A house on the eighth floor was completely burned down. Next to the kitchen, where the burn marks were the most serious, firefighters found the bodies of two old people, which were already burned beyond recognition.

Text/Nagabi-kun’s Nostalgia Cabinet

On April 13 this year, a serious fire broke out in an apartment in Misato City, Saitama Prefecture, Japan. The apartment on the eighth floor was completely burned down. In the kitchen where the burn marks were the most serious, the fireman Officers found the bodies of two elderly people, which were burned beyond recognition and difficult to identify. A few days later, the police confirmed the identity of the deceased. The male corpse was that of Norio Shioyama, the character designer of the animated film " Demon Fighter ". He was 77 years old, and the other corpse was his 85-year-old wife.

R.I.P

The bad news came and shocked many Chinese viewers. "Fighters of the Demon Altar" is one of the best memories of many people's childhood. Whether it is the flame god with the aura of the protagonist, the glorious god with good looks, or the god who maintains his IQ, they are all impressive anime images, and Now Mr. Shioyama, who created these distinctive characters, died unexpectedly, which is very sad.

Illustrations for the novel version drawn by Noriyo Shioyama

Maybe you don’t remember the content of "Fighters of the Demon Altar", but you will never forget the youthful age when you shouted "Arm up", and you will never forget to look up "ti" in the dictionary. What does it mean to be studious and never forget the daydream of raising an albino tiger? Nowadays, several of the creators of this work have passed away, but the legend about the armor will not leave here.

Risheng also followed suit

In the last few years of the 1980s, the Japanese animation industry suddenly had a wave of "armor series". Everyone is familiar with the first work, which is the comic " Saint Seiya " published in "Shounen Jump". After being adapted into a cartoon and aired, the Five Little Stronges caused a huge topic among animation fans. The toys that can be assembled and assembled are even more popular. The series of holy clothes is synonymous with best-selling products.

The popularity of "Saint Seiya" in the toy market has made many animation companies and toy factories restless, and they must not just watch them make money. Overnight, many cartoons like this suddenly appeared on the Japanese TV screen - five beautiful boys found myths from the corners of the world and changed them into armor. By shouting a strange spell, they can put on the armor and fight. "Armor series" became the most popular theme in Japanese cartoons from 1988 to 1990. Among them, the two most successful follow-up works are also the most familiar to Chinese audiences - "Fighters of the Demon Altar" and " Sky Wars ".

This one is called "Ichimurasa" and that one is "Armed". Don't get confused.

Sunrise, the producer of "Devil Altar Fighter", was not originally a company that likes to join in the fun. Ever since they unearthed the huge treasure of Gundam, they have been waiting for others to copy it while sitting and counting toy licensing fees. However, the situation in the previous year was not good. The robot animation "Mecha Dragon", which had high hopes, suffered a sap in the market, and the toys could not be sold at all. Looking at the other side, toys like "Saint Seiya" with glittery plastic pieces inserted into the bodies of naked dolls are selling like crazy. No matter how strong the old version is, they can't sit still.

In 1988, Sunrise made several major changes. First of all, breaking the tradition of more than ten years, there was no robot animation released this year. The second is the change of partners, especially the change of toy sponsor from Bandai to TAKARA. As a new beginning, Sunrise and TAKARA have high hopes for this year's masterpiece "Dark Warriors".

"Saint Cloth Disassembly" made Sunrise and TAKARA extremely jealous.

Ikeda Cheng, who was appointed as the director, was once the right-hand man of the famous director Takahashi Ryosuke, and was mainly responsible for animation storyboard work. "The Demon Altar Fighter" is his directorial debut, which can be said to be of great significance. A few years later, "Mobile Suit Gundam W" directed by him was also an animation about a five-member boy band, and it also experienced the same unlucky fate as "Mashin Fighters".

Norio Shioyama, who died in a fire last month, was Takahashi Ryosuke's right-hand man, equivalent to Yoshikazu Yasuhiko next to Yuki Tomino. He has been responsible for character design and painting supervision at Sunrise all year round and is a trustworthy backbone of the company. Both the character Po Lan Wan Zhang and "Inspiring Brother" in "Armored Cavalry" were written by him.

"Brother Encouragement" can be called the representative character of Noriyama Shioyama.

After receiving the character design task of "Fighters of the Demon Altar", Noriyo Shioyama directly took the character from "Armored Cavalry" and changed his hair to become the God of Radiance. ——The most handsome character. Several other characters are not so lucky. Shioyama Jisheng didn't want to draw the god handsome at first, but the god Tuo was supposed to be a naughty child. But for some reason, Noriyo Shioyama kept changing, and went further and further down the road of beauty. In the end, all five people became beautiful boys, which also paved the way for the strange market trend of this animation in the future.

Character drawings of "Fighters of the Demon Altar" drawn by Norio Shioyama

Hidero Okamoto, who is responsible for the armor design, has always been Sunrise's dedicated mecha designer. Although he is not as famous as Okawara Kunio, after "Galaxy Three Winds", The baptism of two Gundams can be regarded as experienced in many battles. He referred to the style of Japanese armor and designed a unique armor for "Demon Altar Fighter" - "Kaimiya". A few years later, Hidero Okamoto's interest suddenly turned to special effects films, and he became obsessed with designing various mecha leather holsters. The works that Chinese audiences are most familiar with are the B-type robots in "". Coincidentally, the voice actors of Kabuda and Flame God are actually the same person. I didn’t expect that.

It should be said that Sunrise has assigned quite good personnel to this follow-up work, but after "Fighters of the Demon Altar" was aired, it took an unexpected trajectory.

Kabuda and the Flame God are both played by Sakuragi Hanamichi

A bowling ball thrown in the wrong lane

In April 1988, "The Demon Altar Fighter" was launched. In the same month, another cartoon also sponsored by TAKARA - "Magic Heroes" was released. Later, due to the translation of the Three-Legged Cat (mistaking "伝" for "伝"), many Chinese viewers who were young at the time were confused, and when they grew up, they still couldn't tell which was which. Both works have grown up with many Chinese audiences, but have completely different fates in Japan.

Everyone is an April show, why are their fates so different?

From the day it aired, "Fighters of the Demon Altar" has not given any peace of mind to the producers and sponsors. The animation's ratings did not rise as Sunrise expected. It could not be compared with its direct competitor "Saint Seiya" or "Mazing Heroes" which was broadcast at the same time. There was a leak in the house and it rained all night. During the broadcast of "Demon Altar Fighter", there was a major broadcast accident unprecedented in the history of Japanese animation.

When the seventeenth episode of "Fighters of the Demon Altar" was aired, the audience was waiting in front of the TV on time a week later, preparing for the arrival of the new episode. However, what was played on the TV was exactly the same as last week. The audience may have suspected that they had taken a time machine and traveled back to a week ago, because in the decades of history of Japanese animation, the same episode has never been aired for two consecutive weeks. This kind of misfortune happened to "Devil Altar Fighter". What's even more unlucky is that during the animation, a major event such as the death of Emperor Showa was encountered. Sunrise originally planned to shoot forty episodes, but due to rebroadcasting accidents and the change to Heisei, one episode had to be cut, resulting in 39 episodes, which is relatively rare among Japanese dramas.

The TV station’s apology letter

The bad luck is not over yet. It’s okay to have low ratings, but what’s even worse is that the toys can’t be sold! You must know that there is no profit in producing and broadcasting animation itself. You need to rely on animation to drive the sales of peripheral products, making the producer and sponsors a win-win situation. The sales of peripheral toys of "Demon Altar Fighter" can only be described as bleak. This made the toy manufacturer TAKARA extremely angry. They continued to put pressure on Sunrise, which ultimately caused irreversible impact on the animation.

For a long time, Mr. Changbi has always had this question every time he watches "Fighters of the Demon Altar" - why the style of the animation changes suddenly in the second half. The strangest thing is that there are inexplicably three "super bounce" characters before the special move. A word? What is this "super elastic" thing? It must have troubled many Chinese viewers. Only now do I know that it turned out that this "super bounce", bounce~bounce~bounce~, bounced the director away.

The three words "Super Bouncy" are originally the name of the toy series produced by TAKARA based on "Fighters of the Demon Altar". A distinctive feature of this series of toys is that the characters' arms, legs and feet are wrapped with several coils of springs, so they appear very powerful when making punching or kicking movements. Another great use of springs is to allow the limbs of the toy to perform various twisting and difficult movements. The instructions also specifically show how to tangle the limbs of the Demon Altar Fighter together. If "super spring" is replaced by something that people can understand, it actually means "super spring can twist".

"Super Bouncy" is characterized by creepy springs

The problem is that the workmanship of the "Super Bouncy" series of toys is extremely rough. Although the spring can provide very strong strength and ductility, its jerky feel makes it difficult for primary school students to play with. Of course, this is not the main reason for the slow sales of toys. As long as you have seen the character models of the super elastic series, you will feel that the evil god Saber and the Zhao Ling'er figure are nothing compared to the big ones.

The demonic eyes of the Flame God...

Look at the weird body proportions

Logically speaking, if the toy looks like this, don't expect it to be a big hit. However, TAKARA, as a financial backer, refused to find the cause on himself. Instead, he blamed the animation production team for not using the name of the toy in the animation, resulting in poor sales of the product. The toy factory approached Sunrise and requested that in each episode of animation, not only should the toy name "Super Bounce" be added before the special move, but it should also be written in large Chinese characters on the screen.

After hearing the sponsor's request for modification, director Shige Ikeda felt like ten thousand grass and mud horses were galloping in his heart. Double Flame Slash is Double Flame Slash, what is Super Flexible Double Flame Slash. Ikeda expressed strong objections to this gross interference in the creation of works. Although I finally got the opportunity to be a director, I can't just change the animation settings just to sell more toys.

After seeing this manual, do parents still dare to buy with confidence? The final result of the

incident is that the arm cannot twist the thigh. TAKARA put a lot of pressure on Sunrise, which eventually led to Ikeda quitting the class midway and being kicked out of the creative team of "Demon Altar Fighter", with Hamazu Mamoru taking over the directorial duties. It was not until the OVA version that Ikeda returned to the production team. As a result, the TV version of "Devil Altar Fighter" was divided into two parts, with the appearance of the Emperor of Light's armor as the dividing line. Starting from the bottom, "Super Bouncy" appears majestically on the subtitles and becomes the name of the move that must be shouted in every episode.

However, the shout-out product placement did not save the toy's sales. The "super bouncy toys" in TAKARA's warehouse were piled higher and higher, and they could not be sold at all. At the same time, the cartoon's popularity exploded miraculously, which really made the toy factory completely confused.

Back then, there were many speculations about the meaning of "super elasticity". Who could have guessed that it was related to springs?

The original audience of "Demon Altar Fighter" was elementary school boys, and peripheral products were also designed based on this group of people. But because of Shioyama Nori's beautiful character, this animation has become a hot topic among young women. The female viewers are fascinated by the five beautiful boys with different personalities in the animation, and are busy matching their CPs. This is probably an early fujoshi work in the Japanese otaku circle, although it was originally made for the sub-gong animation. The surge of female fans of

has caused the market operation of "Fighters of the Demon Altar" to develop in a strange direction that the producers do not want to see. Because the popularity of the five demon warriors was so high, the agency simply asked the five voice actors to form the earliest voice actor idol group in the Japanese animation industry, named NG5, and even planned to have the four demon generals form a brother group called OK4. . This five-member boy band, headed by Takeshi Kusao, the voice of the God of Fire, releases records, appears on TV, and holds concerts, looking like a big star. It is said that after a handshake meeting, a female fan cried and cried because she couldn't bear to leave. In the end, she fainted and went into shock and was taken to an ambulance.

may be the earliest voice actor idol group

On one side, there are piles of "super bouncy" toys, and on the other side, there are packed NG5 concerts. This time, it is TAKARA's turn to feel like a wild horse. I originally wanted to sell toys to primary school students with high expectations, but unexpectedly I ended up seducing a group of female prostitutes... young people. Faced with this situation, the person in charge of TAKARA had no choice but to describe "Fighters of the Demon Altar" to the TV station:

The expected users did not buy this work at all, but the unexpected users did. It's like bowling, throwing the ball into the next lane, and actually hitting it.

The "super elastic" series of toys that were originally supposed to be sold to primary school students, due to their excellent elastic twisting function, have basically become the playthings of fujoshi, specially used to create various gay-stirring poses. It wasn't until recently that Bandai took over the company that they released decent peripheral products for "Diamon Altar Fighter".

This is the correct way to play "Super Bouncy"

Empty ears sometimes kill people

Liaoning Children's Art Theater ("Liaoyi" for short) is the childhood angel of many people, specializing in bringing foreign cartoons to Chinese young audiences who lack cultural life. of the gospel. The voices of Liao Yi's dubbing artists have become indelible memories, but there is always a shadow surrounding Liao Yi's outstanding translation productions, and that is imprecise translation. It can be said that Liao Yi's translated animations are good everywhere, but the translation of the names is extremely bad. Not only is it completely different from the original meaning, but it also often makes stupid mistakes. Unfortunately, "Fighters of the Demon Altar" is one of the representative works of Liao Yi's nonsensical translation. Since we are reviewing old animations, let's take this opportunity to restore the name that was cheated by Kong Er's translation, and then criticize Liao Yi's translation. Ichiban.

Let’s start with the title of the film. This film is inconsistent from the beginning. The original name of "Demon Altar Fighter" is "Kaiden Sword Fighter", and not a single word matches the Chinese name. The corresponding simplified Chinese character for "Kaiten" is "Kaizhuan". I strongly suspect that the "tan" in the Chinese name came from here. Samurai is a compound word that combines the Japanese word "samurai" (Samurai) and the English word "trooper". Therefore, the literal translation of the name of this animation should be "Legend of Armor: Samurai Force".

"Demon Altar Fighter"... Haha... Allow me to be quiet...

The armor of "Devil Altar Fighter" is based on traditional Japanese armor. All the stories also take place in Japan, with a strong Oriental flavor. However, in the translation of the Liaoyi version, the names of the characters have all been changed to strange American pronunciations, such as the fire god Leo who is often confused with Oreo. And God of Glory, please pronounce this name with me in a translator tone - random.

The more I thought about it, the more something was wrong. They all looked Japanese, so why were their names so weird? Only with the Internet did I realize that they were all masterpieces of translation. Not only did the Japanese name be replaced with a weird fake foreign name, but the setting in the original name was also swallowed up.

First of all, the terms God of Fire, God of Tuo, God of Glory, God of Heaven and God of Water are the second creation of translation. They turned out to be the code names of the five warriors. The correct names are Agni, King Kong, Nimbus, Sky, and Water Margin. The translation not only added the word "god" that misled a lot of people, but also creatively invented the new word Tuo Shen. Mr. Changbi has never understood since he was a child why a "bump" of feces can become a god.

Tuo, Tuo your sister

Then the name of the character. In fact, these characters have very authentic Japanese names, and you can tell what they are playing at a glance -

• Fire God Leo, Sanada Ryo ;

• Tuo Shenshu, Shuili Huang;

• Shining God Suiki, Yi Da Zhengshi;

• The god of heaven is Thomas, Yu Chai is Ma;

• The god of water is stretched, and Maori is stretched.

I finally know why the God of Light’s hair always covers his right eye.

Friends who are familiar with the history of the Warring States Period in Japan will immediately be able to tell who are the descendants of the last three - Date Masamune, Toyotomi Hideyoshi (Hashiba Hideyoshi), and Mori Yuanjiu.Tuoshen Xiulihuang is rather special, and its name is unique in order to match the setting of overseas Chinese.

The surname of the Flame God Ryo Sanada makes him easily mistaken for a descendant of Sanada Yukimura. Although this character is basically designed based on the image of Sanada Yukimura in the novel, his ancestors are only affiliated with the Sanada Ninja Army - the Sanada family army that was transformed into ninjas in the novel during the Meiji and Taisho periods. It should be noted that in the animation, Sanada Ryo's armor does not use the Sanada family's six-cent coin family emblem, but uses the Takeda family's cut hisishi as the emblem, which is really intriguing.

Pay attention to the armor's badge

Others such as Yamano Jun is translated into Qiao, Bai Yan is translated into Bai Guanghu, and Brilliant Emperor is translated into Guangming Emperor. Let's not worry about such small problems. What's funny and annoying is that such a famous surname as Sanada can be translated as Sonata. Leo Sanata, if you didn't listen carefully, you would think that the old driver was eating sandwich cookies and driving.

It’s not that Mr. Changbi is strict about translation, but that some mistakes can be completely avoided. In the early part of the animation, I can at least pronounce Mouri Shin's name correctly - although the pronunciation is almost the same as Chinese, in the second half, I basically gave up the treatment, what about Shu Kanger (King Kong Show), Suiji Kuanglun (Nimbus) Zhengshi) this kind of inexplicable empty-ear translation came out. These are all written in Chinese characters and printed on the end subtitles. The most ironic thing is that the translated name in the Chinese version of the ending is exactly stamped on these Chinese characters.

Alien God Goes Rampage

The translation of the decent characters in the Liaoyi version is rather outrageous, but the villains are relatively better. It's not because the translation skills have improved, but because the naming method of the villains in "The Demon Altar Fighter" itself is very nonsensical.

In Sunrise's earliest trailer for "Fighters of the Demon Altar", the villain's armor was set to resemble a mythical battle between nations. There are death gods from Egypt, and there are snake gods from Southeast Asia. Later, when it was aired, I felt that it was too far away from the Japanese samurai setting. After several revisions, it became the hodgepodge it is now. The Poison Demon Lord Nazar and the Dark Lord Anubis are leftovers from the initial setting.

Another correct way to play "Super Bounce"

In ancient Japan, when they had not yet invented their own writing, they would use kanji instead of kana. Although the pronunciation is similar, it has no meaning at all from the kanji itself. It is called "manye" pseudonym ". Later, Japanese motorcycle bosozokus felt that writing in Manyo kana was particularly cool, and they often transliterated various nouns into similar-sounding kanji. The most famous one was the greeting phrase "Yelu Shiku" (please take care of me).

"Demon Altar Fighter", in order to make the name conform to the setting of the Japanese samurai era, also changed the appearance of the gods invited from foreign countries according to the writing style of the bosozoku, and gave them strange kanji names.

Each of the four demon kings has a Japanese-style real name

The poisonous demon king Nazar. This name comes from the Naga tribe in Indian mythology, and Warcraft players should be familiar with it. After phonetic changes and Chinese character processing, it was written as Nadu. Anubis, the Dark Lord from ancient Egypt, was changed into the evil slave Mi Shou. The hallucination demon Rajura is an original character, and the corresponding Chinese character is Luojuluo. The great devil Arago should be pronounced as Aluohu. Fortunately, the Chinese translator at that time couldn't buy super bouncy toys, and couldn't see the Chinese characters on the packaging. Otherwise, reading them in Chinese would feel weird. The positive character of

, God Chaos, is also from a foreign country. Although he is dressed like a Japanese walking monk, many people have already guessed from the pronunciation that his prototype is Chaos Chaos in Greek mythology. According to the Bosozoku transliteration, he was written as Kaosu.

As the last member of the Kaxiongxu tribe, Kayura (Kayula)’s white butt gave many people their initial sexual enlightenment

Among the four demon kings, Shuton Toji, the first to appear and the last to be cleansed, It's authentically made in Japan. In "Demon Altar Fighter", his name is different from the other Bosozoku brothers. In the film, Shuton's kanji is written as Shuten-dōji. In fact, the pronunciation of this name is exactly the same as the name of another famous Japanese monster - the SSR Shuten-dōji who can't get any ghost charms.

Although the names of the villains are all in the style of the Bosozoku, it is still an unforgivable and low-level mistake to translate "Youxie World" into "Yuga World". Of course, Chinese audiences will have to endure translations like Liao Yi’s for many years to come.

King of Yuga Arago (Evil Emperor Arohu)

This guy actually has a game

Because the article was published on Youyanshe, I had to talk about game-related content. Fortunately, there is not much, just a few sentences. Can carry it through.

The original target users of "Demon Altar Fighters" overlap with the FC player group. In theory, they are boys in primary and secondary schools. However, after the animation was broadcast, the response from primary school students was lukewarm, the ratings were not high, the toys could not be sold, and the enthusiastic fans were only female fans who only bought CDs and concert tickets, and they did not even have the opportunity to play games.

Among Sunrise's works, "The Demon Altar Fighter" could only stand aside.

Until 1999, on the dying DC console, a game called "Sunrise Heroes" was released, which can be regarded as Sunrise. His own Super Robot Wars series. However, in this work, all robots from previous generations appear, and other types of animated characters are not considered. A year later, DC folded, and Sunrise discovered that it was not making money on the wrong platform, so it made a ported version for PS2 called "Sunrise Hero Story R", which was an enhanced version. Naturally, no one bought it for a complete transplant, so several original new chapters and characters were added, including non-robot works such as "Demon Altar Fighter" and "Highly Intelligent Formula Racing".

That’s pretty much it for the game “Demon Altar Fighter”. However, when Mr. Changbi was looking for information, he discovered that a Japanese had once used the SFC version of the fighting game "Demon Altar Fighter" on his blog, and also deceived many domestic players. Of course, the picture quality of

SFC cannot reach this level.

The last thing I want to say is

. In the translated version introduced in China at that time, the opening animation of the first part of the animation was cut off, and the OP of the second stage was directly played, which was sung by Hiroko Moriguchi. "Heart of a Samurai". This is of course another blemish in the glorious history of Liao Art. The hateful thing about this approach is that the existence of the Emperor of Light has been revealed from the first episode, so Mr. Changbi was not that excited when he saw the white armor appear. Therefore, in order to retaliate against society, Mr. Changbi decided to say one sentence at the end of the article to all those friends who have not watched the OVA of "Fighters of the Demon Altar" -

The last five people were all wiped out!

How many people thought that the TV set had bad sectors?