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Sixty Years Since Mighty Atom: 2009
As this personal indulgence of watching my way through sixty years of anime one tiny bit at a time got under way, I did have a sudden thought or two about a particular potential risk. Carrying the indulgence to the point of not watching anything else out of order had me wondering if I’d get stuck anywhere, finding too little satisfaction following a more golden stretch of time. The thought might have really cropped up in the days that took me through the 1970s and a certain amount of variety in genre; it’s easy enough to run across people muttering how “anime wound up just like American superhero comic books, targeted at a handful of long-time maniacs to the point of being sealed off from anyone else.” For that matter too, the years between 2000 and 2009 or so, where digital production settled in but shows were made for standard definition and not a line better, had left me with an impression in recent years of not having aged well.
I’ve made it through those ten years now, though, and seem to have found enjoyment in them. To close things off I settled on the first episode of A Certain Scientific Railgun, which I’d returned to not that many years ago when it became one more “adaptation picking up again after years to present more of its original source.” I am a bit conscious of how the series this “psychic schoolgirl battles” show is a spinoff of had been talked about to begin with, been cruelly denied a legal release amid the era-smashing collapse of Geneon over here, and then only attracted criticism when Funimation had managed to license it after a few years only to not have a high-definition release out at once. So far as I wound up, A Certain Magical Index does seem to set the unfortunate standard of “talky adaptations of ‘light novels,’” and when I did read the original novels in translation they were tough going too. A Certain Scientific Railgun having started as a manga does seem to help.
In taking in the first episode of the series I did note just how much introduction was offered to its “high school city” setting and without an overpowering sense of “references to the original work,” if an introduction that goes to great lengths showing how the main character “Railgun” Mikoto Misaka has to hold off the unwanted played-for-laughs advances of her teleporting schoolmate Kuroko and the junior assistant Uiharu is sexually harassed by her school pal Saten. With the episode bringing the characters together for the first time and things building to an action climax where everyone has their own chance to be brave regardless of what psychic powers they have or don’t have, though, the introduction wound up solid and self-contained. The sense that high definition has settled in helped as well, and so far as “adventures that never quite abandon the comforts of high school” go this series isn’t as devoted as some to school clubs and the like.
I’ve made it through those ten years now, though, and seem to have found enjoyment in them. To close things off I settled on the first episode of A Certain Scientific Railgun, which I’d returned to not that many years ago when it became one more “adaptation picking up again after years to present more of its original source.” I am a bit conscious of how the series this “psychic schoolgirl battles” show is a spinoff of had been talked about to begin with, been cruelly denied a legal release amid the era-smashing collapse of Geneon over here, and then only attracted criticism when Funimation had managed to license it after a few years only to not have a high-definition release out at once. So far as I wound up, A Certain Magical Index does seem to set the unfortunate standard of “talky adaptations of ‘light novels,’” and when I did read the original novels in translation they were tough going too. A Certain Scientific Railgun having started as a manga does seem to help.
In taking in the first episode of the series I did note just how much introduction was offered to its “high school city” setting and without an overpowering sense of “references to the original work,” if an introduction that goes to great lengths showing how the main character “Railgun” Mikoto Misaka has to hold off the unwanted played-for-laughs advances of her teleporting schoolmate Kuroko and the junior assistant Uiharu is sexually harassed by her school pal Saten. With the episode bringing the characters together for the first time and things building to an action climax where everyone has their own chance to be brave regardless of what psychic powers they have or don’t have, though, the introduction wound up solid and self-contained. The sense that high definition has settled in helped as well, and so far as “adventures that never quite abandon the comforts of high school” go this series isn’t as devoted as some to school clubs and the like.