My Anime History

Recently I picked up a Crunchyroll account so I could watch Sword Art Online.  But even though it's only $7 a month, it felt wasteful to watch only the one show.  So I've actually been watching quite a bit of anime lately.  And since I've got the urge to write again, I figured I'd just go with it.

Anime's been a part of my life since childhood, but I didn't realize it until high school.  That's because all the early anime I watched were American re-dubs of Japanese shows.  Battle of the Planets was originally Science Ninja Team Gatchaman, Starblazers came from Space Battleship Yamato, Voltron: Defender of the Universe was a merger of Beast King GoLion and Armoured Fleet Dirugger XV.  The king adaptation was also my favorite, Robotech.  That show took three completely unrelated series, The Super Dimension Fortress Macross, Super Dimension Cavalry Southern Cross, and Genesis Climber MOSPEADA, and rewrote them into one ongoing story.  Innocent child that I was, it never occurred to me that those shows were any different than the other cartoons I was watching like GI Joe or Transformers.  

Robotech.  Nobody does giant robots like the Japanese.

I did notice some differences, though.  The anime based shows tended to have better animation, for one thing.  More, the stories were a lot more adult in that there was romance, war, and death on most of the anime shows that was noticeably absent from their American contemporaries.  Certainly no episode of Robotech ever ended with "And knowing is half the battle!"

When I got to high school, my buddy Steve introduced me to the Anime Club.  That was the first time I'd heard the term, but I got the point quickly enough.  Anime was Japanese cartoons, the word a shortening of "animation".  While springing from Disney roots in the 1930s and then steered down a different path from western animation in the '60s by Osamu Tezuka, anime had developed it's own style and sensibilities that felt really fresh to my teen aged eyes.

Astroboy, Tezuka's classic character.  Another Japanese robot, albeit not a giant one.

I spent a couple hours a week from then on in a classroom watching bootleg videos of various anime with my classmates.  To be honest, I don't remember much of the shows from that time, with one exception.  When I was a young freshman, someone mentioned The Dirty Pair which sounded pretty interesting to a young man with raging hormones.  When I inquired further I was peremptorily informed that "you're not ready for The Dirty Pair" which only made me want to watch the damn show even more.   Eventually someone brought a tape with it on and we watched the antics of a pair of scantily clad girls who were pretty terrible at their jobs.  It was a fun little show, but not exactly the revelation I'd been expecting from all the build up.

You're not...well, no, actually you probably are ready for The Dirty Pair.

The summer between my freshmen and sophomore years, I got into the bootlegging business myself.  I spent a month with my uncle in San Diego, and the video rental place near his house had a bunch of anime while he owned two VCRs.  I rented and copied hours of the stuff and returned to the Anime Club a minor hero for my efforts.  I also figured out that if you put your actual destination in the return address spot on an envelope with no stamp and drop it in a public mailbox, the Post Office will deliver it for free.  Video piracy and mail fraud all at the age of fourteen!  What can I say, it was that kind of summer.

I don't remember most of the shows I copied and the tapes themselves are long gone, but two did stick in my memory.  The first was Megazone 23, Part 2.  That was a cyberpunk style story reminiscent in many ways of the more famous Akira in that the hero is a motorcycle riding rebel in a tightly controlled technologically advanced society, though the stories go to vastly different places.  Megazone was notable because it was filmed in English with Japanese subtitles, which was a nice change of pace, as virtually all the Anime Club stuff was the other way around.  It also sticks in my mind because of the horrible, graphic violence.  It was one of, if not the, first times I can recall seeing people bloodily ripped apart on screen.  It made me queasy at the time, but not so queasy that it stopped me from sharing the video with my friends and younger brothers!

Don't be misled, even Megazone 23 Part 2 concludes in a giant robot fight.

The other show I recall was Gunbuster, which was a short six episode show about humanity in a war against giant bugs.  Naturally, this calls for the use of giant robots.  It also was the first time that I can recall seeing the Teenagers Save the World trope in anime, as the two main protagonists are both high school girls at the start of the show.  Gunbuster was also the first place I ran into the concept of time dilation from FTL travel, a concept that forms the core of the classic science fiction novel The Forever War by Joe Haldeman.  It was pretty deep stuff, even if Forever War handles it better.

Gunbuster.  A giant robot.  Look, it was the '80s...

Eventually, though, I went to college and that was it for me and anime for a long time.  Without the resources of the Anime Club, long before video could be transmitted over the internet or Cartoon Network debuted Adult Swim, there wasn't an easy way for me to watch the stuff.  I went into a Ranma 1/2 phase in the late '90s, but that was an expensive habit since I was buying the show four episodes at a time on videotape.  I can recall seeing some Sailor Moon on TV now and again, and one of my friends threw a party where we all watched Perfect Blue.  A buddy and I got our hands on and watched all of Noir.  I saw Neon Genesis Evangelion at some point and got annoyed at the ending.  But that was pretty much it for decades.

Neon Genesis Evangelion: "Congratulations!"  Me: "What the fuck?"

Then, in 2012, I stumbled upon Crunchyroll, a web service that brings translated anime to the States.  Since then, I've found anime in many other places, including Funimation, Hulu, Netflix, and Amazon Prime.  Still, Crunchyroll remains my primary anime source and most of what I've watched recently came from there.  It was on  Crunchyroll that I saw Another, a show I wrote a review about, and Puella Magi Madoka Magica, which I did not but probably should have.   

Puella Magi Madoka Magica.  Looks cute, doesn't it?  It's a trap!

So that brings us to today.  In the last year or so I've watched something like a dozen anime series, and it's time to talk about them.  Some of them have a lot in common with some of the others.  These tropes and how they're used will be a core element of my forthcoming reviews.  We've already touched on one of those, the aforementioned Teenagers Save the World.  There will be others, but don't expect this to be a TV Tropes deal.  Identifying the parts that go into a show is not the end of criticism.  It's the beginning.  How those parts are used is even more important than what those parts are.

With that in mind, we'll start next time with the show that got me onto my current anime fix, Sword Art Online.

"Another" An Anime Series Review

Contrary to my usual practice, I will be avoiding any spoilers in this review.  Primarily because the show in question is, at it's heart, a mystery.  The main pleasure to be found in this mystery is in learning the rules and seeing how things play out.  Therefore, I will speak only obliquely about the details and record instead my general opinions of the piece.  If anyone's interested in a spoiler version, leave a comment and I'll see what we can do.

If you want the elevator pitch for Another, a 12 episode anime series, it would be "Final Destination with a brain."  In both series death itself is stalking the cast, rather than a standard serial killer.  However, rather than focusing on inventive and gruesome deaths, as the Final Destination films do, Another is really more about the beleaguered cast trying to figure out what the hell is going on and peeling back the layers of the onion one by one until the truth is revealed.  Which isn't to say that Another doesn't have some shocking deaths, just that they're not the point of the exercise.

No, the point of Another is in the details.  The atmosphere of dread that builds from episode to episode is balanced by the revelations that clue you in to what the deal is.  The two elements combine well into a mix that makes you want to watch the episodes one after another.  Hell, I found out about the show on Sunday, and watched all 6 hours of it in a couple of days.  It's really quite addictive.

Furthermore, the show has the guts to play it straight.  Like most good mysteries, there are a number of twists in the tale, but they're set up well.  The final twist in particular caught me off-guard, but looking back over the show, I realized that the clues had been there, I'd just misinterpreted them.  Which is the hallmark of a fine mystery.

That said, I'm not sure I really need more of the show.  I understand that there's a sequel planned, as well as a prequel episode, but I don't think either are really necessary.  The show has a beginning, middle, and end, and while there are unanswered questions, I am content with the story as it exists.  It's sort of like Babylon 5.  I loved that show.  Indeed, all five seasons of it are sitting a foot behind me in DVD format.  But no effort to return to the universe of Babylon 5 has ever succeeded.  That's because Babylon 5 has beginning, middle, and an end, and having ended, the story is best left concluded.  Another feels the same way to me.  They should leave well enough alone.

One other thing that I found was interesting about Another was the story's path through multiple media sources.  Another began as a serial novel that was released in Japan from 2006 through 2009.  A manga version appeared in 2010, followed by the anime version in early 2012.  And now, thanks to the magic of Crunchyroll, there's a subtitled English version.  You have to admire that kind of efficiency.  Six years from first published chapter to international anime release?  That's good work.  Compare that to the way things were back in the day.  To get even a hugely popular work like The Dirty Pair into the USA took something like six years and the work of bootleggers with dubious quality translations.  Now, you can watch shows within days or even hours of its release in Japan in as high a resolution as you system can take done by professional translators.  That kind of service would have been inconceivable back in the late '80s when I first got exposed to this stuff.   

What a world we live in.  

So, if you're a mystery or horror anime fan, I strongly recommend you take a few hours and watch Another.  Sure, it's yet another anime set in a Japanese school, but like Puella Magi Madoka Magica, the show twists the genre conventions so far out of bounds that the familiar becomes horrible.  It's not for everyone.  There's blood and gore to be found throughout.  But for the right kind of fan, this is the kind of show that challenges your brain, and for that, I salute it.