Thunderbirds 2086

[AndyThomas]

Mmmph. MMMMPH. Oh, alright. Thunderbirds 2086 will get a showing on my Animated section as soon as I find a couple of free hours. It's one I've been intending to do for a while, and like you, I have that old video. I finally managed to source the old Annual that I remembered which has some great images from the series. As an example, here's the new version of the Mole - there'll be more on the page once I've got it sorted out. Might have it up by Monday night actually - got a busy weekend lined up but Monday off, so...This, of course, is another example of anime gone West - the Japanese love Thunderbirds, and this is their tribute. The animation isn't fantastic as anime goes, but for me as a kid it was a great series...

[AndyThomas]

I can confirm there were 17 - I've only scanned in the main ones or the new versions of the old Tbirds. The new Mole is actually Thunderbird 16. The craft you've seen, Thunderbird 5, has a cone on the front so you could mistake it for the Mole. In fact it seems to be similar to Thunderbird 3 - it's called a "Special Ground Operations Vehicle", very heat resistant, and can actually carry the Mole inside it...

[Matt Darcy]

I loved the thunderbirds cartoon, it was the same sort of the as BOTP both ACE !

[FZeroOne]

Ah, anime, my almost specialist subject... ^_^Thunderbirds 2086 was a Japanese animated show originally known as Techno-Voyagers (by a curious linguistic quirk, the "V" sound in Japanese is similar to the "B" sound, which is why the various vehicles had TB on the side instead of TV...!)It was developed out of the ashes of an aborted co-production between a Japanese company and Englands very own "God of Puppets", Gerry Anderson. (TerraHawks was another project catapaulted out of the wreckage...!)More details on the history of this fondly remembered series can be found in Helen McCarthys/Jonathan Clements Anime encyclopedia.

[AndyThomas]

I keep meaning to add an ad (so to speak) for the encyclopedia - those interested in more details can read them here. I also ought to update the Thunderbirds entry with the above info which I'm sure Justin's told me about before - I mention Technovoyagers but not how the TB thing came about... I didn't know that Anderson did actually have a hand in it though? Can you elaborate on that Justin?

[FZeroOne]

I have e-mailed this to you before, Andy, which is probably why it strikes a bell.As to the Gerry Anderson connection, I'm going off the top of my head here, but I think he had an agreement to produce a show with Japanese backing. This fell through, but certain elements that were developed were recycled for use in other projects.As for whether TB2086/TV ever had Gerry Andersons approval, I have no idea, but according to the Encyclopedia one of the Japanese production staff was also head of ITC Japan and so presumably had some kind of rights claim.It should be noted that the Japanese - and I mean this without any kind of nasty undertone - have not always been entirely respectful of other people rights to their creations; the famous anime character Lupin III was created without permission from the original Arsene Lupin authors estate, which led to some interesting international copyright spats but at least we also got The Castle of Cagliostro out of it!