Sixty Years Since Mighty Atom: 1977
Jan. 15th, 2023 04:00 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
krpalmerStill looking to get through the 1970s with judicious sampling of giant robot anime, I turned to a title I can’t say I’ve noticed getting prominent emphasis (and if this only reveals I don’t look in the right directions to claim any genuine awareness of 1970s anime, I’ll accept the correction) but was “fansubbed” all the same. Just over a week after sampling Attack No. 1 (which shouldn’t distract from how the viewing audience of the time would have been well turned over after eight years), I tried out another girls’ volleyball series with a title translated as Attack on Tomorrow. (Before seeing the way the fansub translated it I’d been going by the romanization Ashita e Attack, but contemplating how I’d used Tomorrow’s Joe rather than Ashita no Joe...)
Having come around to the comforting dodge that one thing that’s helped me stay interested in anime for so long is “liking how it looks,” I did find myself taking particular note straight off of how something seemed that much more refined and appealing to the heroine’s character design than with the “girl characters” in the 1970s giant robot series I’m aware of. The roughness to be seen in my recent return to the beginning of Attack No. 1 did come to mind again, too. I also noticed there was some variety to the other character designs, to the point of there being a “large-boned girl.” Of course, it’s still open as to whether the character designs will hold up over the length of the series and just what might be done with the heavyset girl. Part of “watching sports anime” could be recognizing familiar story elements; this particular story involves “scraping together a club from nothing,” but that initial state is due to a strong dose of melodrama in the backstory itself. I also happened to notice the girls’ basketball club being set up as an obstacle. A one-episode tryout was enough to get me curious as to how the story’s first difficulties might be overcome, though, so I seem to have come out all right again sampling something new to me.
Having come around to the comforting dodge that one thing that’s helped me stay interested in anime for so long is “liking how it looks,” I did find myself taking particular note straight off of how something seemed that much more refined and appealing to the heroine’s character design than with the “girl characters” in the 1970s giant robot series I’m aware of. The roughness to be seen in my recent return to the beginning of Attack No. 1 did come to mind again, too. I also noticed there was some variety to the other character designs, to the point of there being a “large-boned girl.” Of course, it’s still open as to whether the character designs will hold up over the length of the series and just what might be done with the heavyset girl. Part of “watching sports anime” could be recognizing familiar story elements; this particular story involves “scraping together a club from nothing,” but that initial state is due to a strong dose of melodrama in the backstory itself. I also happened to notice the girls’ basketball club being set up as an obstacle. A one-episode tryout was enough to get me curious as to how the story’s first difficulties might be overcome, though, so I seem to have come out all right again sampling something new to me.