Features
by Sean O'Mara

The Five Star Stories Original Video That Never Was

My recent dive into Animag reminded me of an often overlooked truth about old anime magazines: sometimes you’ll find gold. The news sections of these magazines can read like a fever dream of make believe and “what if” scenarios that seem absurd decades later but must have been rooted in some sort of half-truth or rumor, right?

I mention this to set up why this particular news and rumors section below, from Animag Vol. #3, stuck out to me. Specifically, that last item.

When that news blurb was written in 1988, the Sunrise-produced Five Star Stories OVA was still about a year away. While that direct-to-video anime is a sublime adaption of the earliest chapters of Mamoru Nagano’s long-running sci-fi manga, it was also the only direct adaption the manga would ever get. So reading about another Five Star Stories video from roughly the same era presents an enticing “what-if,” even though it seems like it would be more focused on FSS merchandising than actual animation. Hideaki Anno, though, eh?

For context, General Products had put together a few different videos outside of the often discussed Daicon Openings, including a tape collecting various opening animations from different conventions and an anthology of fan films. They also produced a line of 1/300 metal models based on the Mortar Heads from Five Star Stories around 1988, which is right around the time that this particular video would have been in the works. The General Products 1988 catalog dedicated two full pages to Five Star Stories kits and merchandise, so the company must have had pretty good relations with Nagano during that era.

All told, a video focused on Nagano’s epic manga with a big focus on garage kits, Nagano’s own music, and animation by Gainax co-founder Hideaki Anno made sense… It just also seems like it’s a bit much, right?

I’m far from an expert on the series but for as much as Five Star Stories’ popularity has endured, the series’ creator Nagano has had a seemingly complicated relationship with licensed videos. The gorgeous Five Star Stories OVA is an easy recommendation for anyone diving into ‘80s OVAs, but its quality inevitably leads to disappointment as no more volumes were ever adapted. It was a situation that was reportedly caused by Nagano’s displeasure at it being made in the first place or some sort of licensing woes. Regardless of why, that the only other animated adaption of the series is Nagano’s own Gothicmade—a film that remains only viewable in theaters and has never been released on home video–which seems to have started a bit of a ret-con of Nagano’s designs.

Not that two fifteen second animation clips would have amounted to much, but given Anno’s raw mechanical animating power in the late ‘80s, we can only imagine what a sight it would have been to see.

When I mentioned this Animag blurb in the Zimmerit discord, our friend Austin shared an old General Products ad from the April 1988 issue of Comic Box he’d found years before that mentioned this video and even teased a release date, price, and a name. Tales of Joker was to be released in May of 1988 on VHS and Betamax at a price of 9,800yen. This ad also mostly backs up the Animag coverage, suggesting it would focus more on FSS merchandising and include only some brief animation.

With some more digging, Austin also turned up a Japanese fan site that mentions the original announcement for the video came in the guidebook for the Winter 1988 Wonder Festival (an event that was, at the time, run by General Products). That announcement reportedly mentioned a 60-second animation short and a narrated feature by Nagano himself explaining all the different types of Five Star Stories garage kits available at the time. I don’t have a copy of that guidebook so I haven’t been able to confirm this.

Tales of Joker was also advertised in a massive 1/35 scale Led Mirage soft vinyl kit from Kaiyodo. Included with the booklets and instructions in that kit was a flyer with an advertisement for the video. The only photo of this I’ve been able to dig up comes from a Mercari listing and the image quality isn’t great. It’s worth noting that the illustration attached to the ad (the same Led Mirage illustration by Nagano that was used for the cover of the Led Mirage Technical Manual booklet included with the kit) is assumed to have been intended as the cover for the video, but I’m not sure if that’s really corroborated anywhere.

Paperwork included with the 1/35 scale Led Mirage kit. The Tales of Joker flyer is on the left.

Considering that this never-released video was advertised in magazines just a couple of months before its release date really begs the question as to how close to completion this project was. General Products (and Gainax of that era) were notorious for over promising and under delivering so maybe it was just vapor ware or perhaps—as that Japanese site guesses—there may have been some sort of issue between General Products and Nagano’s company ToysPress that prevented its release.

The final mention of Tales of Joker I could find was in the Spring 1988 issue of Hobby Japan EX, where the video’s cancellation was announced. No details are given as to why the video was cancelled, but the publication date for that issue is April 10th, less than a month before the video’s announced release date. Plans for a release event at the Ryugoku Public Hall in May of 1988 were also cancelled.

A short blurb from the Spring 1988 issue of Hobby Japan EX announcing the video’s cancellation.