Starzinger was my childhood memory, and within the anime there was a character which impacted me deeply.
The cartoon was aired five times a week. In the first 20 or so episodes, it was always the same routine -- the 3 cyborgs with the beautiful princess landed on a planet, then met some strange monster and they won it. The princess to me is too cheesy, and at times I cannot stand her "girlish" demeanor.
It was until episode 36 that I started to watch every show when it aired, and I even watched the reruns.
Belamis was the character who made the difference. She was the heroine, very much like Lady Oscar from Rose of Versailles. Her touch of tragic air only adds to her character. After she ended her role (her life too) in Episode 64, I could not bear to accept it - she was too good a person to die young.
Most Starzinger fan blogs regarded the scene of her death the most sad and heartbreaking.... I was dumbfounded as to why the producers did this.. and the logical result that follows were fans creating new stories about her....
Ironically, perhaps that episode immortalized Belamis. She was forever a hero in my mind.
Thanks to YouTube I was able to taste those long lost memories, and I have a different thought about Belamis as an adult. I was able to understand her character more, and be able to make sense of what happened and what was going through inside her.
Belamis has a small steady group of followers. There were poems, novels, pictures showing Belamis in non-cyborg form, and even fancying her to be with Kogu -- the only man in her heart.
(Illustration by Southern Cross, showing Belamis and Kogu together, for a romantic poem about Belamis)
I too, would write a long story on her -- her journey towards healing.
3 comments:
What a beautiful drawing! Like you, I used to watch Starzinger, until the episode Kuge meets Belamis. I liked her since day 1 and I know that both fell in love with each other since that moment! The hope of their encounters kept me watching the show. Unfortunatedly, I didn't watched all episodes... I always wondered how the show ended. Well, a few days ago Balamia (the name in Spanish)came to my mind and I found the episodes on You Tube and finally saw her tragic ending. Oh well, but fanfiction is an alternative. It's our way to keep our favorite characters alive, and to share what we would like to happen to them. And then I found this site. Thank you for this! I noticed you have put a lot of work on it!
OMG!!! OMG!!! OMG!!!
15 years of dreams and hopes makes reality with that drawing!!!!
Yeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeiii
Why do we like Belamis (Balamia) so much?
I think I have the answer, maybe not everybody went through the same, but for me it was like this:
I was born in 1970 and I grew up watching with my older sister and cousins shows like WONDER WOMAN (Lynda Carter), THE BIONIC WOMAN, CHARLIE’S ANGELS, PRINCE SAPHIRE or the Wonder Woman and Hawk-Girl from the Super-Friends.
Then, slowly I stopped seeing those characters, until I saw Belamis in the Starzinger (Galactico) series.
I was like, “Wow! Finally, a woman who took some vitamins!” Characters like Princess Aurora were like Barbies with anemia. In those shows, the women were always fainting, crying… They could not run without falling every 3 steps. They were always kidnapped and they never freed themselves, they were whining all the time until the hero rescued her.
Later, I noticed that Prince Saphire, Lady Oscar and Belamis were versions of Mulan.
Disney made a good version of Mulan. I like the part when they tried to make her the perfect lady and it was a disaster, because that was not Mulan. The lesson she gave to the world is that women are not one thing, the perfect lady or the manly soldier. We are a little bit of both.
We are sweet when we have to, and we are thought when we have to protect ourselves and the people we care about.
So, Belamis filled a space we were not aware of that was empty. I was glad I did not see the last episode, in that way Belamis always stayed alive.
Writers of TV Shows are mostly men and they write for boys. They do not understand the 50% of children of the world are girls and they need all the versions of Mulan, Wonder Woman or She-Ra they could make up.
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