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Up to an Edge of Anime
May. 7th, 2021 08:43 pmNot quite two years ago, as I wrote up another “quarterly review” of anime watched I mentioned how I’d managed in the space of three months to see at least a bit of anime made in each of the decades from the 1960s to the current day. The next year, I just happened to be able to stop by those decades again and then add one more to them, if only by calendar digits. Three months later, I topped myself again by contriving to watch the first full colour feature-length animated film made in Japan at the end of the 1950s.
However, even if I’ve noticed enough muttering about “other fans who won’t watch anything but the newest anime when these classics are better in every way that counts” to think ranging through time the way I manage is a little unusual, I’ve also seen a certain number of warnings “not to let something so narrow and trivial as your light entertainment tastes define you,” and I kept pushing back uneasy thoughts my whirlwind tours were just tiny almost-boasts. With Hakujaden watched I did suppose I was about finished anyway; to go further back again seemed to mean getting to “World War II and its lead-up,” and my first thought there was of a black-and-white feature-length animated film potential “propaganda strangeness” just seemed spread out over too great a length to interest me, and a society drifting into something it might take more care than I can muster to further describe without raising its own trouble.
Then, though, I did pick up on some pieces of animation from Japan as far back at the late 1920s. “Almost a century” was something, but even as I started toying with new thoughts I discovered I wouldn’t have to make do with that particular qualifier. A panel from a “streaming convention” pointed me to bits of animation that had survived the 1923 Tokyo earthquake and fire all the way to the point of official online availability. Encompassing “more than a century” would top myself once and for all, although I then happened to think I could also get around to some short American animations of comparable vintage too.
( 1917-1959 )
However, even if I’ve noticed enough muttering about “other fans who won’t watch anything but the newest anime when these classics are better in every way that counts” to think ranging through time the way I manage is a little unusual, I’ve also seen a certain number of warnings “not to let something so narrow and trivial as your light entertainment tastes define you,” and I kept pushing back uneasy thoughts my whirlwind tours were just tiny almost-boasts. With Hakujaden watched I did suppose I was about finished anyway; to go further back again seemed to mean getting to “World War II and its lead-up,” and my first thought there was of a black-and-white feature-length animated film potential “propaganda strangeness” just seemed spread out over too great a length to interest me, and a society drifting into something it might take more care than I can muster to further describe without raising its own trouble.
Then, though, I did pick up on some pieces of animation from Japan as far back at the late 1920s. “Almost a century” was something, but even as I started toying with new thoughts I discovered I wouldn’t have to make do with that particular qualifier. A panel from a “streaming convention” pointed me to bits of animation that had survived the 1923 Tokyo earthquake and fire all the way to the point of official online availability. Encompassing “more than a century” would top myself once and for all, although I then happened to think I could also get around to some short American animations of comparable vintage too.
( 1917-1959 )