#peter fernandez

[randomrichards]

TARO, THE DRAGON BOY

[jewelridersarchive]

‪Remembering Peter Fernandez on his #birthday! 🎂 He voiced Grimm, Max and the Grandfather Tree in ✨Princess Gwenevere and the Jewel Riders✨.‬ ‪

[everyanimatedmovie]

381. Tatsu no ko Taro (AKA Taro the Dragon Boy) (1979)

7/10

Produced by Toei, this movie tells the story of Tatsu no ko Taro, a Japanese folk hero who brought the people of the mountains down to the valleys and taught them to farm rice. He meets many strange people and animals on his journey to find his mother, who was turned into a dragon for being greedy, and he even fights a couple different mythological Japanese monsters.

Although the style is not so blatantly psychedelic, Tatsu no ko Taro is more like The Little Prince and the Eight-Headed Dragon than it is any other animated movie before it. The animal animation is more realistic, but the tone of the writing is very similar, and a few bits seem like direct homages, including a scene at the beginning in which he wrestles with his animal friends, the design of the flying horse, and the general theme of learning to be considerate and care for others (he has super-strength, but only when helping someone else.) This movie peculiarly tricks the viewer into craving white rice, by showing every step in the production and cooking process, and having characters opine about how delicious it is. I suppose it should go without saying that rice and rice farming was integral to the development of Japanese cuisine and civilization, but I had never considered the history of it before.

Though not the most esoteric or radical movie ever made, the animation is well produced, and the story and characters are cute and well written. This is a great children’s movie, unless you are the sort of weirdo who doesn’t let their kids see nudity, as there is a running joke about the main character, a child, not wearing underwear (underwear not having been invented yet.) If you are one of those people, I would like to remind you that all children are naked sometimes, and unless they are blind, there is a 100% chance that your child has seen a naked person before.

[gatutor]

Peter Fernandez-Thelma Ritter-Luis Van Rooten "Dime con quién andas" (City across the river) 1949, de Maxwell Shane.

[deebecooperiii]

I've been watching Speed Racer since I was five, but it wasn't until recently that I understood how much the American version of this cartoon depended on the work of a single producer, Peter Fernandez. He's pictured above in the first two jpegs below Speed's picture.

Fernandez was a voice actor and producer in the mid 1960s. He was picked to translate a Japanese cartoon into one American audiences would watch. He received the fifty episodes, all filmed in Japanese, short, English summaries of each episode's story, and that was it. He had to watch each episode in detail (the summaries were quite vague), write American dialogue that not only expressed the story, but also was more or less in synch with the characters' lip movements (which is why some of the dialogue for that show seems awkward, as there was very little technology to assist this process at the time). He voiced several characters himself (including that of Speed Racer). Of course he could not voice all of the characters, so he recruited a female voice actor (Corinne Orr) and another male voice actor (Jack Curtis) to play the others. Orr and Curtis are pictured above, just below Fernandez's pictures. After recording the dialogue (and rearranging and rewording the theme song), the cartoon debuted in 1967.

The "M" on the Mach 5's hood stood for "Mifune" motors, as that was the name of Pops' car company in the Japanese version. The "G" on Speed's shirt stood for "Go," since his name in Japan was "Go," and the show was named Go Mifune!. This was intended as a homage to the Japanese dramatic actor Toshiro Mifune (star of The Seven Samurai, among others).

One aspect of the show I find particularly entertaining is in the names Fernandez chose for the villains. Just below Curtis' picture is "Snake Oiler," the star of the Car Acrobatic Team, and below his picture is "Skull Duggery." The names were clever and hokey in a way that has been largely lost to history because idioms like 'snake oil' and 'skullduggery' are seldom used now.

I'm nearly 60 and when I think about the show it astounds me how perfect it was for little kids and their naive imaginations. The "Car Acrobatic team?" Oh yeah, you can pile a half dozen one ton cars on top of a single car and it'll run...no problem! (see above). Sure, a one ton car can jump across a chasm or 8 feet in the air and land with no damage! (see above again) Cars can run underwater like a submarine! Easy! You have a great race car? Just like in NASCAR it has a bullet proof windshield, saws that slice through grown trees, a homing robot, and again it can jump around like it's on a pogo stick!

But seriously, in the minds of 5 year olds, this all makes perfect sense. My Hot Wheels could ALL fly back in 1971.

This is a hoot also, the introduction of Go Mifune!:

Anyway, I think I have a lot more to say about Speed Racer and his ilk. I gotta take Wifey to a baby shower. More later.

[bluecube92]

Same Voice Actor #18

[jewelridersarchive]

Peter Fernandez voice directed Jewel Riders, and he and Corinne Orr went all the way back together to working on Speed Racer as the original voices of Speed and Trixie! Check out this interview from Anime Weekend Atlanta in 2008. Listen closely and Corinne even mentions Jewel Riders! (03:18)

Watch the complete interview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VY3cbKyA0dE

Join Chris and Ronnie for an ultimate delight – the chance to sit down with the incomparable Corinne Orr, a veteran stage and voice actress with over 50 credits to her name! To Jewel Riders fans, she will be best known as the dual voices of the evil Lady Kale, and the good Queen Anya, but her career also encompasses the original dubs of the anime Speed Racer and Marine Boy.

Listen to the podcast: https://www.podbean.com/eu/pb-v442w-dcf1de

You can also check out this fantastic video of Corinne at work voicing our favorite role – Lady Kale!

https://youtu.be/5790k939vIo

[fandompost]

Peter Fernandez Anime Industry Interview Gets Streaming

Peter Fernandez Anime Industry Interview Gets Streaming

Nozomi Entertianment continues to add pieces to their YouTube accuont from the Anime Today podcast from about a decade ago, which means some great trips back in time for long time fans and a chance to discover things that weren’t known by newer fans. The latest one to be added is...

Read more on The Fandom Post!