Sixty Years Since Mighty Atom: 1974
Jan. 12th, 2023 08:07 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
krpalmerWhile I’ve been managing to get some thoughts typed out about each of the sample anime episodes I’ve watched this year, I have to remain clear this is just a personal indulgence. A single half-hour episode of TV animation, or even a single series, can’t define a whole year’s production. For the year I’ve now got to, I suppose I’ve been conscious for a while that while the English-language fandom directed my attention to Space Battleship Yamato first, afterwards I did see comments (still in the same language) about a rather different series walloping it in the Japanese ratings at the time, such that Yamato wound up “a phenomenon only after the fact.” Even “Heidi versus Yamato” can’t define their year, of course, but I did get to pondering trying to watch the first episodes of each series in a single day.
At that point, though, I was still wondering “which one do I list along the single episodes from their year and which one is stuck in the ‘additional’ slot?” I’d seen Heidi more recently than Yamato, but I’d returned to two episodes of Yamato in my previous “anniversary project.” There was the thought “as Star Blazers, Yamato was its own booster stage for the English-language anime fandom,” but I have to admit to suspicions the fans of Star Blazers, in forgiving whatever trespasses it committed against the original, just might have been among the first to not tolerate Robotech’s different sins. Then, I made a sudden decision to list both series as “additional,” and start with a sample (short) episode of that supreme achievement of human culture, Chargeman Ken. Further marking that distinguished series, I didn’t watch its first episode (with the scene where “Ken rolls two feet off the ground, thanks to an animation error”), but instead revisited the classic “Dynamite in the Brain!”
As for Heidi, it remained as charming as ever even with its plot just getting under way as Heidi is left in the uncertain care of her mountain-man grandfather. I’m pretty sure I was influenced by a recent comment in taking note of the scene setting working its way up into the Swiss Alps, and noticed places that would be revisited later as well as another character (and a good many goats) already being introduced. In watching just one episode of Space Battleship Yamato, I did get to see a good number of its science fiction designs (the temptation is to compare them to Star Trek and 2001’s and maybe even start pondering all those uncertainties over the years about just what the anime might be trying to reinterpret, but that might only reveal I’m not as familiar with the designs of Japanese science fiction to that point) and get introduced to more than a few characters, but the Yamato itself remains scrap metal from World War II. That’s one of the problems with “sample episodes,” of course.
At that point, though, I was still wondering “which one do I list along the single episodes from their year and which one is stuck in the ‘additional’ slot?” I’d seen Heidi more recently than Yamato, but I’d returned to two episodes of Yamato in my previous “anniversary project.” There was the thought “as Star Blazers, Yamato was its own booster stage for the English-language anime fandom,” but I have to admit to suspicions the fans of Star Blazers, in forgiving whatever trespasses it committed against the original, just might have been among the first to not tolerate Robotech’s different sins. Then, I made a sudden decision to list both series as “additional,” and start with a sample (short) episode of that supreme achievement of human culture, Chargeman Ken. Further marking that distinguished series, I didn’t watch its first episode (with the scene where “Ken rolls two feet off the ground, thanks to an animation error”), but instead revisited the classic “Dynamite in the Brain!”
As for Heidi, it remained as charming as ever even with its plot just getting under way as Heidi is left in the uncertain care of her mountain-man grandfather. I’m pretty sure I was influenced by a recent comment in taking note of the scene setting working its way up into the Swiss Alps, and noticed places that would be revisited later as well as another character (and a good many goats) already being introduced. In watching just one episode of Space Battleship Yamato, I did get to see a good number of its science fiction designs (the temptation is to compare them to Star Trek and 2001’s and maybe even start pondering all those uncertainties over the years about just what the anime might be trying to reinterpret, but that might only reveal I’m not as familiar with the designs of Japanese science fiction to that point) and get introduced to more than a few characters, but the Yamato itself remains scrap metal from World War II. That’s one of the problems with “sample episodes,” of course.