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I noticed this a lot earlier this year when it came to Shinichiro Watanabe’s latest series Lazarus, but it feels like the excitement for Toonami making original anime has kind of lessened. Personally, while I think it was a flawed show, I don’t think it’s as bad as some make it out to be but given Adult Swim’s track record with original anime production, I do understand the sentiment of it. After shows like Blade Runner Black Lotus, the Fooly Cooly sequels, and the biggest blunder of them all, Uzumaki, I feel that’s left a rather sour taste in everyone’s mouth, but whether that’s justified or not is all up to the viewer. If you’ve been reading my articles for a long time, you know how I feel about them. It sucks because I think Adult Swim, and by extension Toonami, are more than capable of producing great original content for the block, because they have proven that in the past. Whether that was when Adult Swim funded production for the second season of The Big O or even putting in bits of money to have perpetual rights to the Ghost in the Shell Stand Alone Complex series. That brings me to the show that started off Toonami’s originals, the first and only original to be made during the block’s run on Cartoon Network: The Immortal Grand Prix or IGPX for short. Buckle up, cause we’re going fast, real fast! Welcome to Toonami Throwback.
Before I go into it, I want to get this out of the way first: I am not an IGPX super fan, so despite this going in-depth, it won’t cover everything. If you want as much information on this series as you can get, it exists out there. I got most of mine through the Blu-ray re-release of the series, but I’m sure other fans who are far more knowledgeable than I am can and will point out small details I missed. Of note, IGPX has two versions: the Toonami cut and the IG cut, however neither version is all that different from one another outside of some slight changes with music, but for the most part they are basically the same show. Despite that, I went with the Toonami cut as that is what Cartoon Network ran and what Adult Swim ran when they re-ran the series. With that being said let’s begin not with the series but with…
The IGPX Pilot/TIE
Before IGPX made its debut as a series on Cartoon Network’s Toonami, it premiered in 2003 as Toonami’s next Total Immersion Event. Typically, total immersion events were saved for storylines focusing on TOM and the crew of the Absolution, but likely due to the costs of producing them and the fact that it was more or less feeding a block that CN itself wasn’t too interested in continuing to support after 2004, the move to use TIE’s more for showcasing pilots that could be expanded into new series for Toonami was an interesting idea. Unfortunately, IGPX would end up being the only one to do this, at least at that moment in time. Regardless, getting a glance of what would eventually become a new show was exciting. The first thing that stands out is that the pilot miniseries for IGPX is very different from what the final product would become. Directed by Koichi Mashimo, whose previous work included the .hack franchise, and animated by Bee Train with assistance by Production IG, the pilot would focus more on a cross between snowboarding and robot gladiator extreme sports. The teams featured are mostly the same ones that would be in the final series with a few exceptions, the most obvious being the protagonist team name is completely different. Rather than Satomi as seen in the full series, here, the team name is Suzaku. The art and animation in the pilot is rough and while it’s obviously meant to pitch it to an audience and investors interested in a full series, I find that its color palette was too dull, with the overall plot of the five shorts that make up the pilot rather unfocused. What separates something like this from just a typical Gundam battle or even a sport your audience may understand is beyond me. I will say the voice cast is good, consisting of anime voiceover regulars like Joshua Seth (Tai from Digimon, Tetsuo from the Pioneer dub of Akira), Michelle Ruff (Fujiko Mine from Lupin The Third Part II) , and Wendee Lee (Faye Valentine from Cowboy Bebop), although I do think it could’ve had stronger voice direction in some parts but that’s nitpicking when it comes to a pilot episode. Regardless of those criticisms, I find that there is potential in this idea and if it were tweaked around more and had more of a centralized focus, it could be something great.
