The Old School Otaku Lounge

At AWA last September I put together a commemorative 40th anniversary panel for 1978 asking if 1978 was indeed anime's greatest year. Now that panel, which was scheduled at an ungodly hour of Sunday morning and attended by a brave, undaunted crowd of attendees no doubt suffering from late Saturday nights spent drinking and carousing.

Anyways I put my notes together into a Let's Anime column and here it is!

http://letsanime.blogspot.com/2018/11/1 ... -year.html
I'm going to try to get one more column out this year before Christmas. My goal with Let's Anime is to get one out every month, but 2018 looks like I'm only going to get 11 columns. Well, what can ya do. Stupid Comics isn't going to stupid itself.

Thanks for this Dave. I furiously typed notes down on my phone at the panel but this is a lot better than me trying to piece together my incomprehensible gibberish.

As Zimmerit said on Twitter, I'm not sure I agree that 1978 is the single best year of Japanese animation but it is surely one of the most important years and I think the article highlights that. 1978 definitely has a great cross-section of lasting hits and influential cartoons, even a bit of broken promise.

One thing that I think is understated in the article is that though Mamo is a great Lupin film, and the later Cagliostro film is considered one of the go-to Lupin films, the 1978 TV series is really what is considered the quintessential Lupin franchise in Japan, much more so than the original 1971 series. Also, always happy to see Haikara-san get some publicity.

Honestly, this whole column was an excuse for me to re-do that collage piece and add the "1970s" graphics. I spend way too much time on that kind of thing, but it's so much fun to do.

I totally neglected to mention the Lupin series that straddled 1978 like a titan. It's definitely a definitive Lupin.

davemerrill wrote: ↑Mon Dec 03, 2018 7:32 am I totally neglected to mention the Lupin series that straddled 1978 like a titan. It's definitely a definitive Lupin.

It wasn't my intention to be the "you totally forgot this!" guy - I honestly figured you made an editorial decision to not mention the Lupin TV series when talking about a Lupin film.

I did tangentially refer to the TV show in the phrase "the jump from Monkey Punch's manga and a few hundred TMS produced TV episodes to the big movie screen," but that was pretty vague, considering at that point there had been two separate Lupin television series.

There is way too much Lupin III anime. There, I said it.

Don't let the die hard Lupin fans hear you say that, they might think there isn't enough Lupin to go around.

For me, I'll stick to the Lupin that people can consider "essential" to see, and I can just label Castle of Cagliostro as a good Lupin and Miyazaki film all in one package that i'll preach from my soap box for people to see.

there was a period in the 1990s and 2000s when they were cranking out a Lupin III TV movie every year, like clockwork, and after a while I just threw up my hands and quit trying to keep track of the things.

Though I will say that it's heartening to see the American side of anime fandom starting to be a little more reflective of what's popular in Japan, and not just the hot new shows, but the long-term franchises that have been around for decades. The American fandom knows Lupin (I mean, they always knew Castle of Cagliostro, but now they know it as this enormous whale of a series), Ge Ge Ge no Kitaro is a thing, Gundam is recognized as more than just Gundam Wing, the Go Nagai universe is finally getting some love. It's fascinating to see.

davemerrill wrote: ↑Thu Dec 06, 2018 8:45 am There is way too much Lupin III anime. There, I said it.

davemerrill wrote:there was a period in the 1990s and 2000s when they were cranking out a Lupin III TV movie every year, like clockwork, and after a while I just threw up my hands and quit trying to keep track of the things.

As a big Lupin fan - I would agree. However, the beauty of Lupin III anime is that one can drop in and out of most of it, especially the annual specials. To me, given how simple the characterization and plot are, a lot of it is just there for relaxation and visiting something familiar every so often.