Sixty Years Since Mighty Atom: 1976
Jan. 14th, 2023 02:24 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
krpalmerShould someone be so inclined they could “watch a bit of anime from each year” and get through four-fifths of the 1970s on an uninterrupted diet of super robots, just perhaps wrapping things up with Mobile Suit Gundam and some amused pondering of whether it was a revolutionary or evolutionary step in the genre. Back in 2010, my personal anniversary tour had included a number of those series, although back then I’d had to skip over some years I didn’t have any shows from. Now, while still having to admit this remains a matter of personal choice rather than perfect or prescriptive summation, I did want to at least try and encompass a bit more variety. One of my efforts at that was sampling a series adapted from a shojo manga, Candy Candy.
As I started into this show I kept recalling a few comments I’ve made before admitting to uncertainty as to whether “series like it are for me” (while hurrying to add “of course it’s for other people”). When I did find the art style appealing (however soft the antique “fansub” looked) and the story not loading on melodrama (or moralizing) from the start (although there were elements of it and what might be anticipations of more to come soon), I did get to thinking back to the “girls’ cartoons” of the mid-1980s I’d taken in bits of waiting for “the stuff for boys” to start and how they might have affected my opinions. One thought I sought to amuse myself with was how at least some of those past cartoons, just like the ones for boys, had sought to sell a sizeable cast. It might be of very slight importance there, though, that Candy Candy, in opening with an old-time American orphanage in the winter, had introduced a baby girl abandoned in the snow, established this girl’s name as “Annie” (she has straight black hair rather than red curls), and only then revealed Candy herself had also been abandoned in the snow the same day a little further from the doorstep. By the end of the episode I do have to admit their continued closeness after ten years of story time had me thinking of more modern series, doubtless targeted at different demographics, that don’t have boys to get in the way...
In any case this was one more old show sampled for the first time that I’m already a bit interested in how it’ll continue. As ever, the question there is how to get to and through a lengthening queue.
As I started into this show I kept recalling a few comments I’ve made before admitting to uncertainty as to whether “series like it are for me” (while hurrying to add “of course it’s for other people”). When I did find the art style appealing (however soft the antique “fansub” looked) and the story not loading on melodrama (or moralizing) from the start (although there were elements of it and what might be anticipations of more to come soon), I did get to thinking back to the “girls’ cartoons” of the mid-1980s I’d taken in bits of waiting for “the stuff for boys” to start and how they might have affected my opinions. One thought I sought to amuse myself with was how at least some of those past cartoons, just like the ones for boys, had sought to sell a sizeable cast. It might be of very slight importance there, though, that Candy Candy, in opening with an old-time American orphanage in the winter, had introduced a baby girl abandoned in the snow, established this girl’s name as “Annie” (she has straight black hair rather than red curls), and only then revealed Candy herself had also been abandoned in the snow the same day a little further from the doorstep. By the end of the episode I do have to admit their continued closeness after ten years of story time had me thinking of more modern series, doubtless targeted at different demographics, that don’t have boys to get in the way...
In any case this was one more old show sampled for the first time that I’m already a bit interested in how it’ll continue. As ever, the question there is how to get to and through a lengthening queue.