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krpalmerFive years ago, I was able to go back to all of the anime OVAs I saw at the first anime club show I attended at university (and a movie that was mentioned on that first show’s poster but apparently not screened that night, according to the page of “previous shows” I found in the Internet Archive Wayback Machine). Five years before that, I made a point of watching through some long series from past decades. Five years before that, I watched one sample episode from each year stretching back into the 1970s (although there were gaps in the series I then had available from that decade, something I strove to redress in 2023, a general rather than personal anniversary year...) Five years before that (before I began posting here), I’d accumulated enough anime to schedule a series of “personal showings” revisiting bits of what I’d seen at the club, dropping in on the titles I’d seen someone call “the four revolutions of anime,” and striving to look ahead by returning to bits of some pretty new series that had impressed me. Five years before that, I was still managing to get back to university and stay with younger acquaintances from residence while going to the club shows (even if I’d made it through some “gap months” far from the university on a work contract I’d supposed didn’t pay well enough to seek out VHS tapes, much less those new-fangled DVDs, to start a personal collection with...) Five years before that, I was at that first show.
Added up, that amounts to thirty years. A number of perspectives could be applied to how long I’ve kept watching anime. Some of them aren’t flattering. Against that, I did think of a quote from a volume collecting Stephen Jay Gould’s writings on baseball where he said “one loves what one loves, and unless the activity causes clear and intrinsic harm to others, no explicit defense need be provided for following one’s bliss.” Stolen gravitas aside, I was also wondering how I might mark this anniversary year. I didn’t quite return to everything I saw in that first term at university five years ago, though, and the thought did develop in me that “it’s been long enough” to see just what I’d make of Patlabor 2: The Movie now. It was my first exposure to that mecha franchise, but I have to admit to the thought having stuck in my mind that my reaction throughout it then had been pretty much “When are they going to get to the action? When are they going to get to the action?”
The club did screen some of the Patlabor TV series and the original OVAs in subsequent terms, which I had a more relaxed reaction to. After leaving the club I did get around to collecting that particular anime, but eventually had not just a copy, but copies, of that movie ready to hand and for quite some time. (Those copies include the hefty “Limited Collector’s Edition” Bandai Visual Honneamise produced ten thousand of, only to wind up at a hefty discount...) Remembering my initial reaction, I’d supposed I ought to watch more of Patlabor before returning to the movie, but that bumped against the occasional thought that the series as a whole has such a reputation that it was somehow better to have it to be watched rather than to watch it and just perhaps be left to realise it had all been downhill from there. Once I’d watched the OVAs and the first movie on Blu-Ray, though, I suppose the thought developed that, indeed, “it’s been long enough.”
I did have the feeling more of this movie felt familiar to me after thirty years than my recollections of my first viewing of the first episode of Robotech I saw had become when I got back to it thirty years after that. What helped this time, anyway, was already being familiar with the now-scattered central characters of the anime as they were introduced in the movie. With one reason for why I’ve kept watching anime in mind (which might be unflattering), though, I did get to wondering about the altered character designs pushing towards the sort of “realism” that isn’t quite as interesting to me regardless of the melancholy landscapes and subdued colour schemes having their own certain appeal. It got my attention that this movie was beginning to use bits of computer graphics; maybe there was even a strange interest in that having been there “when I started.” The story was within my grasp now anyway; I’d had to contemplate how it involves a sudden crisis unravelling the world to the point of tanks rolling into Tokyo, but have to admit to latching on to the idea the elusive mastermind seemed to have a different goal in mind than one more “take over the country” scheme. I suppose that fit in with the rest of the series, which I am looking forward to now even if I’m not quite sure when I’ll get to it.
General thoughts of my time at the anime club were also coming back to mind. I’ve contemplated whether joining it jumped into deeper waters than managing to “find videotapes yourself” would have amounted to. By the time I joined it, though, the club had reached a size where, to be honest, you didn’t have to “engage with other fans” all that much; you could just show up to the once-a-month screenings and take a seat in the dark. (A few years after my time at the club, it happened to be covered in a column in the March 2003 issue of Newtype USA, where the club president was quoted that recent additions to club events like “the occasional visiting dealer, costume show, karaoke concert, quiz show, music concert, etc.” would change the experience from what I just mentioned and hoping “no one touches you.”) I took what it offered (which didn’t often include the titles everyone seemed to be discussing on Usenet even as the shows enlarged from one Friday night a month to one Friday night and much of Saturday), but could be selective when it came to finding time to have dinner at residence. For a number of years my personal anime purchases contained a strong element of “catching up to what I saw at the club, or what I saw only in part,” but despite some instances of not being quite as enthused a second time around I was at least fortunate enough to have seen via the club some appealing titles stretching into genres that helped me adapt over the years to come.
Added up, that amounts to thirty years. A number of perspectives could be applied to how long I’ve kept watching anime. Some of them aren’t flattering. Against that, I did think of a quote from a volume collecting Stephen Jay Gould’s writings on baseball where he said “one loves what one loves, and unless the activity causes clear and intrinsic harm to others, no explicit defense need be provided for following one’s bliss.” Stolen gravitas aside, I was also wondering how I might mark this anniversary year. I didn’t quite return to everything I saw in that first term at university five years ago, though, and the thought did develop in me that “it’s been long enough” to see just what I’d make of Patlabor 2: The Movie now. It was my first exposure to that mecha franchise, but I have to admit to the thought having stuck in my mind that my reaction throughout it then had been pretty much “When are they going to get to the action? When are they going to get to the action?”
The club did screen some of the Patlabor TV series and the original OVAs in subsequent terms, which I had a more relaxed reaction to. After leaving the club I did get around to collecting that particular anime, but eventually had not just a copy, but copies, of that movie ready to hand and for quite some time. (Those copies include the hefty “Limited Collector’s Edition” Bandai Visual Honneamise produced ten thousand of, only to wind up at a hefty discount...) Remembering my initial reaction, I’d supposed I ought to watch more of Patlabor before returning to the movie, but that bumped against the occasional thought that the series as a whole has such a reputation that it was somehow better to have it to be watched rather than to watch it and just perhaps be left to realise it had all been downhill from there. Once I’d watched the OVAs and the first movie on Blu-Ray, though, I suppose the thought developed that, indeed, “it’s been long enough.”
I did have the feeling more of this movie felt familiar to me after thirty years than my recollections of my first viewing of the first episode of Robotech I saw had become when I got back to it thirty years after that. What helped this time, anyway, was already being familiar with the now-scattered central characters of the anime as they were introduced in the movie. With one reason for why I’ve kept watching anime in mind (which might be unflattering), though, I did get to wondering about the altered character designs pushing towards the sort of “realism” that isn’t quite as interesting to me regardless of the melancholy landscapes and subdued colour schemes having their own certain appeal. It got my attention that this movie was beginning to use bits of computer graphics; maybe there was even a strange interest in that having been there “when I started.” The story was within my grasp now anyway; I’d had to contemplate how it involves a sudden crisis unravelling the world to the point of tanks rolling into Tokyo, but have to admit to latching on to the idea the elusive mastermind seemed to have a different goal in mind than one more “take over the country” scheme. I suppose that fit in with the rest of the series, which I am looking forward to now even if I’m not quite sure when I’ll get to it.
General thoughts of my time at the anime club were also coming back to mind. I’ve contemplated whether joining it jumped into deeper waters than managing to “find videotapes yourself” would have amounted to. By the time I joined it, though, the club had reached a size where, to be honest, you didn’t have to “engage with other fans” all that much; you could just show up to the once-a-month screenings and take a seat in the dark. (A few years after my time at the club, it happened to be covered in a column in the March 2003 issue of Newtype USA, where the club president was quoted that recent additions to club events like “the occasional visiting dealer, costume show, karaoke concert, quiz show, music concert, etc.” would change the experience from what I just mentioned and hoping “no one touches you.”) I took what it offered (which didn’t often include the titles everyone seemed to be discussing on Usenet even as the shows enlarged from one Friday night a month to one Friday night and much of Saturday), but could be selective when it came to finding time to have dinner at residence. For a number of years my personal anime purchases contained a strong element of “catching up to what I saw at the club, or what I saw only in part,” but despite some instances of not being quite as enthused a second time around I was at least fortunate enough to have seen via the club some appealing titles stretching into genres that helped me adapt over the years to come.