Sixty Years Since Mighty Atom: 1963
Jan. 1st, 2023 07:43 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
krpalmerHaving seen bits of animation from Japan antique enough to perhaps avoid a certain amount of the indignation churned up over the fans who conflate “old anime” and “whatever’s not hot at that very moment” has been something to post about here, but still not something to boast about. Depending on the generosity of a few “fansubbers” (or perhaps just one) is not the same as “learning Japanese and importing discs.” Still, one day I happened to accumulate enough “sample episodes” to have at least one or two of them from each year since Osamu Tezuka started adapting his Mighty Atom manga into animation and getting it on television. In that moment, I started thinking about marking the sixtieth anniversary of that premiere by watching a sample episode from each of those years, and now that anniversary’s arrived.
In thinking back to 1963 and bringing my impressions of it to mind, I then happened to consider “1903 seems more different from 1963 than 1963 seems from now.” Even so, getting back to my sample episodes of Mighty Atom did remind me “it wasn’t exactly the same as today.” Where “the first episode has some animation setpieces and then things just sort of slide from there” might be familiar enough nowadays (I could go back to 1982 and Macross to make a point of it), the opening of Mighty Atom’s first episode does seem very much a matter of limited animation. There’s a dose of emotional impact even so with a grieving father trying to create an advanced robot in the image of his dead son, if also some “youthful logic,” perhaps, in the scientist casting out the robot when it doesn’t grow after creation. That was something I could easily suppose a young audience being affected on some fundamental level, anyway. I also suppose I did get to thinking “the arc of that first episode is something a modern story might be tempted to play out and have resonate for three months or so,” but then recalled criticism I’ve seen of the 1980 remake for perhaps letting “the robot agonizes” carry on and weigh things down. Tiny “cartoony-comedic” moments throughout these early sample episodes might also have given me a sense of “then and later.” So far as other impressions of callbacks went, steam blowing out of Atom’s ears as he sits up for the first time did have me thinking of steam blowing out of the original Gundam’s chest vents as it rose for the first time just over a decade and a half later. Somewhat later on, “dog-shaped” police cars had me thinking they’d also shown up in a later and far more serious anime, and found myself guessing at Psycho-Pass.
I did go to the point of watching all of my Mighty Atom sample episodes today, and that might have got to be a stiff dose of it. Even so, I still remembered an impression I’d had on seeing the first of them a few years ago that, in their own way, they felt like “a good first step” regardless of recent criticisms over Tezuka having locked “anime for TV” into low-budget shackles and left animators, that most fundamental resource of all, on starvation wages ever after. At the time I’d had that impression I’d also had the earliest episodes of Doctor Who and the original Star Trek in mind, although I’m aware I trailed off on taking in both of those 1960s shows. I’ve also kept thinking that some day it might be interesting to try and experience The Prisoner, Thunderbirds, and the original Ultraman...
In thinking back to 1963 and bringing my impressions of it to mind, I then happened to consider “1903 seems more different from 1963 than 1963 seems from now.” Even so, getting back to my sample episodes of Mighty Atom did remind me “it wasn’t exactly the same as today.” Where “the first episode has some animation setpieces and then things just sort of slide from there” might be familiar enough nowadays (I could go back to 1982 and Macross to make a point of it), the opening of Mighty Atom’s first episode does seem very much a matter of limited animation. There’s a dose of emotional impact even so with a grieving father trying to create an advanced robot in the image of his dead son, if also some “youthful logic,” perhaps, in the scientist casting out the robot when it doesn’t grow after creation. That was something I could easily suppose a young audience being affected on some fundamental level, anyway. I also suppose I did get to thinking “the arc of that first episode is something a modern story might be tempted to play out and have resonate for three months or so,” but then recalled criticism I’ve seen of the 1980 remake for perhaps letting “the robot agonizes” carry on and weigh things down. Tiny “cartoony-comedic” moments throughout these early sample episodes might also have given me a sense of “then and later.” So far as other impressions of callbacks went, steam blowing out of Atom’s ears as he sits up for the first time did have me thinking of steam blowing out of the original Gundam’s chest vents as it rose for the first time just over a decade and a half later. Somewhat later on, “dog-shaped” police cars had me thinking they’d also shown up in a later and far more serious anime, and found myself guessing at Psycho-Pass.
I did go to the point of watching all of my Mighty Atom sample episodes today, and that might have got to be a stiff dose of it. Even so, I still remembered an impression I’d had on seeing the first of them a few years ago that, in their own way, they felt like “a good first step” regardless of recent criticisms over Tezuka having locked “anime for TV” into low-budget shackles and left animators, that most fundamental resource of all, on starvation wages ever after. At the time I’d had that impression I’d also had the earliest episodes of Doctor Who and the original Star Trek in mind, although I’m aware I trailed off on taking in both of those 1960s shows. I’ve also kept thinking that some day it might be interesting to try and experience The Prisoner, Thunderbirds, and the original Ultraman...