2008: My Second Quarter in Anime
Jul. 1st, 2008 08:27 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
krpalmerKeeping up with the schedule I set for myself three months ago, I'm taking another look back at the anime I've recently watched. Again, I have a nice little list of titles seen in the space of three months, and again, it's tempting enough to proclaim that I see absolutely no threat of losing my interest in the stuff... of course, all the unopened DVD on my selves always seem a subtle suggestion that I'd better not lose interest just yet. I have begun to think, or perhaps even hope, that by now I've picked through enough back-catalogue sales to cut down on how much I'm rolling into that "backlog"... but I don't seem to be lacking for upcoming releases that sound interesting, either. The current feeling of crisis among anime fans looking at the industry seems to be worrying about how sickly the North American anime releaser ADV is looking, and yet for all of the interesting titles I've bought from ADV over the years (and I've watched a few of them in the last three months), I have the ominous feeling that I don't absolutely need them to continue to exist.
Once more, I took the time to rewatch something I'd already seen and liked, the perhaps deceptively low-key yet ultimately intriguing and "fantastic" Haibane Renmei. With it seen again, I suppose I was conscious of plugging through the last of Cat's Eye and Orguss. Cat's Eye's tales of art thievery (in a fairly noble fashion) ended with something very close to a "wait for next season" setup; unfortunately, that second season hasn't been licensed over here, possibly because something suspicious has happened to the "burn on demand" company the releaser contracted to make the DVDs. The adventures in Orguss's "composite world" seemed to wrap up in a somewhat more low-key way than Macross, which it's sufficiently connected to on the production side to make it tempting enough to keep comparing it to, but in some ways the conclusion was intriguing in how it just might "give everyone (characters and character fans alike) what they want!" A while after finishing Orguss, I decided to rewatch a second anime series in a mere three-month period, and watched Orguss 2, a short OVA followup made a decade after the original. I had seen that OVA in my first year at my university's anime club; now, I had a full awareness of what had come before... and a certain awareness of the relatively light connection between the two titles. Some have found how Orguss 2 treats the conclusion of the original controversial, but I suppose I don't see the point of getting upset about it.
With those two anime series from the 1980s complete, though, I entered into a strange and fascinating period where everything I was watching was "new" (except, of course, for the inevitable "fansubs," of which more later...) I had decided to dip into my "backlog" and open up a sequel series to a show I had particularly liked when I had seen it a while before, finding a tale told in an acrobatic performing circus an interesting change. It was true that I'd seen some people find Kaleido Star New Wings somewhat controversial, and that seemed to be because its new characters come across as jerks at first for, among other things, not acknowledging the importance of and deferring to the heroine of the original... and yet, as the series continued I found myself more and more drawn into it all over again. The heroine goes through something of an internal crisis of confidence, and on a certain level I can see how that might be controversial in itself, but her bouncing back from it made for a satisfying conclusion. The new series perhaps may not have been the only conceivable continuation from the original, but I found it enjoyable all the same.
I may just perhaps have ordered some of those new series for reasons a little less compelling than "I have to see them!", and I suppose that left me, as I started to watch them, with uncertainty over just how I would take them. However, in the end they've seemed interesting enough. Lucky Star is a series connected to the production of The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya, and being released in the same fashion in a close partnership with a Japanese company. My motivations may have been no more complicated than thinking that this scheme ought to continue to be successful, and then after ordering the first DVD of the series a different, somewhat more controversial attempt by a different Japanese company to shape the way anime is sold in North America reached a possibly final stage... In any case, Lucky Star featured seemingly uncomplicated and "cartoony," yet somehow intriguing, character designs and mild observational humour (with a certain awareness of "fans' viewpoints"), and kept me interested. Perhaps, too, it wasn't saddled with quite the same weight of enforced expectations The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya had. I also got around to watching an OVA continuing the anime adaptation of Genshiken, but in order to get the OVA you have to buy a DVD of Kujibuki Unbalance, a sort of real-world production of the "show within a show" that gives Genshiken's fan characters something to be interested in. Things got that much more complicated when the show's premise and characters were altered to a fairly considerable extent for this production, and this generated a good deal of controversy among actual fans and complaints about how they were being forced to buy something they didn't want... but I suppose that since I still hadn't quite grasped the original setup of Kujibuki Unbalance, the new show didn't bother me that much. Beyond the levels of "metafictional" strangeness, I suppose it could always be said that the show is still suspiciously like a compendium of cliches, and I like its high-energy moments more than its sweeter parts, but so far I haven't been skipping it. The Genshiken OVA on the first DVD was nice, too; it introduces a popular character from the original manga.
For all the anime I've bought, I'm still skirting the more ambiguous edge of anime fandom by watching "fansubs." I've almost but not quite finished the baseball anime Touch, and I suppose it's a bit odd to be looking at how many episodes are left and wondering if I can guess how much further the baseball team will be going from that... I've also started watching a "giant robot" anime even older than Space Runaway Ideon, Zambot 3. I might have been expecting something uncomplicated in a "classic" mold, and yet Zambot 3 is from the same director who tried shaking up the genre with Ideon and the original Mobile Suit Gundam. The show has an obnoxious kid piloting the giant robot, supported by his extended family, and battling a goofy alien overlord... but it also seems aware of all the collateral damage of the giant robot battles in a way I'm not quite sure I've seen in other, more modern "mecha" anime.
Speaking of modern mecha anime, I watched the last few episodes of Gundam 00, which continued the Gundam tradition of final battles with a lot of pretentious dialogue being yelled back and forth but was kind of interesting in how it set up the follow-up series for later this year. I went straight from that to Macross Frontier, a new sequel to the original series. It seems tempting to say that "fansubs" are pretty much the only way to see this series translated, as the rights to new Macross series seem tangled up in a generous contract the company that produced and distributed Robotech two decades ago managed to get, although I guess I do wonder at times if it's really the inescapable sticking block other anime fans love complaining about. In any case, Macross Frontier looks good (so long as you can accept relatively obvious computer graphics in anime), perhaps doesn't take itself as seriously as Gundam 00 seemed to, and, while "likeability" may be overemphasised at times, it's easy enough for me to enjoy its characters. I suppose, though, that just where their deep-space adventures are going to is still sort of elusive; it may be in the end that "the journey had to be its own reward."
Once more, I took the time to rewatch something I'd already seen and liked, the perhaps deceptively low-key yet ultimately intriguing and "fantastic" Haibane Renmei. With it seen again, I suppose I was conscious of plugging through the last of Cat's Eye and Orguss. Cat's Eye's tales of art thievery (in a fairly noble fashion) ended with something very close to a "wait for next season" setup; unfortunately, that second season hasn't been licensed over here, possibly because something suspicious has happened to the "burn on demand" company the releaser contracted to make the DVDs. The adventures in Orguss's "composite world" seemed to wrap up in a somewhat more low-key way than Macross, which it's sufficiently connected to on the production side to make it tempting enough to keep comparing it to, but in some ways the conclusion was intriguing in how it just might "give everyone (characters and character fans alike) what they want!" A while after finishing Orguss, I decided to rewatch a second anime series in a mere three-month period, and watched Orguss 2, a short OVA followup made a decade after the original. I had seen that OVA in my first year at my university's anime club; now, I had a full awareness of what had come before... and a certain awareness of the relatively light connection between the two titles. Some have found how Orguss 2 treats the conclusion of the original controversial, but I suppose I don't see the point of getting upset about it.
With those two anime series from the 1980s complete, though, I entered into a strange and fascinating period where everything I was watching was "new" (except, of course, for the inevitable "fansubs," of which more later...) I had decided to dip into my "backlog" and open up a sequel series to a show I had particularly liked when I had seen it a while before, finding a tale told in an acrobatic performing circus an interesting change. It was true that I'd seen some people find Kaleido Star New Wings somewhat controversial, and that seemed to be because its new characters come across as jerks at first for, among other things, not acknowledging the importance of and deferring to the heroine of the original... and yet, as the series continued I found myself more and more drawn into it all over again. The heroine goes through something of an internal crisis of confidence, and on a certain level I can see how that might be controversial in itself, but her bouncing back from it made for a satisfying conclusion. The new series perhaps may not have been the only conceivable continuation from the original, but I found it enjoyable all the same.
I may just perhaps have ordered some of those new series for reasons a little less compelling than "I have to see them!", and I suppose that left me, as I started to watch them, with uncertainty over just how I would take them. However, in the end they've seemed interesting enough. Lucky Star is a series connected to the production of The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya, and being released in the same fashion in a close partnership with a Japanese company. My motivations may have been no more complicated than thinking that this scheme ought to continue to be successful, and then after ordering the first DVD of the series a different, somewhat more controversial attempt by a different Japanese company to shape the way anime is sold in North America reached a possibly final stage... In any case, Lucky Star featured seemingly uncomplicated and "cartoony," yet somehow intriguing, character designs and mild observational humour (with a certain awareness of "fans' viewpoints"), and kept me interested. Perhaps, too, it wasn't saddled with quite the same weight of enforced expectations The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya had. I also got around to watching an OVA continuing the anime adaptation of Genshiken, but in order to get the OVA you have to buy a DVD of Kujibuki Unbalance, a sort of real-world production of the "show within a show" that gives Genshiken's fan characters something to be interested in. Things got that much more complicated when the show's premise and characters were altered to a fairly considerable extent for this production, and this generated a good deal of controversy among actual fans and complaints about how they were being forced to buy something they didn't want... but I suppose that since I still hadn't quite grasped the original setup of Kujibuki Unbalance, the new show didn't bother me that much. Beyond the levels of "metafictional" strangeness, I suppose it could always be said that the show is still suspiciously like a compendium of cliches, and I like its high-energy moments more than its sweeter parts, but so far I haven't been skipping it. The Genshiken OVA on the first DVD was nice, too; it introduces a popular character from the original manga.
For all the anime I've bought, I'm still skirting the more ambiguous edge of anime fandom by watching "fansubs." I've almost but not quite finished the baseball anime Touch, and I suppose it's a bit odd to be looking at how many episodes are left and wondering if I can guess how much further the baseball team will be going from that... I've also started watching a "giant robot" anime even older than Space Runaway Ideon, Zambot 3. I might have been expecting something uncomplicated in a "classic" mold, and yet Zambot 3 is from the same director who tried shaking up the genre with Ideon and the original Mobile Suit Gundam. The show has an obnoxious kid piloting the giant robot, supported by his extended family, and battling a goofy alien overlord... but it also seems aware of all the collateral damage of the giant robot battles in a way I'm not quite sure I've seen in other, more modern "mecha" anime.
Speaking of modern mecha anime, I watched the last few episodes of Gundam 00, which continued the Gundam tradition of final battles with a lot of pretentious dialogue being yelled back and forth but was kind of interesting in how it set up the follow-up series for later this year. I went straight from that to Macross Frontier, a new sequel to the original series. It seems tempting to say that "fansubs" are pretty much the only way to see this series translated, as the rights to new Macross series seem tangled up in a generous contract the company that produced and distributed Robotech two decades ago managed to get, although I guess I do wonder at times if it's really the inescapable sticking block other anime fans love complaining about. In any case, Macross Frontier looks good (so long as you can accept relatively obvious computer graphics in anime), perhaps doesn't take itself as seriously as Gundam 00 seemed to, and, while "likeability" may be overemphasised at times, it's easy enough for me to enjoy its characters. I suppose, though, that just where their deep-space adventures are going to is still sort of elusive; it may be in the end that "the journey had to be its own reward."