Alter Ego: Torkaizer

I spent my early life watching Grendizer and other anime that where dubbed in Arabic  As a child they where awesome .. no perfect in my eyes. Now that I see them despite the fact that the story puts a bad taste in my mouth, the villains i feel are two dimensional, and the dubbing was In formal Arabic. Seriously though, that’s like watching the show in Shakespearean English, and while this form of Arabic is NOT Archaic it is not used in everyday talk (as each country has its own dialect and each dialect has several accents) it is instead reserved as the universal dialect that all Arabs know but only use in formal writing, or court…

So what does all that have to do with the topic? Remember my first article where I discussed my interview with Mr. Ahmed Almutawa? No? Check it out here. If you do remember then you may remember that I stated that I discussed Torkaizer with him as well and not just Grim Hearts… Yeah? Good… You BETTER!

So what is Torkaizer? It is an Arabic (Emarati to be specific) Rosoom (Yes I shall refrain from using the term anime here… I will explain why as I promised in the previous article… Just have some patience! Seriously…). It generally revolves around a young Emarati named Ahmed who on his vacation to Tokyo Ends up being the pilot to the powerful Mech called Torkazier fighting off an alien race planning on invading earth.

I honestly have to say that while we have had some comical (good, funny, but no substance, no plot) attempts at animated shows non have shown the graphical quality that Mr. Almutawa’s team put into the trailer that they showed off… and while the team did get a fair amount of heckling for the fact that the trailer was a little choppy but hey… it was done in two weeks! So I am impressed by the work (I actually look forward more to the anime than the game! It is right up my alley in terms of graphics and the coolness factor of the enemy Robot… Only mech I like more than it is the first silvery Arm Slave in Full Metal Panic and that is only cause of the cooling fibers that look like hair!

Right, I diverged… strangely enough while I had originally thought that he would have gotten complete support from the Arabic community there has been a fair amount of heckling for using the Emarati dialect instead of using the fore mentioned formal Arabic dialect. He got some racial hate for being Emarati (yeah we can be racist against ourselves it appears…), and one heckler even claimed he stole the trailer off of some Japanese Anime because it was set in Tokyo, and one character spoke in Japanese… He told me in our discussion that as for the Dialect, he wanted to add an aspect of realism including allow different characters to speak in varying dialects for example the aliens when communicating with Ahmed would speak in the formal Arabic because it was the most widely understood… It would make sense that they wouldn’t bother learn every single bloody dialect we know because we have a LOT, and it is NOT the difference between the English spoken in Britain and America… Its Different. I agreed with that for two reasons… Yes it made it feel more realistic… And also for the very same reason you wouldn’t watch an anime or cartoon that was spoken in Shakespearean for the entirety of the cartoon… I understood it but it didn’t feel real… It would be perfectly alright if it was set in a historical period in which they actually spoke that language but NOT when it is not used casually anymore. Also, he noted that as for the fact that it was set in Tokyo, he wanted to set it in a familiar setting to Mech shows, and that he quiet honestly didn’t want the Arabian peninsula to take the first hit but promised that the anime would move back to the Arabian peninsula as the story progresses.

Despite all the heckling… The Alter Ego team got a good amount of support as well from fans who where looking forward to seeing the production complete! Hell I am already looking forward to it… if only to see the alien mech (yes that’s how much I like that mech). He also told me that he had arranged for a drawing contest in which people would draw their character saving Jin one of the main characters. The best artist will have their character incorporated into the Grim Hearts Game as a travelling merchant… and potentially even the Anime. He stated that if they reach four thousand artists contributing there would be two winners and if there where seven thousand he would arrange for three winners and an OVA detailing the character backgrounds. I really hope they get there… I think it would be a great motivator for all those artists contributing to have their very own character included in a Rosoom.

Right so here is why I have been referring to this Animated series as Rosoom for so long. Rosoom in Arabic is the Plural of drawing… so drawings. The word is often used with moving in Arabic to say moving drawings referring to dubbed anime and cartoons alike. What Mr. Almutawa wanted to do however was to create something with it’s own Arabic identify much like Anime is Japanese and Toons are Western, he intends to create the first ever Rosoom, something that will characterize it as Arabian in origin just as each of the former two animation types managed to form their own identities. I suppose the reason it looks significantly more anime like than Toon is because the majority of people my age and older lived off Friday morning (Friday is a weekend) dubbed anime much like myself as I mentioned earlier. One thing he did also mention was that he was sick and tired of how more and more animated shows continued to degrade women as sexual objects, dumb bimbos who are generally utterly useless without the stereotypical “awesome” male who depending on the culture could either be a strong “badass” macho man or worse… a super emo with effeminate qualities… Don’t get me wrong some of the shows that display main characters with those qualities can be pretty damn fun… until you really think about how that personality in real life and how such characters influence some of the viewers… He wanted to veer away from that steriotype. As I have said before… I look forward to see how well that works, and I hope we do get something that doesn’t stick to basic character Archtypes.

So if this wasn’t substantial enough here is more information directly about the anime: The Anime starts in japan and is named by the Japaneese scientests who built him “but not created” Mr. Almutawa clarified implying perhaps that Torkaizer is built on some alien specifications or blueprints. Torkaizer being a name comprised of an amalgamation of the words torque and kaizer as torque us spinning force and Kaizer like the German Emperor. The Amalgamation is intended to describe in a single name what Torkaizer the mech is… A mech who is the emperor of delivering spinning force attacks (Chuck Norris’s Round house kick?). The issue with Torkaizer  at the start is that his Pilot, Jin couldn’t get the best performance out of his or utilize it to its best potential… Because of that, the scientists build two more Robots utilising Torkaizer’s schematics.

During an invation (when Ahmed is on his vacation in Tokyo city) Jin pilots Torkaizer as his robot was under maintenance at the time but due to Torkaizer being less responsive Jin is injured and Ahmed ends up resorting to having to pilot Torkaizer and the responsiveness and compatibility are incredible… That was just a bit of a teaser from what Mr. Almutawa shared. I have to say I am a sucker for the noob getting the kickass weapon of doom at the start to defend everyone and learning how to use it better over time… Really takes me back to the old days!

Mr. Almutawa also stated that the Anime is planned for 26 episodes for the first season and the basic plot is Ahmed defending earth and as the story progresses the setting will move back to Abudhabi where the aliens lash back at Ahmed for continually getting in their way by hitting him where it hurts… Home.

We also discussed the possibility of a second season in which Mr. Almutawa stated that if the first season picks up and is commercially successful there would be another season which he has also planned another 26 episodes and will involve not only an Alien threat but worldwide political tension and feature a darker tone. He did however state that this project will only come out if he could arrange for the funding and for that to happen he would have to find a great deal of support so that it may see the light. It would other wise be put to sleep… I REALLY don’t want that to happen as I am very excited about it!

At the end of interview we sort of diverged and discussed the themes he would like to incorporate and I picked up on the fact that he wanted to stress the theme of communication and the lack of it acts as a barrier between people and how he would like to represent that in the anime. I then asked him what he hoped to achieve with all those productions, he replied that he had several goals. The first being that he would like to see the artistic community in the region grow and expand the entertainment industry in the region. The second was to engage more artists from the region to be involved directly in this project. The third is to personally express his thanks to Go Nagai for his influence and to reach him with his work ( Perhaps get a Grendizer Torkaizer crossover? or ultimately for Torkaizer to be on Super Robot Wars).

That was it for the interview: As I said before … SUPPORT GROWING PRODUCTIONS!!!