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Information

• Member: Rorschach
• Studio: Shoestring Films Inc.
• Title: Love Flaming Through Time
• Premiered: 2010-07-29
• Categories:
  • Action
  • Drama
  • Other
  • Serious
  • Romance
  • Sentimental
• Song:
  • Tryanglz Burnin' In The Third Degree
• Anime:
  • Fire Tripper
• Comments: While digging through some older and obscurer works, I happened to find this Fire Tripper anime floating around, and to wonder whether anyone had ever done an AMV to it. Looking around, what I found was that although one or two mash-ups included a bit of footage from it, this early Takahashi Rumiko work has otherwise gone almost completely unnoticed and has had no entry in this site's database up to now. Meanwhile, the now-defunct Central Park Media and the U.S. Manga Corps, which licensed and distributed Fire Tripper in North America back in 1993, have long since allowed their licenses to lapse. Overly optimistic rumors earlier this year that Funimation was soon going to be picking up the license and making a DVD release have since proved false.
  
  In the meantime, I thought a little free publicity for this lovely work might help accelerate the arrival of the day Fire Tripper ultimately receives a remastering and release on DVD, so I decided to put together this AMV of it. This AMV does contain what might be considered spoilers, so getting yourself a copy of the anime itself to watch before you watch my derivative work would probably be a good idea. At the same time, the significance of a lot of the spoilers probably won't be all that obvious to you unless you've already watched the anime, so I leave this decision up to you; view at your own risk. The anime itself, incidentally, contains a very early reveal (before the title credits, yet!) for any viewer observant enough to be looking in just the right place at just the right time.
  
  As implied in the title, Fire Tripper has a lot of flaming scenery in it, so I felt it to be almost mandatory that this AMV include a song about fire. Fire Tripper is also a story of time travel and romance, so naturally I felt the song ought to involve some of those elements too. Songs about flaming love and fiery passion are fairly common, of course, including a lot of classics such as "Light My Fire" by The Doors and "Burning Love" by Elvis Presley. Songs involving time travel are a bit less common, although "Double Back" by ZZ Top from the Back To The Future movies is a fairly good one. A song combining all three, however, is all but impossible to find.
  
  What finally came to mind was an obscure work that is--however--likely to seem oddly familiar to viewers of a certain popular film. Viewers of the anime may also experience a strange sense of déjà vu if they happen to have seen one of Rumiko's later and more famous works. The reason for this is that the song is from the soundtrack of none other than the first Terminator film--a piece that was playing in the background in the scene in which the Terminator is hunting down Sarah Connor at a night club. As for the anime, viewers will probably notice that the plot and some of the characters from Fire Tripper are remarkably similar to those of InuYasha--possibly because Rumiko wrote both stories; many believe the former was a kind of dress rehearsal for the latter.
  
  What I have here, in other words, is footage from a 1980s anime about love, fire, and time travel set to a 1980s song from a movie about time travel, love, and fire; a most fitting combination in my opinion. Coming as it does from an old VHS tape, the quality of the video--alas--can hardly be the best. Moreover, the original ripper seems--in addition to having blended the picture fields during de-interlacing--to have applied some kind of temporal smoother to it which only made scenes involving a lot of motion seem rather blurry. In the meantime, I've done what I can with it. Here's hoping that I will be able to remake this AMV some day when the DVD is finally released, and that this release will come soon.