Anime Boston 2023: Bad Anime, Bad!

Author: Samantha Ferreira

Editor: Samantha Ferreira

Host: Tinfoil Pyramid Hats

Date: 4/8/2023

Over the past fourteen years, Brian T. Price’s Bad Anime, Bad! panel has become a signature event at Anime Boston. Part performance piece and part showcase of everything wrong with the anime medium, the panel has grown to become a destination for thrill-seekers, masochists, and rubberneckers alike. With each year, he dives into the dumpster of the anime world to find something new and utterly dreadful. In 2015, he proved that, in space, everyone can hear you scream with Starship Troopers (not that one). A year later, he yanked the stake out of schlock OVA Vampire Wars. Last year, Price took a trip down to the worst grocery store anyone’s ever had the displeasure of shopping at, with Foodfight!

As the lines for the event began to form for this year’s panel, it was hard to not hear folks eagerly sharing their guesses for what the Duke of Despicable animation had up his sleeve this year.

The energy was palpable as the room began to fill in. A countdown ticked away the seconds. A train of eager lambs for the slaughter filtered into the room, as Love Train by the O'Jays played over the PA. As the clock hit 14:30, Long Train Running by the Doobie Brothers kicked on, as the human locomotive that was the line seemed almost endless from my vantage point.

At the 11:13 mark, the first beats of Caravan by RUSH washed over the audience, as a low murmur rumbled through the room. There was a palpable sense of glee from the hundreds that were already seated, and the many who had yet to be seated. How envied that sense of naivete, that raw innocence that could only be felt by those whose souls had not been hardened by the parade of horribles that awaited this evening.

At the 5:41 mark, Brian T. Price sat, clad in a black RUSH R40 tour shirt, and announced that he would be extending the countdown, before pulling up the 2019 countdown timer. 2019 was a special year for Price, as it marked ten seasons of Bad Anime, Bad! At Anime Boston. As the song Road to Nowhere by the Talking Heads played, the timer once again counted down from 20 minutes. The entire room began clapping in unison to the beat.

All the while, the hundreds of eager anime fans filtered in, one after another, as they steeled themselves for an evening of comforting misery.

Caravan by RUSH began once again, as staffers continued to pack in the many waiting fans. The room was quickly reaching capacity, as Neil Peart's masterful drumming and Alex Lifeson's brilliant guitar work complemented Geddy Lee's vocals. The energy continued to climb, as RUSH's prog rock sound gave way to AC/DC's triumphant It's A Long Way to the Top. The eager chatter of the room could be heard even above the song's iconic bagpipe solo.

The screaming bagpipes gave way to the iconic sound of RUSH once more, as Dreamline began to play once again. I'll never not be impressed that Price was able to get two RUSH bangers into this countdown.

By this point, the room had reached capacity, as Geddy Lee's "We Are Young!" reverberated through the room.

As the final seconds ticked down, the crowd chanted in unison, down from ten, erupting in cheers as it reached zero, and Price rushed out onto the stage, middle fingers extended as the audience. He uttered an excited "Good evening, Boston!"

He paused for a moment, and looked over the ecstatic crowd, soaking in the energy of the moment. He raised the microphone, and asked, “Why do you cheer for such awful things?” The audience let out a collective chuckle as he continued, inquiring, "Who is here for the first time?”

Dozens of hands shot up throughout the room. Price added, “Keep your hands up, if someone recommended you come here.” About two-thirds of the hands dropped down, as he gazed over the room once more. The host raised the microphone once more and uttered an ominous “They are not your friends. They are bad people and deserving of scorn.”

Chuckles rang out through the room once again, as he offered his brief explanation of what bad anime is, and what goes into his selection process for each year’s lineup. This year, the bad anime train would be making a voyage into the Sea of Stars, with Wonder of Frontier, a low-rent film by Hong Kong-based ADDA Audio-Visual (Protectors of Universe, Defenders of Space). Price has dangled the studio’s films out for audiences in the past, with great success, due to their status as shoddy, poorly dubbed dreck. The movies shamelessly rip off character and mecha designs from prominent anime works like Star Blazers and Mazinger Z and tend to have production values that can only be attained with the help of five bucks and a length of string.

Wonder of Frontier is no exception, as the feature copies heavily from Leiji Matsumoto’s Galaxy Express 999. Price paused for a moment after revealing the film, before stating "I will take great glee in dragging these peoples' works over a white-hot cheese grater because these people ripped off the great Leiji Matsumoto, who recently passed away.” He added an affectionate “So this one's for you, Leiji," as the crowd erupted in cheers.

Before he kicked the video on, Price uttered a booming “Are you ready for pain?!”

The audience responded with an excited “Yeah!”

He replied, "Are you ready for misery?!"

The crowd cried out "Yeah!”

Price indulged their response with an eager "Then let us begin!"

The film opened with a shot of a space train that is little more than a blatant rip-off of the titular locomotive from Galaxy Express 999, streaking across space. Price immediately remarked, "Did I mention how shameless these people are?!"

This moment set the tone for the rest of the screening, as the crowd watched, half in horror, half in perverse curiosity at the trash fire that was smoldering on-screen before them.  All the while, Price was quick to respond to the hilariously shoddy dialogue with mocking responses and inserted dialogue.

In one scene, a guard was snoring loudly, prompting Price to cry, “Dude, get a CPAP machine!”, as the room erupted in giggles and laughs. In another, a token “sexy doctor” character entered the room with awkward stares from the cast. Price paused the video and remarked, “I think that scene is missing something," before replaying the scene, albeit with Shameless Whisper playing instead of uncomfortable silence.

Granted, he didn’t do all the heavy lifting. The film’s nonsensical plot, combined with a dub that can charitably be described as “ear-meltingly bad.” The audience erupted in peals of laughter with every instance of the lead character’s robotic, monotone delivery, and they howled at every snarky response from the female lead.

At times, it felt like Price and the crowd were on the same wavelength. In one segment, an old doctor stated, “There is something I don’t understand,” prompting Price to reply with “You and me both, brother!” In another, the same scientist was explaining to the cast that they needed to retrieve “the map to the Q Stars Group and the program to make the Extreme Nuclear Light Rocket.” Several audience members let out confused noises, and a person beside me uttered a baffled “Wait, what?” Price leaned into the microphone and noted,  "I cannot make this up. Someone did, and I hope they are on their meds,” as the room cheered again as if to welcome the coming chaos.

Peals of laughter erupted through the room in the later film, as a group of characters charged into a fight scene screaming “Let’s give them a heart attack!” The laughter only grew louder near the film’s climax, as a character remarks “Yes, we’ve saved our city,” only to have the camera cut to a shot of their home’s flaming wreckage.

Even with judicious jump cuts and edits, the film was an exasperating, frustrating, awkward hour in length. The plot, which opened with the destruction of the Galaxy Express 999, was an incoherent mess as giant robots based on Dairugger XV soared through space, and a frustratingly inept army tried to take down a parked space train. The main villain didn’t even show up until the end of the film, and the whole point of the film - to bring the robot-talking boy to his father, remained unfulfilled.

That’s to say nothing of the random E.T. aliens who led an Ewok-esque reprisal against an intergalactic army, or the random “friendship is power” message that was shoehorned into the narrative. The music was judiciously stolen from Char’s Counterattack, mixed with a cast that had no clue on what voice acting was, as they jumped from South Boston accents to Monty Python British. And, the less said about the main villain’s freakishly large hands with their own wandering camera perspective, the better.

In plain English, Wonder of Frontier film was a shameless dumpster inferno, made not only tolerable but utterly delightful for the capacity crowd. As the credits rolled and the house lights came back up, the audience erupted in thunderous cheers and applause.

With an hour remaining, a devilish grin played upon Price’s face as he looked over the room. “So, I have to ask,” he began, “now what are we gonna inflict on the newbies?!”

The crowd screamed out suggestions in response, ranging from Rapsittie Street Kids to Garzey’s Wing. One group could be heard above all the others, though, as Price remarked "We're getting a really strong showing from the Frankenstein crowd!"

He queued up an abbreviated version of Harmony Gold’s Frankenstein, which they launched in 1983. Unlike Wonder of Frontier, the film didn't get the same uproarious cackles from the crowd. Still, the giggles and laughter were punchy on the biggest points.

For example, at one point, Inspector Bellbeau is casually talking with Dr. Frankenstein, before noticing the time. As he walks out the door, Bellbeau pauses and begins, “Oh, and one more thing, Doctor…”

At this point, the entire room just paused and seemed to blink in unison, dumbfounded. A moment later, someone yelled out “Did he just try to Columbo Frankenstein?!” to which Price, without skipping a beat, yelled an emphatic “Yes!”, as the audience erupted in laughter.

Likewise, the climactic finale, in which Dr. Frankenstein realizes that he was the monster, only to turn his shotgun on himself, elicited uncomfortable laughter and cheers from the room.

As the film ended, the audience applauded, as Price noted that fifteen minutes were remaining in the event. He used to run through a “Greatest Hits” of shorter bits, from Macross II to the Doozy Bots pilot, to a heavily compressed recap of the first episode of Garzey’s Wing set to Yello’s Oh Yeah. The latter brought about eager giggles, as folks poked fun at the stilted, over-literal dialogue and the overwrought storytelling. Key lines like “I thought I was having a dream,” and “My sword is unbelievably dull” brought about cackles that rang out through the room.

As a character that Price dubbed “Wandering Perspective Man” entered the scene, the audience erupted in rapturous applause and cheers. Price paused for a moment, and mused aloud, “How did this become a thing? Is this what is going to be my contribution to popular culture? Wandering Perspective Man?”

The crowd replied with an emphatic “Yes!”, as Price burst into laughter, himself. He responded with “Y’all are sick fuckers,” before letting the video finish. The room was hot, giggling and snickering with every silly line choice and nonsensical plot point.

For the finale, Price queued up the pilot for Governator. As with previous years, the crowd cheered and giggled as Arnold sauntered into his knockoff Batcave, and clapped along to Black Eyed Peas’ Pump It as it kicked in as a background track.

As the video came to a close, Price rose and told a short story about his tenth anniversary at Anime Boston, which was held in the cavernous Hall D, and attracted more than 2,200 people. “You guys did this,” he yelled, “You made this possible!”

Rapturous applause rang out through the room, as the Moment of Zen kicked on. Stan Bush's The Touch began playing, as the video rolled through every iconic highlight from the first ten years of Bad Anime, Bad. Highlights from everything, from iconic stinkers like  Titanic: The Legend Continues and Defenders of Universe, to one-off showings like Final Fantasy: Legend of the Crystals, and A Mouse and His Son, to cult favorites like Vampire Wars and Magnos, had the crowd giggling and smiling. The room erupted once more as the "Tinfoil Pyramid Hats” logo appeared onscreen, and Price signed off with his signature "Boston, we love you, goodnight!"

As the lights came on and the audience started filing into the hallways once more, it was hard to escape that unmistakable electricity in the air. For many, Bad Anime, Bad! was a homecoming of sorts, an irreplaceable tradition that the convention wouldn’t feel right without. It’s a communal experience, a real beacon of badness that can only be likened to sharing a couch on bad anime night with a thousand of one’s closest friends. And Price, as he is every year, was nothing short of eager to turn it into an event few would ever forget.