Well, went on a nostalgic binge so rewatched the anime series Thunder Sub (aka Space Carrier Blue Noah), made in 1979 in Japan and dubbed I guess in 1986. As I said before my parents had recorded the TV-movie that started the series. Of course, we had it on two different tapes. The ending part which I saw first was on a VHS tape I think we had recorded Raiders of the Lost Ark and a Bugs Bunny Special where Bugs tells the history of the US to his... nephew (?) followed by some road runner cartoons. The cartoon ends on Wile E. Coyote shrinking after running through a pipe, but he gets the roadrunner and realises he is so small that he holds up a sign where it says something like "you always told me to catch the roadrunner... so what do I do now" and as the Swedish dubber said the line it cuts to Thunder Sub and it sailing away on the attack on the first Death Force fort. The first part was recorded on a VHS with Spitting Image special on Ronal Reagan after he ended his run as president of the US, but the ending is cut off.
Story is... well, depending on which voice over you listen to, it's either 2052 or the 22nd centuary and the world is at peace (see, clearly fiction!) and have colonised the planets of the solar system (or at least Mars, Jupiter and Saturn). The earth is one united federation and have created 9 scientific research centres around the world to help the exploration of the world and space. N1 being the most important one for this story and focused on Oceanography and placed in... well, the map shows Japan, but they dub it to Hawaii.
Beside the N1 problem I also noticed there is no centres in Africa (maybe N5, but hard to see) or South America.
One night a meteor shower causes concern when one is studied by scientist and they discover spying equipment and reports of signals beaming out from Earth into space and no known transmitter. All scientist and politicians meet in Hawaii (aka Tokyo) to discuss this alarming news. From N1 head director Cromwell Colins meet his son Colin Colins (not much fantasy in naming really) who been accepted to the science academy. During the meeting the aliens causing the meteor shower attacks from their satellite Terror-Star with their army, the Death Force. Terror-Star is home to the Gothamites from the planet Gotham that is 30 light years away near the constellation Gemini. Their home was destroyed by a wandering black hole that devoured their sun and planet. In desperation they give dictatorial powers to General Zee who have the plans for the Terror-Star that will save 200 million gothamites. Colin with his two friends Chris and Jamie survives the initial attack and enter the conference centre where both Colins and Chris fathers is. They find Cromwell pinned under a large stone slab dying. He gives Colin his pendent and the task of going to N1 with the word "Thunder Sub" before passing away. They find a futuristic hoover craft and pick up their classmates like Jeremy, Robby and Fenton and some more unnamed ones before visiting their families. At Chris's house they pick up this girl Anna that seems shellshocked from the destruction and they leave, finding no other survivors they can help. At Terror-Star we learn that they placed themselves between the earth and moon and with it changed the poles. The attacks and disasters that follows kills 90 % of the human population leaving 600 million alive. Collin and his friends reach N1 and is sucked down a whirlpool to a hidden cave where they open doors with Collins pendant and at what looks like a ship bridge Collins utters the command input "Thunder Sub" and it awakens the weapon to save the earth!
It looks amazing!
N1 was in actuality built to create Thunder Sub as a weapon against a possible war between Jupiters moons and Earth due to Earths economical dominance... so much for a world in peace. At the same time another sub observes them, the Tempest Junior controlled by the Thunder Sub crew lead by Captain Noah. They board Thunder Sub and confronts the students at the brig. As they learn about the creation of Thunder Sub by Colins father they are spotted by Death Forces lead by Colonel Lupus that tries to sink her. They fire back and submerge and goes away. The student are drafted as the crew for Tempest Junior and taken on a two week training course where they discover a downed fighter jet from Earth with the pilot barely alive. Rushing him to the infirmary he says the words Point N9, Bermuda to Colin and Anna. Captain Noah informs them that Bermuda is where N9 is stationed, he also begin asking Anna about her brothers and it is revealed (to Colin, there was a scene earlier where Noah and Grogan, first mate and now skipper of the Tempest Junior discuss the kids) that Anna is Noah's daughter. Ricky and Jason didn't make it according to Anna since they where hit by a missile. Their relationship was also strained since Noah's wife died while he was working on Thunder Sub.
With this Thunder Sub prepares its first attack on the Gothamites by destroying their Heavy Water Plant by using the Tempest to lure the forces so that Thunder Sub can attack them from behind and then go all out on the Plant. There's entangling bombs, a missile creating a whirl pool under Thunder Sub and other things, but the humans prevail and uses their Anti-Proton Gun that obliterates the plant, but Colonel Lupus and his superior officer Admiral Zogal escapes. At the Gotham Headquarters in the Sahara they ask for materials to fight Thunder Sub from Commander Gulf, but are denied so Lupus contacts General Zee himself and is granted the manpower and materials to build his own submarine. At Thunder Sub the N9 pilot have awakened is named Captain Domingo that informs them that N9 survived the attack and have completed the space engine for Thunder Sub. With their new goal they set out rescuing Earth from the alien invasion.
The adventure continues for 23 more episodes. You get ideas as space elevators, how best to protect the Earth, either focusing on the human element or other animals. They rescue locals and destroy most of the alien invasion force. The strange thing is that both sides knows information they shouldn't have until later. In the very first episode the humans know that the aliens squadrons are known as the death force and their satellite is the Terror Star and vice versa from episode 2 the Gothamites knows that the warship they fought are named Thunder Sub with the commander named Captain Noah. There is an episode where they interrogate a gothamite prisoner and learns about the command structure and history of Terror Star, but the prisoner exchange isn't completed that follows so the Gothamites shouldn't knew anything about this. Especially when Thunder Sub only was known to pretty much the crew and a handful of people, most probably killed in the initial attack (like the President of the World). Even more curious is how civilians knows about Thunder Sub when they are rescued from a slave colony and there is no communication between Gothamites and humans until they have the tongue twister from the interrogation episode.
And the tongue twister is a bit of other problem with the show. Any obstacle they face is solved by using another gadget they just happen to have access to. Is Thunder Sub under attack by kamikaze barracudas at 2 000 m below the surface? Let's try these experimental scubas we just happen to have here. Is the Tempest caught in a living water organism that is weak to ice? Use these ice bombs we have here. Some things like the battle copter I can accept since it looks like a different part of the ship. And since the show tries to look very scientific (everyone has a degree, scientist saves and dooms their respective planets) it feels like they might should have foreshadowed some parts more. The ending is rather short as well, but on the other hand, they at least don't bring out the Anti-Proton Gun 2.0... they just make it so it can fire more often since they have two engines which makes sense to me (who doesn't have a degree in natural science). Also, how many people where on the crew? They use fighter jets in the first episode, but who pilots them? They show Spencer and other pilots run to them in the episode following that, but I got the impression that the reason they hit the slave colony to rescue everyone was to get more people to man the ship? And where is the women? There are 7 women in the whole show, and that includes Colins mother that I assume dies in the first episode (and isn't mentioned at all compared to Colins father after that). And Gotham seems to have no women at all, and how could they have an army stationed after travelling for 30 years?
Small nitpicks, the bigger problem is that they didn't dub the second-to-last episode where they kill the main bad guy and set up the confrontation between Lupus and Thunder Sub that have been anticipated since the very beginning. And missing out the plot point that General Zee intended to take the cells off the dead gothamites and recreate them on earth as a new race devoted to him and for that betrayal is killed by the commander of the death force. At least the commanders noble sacrifice in the final episode is shown. Although why it's him and not General Zee must have been curious for the watchers... did the other dubbers translate it? I found some episodes on the Swedish dub on youtube, but episode two is horrendous where they cut away the music every time someone speaks (and I happen to like the music) and I don't know, Åskbåten sound kinda childish. And that Gunnar Ernblad is like 5 main characters stretches the imagination. He's not bad, but the english is at least varied. And I think Jamie's voice actor also was in Batman Beyond as a minor roll professor and Colin Colins was Batman himself on some of the animated movies. Of course some moments was a bit weird, for example the first flash back to the death of Colins father must have taken another actor and Domingo in one scene almost sounded like his voice broke during the line read. And I don't like the clothes change in episode 8-9 without explanation. Before they had their blue and white shirts and after that everyone wore green. But Colin in total have 5 different clothes. Civilian clothes, academy clothes, the blue shirt, green shirt and space uniform. And that not counting the awesome black scuba gear and the underwater suit.
I would recommend watching it. Youtube have most of the series in english (missing something like 2-3 episodes), think I've seen the greek one complete. I got a boot leg dvd collection back in 2007, but the website seems to be defunct. Sadly the DVD's seems to have been dirtied enough to not been able to be read by my PS3 completely, but my DVD-drive for my Mac works fine. Tried to clean it, but I ain't able to get every speck of dirt so it might be scratched. Doesn't make it better that using the soap and water cleaning destroys the paper glued on top of the DVD. Commendable effort. This is probably to niche to get a whole sale release with commentaries and other things. A pity really since it was one of my first anime's.
