Sixty Years Since Mighty Atom: 1973
Jan. 11th, 2023 07:37 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
krpalmerFrom the tenth anniversary of Mighty Atom appearing on TV (a mere half-century back from the present now), the anime series I was intent on sampling was Aim for the Ace! The timing of this project became a little more awkward after picking my titles, though, when Discotek announced they’d licensed the tennis series for release on Blu-Ray. (It might be too much of a stretch to connect that to their having licensed Gunbuster even given all the suggestions over the years about part of the mecha anime’s tongue-in-cheek nature being a decided invocation of the earlier show...) I have ordered their impending release, but it won’t be out until the end of next month; once more I’m dipping into the murky water of “fansubs.”
In any case the sketchy designs of Aim for the Ace may look “old,” but combined with the colourful backgrounds they do look distinctive. Someone looking for more anime as striking as this might well wind up complaining “commercial production has no time for art,” but I do seem able to take this series as a “bonus” or something. I do find myself thinking back to Attack No. 1 again and the certain amount of awkwardness I supposed I could see in its first episode; on the other hand I can think back to the volleyball series as “a compelling story that happens to be told in animation” as compared to Aim for the Ace as “a story that looks interesting in a way ‘drawings’ provide.” As for weighing their different high school girl main characters, the first episode of Aim for the Ace gets far enough into its story that I did happen to notice Hiromi showing just enough already-justified gumption at a crucial moment that there was a certain sense to her being yanked up into what would surely seem an awkward and gruelling position rather than having to suppose “something’s been seen neither she nor we can just yet.” An impending legitimate release might be more of a nudge to really get back to a show than with some of the others I’ve sampled; I can at least suppose at this moment that it’ll be interesting to get back to.
In any case the sketchy designs of Aim for the Ace may look “old,” but combined with the colourful backgrounds they do look distinctive. Someone looking for more anime as striking as this might well wind up complaining “commercial production has no time for art,” but I do seem able to take this series as a “bonus” or something. I do find myself thinking back to Attack No. 1 again and the certain amount of awkwardness I supposed I could see in its first episode; on the other hand I can think back to the volleyball series as “a compelling story that happens to be told in animation” as compared to Aim for the Ace as “a story that looks interesting in a way ‘drawings’ provide.” As for weighing their different high school girl main characters, the first episode of Aim for the Ace gets far enough into its story that I did happen to notice Hiromi showing just enough already-justified gumption at a crucial moment that there was a certain sense to her being yanked up into what would surely seem an awkward and gruelling position rather than having to suppose “something’s been seen neither she nor we can just yet.” An impending legitimate release might be more of a nudge to really get back to a show than with some of the others I’ve sampled; I can at least suppose at this moment that it’ll be interesting to get back to.