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krpalmerA little while ago, my area newspaper ran an article about thirty years having passed since the movie Akira opened in Japan. Something about anime showing up in something like a newspaper (and I'm afraid I can think to add something like "especially in these page-straitened days") does get my attention, but beyond that it had me remembering I'd bought the movie on Blu-Ray a while ago to move up from the DVD I'd first watched it on, seen some criticisms of that particular release and let the disc sit, and then heard it was being released on Blu-Ray again and bought that disc as well only to also let it sit...
I can open the space in a week to "watch a movie" without having to "get through other things first," though, so I got out the latest disc at last, even if I did notice it was labelled "twenty-fifth anniversary." Trying to shrug that off, I contemplated how it had made a selling point of including the original English dub from the late 1980s, but aware that dub didn't seem to have a good reputation straight from that time (at least until it wasn't available any more) I decided it had been long enough since I'd last watched the movie that I ought not to return to it in a way that might now seem "camped up." Visually, it remained impressive; I did ponder a bit, though, whether I'm so used to "low frame rate animation" that Akira's seemed somehow unusual, as doubtless something more conventionally "classic" would as well. I also thought a bit of the lengthy original manga that hadn't been finished when the movie had been made, and of personal impressions that its additional length and situations doesn't seem to make it feel any more profound.
In any case, I did finish the movie wondering a bit about just where someone in North America who'd seen Akira for the first time at the beginning of the 1990s might go from there (at least able to remember the moment, a few years after I'd heard of the movie, that other animation from Japan was becoming available over here even if still out of my reach, and that the science fiction giant robot action of Robotech hadn't "vanished into the past"...) I went back to my copy of a book called Watching Anime, Reading Manga by Fred Patten, who'd parlayed an interest in European comics into his first awareness of Japanese comics at the beginning of the 1970s, and had written articles introducing it to other people throughout the 1980s, managing to get involved with Carl Macek's Streamline Pictures when Akira was first being brought to North America. (Returning to it, I did contemplate the book having been published in 2004, on the last upslope of an "anime and manga boom" over here; I had, though, supposed in the years just following that Patten having managed to stay interested in the stuff for so long was one slender reed against the supposition sometimes filtering through online discussions that "burnout is inevitable (especially with the stuff made now...") In one period comment about Akira, he mentioned it appealing "to the type of fans who would go to see Blade Runner and "Terminator." That got me thinking again.
I'd got around at last to the original Terminator when it had rotated onto Netflix; a few first, amused thoughts of a few of the more recent movies in the Mystery Science Theater 3000 canon faded when confronted with things movies worked into a cable television show couldn't feature. Blade Runner, though, remained one of those things I only know "about." Some years ago, I did find a DVD set of its "Final Cut" on the discount rack at a local store, but I'd let it sit unopened since. Perhaps it had a little to do with an old impression of a great many "written science fiction buffs" showing contempt for all "visual science fiction" save 2001: A Space Odyssey (which I'd taken the time to watch once more after reading a book about it just a little while ago) and then, should they bother to permit a second title to escape their disapproval, Blade Runner. I'm afraid that to see something promoted in such a way I become convinced the effort is also trying to put other things down can just push me away from the first item. Perhaps, too, understanding just how much could be traced back to that movie (usually in ways subtler than the names lifted from it in the Bubblegum Crisis anime OVAs of the late 1980s), including written science fiction "cyberpunk," might have had me thinking I was somehow "risking" a lot of derivative works by confronting their inspiration. There was also the wrinkle of the DVD set offering all the previous cuts of the movie; eventually, though, telling myself that I am perfectly capable of watching the Blu-Rays of the Star Wars saga helped me resolve to start with the "Final Cut."
There might be risks to "snap judgments" after so long, but all in all, remembering it's still not that long since my viewing, I don't seem in a "well, that just about wraps things up" mood. By the time I'd finished the movie, I could suppose it seemed more about the mood of its setting than action; aware beforehand of the long-standing questions people keep asking about it I could see how "sorting things out yourself" can make them stick in your mind. There was, I suppose, a different sort of "texture" to the live-action settings than to animation recent or period. Along with that, though, I did get to thinking one of the secondary characters had sounded somehow familiar; all of a sudden I thought, then managed to confirm, that William Sanderson had provided the voice for a character in "Batman: The Animated Series" who'd constructed humanoid robots only for them to get out of hand. There's something about realising a reference you hadn't expected beforehand. On the other hand, where seeing Edward James Olmos in the credits had me first thinking back to the "new Battlestar Galactica," something I admit to not thinking of very much one way or another in the time since that series finished, after things were over that had faded from my mind again. I suppose I am thinking now, though, of the copy I do have of Philip K. Dick's Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? However, while taking the copy off my shelf and glancing at it reminded me a number of things must have changed between it and the movie, I did get to wondering just how much of the book I remembered. I have the feeling Dick's The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch sort of flew over my head; his Ubik did have enough striking imagery to stick in my mind; for this book, though, I may just have to read it again.
I can open the space in a week to "watch a movie" without having to "get through other things first," though, so I got out the latest disc at last, even if I did notice it was labelled "twenty-fifth anniversary." Trying to shrug that off, I contemplated how it had made a selling point of including the original English dub from the late 1980s, but aware that dub didn't seem to have a good reputation straight from that time (at least until it wasn't available any more) I decided it had been long enough since I'd last watched the movie that I ought not to return to it in a way that might now seem "camped up." Visually, it remained impressive; I did ponder a bit, though, whether I'm so used to "low frame rate animation" that Akira's seemed somehow unusual, as doubtless something more conventionally "classic" would as well. I also thought a bit of the lengthy original manga that hadn't been finished when the movie had been made, and of personal impressions that its additional length and situations doesn't seem to make it feel any more profound.
In any case, I did finish the movie wondering a bit about just where someone in North America who'd seen Akira for the first time at the beginning of the 1990s might go from there (at least able to remember the moment, a few years after I'd heard of the movie, that other animation from Japan was becoming available over here even if still out of my reach, and that the science fiction giant robot action of Robotech hadn't "vanished into the past"...) I went back to my copy of a book called Watching Anime, Reading Manga by Fred Patten, who'd parlayed an interest in European comics into his first awareness of Japanese comics at the beginning of the 1970s, and had written articles introducing it to other people throughout the 1980s, managing to get involved with Carl Macek's Streamline Pictures when Akira was first being brought to North America. (Returning to it, I did contemplate the book having been published in 2004, on the last upslope of an "anime and manga boom" over here; I had, though, supposed in the years just following that Patten having managed to stay interested in the stuff for so long was one slender reed against the supposition sometimes filtering through online discussions that "burnout is inevitable (especially with the stuff made now...") In one period comment about Akira, he mentioned it appealing "to the type of fans who would go to see Blade Runner and "Terminator." That got me thinking again.
I'd got around at last to the original Terminator when it had rotated onto Netflix; a few first, amused thoughts of a few of the more recent movies in the Mystery Science Theater 3000 canon faded when confronted with things movies worked into a cable television show couldn't feature. Blade Runner, though, remained one of those things I only know "about." Some years ago, I did find a DVD set of its "Final Cut" on the discount rack at a local store, but I'd let it sit unopened since. Perhaps it had a little to do with an old impression of a great many "written science fiction buffs" showing contempt for all "visual science fiction" save 2001: A Space Odyssey (which I'd taken the time to watch once more after reading a book about it just a little while ago) and then, should they bother to permit a second title to escape their disapproval, Blade Runner. I'm afraid that to see something promoted in such a way I become convinced the effort is also trying to put other things down can just push me away from the first item. Perhaps, too, understanding just how much could be traced back to that movie (usually in ways subtler than the names lifted from it in the Bubblegum Crisis anime OVAs of the late 1980s), including written science fiction "cyberpunk," might have had me thinking I was somehow "risking" a lot of derivative works by confronting their inspiration. There was also the wrinkle of the DVD set offering all the previous cuts of the movie; eventually, though, telling myself that I am perfectly capable of watching the Blu-Rays of the Star Wars saga helped me resolve to start with the "Final Cut."
There might be risks to "snap judgments" after so long, but all in all, remembering it's still not that long since my viewing, I don't seem in a "well, that just about wraps things up" mood. By the time I'd finished the movie, I could suppose it seemed more about the mood of its setting than action; aware beforehand of the long-standing questions people keep asking about it I could see how "sorting things out yourself" can make them stick in your mind. There was, I suppose, a different sort of "texture" to the live-action settings than to animation recent or period. Along with that, though, I did get to thinking one of the secondary characters had sounded somehow familiar; all of a sudden I thought, then managed to confirm, that William Sanderson had provided the voice for a character in "Batman: The Animated Series" who'd constructed humanoid robots only for them to get out of hand. There's something about realising a reference you hadn't expected beforehand. On the other hand, where seeing Edward James Olmos in the credits had me first thinking back to the "new Battlestar Galactica," something I admit to not thinking of very much one way or another in the time since that series finished, after things were over that had faded from my mind again. I suppose I am thinking now, though, of the copy I do have of Philip K. Dick's Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? However, while taking the copy off my shelf and glancing at it reminded me a number of things must have changed between it and the movie, I did get to wondering just how much of the book I remembered. I have the feeling Dick's The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch sort of flew over my head; his Ubik did have enough striking imagery to stick in my mind; for this book, though, I may just have to read it again.