Ask John: What is Arion?

Question:
I saw an anime movie a long time ago called “Arion” (1986). I’ve been looking around and can’t find anyone who sells this! Do you know where I can buy this and can you tell me more about the producer, director and artist?

Answer:
Recognized as one of the classics of the early 1980s, Arion has largely been forgotten by American anime fandom mainly because of its relative unavailability in America over the past decade. This 119 minute long epic fantasy film was written and directed by Yoshikazu Yasuhiko, adapted from his own manga. “Yas,” as he signs his work, also provided all of the character designs for the movie. Yoshikazu Yasuhiko may be more familiar to American anime fans as the character designer of Venus Wars, original Mobile Suit Gundam and Gundam F-91, and as the first artist to illustrate the Dirty Pair.

Arion is a loose adaptation of Greek mythology telling the story of demi-god Arion, son of Demeter. First kidnapped by Hades, Arion grows from child into teen before returning from the underworld to the surface of the earth and leading a human uprising against the tyrannical oppression of the gods including Apollo and Zeus. For its time Arion featured stunning animation, character design and background design and a story as complex and multi-layered as the epic characters it dealt with. The musical score provided by Hayao Miyazaki regular composer Joe Hisaishi is also considered one of the finest anime scores ever written.

Early last year Arion was released on special edition DVD in Japan, featuring a digitally remastered anamorphic widescreen transfer with 38 minutes of bonus footage, theatrical teasers and trailers, promotional footage and illustration galleries. Unfortunately there are no plans at the present for an American release of this classic masterpiece. However the increasing interest in “golden period” anime among American distributors that includes American licenses of the Dirty Pair movies, the SPT Layzner and Aura Battler Dunbine TV series and Bandai’s licensing of Yoshikazu Yasuhiko’s 1984 anime TV series Giant Gorg, the work that directly preceded Arion, may portend an eventual American release of Arion itself.