Boop!

This week we rsquo;re featuring Betty Boop, the indirect inspiration for most of the female characters in anime. You can find some samples of Betty rsquo;s work on YouTube.

Betty Boop (who was a dog in her first appearances) spun off from the Koko the Clown cartoon series at the start of the sound era and was tremendously popular in the early 1930s ndash; so much so that censors came down pretty hard on her flirty sexuality.

The spotlight was again on Betty in the 1960s, when the cartoon rsquo;s hallucination-like surrealism was appreciated by a whole new generation. The Boop cartoons have been at the center of a controversy again since the mid- lsquo;90s, when an overzealous digital restoration for a laserdisc box set release ruined much of the image quality while cleaning up speckles and smudges. Since then, the Boop cartoons have been used as filler items in budget cartoon packages, some taken from these DNR-burned LDs or even worse transfers.

This set doesn rsquo;t seem to suffer from those woes, and gives us more Boop cartoons than any DVD release yet, but it rsquo;s far from the definitive treatment this movie star deserves. Some Betty cartoons have been restored by ASIFA rsquo;s preservation project.

(O) BETTY BOOP Collector rsquo;s Edition (Echo Bridge) This 2-disc set features 42 classic cartoons, mostly taken from TV prints.

Windowboxing gives them a more accurate aspect ratio than some presentations, and they don rsquo;t suffer from over-cleaning, but the image suffers from some wear and digital mushiness. The audio is also a bit muffled, but not nearly as bad as some discs featuring cartoons of the era. The earliest shorts in this set are 1933 rsquo;s ldquo;Betty Boop's Ker-Choo rdquo;, ldquo;Is My Palm Read rdquo; (featuring Betty in lingerie and naked as an infant) and ldquo;Betty Boop's Crazy Inventions rdquo;.

The rest come from later when Betty rsquo;s image was increasingly toned down and supporting characters Grampy and Pudgy became more prominent. The rest of the line-up: ldquo;Be Human rdquo;, ldquo;Betty Boop and Grampy rdquo;, ldquo;Betty Boop and Little Jimmy rdquo;, ldquo;Betty Boop and the Little King rdquo;, ldquo;Betty Boop's Rise to Fame rdquo;, ldquo;Betty in Blunderland rdquo;, ldquo;Happy You and Merry Me rdquo;, ldquo;House Cleaning Blues rdquo;, ldquo;The Impractical Joker rdquo;, ldquo;Musical Mountaineers rdquo;, ldquo;Not Now rdquo;, ldquo;Stop That Noise rdquo;, ldquo;Swat the Fly rdquo;, ldquo;Baby Be Good rdquo;, ldquo;Betty Boop with Henry, the Funniest Living American rdquo;, ldquo;Candid Candidate rdquo;, ldquo;Ding Dong Doggie rdquo;, ldquo;The Hot Air Salesman rdquo;, ldquo;Judge for a Day rdquo;, ldquo;A Language All My Own rdquo;, ldquo;A Little Soap and Water rdquo;, ldquo;Rhythm on the Reservation rdquo;, ldquo;Training Pigeons rdquo;, ldquo;We Did It rdquo;, ldquo;Grampy's Indoor Outing rdquo;, ldquo;Little Nobody rdquo;, ldquo;Making Friends rdquo;, ldquo;Making Stars rdquo;, ldquo;More Pep rdquo;, ldquo;My Friend the Monkey rdquo;, ldquo;No! No!

A Thousand Times No!! rdquo;, ldquo;Poor Cinderella rdquo;, ldquo;Pudgy Picks a Fight rdquo;, ldquo;Pudgy Takes a Bow Wow rdquo;, ldquo;The Scared Crows rdquo;, ldquo;So Does an Automobile rdquo;, ldquo;A Song a Day rdquo;, ldquo;Taking the Blame rdquo; and ldquo;You're Not Built That Way rdquo;.

Includes Betty key chain.

Here rsquo;s a rundown of the constant stream of anime comin rsquo; at ya on DVD from around the world:

(O) ANGELINA BALLERINA: Angelina Follows Her Dreams (Fox) You rsquo;ve got to follow your dreams, as movies and TV keep telling us. So when I dream about capturing hundreds of lizards around the neighborhood and setting them loose at the post office, I should hellip; ?

(O) BILL MANDY rsquo;S BIG BOOGEY ADVENTURE (Warner Bros.)
(O) CASE CLOSED Case 3.1: Behind the Facade (Funimation) Episodes 40-45.

Kid detective Conan Edogawa defies social convention on his quest for the truth even when it takes him from the grimiest gutter to vast estates.
(O) DEFENDERS OF THE EARTH Complete Series Volume 2 (BCI Eclipse) Comic-strip heroes battle Ming the Merciless across five more discs.
(O) DORA THE EXPLORER: Shy Rainbow (Paramount) Dora coaxes a rainbow from its hiding place in the closet.

Anyone catch the brilliant Dora parody on Saturday Night Live?

Almighty Leader!

We welcome the input of Maniacs who want to share input on this section, where we highlight a different genre feature that has yet to come to digital disc format ndash; just send your suggestions to in an email identified with ldquo;NOT ON DVD rdquo; in the subject line.

(O) OUT OF THE INKWELL (Lionsgate?

Shout Factory? Echo Bridge?) An earlier, even more groundbreaking series of cartoons from Betty Boop rsquo;s home at the Max Fleischer Studios featured a little clown named Koko who, along with his dog pal Bimbo, have bizarre adventures both in the cartoon and lsquo;real rsquo; world.

Some of the 85 or so Inkwell cartoons are lost, but the ones that survive need to be preserved on DVD in first class editions. Of lesser importance are a series of Koko cartoons made for TV in the 1960s by Hal Seeger Productions, with Larry Storch providing the clown rsquo;s voice. With Shout Factory releasing other Seeger properties, I hope they rsquo;ll get around to this one as well.

It rsquo;s a crime that so much of animation history is NOT ON DVD.

And be sure to check back next week mdash;and every week mdash;for Mania rsquo;s Anime Avalanche! And check in every Tuesday for the latest DVD Shopping List!

Anime Avalanche ( 2007 Brian Thomas) is our weekly anime column. Brian Thomas is the author of the massive book VideoHound rsquo;s Dragon: Asian Action Cult Flicks, !

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