1988 – Tamala 2010: A Punk Cat in Space (2002)

spacetime coordinates / Synopsis: 2010. Meguro City, Tokyo, Cat Earth, a world of corporations and commercialism, where a giant mechanical Colonel Sanders wanders the streets with an axe embedded in its head, loudly advertising the restaurant. Tamala, bored with the city, leaves her home against the wishes of her human mother and flies away in a personal spaceship bound for her birthplace, Orion. Her ship is shot down by the Mysterious Postcat, and lands on the outskirts of Hate City on the Planet Q

TAMALA 2010: A Punk Cat in Space is a 2002 Japanese animated film written, directed and featuring music by the two-person team t.o.L (“trees of Life”), known individually as K. and kuno. The film features both 2D and 3D computer animation, and is mostly black-and-white. The characters, designed by t.o.L and Kentarō Konpon, are reminiscent of Sanrio‘s Hello Kitty and 1960s anime and manga such as Astro Boy. The creators admit that one of the film’s central plot points, about a cult operating as a postal service and corporate monopoly, is influenced and adapted from Thomas Pynchon‘s novel The Crying of Lot 49.

TAMALA2010 was originally envisioned as the first episode of a trilogy – the latter two parts were given the working titles TAMALA IN ORION (which would chronicle Tamala’s search for her real mother) and TATLA (which was to explore the character of Tatla in greater depth). A colour TV series was also planned, with the working title TAMALA IN SPACE. As of 2020, none of these has surfaced – instead there have been two shorter works, the t.o.L written and directed TAMALA ON PARADE

and TAMALA’S “WILD PARTY“

–two short stories from different writers, storyboarded and directed by Shūichi Kohara and animated by Studio 4°C. Both of these are included on the TAMALA ON PARADE DVD, released in Japan in August 2007. This DVD does not have English subtitles.

 A sequel named TAMALA 2030: A PUNK CAT IN DARK has been under production since 2019. (wiki)

imdb

Wake up!! TAMALA (english subtitles)

t.o.L collaboration with the WWF Japan

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TAMALA 2010 OST – happy prince

1978 – ORION #1 #2 #3 #4 #5, 1988-1990 issues (Romanian SF zine)

ORION science fiction art and literature zine was somehow my first true entry into science fiction when at the end of the 1980s, in the Romanian Southern city of Craiova at the local Lyrical Theatre and was really lavish in style (designed and layout by famous comic book artist and SF enthusiast Victor Pirligras). I could not wait to buy it at the local newsstand when I was visiting my grandparents in Ploiesti, back then it cost a small fortune yet affordable for everyone’s pocket money and I was completely blasted by its contents each time. Hard to describe the sentiment of reading – was keeping always article to read for later, to have the pleasure of discovering something new. The mutant hunter by V Pirligras was serialized and blew me apart with its labyrinthine and vast architectural assemblages. Many congrats to those who published it and those scanlaters who digitized it. This way I was able to include it in the Timpuri Noi: Xenogenze ale SF-ului show, especially the back cover of No 3 Orion with the headless, begging homeless robot drawn by V. Pirligras in 1983 and published in 1989.

Some technical details – it was made on a CoBra computer the only computer produced in the city of Brasov using a special ORION software coded by Liviu Cercelaru. It was made with the help of the Craiova-based Scifi club or cenaclu “Victor Anestin” (named after one of the pioneers of Romanian SF).

In two colors (black and red) it had a newspaper format and featured a lot of local comics book artist greats such as Victor Pirligras, Valentin Iordache and Marian Mirescu as well as for example the first (in my knowledge) serialization of Barbarella by J C Forrest. On 32 pages it had everything, including a lot of women authors (for those days), as well as SF criticism and SF studies by Dodo Niţă and V Pirligras – introductions to heroic fantasy, SF cinema etc Local SF greats as well as foreign names were present. A wide assortment from Asimov, J G Ballard to Gustav Meyrink, Richard Matheson, James Triptree Jr., Marion Zimmer Bradley, Ursula K. Le Guin, Olga Larionova, Michel Jeury, Liuben Dilov, Gustav Wahl, Constantina Paligora, Serge Brussolo, Anne McCaffrey, as well as Mihai Gramescu, Victor Martin, Radu Honga, Dragos Vasilescu and many more.

ORION issue #1 1988

ORION issue #2 1988

ORION issue #3 1989