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New Year's Anime: Horus, Prince of the Sun
Jan. 5th, 2018 08:18 pmThe first day of the year being a day off had me thinking I could spend part of it watching one of the movies I hadn't quite found the time for in the last weekend of the year just ended. I have movies enough to get to, but my specific thoughts were of an anime feature that had arrived not that long ago. Not quite getting to it until this year worked out in an odd way, though: I was now reaching back an even fifty years to it.
While I suppose I might have taken some notice of Discotek's licensing notice for Horus: Prince of the Sun and whatever first reactions there were to that on the anime sites I follow, what really made me pick up on the movie was Mike Toole putting it at the top of a list of "The Other 100 Best Anime Movies," a half-joking response to a previous list by someone else that had seemed at first glance all the easy, obvious choices, and itself an exploration of the fine lines separating curiosities, obscurities, and hidden gems. Describing Horus as the breakout moment where Japanese animation had first created something other than "kids' stuff" (although Toole had put a good number of features made in the years just before it not that far down his list, too) did get my attention. When I happened to see the movie on special sale on Right Stuf at the exact moment I could order enough other things to reach the rarefied goal of free cross-border shipping, I went ahead and ordered it.
The movie really was an interesting experience, although I still wonder a little about the possible risk in taking in "formative works" well after the fact, one of not quite understanding just what its contemporaries had been to take the innovations for granted but fixate on anything that might be called a holdover. I'm also stuck with a familiar feeling that in being invigorated by something I hadn't heard much about before to the point of trying to share my reactions, I risk depriving anyone in the position I'd just been on of their own chance of a similar experience.
( My specifics )
While I suppose I might have taken some notice of Discotek's licensing notice for Horus: Prince of the Sun and whatever first reactions there were to that on the anime sites I follow, what really made me pick up on the movie was Mike Toole putting it at the top of a list of "The Other 100 Best Anime Movies," a half-joking response to a previous list by someone else that had seemed at first glance all the easy, obvious choices, and itself an exploration of the fine lines separating curiosities, obscurities, and hidden gems. Describing Horus as the breakout moment where Japanese animation had first created something other than "kids' stuff" (although Toole had put a good number of features made in the years just before it not that far down his list, too) did get my attention. When I happened to see the movie on special sale on Right Stuf at the exact moment I could order enough other things to reach the rarefied goal of free cross-border shipping, I went ahead and ordered it.
The movie really was an interesting experience, although I still wonder a little about the possible risk in taking in "formative works" well after the fact, one of not quite understanding just what its contemporaries had been to take the innovations for granted but fixate on anything that might be called a holdover. I'm also stuck with a familiar feeling that in being invigorated by something I hadn't heard much about before to the point of trying to share my reactions, I risk depriving anyone in the position I'd just been on of their own chance of a similar experience.
( My specifics )
