Mighty Space Miners...
A while back, I picked up the VHS version of Mighty Space Miners...
Mighty Space Miners has stunning visuals and a great story. Only one problem, the story builds to a wonderful climax and then it's over. I used to have the subtitled VHS version. Even though, I had issues with the ending, I did eventually repurchase Mighty Space Miners when it finally became available on DVD. I gave Mighty Space Miners a 3 out of 5.
Mike Toole, a columnist for Anime News Network discussed unfinished anime and mentioned Mighty Space Miners...When disaster strikes an asteroid mining colony, who can the trapped miners call for help? Nobody! That's why only the bravest and most resourceful of individuals can ever become Mighty Space Miners, the hardworking pilots, scientists and technicians who keep earth supplied with priceless metals and isotopes from deep-space asteroid mines in the year 2060. Mighty Space Miners is also the title of a stunning animated film that accurately depicts what happens when a military satellite triggers a disaster of catastrophic proportions on a remote asteroid colony designed to literally catch Haley's Comet by the tail!
Told from the point of view of Ushikawa, the only youngster living on the colony, Mighty Space Miners documents the surviving colonists desperate battle to survive in a hostile environment in which every moment carries the possibility of instant death by fire, cold, radiation or explosive decompression, and where the nearest outside assistance is literally millions of miles away! It's adventure on an epic scale, with nail-biting tension as the colonists must cope with a world turned literally inside out, in which neither the ground below one's feet or the air one breathes are ever guaranteed, and with a runaway nuclear reactor that threatens to turn the entire asteroid into a miniature sun in a matter of hours! A soaring tribute to the spirit of exploration and the ultimate pioneers, Mighty Space Miners is scientifically accurate in every detail and has long been a "dream project" for producer Takao Asaga; now the dream has been realized with brilliant animation by director Umanosuke Iida.
I think my favorite failed OVA story is that of Mighty Space Miners. Maybe you saw Mighty Space Miners? it was a two-episode joint produced by KSS and Triangle Staff; ADV Films dubbed and released it on VHS, but it's one of those weird titles that never made the jump to DVD. I kinda enjoy it - it's got a typical plucky-kid-beats-the-odds story, but its approach, in which the real threat is simply the hard, unforgiving vacuum of space, seemed fresh to me when I saw it. The thing is, Mighty Space Miners, directed by the late, great Umanosuke Iida, was supposed to be six episodes. They had all six of those episodes scripted, there were storyboards... and then Triangle Staff ran out of money for the project. It was a labor of love for the studio, who bought ads in magazines like NEWTYPE and Animage entreating the otaku public to help them get the rest of the series funded. That was a noble effort, but it failed. Every time I see a successful Kickstarter, I remember Mighty Space Miners, and think of what Iida and Triangle Staff might've accomplished if they had that platform.
Mighty Space Miners has stunning visuals and a great story. Only one problem, the story builds to a wonderful climax and then it's over. I used to have the subtitled VHS version. Even though, I had issues with the ending, I did eventually repurchase Mighty Space Miners when it finally became available on DVD. I gave Mighty Space Miners a 3 out of 5.
