Daicon

I have a message from another time
-- Electric Light Orchestra, "Twilight'

Daicon III

This is how Gainax begins: three students attending the Osaka College of Art move into the same cramped apartment in Osaka, enduring each other's smells and revelling in their shared passion: anime. The roommates, Hideaki Anno, Hiroyuki Yamaga, and Takami Akai, buy an 8mm camera (a Fujica ZC-1000) and begin filming a short animated film, drawn by hand and shot frame by frame.

This short, five-minute film was shown at the opening ceremonies of 20th Japan Science Fiction Convention, nicknamed Daicon, in 1981. Set to a soundtrack of snippets from famous anime shows, Daicon III narrates the tale of a young school girl given a mysterious glass of water by two travellers from outer space. Sci-fi creatures and a giant robot are determined to steal the little girl's glass, but she fights them off with inexplicable super-strength and the help of her schoolgirl's backback, which doubles as a jet-pack and missile launcher.

The animation is crude, but crackles with the enthusiastic creativity of youth. In the film's final minutes, the little girl launches an all-out missile barrage that destroys not only Godzilla, but the spaceship Yamato, USS Enterprise, and a Super Star Destroyer! These three smelly otaku had thrown down the gauntlet, declared war on the entire history of sci-fi with this little homemade anime, Daicon III.

Daicon IV

And then they upped the ante. In 1982, the three friends joined up with some new blood and founded Daicon Film, the precursor to Gainax. The Daicon IV animation was entirely set to one song, "Twilight" by Electric Light Orchestra, in imitation of the music videos beginning to appear on MTV. The little girl from Daicon III undertook a transformation of her own, magically morphing into a Playboy bunny girl who tangles with giant mecha, flies on a sword, and engages Darth Vader in a light saber duel, among other things.

The animation is greatly superior to Daicon III, with the special effects putting to shame even some professional animation to this day. Daicon IV is a few minutes of pure animated energy stripped of plot, narrative, or even logic. There is much which predicts FLCL.

note: the city bombing scene on the left appears in Otaku no Video

Daicon Films

Although little known in the US, Daicon Film produced a number of live action films:

• Aikoku Sentai Dai-Nippon (Patriotic Taskforce Great Japan! (07.1982; 19 minutes; 8mm; Hideaki did mecha designs and wore a monster costume). This is exactly what you'd expect: a silly no-budget sentai film/parody, with guys in Power Rangers getup doing crazy action and forming a mega-mecha a la Voltron. Special moves include "Tempura Jump!" and "Harakiri Ball!", and the theme song's lyrics rattle off stereotypically Japanese things. I'm pretty sure that's Takami Akai getting beaten up in the bookstore scene, while the end credits feature a really young Anno acting out some moves. Over 20 years later, Anno made Cutie Honey, which is really just a longer, bigger-budget film like this.
  
  Official site. More info: here, here.

• Kaette-kita Ultraman (The Return of Ultraman; 1983; 26 minutes; 8mm) - this is an extended version of Anno's "Ultraman Deluxe," a three-minute short Anno filmed as a school project.
  
  Official Site

• Kaiketsu Noutenki 1 and 2. Official Site

click for larger

Important Links

Videos Daicon - download Daicon III and IV in low, but watchable quality

Official site - Gainax site has info (in Japanese) on all the Daicon films and anime

Lawrence Eng Daicon page - fan page with history and trivia about Daicon III and IV

Yamaga and Akai at Fanimecon - two Gainax founders recall the Daicon days

Anno Hideaki works - Anno's official site contains a bunch of illustrations from the Daicon days

Otaku no Dreaming - a thoughtful article by Lawrence Eng on the Daicon animations

Daicon memorabilia - Japanese page w/ program books and stuff from Daicon IV. Just click on the links.

Catsuka: Daicon - 24 original design sketches from Daicon

Daicon girl portfolio - Japanese page with some artwork of the Daicon III girl

Less important links

Copyright? What copyright? An ancient usenet post by Lea Hernandez which reveals that Gainax never cleared the rights to legally use the song, "Twilight," in Daicon IV.

Japan SF Convention timeline - lists the precise dates, locations, and attendance of both Daicons

Kayt cosplays - a woman with really big boobs cosplaying as the Daicon bunny girl (hey, if this isn't in the Daicon spirit, what is?).