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krpalmerAs I've mentioned perhaps more often than I have to, I buy anime DVDs faster than I can watch them. One of my reasons for this (among others touched on an interesting recent column) might be that I started ordering from a well-regarded specialty online store, but one with a high threshold for free cross-border shipping. To pad out orders and think that I'm paying for "product" and not "shipping," I may well have selected more than a few titles for thin reasons, but one of my more peculiar reasons may be that one particular series just happened to have featured in a memorable MSTing, the sequel to a MSTing I've wondered about being "the greatest of all time..."
At certain times, I have wondered if I've enjoyed the MSTing of Peter Guerin's "The Return of the Lawndale Militia" that much more than "The Misery Senshi Neo-Zero Double Blitzkrieg Debacle," if for no more reason than that its jabs didn't hit particularly tender targets for me, as a handful of "riffs" did in its lengthier predecessor. It also happened I'd already seen one of the "obscure" anime series that particular story crossed over (with little rhyme or reason) with Daria, Gunsmith Cats, at my university's anime club. The other anime series I was convinced the story had skewed almost beyond recognition, though, I hadn't seen... but when the the manga it had been based was released some years later, I bought the first volume of Here Is Greenwood (back, I suppose, in the days when I sort of saw manga just as "poor man's anime"). For some reason, though, I wasn't quite able to get into the story that way, so when I did have the chance to buy the anime I took it, perhaps thinking of another time or two when I'd struggled starting a manga but enjoyed the anime made of it. Then, of course, the DVD case sat on my shelf for a long time. It took the thought the tenth anniversary of the MSTing was approaching for me to open it, and just for the full experience I rewatched Gunsmith Cats at the same time. (So far as introductions to those two anime go, I'm very tempted to suggest following the MSTing link and seeing both Guerin's own introductions at the very beginning of his story and the "riffing" on them.)
After all of it, I suppose both of the OVAs evoked wistful thoughts of "once upon a time" for me, of how multimedia franchises used to be built with three or six-episode OVAs instead of thirteen-episode TV series, and how this might make them seem more like "well-animated tasters" rather than "reasonable slices of story." (Gunsmith Cats in particular has an impressive car-chase animation in it, although I try not to make the same fetish of "drawn animation" as certain other fans do...) As for Here Is Greenwood in particular, I did sort of dwell on how I might very well not have ever paid any attention to it save for that accident of history even as I sort of acknowledged it would have seemed "distinctive" for being (more or less) in the "real world" to the first North American anime fans to see it. Still, I wouldn't say I regretted that particular experience. I was able to realise how one particular point in Guerin's story had indeed been skewed into something ridiculous, although I also learned that, just as one strange bit about Gunsmith Cats in the story wasn't that far off the anime, one other particular character had indeed appeared in the anime and not been taken from a mere different "fanfic," as I'd once wondered...
At certain times, I have wondered if I've enjoyed the MSTing of Peter Guerin's "The Return of the Lawndale Militia" that much more than "The Misery Senshi Neo-Zero Double Blitzkrieg Debacle," if for no more reason than that its jabs didn't hit particularly tender targets for me, as a handful of "riffs" did in its lengthier predecessor. It also happened I'd already seen one of the "obscure" anime series that particular story crossed over (with little rhyme or reason) with Daria, Gunsmith Cats, at my university's anime club. The other anime series I was convinced the story had skewed almost beyond recognition, though, I hadn't seen... but when the the manga it had been based was released some years later, I bought the first volume of Here Is Greenwood (back, I suppose, in the days when I sort of saw manga just as "poor man's anime"). For some reason, though, I wasn't quite able to get into the story that way, so when I did have the chance to buy the anime I took it, perhaps thinking of another time or two when I'd struggled starting a manga but enjoyed the anime made of it. Then, of course, the DVD case sat on my shelf for a long time. It took the thought the tenth anniversary of the MSTing was approaching for me to open it, and just for the full experience I rewatched Gunsmith Cats at the same time. (So far as introductions to those two anime go, I'm very tempted to suggest following the MSTing link and seeing both Guerin's own introductions at the very beginning of his story and the "riffing" on them.)
After all of it, I suppose both of the OVAs evoked wistful thoughts of "once upon a time" for me, of how multimedia franchises used to be built with three or six-episode OVAs instead of thirteen-episode TV series, and how this might make them seem more like "well-animated tasters" rather than "reasonable slices of story." (Gunsmith Cats in particular has an impressive car-chase animation in it, although I try not to make the same fetish of "drawn animation" as certain other fans do...) As for Here Is Greenwood in particular, I did sort of dwell on how I might very well not have ever paid any attention to it save for that accident of history even as I sort of acknowledged it would have seemed "distinctive" for being (more or less) in the "real world" to the first North American anime fans to see it. Still, I wouldn't say I regretted that particular experience. I was able to realise how one particular point in Guerin's story had indeed been skewed into something ridiculous, although I also learned that, just as one strange bit about Gunsmith Cats in the story wasn't that far off the anime, one other particular character had indeed appeared in the anime and not been taken from a mere different "fanfic," as I'd once wondered...