The Adventure of Santa Boy

Through a happy set of circumstances, I was able to get my hands on a copy of the elusive Japanese anime series, Shonen Santa no Daibouken, or, literally translated (according to Google), The Adventure of Santa Boy. This is a twenty-four episode adaptation of L. Frank Baum's The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus, and I found it to be utterly charming. I'd love to see a subtitled version so that I can figure out exactly what's going on, but thanks to knowing the book I got the general idea. It opens with Claus as a boy in Burzee, but we do get some flashbacks throughout the series of him as a baby and how he was adopted by Necile. But this being a series, portions of the story were greatly expanded. Most of the animals appear to be immortal, as they're still there in the end when Santa looks more like how we expect to see him today. Blinkie the cat shows up much earlier, and he and Claus can talk to each other. However, none of the other mortals can understand what Blinkie is saying. Glossie and Flossie the reindeer also are there from the start, and they make for an amusing double act. Several other animals who weren't in the book also appear throughout the series. One of the biggest deviations, however, is the character of Mari, who appears to be a yellow ryl. She is pretty much the co-lead character, especially once Claus leaves Burzee and strikes out on his own. (Claus, by the way, is still a boy throughout the series, until the very end. He is never shown making or delivering toys as a young man, as he was in the book.) Mari is a great character, with lots of enthusiasm and a bit of a temper and probably a crush on Claus. She helps Claus on many of his adventures, and colors the toys. The battle with the Awgwas has been expanded, crossing over several episodes, and it appears to feature several different levels of bad guys, all of whom are very Japanese.

I hope someone can figure out a way that this can get wider distribution, with English subtitles or dubbing. I doubt it would ever become a hit, but I could see a small but devoted following popping up around this show.

The latest Oz reading

Let's see what I've just finished this weekend, shall we?

• First was a new picture book edition of The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus illustrated by Charles Santore that came out this year. If you want the full story, I really don't recommend getting this, as it is a severe adaptation. Most of the highlights are there, but the Awgwas are left out completely, and it just feels incomplete. But I still recommend it for Santore's illustrations. They are wonderful and charming, and remind me a lot of Maxfield Parrish's work.
  
• The other book I read was Beyond the Stars: Tales of Adventure in Time and Space, a collection of science fiction and fantasy short stories, and excerpts of longer works, from the early '80s. I think we originally bought this for the final story, the opening of the novelization of the Doctor Who story "The Monster of Peladon," but when I discovered that one of the stories was by Rachel Cosgrove Payes, I grabbed it for my Oz collection. Rachel Cosgrove is the most underrepresented Royal Historian in my collection, and that's something I hope to fix soon. Anyway, "Half-Life" sets up an interesting post-apocalyptic city where fifteen-year-olds must kill older people and steal their identity or they will be fair game for the next generation to do the same to them when they turn thirty. Yeah, grisly. So when Benji sets out into the wilderness to find the legendary Old Man of the Hills... well, let's just say he finds more than he bargained for. This book actually looks like a pretty interesting read in general, and maybe I'll go back and read the rest of the stories later. It includes such big name writers as H. G. Wells, Jules Verne, Arthur C. Clarke, Robert Heinlein, Anne McCaffrey, and Robert Silverberg, so it may just well be worth my time.
  

Santa Claus in Japan

One of the great unknown mysteries of Ozian fandom has been the early '90s Japanese anime series based on L. Frank Baum's The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus. Nobody — at least on this side of the Atlantic — has been able to track it down or learn much about it. So it helps to have a fan in Japan, I guess. Michael-sensei, a Canadian teaching English over there, has also tracked down some interesting Oz stuff over there, and today on his blog posted about Shonen Santa no Daiboken with a lot more info than I've ever seen on it before. No, he hasn't found it yet, but he's on the hunt. I just hope he'll manage to get a copy to me somehow, too...

Saturday Morning Oz Cartoon

Okay, strictly speaking, this isn't Oz, but the original story was written by L. Frank Baum, so it's close enough! (Besides, the main character later shows up in The Road to Oz.) It's an excerpt from the 1985 Rankin-Bass production of The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus. I wish someone had put up a less graphic part, one that shows more about who Claus was and what he did for children, but this is the only one I could find. So go ahead and watch.