Science Fiction and Fantasy artists such as: Stephen Youll, Donato Giancola, Chris Moore, Tim White, Jim Burns, David B. Mattingly and Michael Whelan, to name but a few. He attended Lindsey-Hopkins Technical Education Education Center in Miami, Florida where he received a certificate in Commercial Art Technology-majoring in illustration and minoring in Graphic Design. Jose would ideally like to see himself one day working professionally in the motion picture industry as a Concept Artist. He had previously worked on a low- budget SF/Super Hero Animation flick titled: "Shadow Runner", designing the individual character's spaceships. "They tend to depend more on technology than they do on their own superpowers". He is also interested in the publication and gaming markets. To one of his many credits, which have included several fanzine covers and one semi-prozine cover and interior artwork. Also appearing in the official LucasFilm Star Wars Insider magazines: "City Patrol", was chosen for publication in the March/April 2006/issue #86. “Oil Bath”, “Artoo”, “Pair of Jawas” and “Land of the Rising Suns” in April 2014/issue #148 now being published by Titan Publications and online at starwars.com on the Jan.15,2014 Blog article: Bantha Tracks: Best of the Year, Online edition: “AT-AT Driver” and in the Blog article: Bantha Tracks: Art Galaxy, March 2014 “ Djas Puhr-Settling The Score!” Much of his art can be currently seen at efanzines.com. 2 Breaking It All Down: The ‘Zine – is edited and written by Alexander Case. Letters of Comment can be sent to [email protected]. If you’ve never sent a LoC to me before, please put “LoC:” at the start of the subject line, so it gets filed in the right place. I also sporadically appear on the Bureau42 Greatest Science Fiction Film Tournament podcast, available through the Bureau42 Master Podcast Audio Feed, which can be found on iTunes and Stitcher. My YouTube Channel, where the web-series that this fanzine is spun off from. can be found at http://www. youtube.com/user/CountZeroOr Contents Letters of Comment 4 Thoughts on the 2015 Hugo Award Nominated Novels 7 Anime 203 – Fantasy in Anime 9 Documentary Review: The Ackermonster Chronicles 16 3 Letters of Comment My apologies for the short length and lack of proofreading, as I’m trying to get this issue out the door before WorldCon. First up is a letter from Taral Wayne. I sent a brief and perhaps flippant word earlier. I’ll try to comment at greater length now that I’ve done the day’s computer chores. First rule of fandom. Never apologize for a late issue. Everyone has late issues. Having an issue on time is by far the less likely thing. Secondly, everyone apologizes anyway... In fact, I’m facing the fact that I’ll have to apologize myself for being late with the next issue of Broken Toys. For 39 issues my hexa-weekly fanzine came out on a monthly schedule. I will probably be so late with issue 40, though, that it may really come out six weeks after the previous one! But I have no social life to speak of, so have little better to do than observe schedules. The main problem presented by the desire to loc your fanzine is that while I dabble in many of your interests, none are near the top of my list of priorities. Some aren’t on the list at all. Anime, for instance. I discovered it back in the early 1980s. Some bastardized versions of Force-Five and Speed Racer were showing on the local television stations around 4 in the afternoon, and sometimes there was nothing better on, so I’d groan and watch them. One or two years later, the Chuck the Security Guard Show presented Hayao Miyazaki’s “Nausicaa” and I was hooked! The show wasn’t really run by a security guard named Chuck, of course. He was a local stand-up comedian who pretended to be the stations security guard, secretly broadcasting himself, his buddies and any weird shit that he found. He did that too. He had all sorts of oddball folk singers, street artists, and bizarre little art films on the show. I don’t know where Chuck got the tape. It was more than three generations old, and the sound warbled terribly. It was in the original Japanese from start to finish, and the picture jittery. Yet it was so different from anything I’d seen before – even wretched crap like Force Five – that I couldn’t tear my eyes from it. I later learned that there were other Miyazaki films, and that they were only available in fan bootlegs in North America. I cast my nets into fandom and made the necessary connections to start collecting Miyazaki’s other films. Each acquisition was a story in itself. Princess Mononoke, for instance, I located in the big Japanese department store in Seattle on a trip there one year. The story demanded $70 for it! That’s outrageous today, and was even more so in the late 1980s. But generally that’s what imported anime cost in those days. I regretfully walked away from it. To my surprise, I found a small Japanese video rental place across the street. The proprietor agreed to copy the tape for me on the spot, for only $20! He even colour photocopies the packaging for another $2! Years later, Buena Vista made a distribution deal with Studio Ghibli, so now you can buy all the classic Miyazaki dubbed in English – no more Japanese only, or butchered sub-titles! I’ve replaced my tapes with DVDs and think have almost all the Master’s work in my collection. However, I may have missed one or two since Ponyo. Sometimes it is a bit hard to keep straight which work are his, and which are merely another of Studio Ghibli’s directors. My interest in other anime, however, has declined enormously. There was quite a lot of good stuff that I once enjoyed – Ranma 1/2, Lum, Cowboy Be-Bop, Patlabor, Bubble Gum Crises, Nadia: Secret of Blue Water. But 4 with a few exceptions, I grew tired of all that – the frivolous humour and exaggeration, the cute, aggressive girls, the fast cars and the big guns grew formulaic. Then came the Sailor Moon invasion, and all the lackwit shows based on games. I lost interest in all of it. Apart from Miyazaki, I’ve kept only Ghost in the Shell, Metropolis, Akira, and Grave of the Fireflies, I’ve kept nothing. Except Wings of Honeamise. I don’t know why I liked that so much – I was never able to decide what the point of the story was. It was your mention of the film – or a fanzine named after it that you reviewed, at least – that inspired this concise reminiscence. Mad Max? I saw the other three films on TV. The first was interesting – an austere, grim prediction of a post- disaster near-future. The next two seemed like punk circuses, as though Mel Gibson had been replaced by the Three Stooges and the plot confused with Ben Hur. I have no interest in seeing the new one. Best I say no more. I can’t really speak about video games, either. I had a couple of adventure type games, early on – The Neverhood, Circle of Blood (about Templars and clowns that leave bombs) – and played them both all the way through. I only got half way through Toon Struck, though. When I was staying with friends out of town, I was bored late at night and played a car chase game of some sort – I turned off the other cars and just drove recklessly around town, crashing into store windows, running over pedestrians, stuff like that. But a couple of hours of that was enough for me. I have never played any other shoot’em up, chase ‘em, blow’em up type game. No D & D, no Sim, no nothin’. I did once buy a copy of The Incredibles for $2 ... but I never installed it and have no idea what it’s like. I don’t even know if it’ll run with Windows 7. There just never seems time enough in the day to find out. Understandably, this may well be the only loc I write on Breaking It All Down. Maybe if you ever have an article on Fraggle Rock or The Powerpuff Girls, I’ll give it another try. But you have to meet me half way here... Thanks for the letter! You know, I probably should write something about Fraggle Rock (or maybe The Storyteller). HBO taking on funding Sesame Street would certainly make it timely. Also, Disney is putting out a collection of all of Miyazaki’s work (not just films, but several episodes of TV shows he directed), plus some documentaries and an art book on Blu-Ray.