Teenage Memories

It was 1992 and my sophmore year of high school. My parents had finally got cable and I was basking in all of its brainwashing goodness. It was a time when MTV was still relevant and amazingly enough still played videos. That being true I was guilty of watching the channel a decent amount back then without the slightest feeling of shame. I believe it was a Saturday afternoon when I first ran across a show that would solidify my love for the animated medium. The show I am referring to is called Liquid Television. The show was quite the experience and unfortunately probably one of the first steps the channel was making to make the "M" in their name completely useless and unnecessary. This show was full of animated shorts that ran the gambit from avant garde to goofy to even provocative. As with anything there was some crap on on it but it was far outweighed by awesome content. Liquid Telivision would also prove to be the point of origin for some pop culture staples. Aeon Flux first started on this show and a little show called Beavis and Butthead started as a short called "Frog Baseball" on this show as well. Oh man, I remember seeing the duo, who were even more crudely drawn in this short, bat a frog across the screen and I knew they were on to something. But I'm digressing. I guess the reason I even decided to write this blog is because I just recently remembered a particular short I saw on this show and felt like I need to share it with whoever might enjoy it as well.

This particular short was called "The Running Man" and it must have done something to me if I'm writing a blog about 16 years later. It was made by Yoshiaki Kawajiri who I believe also did animation on Ninja Scroll and the Animatrix for you anime fans out there. I remember this short instantly caught my attention with its crazy and dark visuals and interesting and also equally as dark subject matter.


The story is about Zach Hugh, the undefeated champion of the "Death Circus" racing circuit. It's a futuristic race where the competitors ride around in what looks like cars out of the nintendo game F-Zero. The short is very stylized in appearance and extremely trippy (especially in the race scenes). Like any good story when it was over it left me completely silent reflecting on what i just saw. There's plenty more that I could divulge about this story but my main goal is to just spark interest in what I think is a great story.

I was originally going to include youtube videos on this blog but I found out that Viacom took them down due to copyright infringement. But good news I found out this short is also on a dvd called Neo Tokyo and that it is available on Netflix. Due yourself a favor and check this and Yoshiaki's other work out. I think you won't be disappointed.