Requiem for animation that once spoke my language.

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Brain Trash
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Requiem for animation that once spoke my language.

Post by Brain Trash »

Hidey ho. Name's David, and I started out life as a kid who absolutely hated, despised, and was otherwise bored to tears with Disney and Saturday morning cartoons whenever adults tried to make me watch them... so naturally of course I gravitated to animated films about demons, rape, dismemberment, hitmen, and the occasional girl wearing a sailor uniform. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

I grew up from an early age (that age being probably about 4) around a lot of adults and college age kids who really could have cared less about “shielding” me from much of anything. Whatever anybody happened to be watching (and lots of times what they happened to be watching was horror, R rated action, and occasionally porn; and this being the 80's, there were excessively large supplies of all three), my presence would never elicit a “turn this off, there's a kid in the room” reaction. It was either left on as if I wasn't even there, or oftentimes I'd even directly get pulled in by someone with a “Aw man kid, you gotta check this shit out! This Pinhead guy totally RIPS THIS DUDE'S SKIN OFF WITH HOOKS! BADASS!!”

When you're a growing young boy in the mid 80's and some of your very first films as a toddler include Taxi Driver, Death Wish, The Fly, Eraserhead, The Terminator, An American Werewolf in London, Aliens, Phantasm, Cobra, The Thing, Robocop, Nightmare in a Damaged Brain, Suspiria, Angel Heart, Day of the Dead, Evil Dead II, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Predator, The Beyond, Big Trouble in Little China, Commando, The Exorcist, Videodrome, Full Metal Jacket, Blade Runner, First Blood, Friday the 13th part IV, Basket Case, The Blob, Return of the Living Dead, Escape From New York, Ms. 45, The Shining, Hellraiser II, I Spit on Your Grave, Re-Animator, Maniac, more Shaw Bros and Golden Harvest films than I could ever recount, most of the Dirty Harry series, and Make Them Die Slowly, etc... somehow or another, Pinocchio and G.I. Joe don't seem all that appealing or engaging in comparison.

So with that foundation laid firmly in place, I became a child that haunted the back ends of scuzzy video stores, grindhouse theaters during the tail, ass-end of when such things existed before becoming a relic of history (thanks dad), and even art house theaters. During all this, and as the 80's were drawing to a close, Akira came into my life and I learned about anime. And right then at long, long last I finally had something that my childhood up to that point had been missing... cartoons I could watch without becoming bored because they could actually stand up next to what the rest of the filmmaking world was giving me. A whole new universe of amazing goodness laid open before me.

In the mood for massive gunplay and Golan-Globus-esque action goodness? Hello Golgo 13, so nice to make your acquaintance. Something perhaps a bit more John Woo/Hong Kong Heroic Bloodshed-ish? That's what Crying Freeman was for. Wanted the closest thing to a Robocop cartoon that didn't suck balls? Hey there's A.D. Police Files and its “The Man Who Bites His Tongue” segment. Bonus points for its “Phantom Woman” segment if I was feeling a bit more Blade Runnery. Needed an abstract, surrealist art house fix? Katsuhiro Otomo delivers yet again with Neo-Tokyo, Robot Carnival, and Memories. And why hey, there's Mamorou Oshii with Angel's Egg. In need a superhero who isn't completely lame? Meet Guyver and 8 Man. I'll even sorta count Baoh, why not?

How about some balls to the wall horror? Oh man are we in luck; we got Vampire Hunter D, Urotsukidoji, Wicked City, Devilman, Doomed Megalopolis, Demon City Shinjuku, Curse of the Yoma, Genocyber, Mermaid's Scar, The Laughing Target, Vampire Princess Miyuu, and plenty more enough to fill up a phonebook. Exploitation and sleaze? Violence Jack, Guy: Double Target, and Mad Bull 34 had a few words with me, and I'm ever so thankful for it. How about classy, mature drama with gravitas? Area 88, Grave of the Fireflies, Windaria (uncut of course), Barefoot Gen, The Tale of Genji, Macross Plus, Wings of Honneamise, Galaxy Express 999, Arcadia of My Youth, and Only Yesterday all had my back there. Martial arts? Wuxia? Fist of the North Star, Kujaku-Ou, Dragon Ball Z, Yu Yu Hakusho, and so on were there for me. I was never much of a Fantasy guy, but if I felt a sudden need to go down that road? Record of Lodoss War, Heroic Legend of Arslan, Legend of Lemnear, and large swathes more still laid open to me.

Satire? Roujin Z, Project A-Ko, Dominion Tank Police, and Patlabor. Chanbara? Dagger of Kamui, Yotoden, Ninja Scroll, and tons more. Straight up action? Riding Bean, Castle of Cagliostro, City Hunter, and so on. How about some “WTF?” unclassifiable stuff that defy a genre label? Majinden, Birth, Twilight of the Cockroaches, Iczer-One, Dragon's Heaven, and then some. Sci Fi and Cyberpunk? Space Opera even? Even discounting some of the ones already mentioned above that would more than qualify, we'd be here all day with that one. But holy crap, Bubblegum Crisis, Cyber City Oedo, Ghost in the Shell, Goku: Midnight Eye, Venus Wars, Iria, Battle Angel, Black Magic, Angel Cop, Silent Mobius, Dirty Pair, Crusher Joe, Gall Force, Lensman, Megazone 23, A Wind Named Amnesia, Lily C.A.T. and Armitage III... endless list.

And so on. And on. And on. And on.

The phrase “kid in a candy store” doesn't even begin to cover it. I was in my glory. I had every possible base I could ask for covered, in gorgeously animated form. Most of the 90's saw nearly every kid my age obsessed with Ninja Turtles, Power Rangers, Aladdin, and The Lion King. Chumps I said. The whole lot of them. Outside of what MTV was doing with Liquid Television and Oddities, some Ralph Bakshi, and the occasional random European gem like Fantastic Planet, Felidae, and Watership Down... anime pretty much made up the vast, overwhelming bulk of the ENTIRETY of my childhood cartoons. I mean when I already had all that at my disposal, what the hell else was I gonna watch? Transformers? Spider-Man? Winnie the Pooh? Pffft. Where'd I leave my fansubbed copy of The Five Star Stories again?

Also thanks to early internet access among other factors, I also found myself wrapped up heavily in English anime fandom. I was a heavy duty lurker of the rec.arts newsgroups for many years, and I attended my share of art house theatrical anime screenings, bootleg tape sales, conventions, and so forth.

But as the late 90's and early 2000's came, I was starting high school, and anime (strangely enough, considering the time frame) sorta fell by the wayside for me. I ended off on a spectacularly high note though, as Perfect Blue, Cowboy Bebop, Kite, Spriggan, Samurai X: Trust & Betrayal, Princess Mononoke, Blood: The Last Vampire, and Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust among others functioned as my final roundup of titles during my last years heavily into the medium/fandom prior to mostly focusing on school and my future career plans.

As years passed and as I got older though, I once more found myself with a lot more free time. I'd been away from anime for well north of half a decade by that point and decided to jump back in. What I'd found in terms of what the medium and its English fanbase had mutated into while I was gone was... less than pleasing. What had once been an entity that prided itself on maturity, artistic freedom, and a heavily progressive attitude about animation as a medium for ALL ages, including for adults and not just exclusively for children... had now (largely, and not without exceptions) become infantilized. I need not go into anymore detail beyond that. Anyone reading this has seen and knows well what its like now. So much of it flies completely in the face of why I got into this medium in the first place. The entire point of what made anime appealing for someone like me has now been soundly defeated.

But what was really most frustrating of all wasn't even just all that; it was attempting to communicate with other present day fans. The vast majority of them now are so much younger and attempting to find common ground with most of them in nearly any area has been a fool's errand.

Another half decade later and here I am. I very much hope that what Daniel is attempting to do with this site (reunite older anime fans from earlier generations) will bear fruit. He and I both welcome anyone and everyone who can relate to the experience of having been an anime fan directly during and throughout the medium's glory years and getting old(er) now while watching its (again, mostly) continued deterioration (and moreover, the deterioration of the discourse surrounding it) over the course of the last decade or so.

So yeah. TETSUOOOO!!! and all that jazz.
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Daniel
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Re: Requiem for animation that once spoke my language.

Post by Daniel »

David,


Your decisively old school viewpoint and your vast knowledge and experience is refreshing to hear of nowadays. Backed by your incredibly engaging writing style, your introduction was a joy to read, and I wholeheartedly welcome you as a founding member of the community.


There are only about a million things to discuss here, but I'll leave them as future topics.

One thing that I could mention here, though, is that I can relate to your experience of being young and getting exposed to mature content. In my introductory post, I think that I didn't make this as clear as I should have (I'll update it). Basically, when I was young I was influenced by a friend who in turn was influenced by his Asian cinema loving father.


Well, friend, here we are. The beginning of a dream come true...

Daniel
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greg
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Re: Requiem for animation that once spoke my language.

Post by greg »

The '80s had a lot of moxy to it. But the '90s animation stuff had smoothed the sharp edge of '80s cartoons, and stuff that made the '80s great was starting to disappear. Very few shows, such as EXO Squad, had anybody die in it. I thought that Titan A.E. was pretty decent (it could've been better if the studio had let Don Bluth make the movie how he wanted it to be), but its failure made Bluth retire from the animation industry. Toy Story showed the rise of Pixar, and while I love Pixar movies, I hate how everything has become CG. In the '80s there were shows like Bluth's Secret of NIMH and Disney's The Black Cauldron, but in the '90s, everything was watered down. I think that's why anime gained popularity, because it was filling that void. Anime in the '90s was great, but yeah, now it's pretty much time to cross your eyes, put your finger to your mouth and go "bl bl bl bl bl." Anime has lost sight of what it once was, I think, and this has led to the rapid decline of anime's popularity in North America. Anime fandom has boiled down to the weeaboos who run around talking gibberish crap like "Watashi wa EAT SUSHI desu!" Stupid. You don't see any badass protagonists anymore. All you see are effeminate pussies. The rest of us are just left to shake our heads and say, "anime what have you become?"

A friend of mine on another message board summed it up best:
Because in the 80s and 90s, studios were copying and building on awesome western ideas such as this:

Image

Now, unfortunately this is whats cool in Japan:

Image
I certainly cannot relate to your upbringing though, since I was raised in a conservative Baptist environment. Once Mom saw the witch in Voltron, she told me I couldn't watch it anymore. In Robotech when people were getting killed, my bossy older sister told me to stop watching the show, lest Mom get mad at me. I obeyed. Stupid. Oh well.
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danth
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Re: Requiem for animation that once spoke my language.

Post by danth »

Now, unfortunately this is whats cool in Japan:
Wow, that really does say it all.
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