Angel Films

**Angel Films** (Japanese:エンゼルフィルム) is a Japanese movie studio founded on 1971 in Osaka, which created the second Japanese dub of Engines Of Eight.

## Company information

* Formerly: N/A
* Type: Shukyo Houjin (宗教法人, “religious corporation”)→Unknown
* Founded: 1971-04-05
* Defunct: 1999-07-09
* Headquarters: Osaka, Japan
* Products: Films, animation, dubbing (from 1980s)
* Owner: Kaneda Torajirou (1971~1986), Gen Crownmire (1986, briefly), Kaneda Torasaburou (1986~1999)
* Number of employees: unknown (no specific information available)

## History

The company was founded on April 5th, in Japan, by Kaneda Torajiro (金田寅次郎, 1948~). The company was made as a division of “Archangel Ascention Church”（大天使昇天教会）, a cult founded by Kaneda Tenmei（金田天命, 1921~1986）, a father of Torajiro. Due to the cult’s main teaching that “all of the people who believe in the religion turn into angels and serve eternally for god in heaven”, they have made many films that the angels appear in. During the first 15 years, the company made a lot of religious films, such as “The God is Coming,” “Hanako and Yang-hee,” “Oriental Sodom” and “An angel is coming.” Many of them were strictly criticised not only for its overly religious themes, but also its poor writings, cheap settings (save for the details of the angels for some reason) and reliance of the angels as a deus-ex-machina. Their conservative views of gender (most notorious example is “Oriental Sodom,” and it is said that the infamous “I do not support transgender community” line in Racing Rob is from the English subtitled version of Angel Film dub) were criticised by the left (they also bashed the portrayal of railguns in Tom), while their political stance on racism toward Korean people and Japan’s reluctance of admitting war crimes in WW2 were bashed by right-wing associations.

However, some cinephiles liked the poorly made “Angel Films” for enjoying its “bad” aspects. In addition, their film got popular in Ealmoin during their airings on Fiddle TV. Financial aids from Fiddle TV helped the company to expand a lot, but they also asked to tone-down the religious content, much to the church’s annoyance.

In the 1980s, they started making Japanese dubs of obscure foreign cartoons, in relation to FiddleTV. The cartoons included Dockyard Film shows like Victor Vicar, Jizzle The Clown, Eliot The Rocketship and Alberto El Pato, but we have to wait until 1988 to see “Engines of Eight” being dubbed.

1986 saw the death of Kaneda Tenmei, and the company was briefly taken over by Gen Crownmire for a while (changing its name to “Engine Films”), but Torajiro’s younger brother Torasaburo properly took over the company in December of the year. Due to his lack of interest (and hatred) to succeed the church, he cut relations with the Archangel Ascension Church and Angel Films, and shifted its policy from preaching to making more commercial mock-buster movies. However, due to its rather non-religious content, the cartoon-dubbing section wasn’t much affected by his new-deal. He also kept the company’s name and its angel-driven content.

In 1988, the second Japanese dub of “Engines of Eight” was produced. First two seasons were dubbed, and the voice actors were a mixture of professional voice actors and actors from Angel Films (it’s easy to notice the difference in acting). The dub was aired on TV Asahi in 1989, but because of its early airing time (5:25 AM, Japanese Standard Time), it didn’t become a success. After its original run, the dub got several re-run on local TV channels. Most of the surviving copies of the Japanese dubs are derived from JBC airing in 1995. Angel film also sold some VHS copies and related goods like toys, towel, soap, bicycle and Furikake (Japanese salty sprinkles).

In 1999, the company went bankrupt for unknown reasons. Ironically, the day falls on the 9th of July, which is believed to be the day that “a great king of terror would come from the sky,” as in Nostradamus’ prediction (which was extremely popular in Japan), and also in the prediction of the Archangel Ascension Church. The fate of the staff and master tapes of the films are mostly still unknown (Only Tom's voice actor, Hori Daisuke, confirmed dead in 2005). The website closed in 2000, so we can't know many details about the company.

## Selected Filmography

### "Religious" Era

* The God Is Coming(主は來ませり)(1971)
* Love Thy Neighbours (隣人を愛せ) (1973)
* A Lily (百合の花) (1976)
* A Hand of The Red Demon (赤鬼の手) (1979)
* Hanako and Yang-hee (花子と良姫) (1982)
* Oriental Sodom (東洋のソドム) (1983)
* An Angel Is Coming (天使降臨) (1985)
* Angels Ascends (天使昇天) (1986)

### “Mockbuster” Era

* Princess Kaguya (プリンセス・カグヤ) (1987)
* Jin Ping Mei (金瓶梅) (1988)
* Angels In School Uniforms (学生服の天使達) (1988)
* Archangels In School Uniforms (学生服の大天使達) (1989)
* Afterlife (大天界　死んだらこうなる) (1990)
* Dinosaurland (恐竜ランド) (1994)

## Dubs

* Victor Vicar （ビクター牧師）
* Jizzle The Clown （ピエロのジズル）
* Eliot The Rocketship （まけるなエリオット～たのしい空のなかまたち）
* Alberto El Pato（スペイン語を話すアヒル　アルベルトの大冒険）
* Jiro-san From Tokyo（日本人ジローさん）
* Willy Ton Bastardo（おまぬけウィリーくん）
* Worker And The Parasite （労働者と寄生虫）
* A Tale Of A Blue Bear（あおいクマのおはなし）
* Engines of Eight （８りょうのきしゃ）

## Trivia

* Some voice actors from Engines of Eight were also involved in the English dub of the films, most notably Sarah Smith and Ben Alwat.
* In addition to the Japanese dub of Engines of Eight, they also dubbed a few episodes in Korean, Hebrew, three Okinawan languages (Ryukyu, Miyako and Yonaguni) and Ainu.
	+ Strangely, they also made **an English dub of the Japanese dub**, as an English-learning device.
* Gen Crownmire considered to make English as an official language of the Engine Films and planned to shift to more international film-making (with making all films in English).
* The 1984 program guide of Fiddle TV mistakenly states that the origin of the films are Korean. Ironically, Kaneda Tenmei himself was Korean and there were several Korean-Japanese working for Angel Films.