Keith Palmer's Multi-Purpose Journal

“But it’s anime!” played its own certain role in unbending to the point of taking in a bit of “recent Star Wars.” I even emerged from “Star Wars Visions” supposing some of its nine animated shorts would be interesting to go back to. However, I hadn’t got around to that by the time a second Visions series, animated by studios from around the world, was announced. Whether or not my reactions to those new shorts amounted to a lower batting average than the original group, I still supposed I might go back to at least one of them... but still hadn’t by the time a third Visions series, returning to Japanese animation studios and even promising to follow up on some of the original shorts, turned up. Still, I did manage to find the time to watch these latest productions.
( Visions revisited and new )

Revisiting at last both an anime movie and an OVA series I’d first seen back in university addressed just the beginning of my “it’s been long enough” thoughts. The next title that had caught in my mind would give me a chance to reflect on those first, different years after university. However, I have to admit to thoughts of diminishing returns. I’d hoped I’d be better able now to understand what Patlabor 2: The Movie offered, and perhaps I did. Going into Bubblegum Crisis I’d wondered in an amused way about the varied constraints on what could be made commercially available at the dawning of “the anime market in (North) America” and how that would have changed formative experiences for less-connected fans; going out of it, though, I was a bit conscious of certain simplicities in that OVA’s core stories I didn’t find all that interesting. For the next title in my mind, I was thinking most of all of how Macross Zero seemed more a simple matter of that old insistence, or assumption, that once a title you’d seen “fansubbed” had been licensed, you were obligated to buy the legitimate release, just perhaps regardless of your previous reactions...
( Out of the shadow world )

Aware I’d slid back into “let someone else take the chance on being horribly disappointed by new anime series” and conscious even that just might be a step towards “making a great show of disdain for all ‘recent’ anime,” I resolved to watch a few streaming series “with everyone else.” As soon as I’d started them, I was feeling kind of bad about “only watching the safest bets from among the most popular titles and very much depending on established names.” It took me a little while to think about the varied older titles I was also watching, a while longer to remember some unfortunate examples of “sequels much fault was found with for not matching the brilliance of the original production,” and some more time again to consider the examples I’ve piled up over a certain number of years of when I just didn’t seem as offended by certain series “everyone else” kept, or keep, singling out for condemnation, to say nothing of some perhaps more unfortunate instances when I wasn’t as impressed with some shows as insistences would have it. After all of that, in the end I suppose I was in general contented with all the anime I watched in the past three months, and conscious those months brought me up to another big anniversary of when I joined the anime club at university.
( Streaming sequels: DAN DA DAN and My Dress-Up Darling )
( Streaming absurdity: CITY the Animation )
( Getting around to work: Magilumiere Magical Girls Inc. )
( On a new track: Shinkalion Change the World )
( Into dangerous territory?: Attack on Titan )
( A magical conclusion: Minky Momo )
( Back on a long road: Urusei Yatsura )
( Looking back, glancing ahead: Patlabor 2 the Movie and Nijiyon 2 )

One weekend before I left on my vacation I took a shorter trip, going back to my old university for homecoming. I must not have paid close enough attention to the schedule, because in arriving around noon after a lengthy trip by train and bus I found the homecoming events had closed down and displays for visitors were being packed away. Managing to shrug that off, I wandered around campus by myself and dropped in on the arts library, my thoughts turning to a particular article I’d read a certain number of years ago.
( Past mechanics )

That I scraped together the resolve to step outside weekend routine and head to my area’s big anime convention in 2019 could feel in the immediate years afterwards like “at last yet almost too late; at least I can say I once saw what they were like.” Even after starting to get on cruise ships again I was at least noticing warnings that conventions had never been healthy places. In the leadup to this year’s “Anime North,” though, noticing davemerrill’s panel announcements might have tipped a balance that had already been shifting. (That had something to do with being invited to describe a university anime club experience at the time of the very first Anime North.) A few daydreams about taking the chance bounced through my mind, and then I bought a Saturday pass, perhaps a few more days before the convention than I’d managed back in 2019.
( Preparations and panels )

As the new year started I was intent on getting back to the anime Blu-Rays I’d only just begun in the first days of October before breaking my hip. With family staying at my place afterwards to provide considerable and welcome assistance, watching anime on any screen larger and less private than an iPad had got to feeling awkward right away. Once I’d started making trips to and from their home so that they could keep meeting appointments of their own, that didn’t help either. Returning to those shows, my thoughts also turned to some Blu-Rays that had just come in, if in some certain way just to “get them out of the way now rather than leave them lurking in the pile.” Around that point, with schemes in mind to watch two episodes a week of some longer series, what wound up giving was any intention of seeing new titles streaming. The problem there was that I started thinking how sometimes not very many sour dismissals tossed into reaction threads to end-of-the-season reviews will nudge me away from trying to form my own opinions or just dampen my own best efforts at that. There does seem a threat of “always expecting the worst when it comes to recent anime.” It wasn’t until months later that I happened to wonder whether there’s that much difference between “a three-month-old series you gather you’ve been granted an all-clear for,” “a three-year-old series that’s still being mentioned but you haven’t quite found time for yet,” and “a three-decade-old series you suppose is worth watching because Discotek just licensed it, and they know what they’re doing...”
( More than a footnote: Albegas )
( A risky return?: Attack on Titan )
( Also getting around to it: Demon Slayer )
( Newer and older: Urusei Yatsura and Minky Momo )
( Streaming efforts: Blue Box and The Apothecary Diaries )
( Mecha movies: Macross DYRL and Gundam GQuuuuuuX )

Advance reports the latest release over in Japan of “the Macross movie” Do You Remember Love? would have English subtitles got my attention. That particular piece of the Macross franchise hadn’t been included in the recent rollout to streaming services outside Japan I don’t have a subscription to. While I am quite aware a good number of other fans assign all the blame for that continued absence to Harmony Gold, I have to admit to being willing to wonder if there might be something to the occasional counterarguments the number of entities involved in the production of the movie four decades ago could have something to do with particular problems with its overseas rights. (I also understand that when the English dub of uncertain provenance was released on videotape years and years ago, Harmony Gold didn’t appear to have been involved...) In any case, I did start contemplating taking a rare step indeed for me.
( Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence )

Just as I’d happened to do during the first months of this year, I came upon on certain notices there’d be another altogether unofficial streaming of Do You Remember Love? This time, the promise was of the original Japanese language dialogue with subtitles. That would be more familiar to me than the perhaps-infamous English dub streamed earlier, but I still thought I could make a late evening of the movie.
( Found in translation )

Three months ago I remained conscious of having sliced a waking hour out of at least five days every week for the sake of getting more sleep before an early start at work, and how this had made me decide to halve the amount of anime I watched most weekday evenings, from two episodes to one. By most standards I was still taking in a lot of it, to the exclusion of just about anything else that might be watched, but I suppose a current habit of two episodes a week from a fair number of older and longer series added to the sense of constraints tightening. Still, in managing to maintain some variety of vintage and genre alike I kept finding certain rewards, organized here in the order I finished them in.
( Plugging along: Machine Robo Revenge of Cronos )
( Streaming dark and light: Dead Dead Demon’s DeDeDeDe Destruction and Narenare Cheer For You! )
( Streaming old and new: Major 2nd and Sengoku Youko )
( Back to long ago: Anne of Green Gables )
( A new adaptation: Urusei Yatsura )
( The concluding movement: Sound! Euphonium )
( The unexpected number: Girls Band Cry )

As I posted my summary of the anime I’d seen in the first three months of this year, I knew I was days away from leaving on my second long vacation in less than a year’s time, getting away once more from Blu-Ray players and broadband connections. Having found a new video player program for my iPad, and contemplating six sea days in between Mexico and Hawaii and five sea days in between Hawaii and Vancouver Island, I didn’t intend for this to be altogether a “vacation from anime.” (I was also thinking a bit of reports that multicultural television in Hawaii had happened to show some anime in the 1970s and that that, more than memories of Astro Boy, Speed Racer, and some other “localized” cartoons in the 1960s, had got a first few fan-types thinking there were some interesting animated series in Japan... However, it wasn’t until my last day or so in Hawaii that I happened to think “now wasn’t ‘Kamehameha’ a term in Dragon Ball too?”) On coming back, though, I did decide at last I had to start turning in earlier to get to an early start-of-the-day meeting at work yet feel refreshed in the morning. I could still watch two episodes of anime in a weekday evening, but that began to feel a bit too extravagant with less time in general available in those evenings. I suppose having limited time to watch all the anime that’s caught your eye could be better in a certain way than having got to the point where you just can’t find anime that interests you, but there might be the eventual risk of feeling overwhelmed by what you can’t quite get around to.
( Back to one beginning: Pretty Cure )
( Forward to a follow-up: Major 2nd )
( A super robot wrap-up: Getter Robo )
( Return to streaming: Love Live Nijigasaki Next Sky and Nijiyon 2 )
( Return to Blu-Rays: Machine Robo Revenge of Cronos )
( Beginning once more: Patlabor OVAs and Movie )
( Extra unusual service: Akiba Maid War )
( One concluding surprise: Dead Dead Demon's DeDeDeDe Destruction )