Keith Palmer's Multi-Purpose Journal

In keeping up with what shows up on Anime News Network, I did feel a bit surprised to see Big X, an anime series from 1964, appear on the front page. The article explained the studio that had made it would be streaming (via the uncomplicated means of YouTube) various sample episodes from its productions over the years, and while they weren’t starting with their very first series they would get around to an episode of it.

Having taken in some television anime from the 1960s out of some mixture of simple curiosity and feeble grandstanding, I’m at least intrigued by the thought of more people having the chance to do that (for all that for me Big X more “represented its year” than stood out on merit from its decade...) I’m also conscious that, lacking any fluency in Japanese, I pretty much depended on a single “fansubber” to see what sample episodes from then I’ve seen. Things were a bit better there when it came to movies.

At least a few experiences with “the artwork of the original manga have more character to them than the mass-produced drawings of its anime adaptation” and “certain moments in the manga get... watered down for the anime” formed an impression in me that seems to mean there’s always a few stacks of particular manga growing ever taller until I’ve finished the anime that got my attention in the first place. After having made a bit of an effort to start into some of those anime (and having read through the latest lengthy volume of Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou both right before and in the days after my vacation), I could at last pick up the first volume of Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End.
( Beginning anew )

Seeing a new volume of Nichijou appear in lists of upcoming manga was a bit of a surprise. Some time has passed since the previous volume offered a certain slight air of conclusion to its continued absurdities; Keiichi Arawi went on to a similar comedy manga named CITY, which I also read. I went ahead and got a copy of the Nichijou revival, but I suppose I’ve got to admit there could have been a sense of “inertia again, even after so long?” The manga had continued on past the misdaventures of the anime, but it just might have been a case of “the adaptation does manage to add something to the original” for me for all that I can imagine “of course; it was a Kyoto Animation production” being proclaimed.

When I started reading the new volume, though, something about it really did appeal. Major and minor characters returned, some gleeful participants in, some enigmatic participants in, and some aghast witnesses of the assorted absurdities. While CITY had been a little different for having main characters no longer in high school (college-age, perhaps; at least they aren’t in school uniforms), I did miss anyone packing the simple heart of the robot girl Nano. (The talking cat Sakamoto who lives with her and the little-girl Professor did seem to swear enough in this new volume to not quite fit in, though.)

When I got around to watching the “girls’ acting school” anime Kageki Shojo!!, I became caught up in its melodrama to the point of ordering the original manga by Kumiko Saiki before I’d finished the series. (The manga began with a volume of unusual thickness, which I eventually understood collected everything that had first been printed in a particular manga magazine before moving to a different publication.) It took a while to read through everything that had been adapted in the anime and reach the further adventures that had been the point of going on to the manga. While I summarize the anime I watch every three months, I’m a bit more relaxed about commenting on the manga I read, as might be suggested by the volume number here. When I thought I ought to post about something around now, though, the volume was both finished and had included some interesting points.
( On to a new year )

Sixty days later, the seventy-third half-hour (give or take) instalment from a sixty-fourth anime series (TV and OVA), with a “short TV episode” and a theatrical short added in too, brought me to the end of my offbeat odyssey. It did take me a while to decide on my final sample. Last year’s anime did seem easier to feel altogether confident about than 2019’s had at the end of its year, but I suppose things were different when it came to the thought of picking one single (first) episode to represent the year, be impressive in itself, and perhaps even serve as the more positive kind of “the adventure will continue” stopping point.
( A hard-rocking choice )
( Bonus summary and directory )

For my final sample of anime from the 1980s, I dug out and opened at last a DVD box set of a series not quite as notable now as other titles from its time but still connected to manga, at least. Yawara! adapted a manga by Naoki Urasawa, who nowadays seems a rather respectable manga artist. Sometimes, though, “respectability” threatens to get entangled with “the sort of manga that doesn’t get adapted into anime.” I at least recall seeing comments this “judo series” acquitted itself well against Ranma 1/2’s “anything-goes martial arts” when they both got on the air in Japan around the same time. The adaptation of a Rumiko Takahashi manga was licensed over here long before Yawara!, though, and that seemed to make a difference...
( A fashionable judo girl )

As tempting as it is for me to call 1982 “the year of Macross” (not that long ago, I ran into a reminder that series was one of the first to be made by a new generation who could have been part of the initial audience for anime on TV), that personal thought hinges on having been exposed to at least its animation at an early age (early enough I can’t say “anime character designs” registered for me on any conscious level). I’ve also revisited that series quite a few times already, including during my speedy 2010 tour; back then I watched its first two episodes to get to a solid dose of “mecha action,” and for all that I’ve managed to watch two episodes on a weeknight and then still push through typing a post up I don’t want to do that too often. For more reasons than that, I had intentions of trying out the beginning of some recent “fansubs” of an early-1980s magical girl show I’d known the peculiar title of for some time. Having seen a different series of almost the same age in the same genre before, I did have some suppositions about what Minky Momo would be like. As it turned out, things were just a bit more peculiar than I’d been expecting.
( The further development of magical girls )

Should someone be so inclined they could “watch a bit of anime from each year” and get through four-fifths of the 1970s on an uninterrupted diet of super robots, just perhaps wrapping things up with Mobile Suit Gundam and some amused pondering of whether it was a revolutionary or evolutionary step in the genre. Back in 2010, my personal anniversary tour had included a number of those series, although back then I’d had to skip over some years I didn’t have any shows from. Now, while still having to admit this remains a matter of personal choice rather than perfect or prescriptive summation, I did want to at least try and encompass a bit more variety. One of my efforts at that was sampling a series adapted from a shojo manga, Candy Candy.
( How sweet she is )

As history’s calendrical odometer turned over by two digits, but with TV anime that can be watched and understood without fluency in Japanese (with a different deficiency, namely of the uprightness to eschew “fansubs” in total, getting mixed up in there) still scarce, I did find myself a bit uneasy about the only title I had to hand for the year. I knew Tomorrow’s Joe is a significant title starting with its manga, but I didn’t especially like the idea of a series about boxing and its relentless battering away of health for the entertainment of others. I have to admit happening on Porco Rosso ending with an extended impromptu punchup did sort of shake my impressions of the movie. The time of Tomorrow’s Joe making, of course, could prompts shrugs about things being “different”; for that matter, there were Peanuts Sunday pages at the beginning of the 1960s with the kids (and Snoopy) wearing boxing gloves and walloping each other with the losers (or just sucker-punched) left dazed and dizzy.
( It starts outside the squared circle, anyway )

When I started going through lists of anime series debuts by year, it had seemed simple enough to cover 1965; I supposed I’d just watch the first episode of Hustle Punch again. Then, though, I happened to realize sample fansubs of a different series that had begun that year were also to be found, and contemplated taking in a different series, Wonder Three. The thought did cross my mind as to whether I’d decided to see something other than Hustle Punch because that anime had featured “funny animals,” but there was the wrinkle that I understood Wonder Three to be just about the same there, with three alien visitors to Earth having transformed themselves into a girl rabbit, a duck with a Moe Howard hairdo, and a horse.
( The Earth hangs in the balance, anyway )