Note: Much of this is anecdotal – your mileage may have varied.
In recent years, I’ve become somewhat of a booster for older anime. While I enjoy a lot of the newer content coming out, I can’t help but find myself drawn to titles from the ’70s, ’80s, hell… anything prefixed by “19” at this point. I know I’m dating myself tonight, but I grew up in a time when charismatic heroes like Lupin, Harlock, and the Dirty Pair were front and center in anime clubs, and people were chomping at the bit to get their hands on shows like Devil Hunter Yohko and The Slayers. It was a time of tape trades, new frontiers, and high hopes. We could count the new titles being released from month to month on one hand, and many were lining up to buy them.
We were a proud bunch – proud of our hobby, and proud of the works that came of it. We had our lists of “must sees”, which ranged from the staples, to titles like Robot Carnival and Angel’s Egg. The past, the present, and the future were something important to us, and we eagerly embraced the past, as we did the latest and greatest.
In our current market, viewers don’t have the luxury of building that same body of history. Hell, many of us can barely keep up, as dozens of new titles run without fail each and every week. As the new comes in, and the old grows older, it simply becomes unattractive to those who have but a moment to give a glimpse. After all, most of the old stuff was, and still is fairly primitive. The animation wasn’t alway perfect, the colors didn’t alway match up, and everything just had a generally “rough” appearance to it, unless the show was a big-budget blockbuster. Shows from the ’70s, ’80s, and even the ’90s are fairly dated on a visua level, in comparison to today’s clean-colored digital marvels.
Still, some of us cling to the classics.
There was something that is difficult to describe at the time, and it still is today. There was an adventurous spirit, a magic that was different from that of today’s offerings that couldn’t be repeated. Adventures like like Starblazers, City Hunter, and like Escaflowne have different tones, different strengths, and different weaknesses from, works like Noir, FLCL, and Hellsing.
As the press releases roll in, and new licenses get announced by publishers, I can’t help but feel delighted, excited even, when an older piece gets picked up. I smile, I get the gang together, and we plan a huge evening to watch through some of the moments that made us fans to begin with, or those that we missed out on due to factors at the time. These gatherings rarely work out (software engineers, retail workers, and doctors work in different world), but when they do, it’s an experience that is simply incredible.
Going forward, I’d like to talk about these older pieces a bit more. I’ve already begun, with our Landmarks section and the Semi-Essentials. However, I’d like to do more – highlight the bigger titles, the smaller titles… anything really worth checking out, that came about in those pre-millenial years. However, there are still conversations to be had, and things to be said. I’m not sure of what form this will take, or how the conversation will be shaped, but I hope that you, dear reader, will join as we press forward into this new frontier.
