2007: Rounding Out My Year In Anime
Dec. 31st, 2007 04:30 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
krpalmerWell before the end of the year, I was putting a little thought into what I might say about all the anime I watched from the start of September to the end of December, and one question that kept turning up was just what I would title the post. "My Final 4 Months in Anime" or "My Last 4 Months in Anime" might match the titles I had used before, but they somehow seemed a little grandiose, misleading to the extent that some people might think I had burned out on anime at last like I've muttered about in the past... (Although, for all I know, some of the people who actually see this journal may be skipping over these posts anyway and might take the slightest of interest in a title like that.)
In any case, that fate hasn't struck me so far as I can tell; I was interested enough in the anime I watched in these past four months, not seeing it as a chore to be got through just so I could get through still more titles I've paid for and received but not watched yet... but as if to help remind me that worries will arise right when you're not expecting them, I did spend a little while wondering about apocalyptic visions of all the North American anime companies going out of business in the wake of the shocking demise of one thought well-regarded at least, and that somehow shattering the Japanese production side of the industry. (I suppose that could be seen as a sort of "anticipatory" variant of the long-popular complaint "they're not making stuff I'm interested in!") Still, I have my stockpile, even if I did manage to dig into it a little.
I didn't think exclusively about "reducing my backlog" in the last four months. At the start of the year, I gritted my way through Zeta Gundam one more time; starting in May, I watched Macross with a new dub to deal with some DVDs I had recently bought, and yet saw an often-experienced series one more time; starting in September, I rewatched the series Nadia just because it seemed about right every once in a while to rewatch DVDs I've already seen. Nadia was interesting in several ways to me. Changing styles in character designs can "date" a work with great certainty for me, but Nadia looks newer than it actually is because of its designs; the series starts with much of the amiable "all-ages" appeal of a Hayao Miyazaki movie but ends with the tortured characters and at once pretentious yet genuine depth of its actual director, Hideaki Anno. Along the way, though, it also veers into territory some of its viewers are always complaining about, stranding some of its characters outside of the developing story and casting them into what can seem just plain "cartoony" sidelines as the quality of the art goes down. Taking a "forewarned is forearmed" approach, though, I find that it's entirely possible (if somewhat complicated) to just skip all but a few halfway useful fragments of story development from those "controversial" episodes and pick up with no real problems or regrets near the conclusion. In any case, it left me daydreaming about what else I might soon rewatch.
I finished off Tekkaman Blade, which involved a mid-series plot shift that surprised me, the TV broadcast having left off ahead of it all those years before. I also got to the end of the DVDs of Fullmetal Alchemist, rewatching a series I had already seen on TV in "subtitled" form this time around and enjoying it again. I also watched that series' followup movie, which was interesting enough in wrapping up some open ends without perhaps being absolutely necessary. I was lucky enough to be able to see the final DVD of Zipang, released shortly before Geneon went out of business altogether, but found that it ended with a sort of "this plot line is wrapped up, but a new one opens" conclusion probably meant to direct you to the manga the anime was based on. Unfortunately, the manga hasn't been licensed in North America yet... although I've heard that it seems to drift towards a more ambiguous "wish fulfilment" revision of history.
While it's easy enough for me to think about the anime I've bought and reassure myself that I am "supporting the industry," I have to admit that I also spent time watching downloaded "fansubs" of older shows not licensed. I've continued to work my way through the baseball series Touch; however, a while ago I was interested when a column on "obscure anime series" I've taken note of before covered Touch, only to discover that it contained an enormous spoiler about an "Everything Changes" moment in the series, by many measures still quite early in the quite lengthy show but one I hadn't reached myself... Still, for all that an ambiguous note of forboding was added to my viewing of the series for a while, I've found myself able to still be interested in it. (Given that pitching is an important element of baseball as played in the series, I've found it intriguing that it can make low-scoring "pitcher's duels" both typical and entertaining.) As for other fansubs that I've watched, I managed to see some follow-up "untold stories" to Legend of the Galactic Heroes, and finished off ZZ Gundam, which began as something like farce, actually picked up quite a bit, and then seemed to backslide just a little before rallying to a close. No doubt, of course, I'm capable of being sympathetic towards ZZ Gundam because I've had considerable difficulty seeing its immediate predecessor series, Zeta Gundam, as the unparalleled achievement of our time as I sometimes wonder I've exaggerated the selling efforts of other fans into. I then saw the first episodes of a few "mecha" anime series of about the same vintage, not continued by the people who "fansubbed" them yet that not any great loss for me, and moved on to a fresh attempt on an even older mecha anime, Space Runaway Ideon. Something about its design is distinctly "quaint" to me, including a titual giant robot proclaimed to be the "ultimate power" but which is assembled by docking three big red trucks together and which looks like one of those knockoff Transformers of shadowy origins that used to show up in the discount stores. However, I've heard that it was a direct inspiration for the bleak apocalypticism of the anime series Neon Genesis Evangelion (which is pretty much where Hideaki Anno got his reputation as a director from), and at times for me there are interesting resonances to the "dysfunctional survivors on the run" theme of the new Battlestar Galactica.
I did also, though, step into the deepest, most ambiguous "fansub" waters of all by starting to follow a series just being aired in Japan, translated in a seemingly acceptable fashion mere days after airing, well ahead of its being officially licensed and that beginning long months of production before the DVDs get released... although I certainly don't intend to become one of those people who use that as an excuse to avoid actually paying money for that eventual release. It usually seems that I begin to hear positive "buzz" from other people watching those fansubs, but don't quite get around to trying to catch up because of everything I have in my "backlog" and the fansubs of old series that I'm cramming into my available time... but in the case of a new Gundam series, I was willing to take the plunge. The Gundam "franchise" is at a peculiar point where an entirely new story world is dreamed up for it every few years, sharing a general similarity of design when it comes to the titular giant robots and some other notes but officially unconnected. There were comments that Gundam 00 had similarities to the earlier (and in some circles very popular yet in other circles controversial because others found it popular, but also because some thought it a bit pretentious and ridiculous) Gundam Wing, in that both made their lead mecha the weapons of tiny groups, but for me the resemblance dwindles away around there. Gundam 00 involves at first glance a clearly ambiguous attempt to "end war through violent action," and the storyline is complicated enough... although I did find that it took a very long time for me to warm up to its enormous and interconnected cast. Perhaps, though, some of this was from an ambigious personal sense of "sour grapes," worrying that the show would wind up followed by some not so much for any merits it had when seen alone but as a stick to use against still other Gundam series. Fortunately, some of the message-board threads I've followed about it seem to be more or less avoiding that. With some other "anime weblogs" that I've glanced at, though, the general mood seems to be one of jaded disdain and chewing over disappointments in general, leaving me with my usual suspicion that if you want to enjoy something, you should stay far away from the great bulk of "fans" of it...
In any case, though, watching a new show does help reassure me that I haven't become one of those fans who might as well be burnt out, because they're always complaining about how much they're offended by everything that's been made since 1989. That's good in a certain way, because two more "new" releases I've been following are also of anime series made well before 1989. Acknowledging that these vintage releases seem to sell in small numbers no matter how vocal certain groups of fans are about them, they're actually "released to order" on recordable DVDs, but to me they seem acceptable enough in terms of video quality. In terms of their actual stories, they're both quite interesting. Super Dimension Century Orguss is the series that directly followed in Super Dimension Fortress Macross's time slot, and was made by some of the same people. Its character designs have the same appealing quality to me as Macross's (at least when the episodes are being animated "on model"), although, after having heard rumours that it had once been considered as the "stretcher" that would make Macross long enough to sell in the North American syndication market of the mid-1980s, I found myself thinking that their stories weren't similar enough to generate anything resembling Robotech's certain success. I was already somewhat familiar with Orguss, but not with the second series I started buying, Cat's Eye. Enough people were excited by the news of its release to surprise me, though, and so I took a look at a series about a trio of attractive (in that early-1980s way) sisters endlessly outwitting the police to steal back the paintings of their vanished father. I did wonder if it would be so easy for the main characters that I started sympathising exclusively with the underdogs, but that wasn't the case.
Eventually, I did manage to watch a few of the shorter series that I'd had sitting around for a good while. Animation Runner Kuromi, two recent "OVAs," was of course somewhat self-referential yet informative, but entertaining all the same. I then had the chance to finally see the conclusions of some series I had started watching back in my university's anime club, but not quite finished there. When it came to something like El-Hazard, a "tossed into a fantasy world" OVA series played for a mixture of comedy and drama (and which I did see being released on DVD at the time I first bought my DVD player, only to think "it's too expensive"), I did wonder if any conclusion would be worth catching up to it after all those years... and yet, it was indeed surprisingly satisfying.
In any case, that fate hasn't struck me so far as I can tell; I was interested enough in the anime I watched in these past four months, not seeing it as a chore to be got through just so I could get through still more titles I've paid for and received but not watched yet... but as if to help remind me that worries will arise right when you're not expecting them, I did spend a little while wondering about apocalyptic visions of all the North American anime companies going out of business in the wake of the shocking demise of one thought well-regarded at least, and that somehow shattering the Japanese production side of the industry. (I suppose that could be seen as a sort of "anticipatory" variant of the long-popular complaint "they're not making stuff I'm interested in!") Still, I have my stockpile, even if I did manage to dig into it a little.
I didn't think exclusively about "reducing my backlog" in the last four months. At the start of the year, I gritted my way through Zeta Gundam one more time; starting in May, I watched Macross with a new dub to deal with some DVDs I had recently bought, and yet saw an often-experienced series one more time; starting in September, I rewatched the series Nadia just because it seemed about right every once in a while to rewatch DVDs I've already seen. Nadia was interesting in several ways to me. Changing styles in character designs can "date" a work with great certainty for me, but Nadia looks newer than it actually is because of its designs; the series starts with much of the amiable "all-ages" appeal of a Hayao Miyazaki movie but ends with the tortured characters and at once pretentious yet genuine depth of its actual director, Hideaki Anno. Along the way, though, it also veers into territory some of its viewers are always complaining about, stranding some of its characters outside of the developing story and casting them into what can seem just plain "cartoony" sidelines as the quality of the art goes down. Taking a "forewarned is forearmed" approach, though, I find that it's entirely possible (if somewhat complicated) to just skip all but a few halfway useful fragments of story development from those "controversial" episodes and pick up with no real problems or regrets near the conclusion. In any case, it left me daydreaming about what else I might soon rewatch.
I finished off Tekkaman Blade, which involved a mid-series plot shift that surprised me, the TV broadcast having left off ahead of it all those years before. I also got to the end of the DVDs of Fullmetal Alchemist, rewatching a series I had already seen on TV in "subtitled" form this time around and enjoying it again. I also watched that series' followup movie, which was interesting enough in wrapping up some open ends without perhaps being absolutely necessary. I was lucky enough to be able to see the final DVD of Zipang, released shortly before Geneon went out of business altogether, but found that it ended with a sort of "this plot line is wrapped up, but a new one opens" conclusion probably meant to direct you to the manga the anime was based on. Unfortunately, the manga hasn't been licensed in North America yet... although I've heard that it seems to drift towards a more ambiguous "wish fulfilment" revision of history.
While it's easy enough for me to think about the anime I've bought and reassure myself that I am "supporting the industry," I have to admit that I also spent time watching downloaded "fansubs" of older shows not licensed. I've continued to work my way through the baseball series Touch; however, a while ago I was interested when a column on "obscure anime series" I've taken note of before covered Touch, only to discover that it contained an enormous spoiler about an "Everything Changes" moment in the series, by many measures still quite early in the quite lengthy show but one I hadn't reached myself... Still, for all that an ambiguous note of forboding was added to my viewing of the series for a while, I've found myself able to still be interested in it. (Given that pitching is an important element of baseball as played in the series, I've found it intriguing that it can make low-scoring "pitcher's duels" both typical and entertaining.) As for other fansubs that I've watched, I managed to see some follow-up "untold stories" to Legend of the Galactic Heroes, and finished off ZZ Gundam, which began as something like farce, actually picked up quite a bit, and then seemed to backslide just a little before rallying to a close. No doubt, of course, I'm capable of being sympathetic towards ZZ Gundam because I've had considerable difficulty seeing its immediate predecessor series, Zeta Gundam, as the unparalleled achievement of our time as I sometimes wonder I've exaggerated the selling efforts of other fans into. I then saw the first episodes of a few "mecha" anime series of about the same vintage, not continued by the people who "fansubbed" them yet that not any great loss for me, and moved on to a fresh attempt on an even older mecha anime, Space Runaway Ideon. Something about its design is distinctly "quaint" to me, including a titual giant robot proclaimed to be the "ultimate power" but which is assembled by docking three big red trucks together and which looks like one of those knockoff Transformers of shadowy origins that used to show up in the discount stores. However, I've heard that it was a direct inspiration for the bleak apocalypticism of the anime series Neon Genesis Evangelion (which is pretty much where Hideaki Anno got his reputation as a director from), and at times for me there are interesting resonances to the "dysfunctional survivors on the run" theme of the new Battlestar Galactica.
I did also, though, step into the deepest, most ambiguous "fansub" waters of all by starting to follow a series just being aired in Japan, translated in a seemingly acceptable fashion mere days after airing, well ahead of its being officially licensed and that beginning long months of production before the DVDs get released... although I certainly don't intend to become one of those people who use that as an excuse to avoid actually paying money for that eventual release. It usually seems that I begin to hear positive "buzz" from other people watching those fansubs, but don't quite get around to trying to catch up because of everything I have in my "backlog" and the fansubs of old series that I'm cramming into my available time... but in the case of a new Gundam series, I was willing to take the plunge. The Gundam "franchise" is at a peculiar point where an entirely new story world is dreamed up for it every few years, sharing a general similarity of design when it comes to the titular giant robots and some other notes but officially unconnected. There were comments that Gundam 00 had similarities to the earlier (and in some circles very popular yet in other circles controversial because others found it popular, but also because some thought it a bit pretentious and ridiculous) Gundam Wing, in that both made their lead mecha the weapons of tiny groups, but for me the resemblance dwindles away around there. Gundam 00 involves at first glance a clearly ambiguous attempt to "end war through violent action," and the storyline is complicated enough... although I did find that it took a very long time for me to warm up to its enormous and interconnected cast. Perhaps, though, some of this was from an ambigious personal sense of "sour grapes," worrying that the show would wind up followed by some not so much for any merits it had when seen alone but as a stick to use against still other Gundam series. Fortunately, some of the message-board threads I've followed about it seem to be more or less avoiding that. With some other "anime weblogs" that I've glanced at, though, the general mood seems to be one of jaded disdain and chewing over disappointments in general, leaving me with my usual suspicion that if you want to enjoy something, you should stay far away from the great bulk of "fans" of it...
In any case, though, watching a new show does help reassure me that I haven't become one of those fans who might as well be burnt out, because they're always complaining about how much they're offended by everything that's been made since 1989. That's good in a certain way, because two more "new" releases I've been following are also of anime series made well before 1989. Acknowledging that these vintage releases seem to sell in small numbers no matter how vocal certain groups of fans are about them, they're actually "released to order" on recordable DVDs, but to me they seem acceptable enough in terms of video quality. In terms of their actual stories, they're both quite interesting. Super Dimension Century Orguss is the series that directly followed in Super Dimension Fortress Macross's time slot, and was made by some of the same people. Its character designs have the same appealing quality to me as Macross's (at least when the episodes are being animated "on model"), although, after having heard rumours that it had once been considered as the "stretcher" that would make Macross long enough to sell in the North American syndication market of the mid-1980s, I found myself thinking that their stories weren't similar enough to generate anything resembling Robotech's certain success. I was already somewhat familiar with Orguss, but not with the second series I started buying, Cat's Eye. Enough people were excited by the news of its release to surprise me, though, and so I took a look at a series about a trio of attractive (in that early-1980s way) sisters endlessly outwitting the police to steal back the paintings of their vanished father. I did wonder if it would be so easy for the main characters that I started sympathising exclusively with the underdogs, but that wasn't the case.
Eventually, I did manage to watch a few of the shorter series that I'd had sitting around for a good while. Animation Runner Kuromi, two recent "OVAs," was of course somewhat self-referential yet informative, but entertaining all the same. I then had the chance to finally see the conclusions of some series I had started watching back in my university's anime club, but not quite finished there. When it came to something like El-Hazard, a "tossed into a fantasy world" OVA series played for a mixture of comedy and drama (and which I did see being released on DVD at the time I first bought my DVD player, only to think "it's too expensive"), I did wonder if any conclusion would be worth catching up to it after all those years... and yet, it was indeed surprisingly satisfying.