Sixty Years Since Mighty Atom: 1966
Jan. 4th, 2023 07:30 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
krpalmerAfter sampling three series based on manga by Osamu Tezuka, I’m moving on to an anime created by Mitsuteru Yokoyama. I understand Yokoyama was also a prolific creator, if mostly through having been told how the characters of the Giant Robo OVAs of the 1990s were assembled. (So far as dwelling on “original creators” goes, though, only two of the three “Tezuka series” were adapted by his own Mushi Productions. My first thoughts about the simpler animation of the odd series out might be a reminder that anime depends on a lot more than its source material, if one a bit less weighty than recent complaints about “good manga being handed to crummy studios...”) Sally the Witch is a series I’ve already watched all of my sample fansubs of, and it’s not the only show from 1966 (it snuck in close to the line, premiering in December) I have a few episodes of. Still, I had been thinking it was getting about time to turn to “a show with girls as lead characters.”
I still remember starting off with uncertain thoughts that “an anime with girls as lead characters made this early might be a bit moralizing,” and them being brushed away by “old-fashioned cartoon mayhem.” I hadn’t really remembered events in the first episode, though. Sally just happens to head to “the human world” to get away from magical studies and parents who don’t seem to have much time for her, and by the end of the episode she’s using her magic on “people who might deserve that,” even if she deploys enough tricks a certain feeling of excess starts to pile up. In having seen comments this was the beginning of “magical girls” I did remember there were other early shows I haven’t seen anything of that might have formed clearer links to the early-1980s examples of them (much less the modern “feminine superheroes”). For that matter, I recall comments Sally the Witch had been inspired by Bewitched having aired in Japan, and I haven’t seen anything of that sitcom either.
I still remember starting off with uncertain thoughts that “an anime with girls as lead characters made this early might be a bit moralizing,” and them being brushed away by “old-fashioned cartoon mayhem.” I hadn’t really remembered events in the first episode, though. Sally just happens to head to “the human world” to get away from magical studies and parents who don’t seem to have much time for her, and by the end of the episode she’s using her magic on “people who might deserve that,” even if she deploys enough tricks a certain feeling of excess starts to pile up. In having seen comments this was the beginning of “magical girls” I did remember there were other early shows I haven’t seen anything of that might have formed clearer links to the early-1980s examples of them (much less the modern “feminine superheroes”). For that matter, I recall comments Sally the Witch had been inspired by Bewitched having aired in Japan, and I haven’t seen anything of that sitcom either.