Thirty Years Ago: The Best Anime of 1988

Discuss anime, especially but not limited to 1950's~1990's series, and related sub-topics
gaijinpunch
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Thirty Years Ago: The Best Anime of 1988

Post by gaijinpunch »

Hope this hasn't been posted. Stumbled upon this... nice stroll down memory lane. Source

There is also a 1998 Version
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DKop
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Re: Thirty Years Ago: The Best Anime of 1988

Post by DKop »

Wow, a decent write up on Initial D from Daryl Surat? Who would have thought. I will always go to bat for Initial D, since im one of those people that has plenty of good things to say about it when you take in what came from Initial D to keep the name/series going.

Interesting enough, I got a hold of the Weiss Kruez series to check out, because I figured why the heck not, ive heard about it for almost 20 years and remember those old fansite dedicated to the series that mostly girls were into from what I can gather.
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Re: Thirty Years Ago: The Best Anime of 1988

Post by DKop »

Damn, not even a mention for Bubblegum Crisis Tokyo 2040? I figured if that's the one thing to rant on from 1998 from certain people in fandom, it would be that show. I got no beef with Tokyo 2040, it's how I got to know about BGC in the first place before the OVA's, and I got no hate on that show.
gaijinpunch
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Re: Thirty Years Ago: The Best Anime of 1988

Post by gaijinpunch »

DKop wrote: Mon Apr 23, 2018 5:57 pm Damn, not even a mention for Bubblegum Crisis Tokyo 2040? I figured if that's the one thing to rant on from 1998 from certain people in fandom, it would be that show. I got no beef with Tokyo 2040, it's how I got to know about BGC in the first place before the OVA's, and I got no hate on that show.
Haven't read the 1998 one, as I was kind of "out of the hobby" by then. But I heard nothing really good about 2040... and it didn't appear to be my cup of tea based on what I had seen.
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Re: Thirty Years Ago: The Best Anime of 1988

Post by davemerrill »

People really seem to hate Bubblegum Crisis 2040. I watched & reviewed the first ADV release back when it came out and it didn't strike me as being awful. Certainly it was better than Bubblegum Crash.
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Re: Thirty Years Ago: The Best Anime of 1988

Post by DKop »

Ditto. At least 2040 was consistent in its animation budget, and plot, and character development, and multiple releases on DVD. Crash did, none of those things. Although to Crash credit, episode 1 is the best one, and if it was only that episode, I would have nothing against Crash as a whole.
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Re: Thirty Years Ago: The Best Anime of 1988

Post by Fvlminatvs »

gaijinpunch wrote: Mon Apr 23, 2018 5:25 pm Hope this hasn't been posted. Stumbled upon this... nice stroll down memory lane. Source
1988. The year of Akira. I was in second and third grades.

Nice to see Patlabor getting love.

I thought Appleseed was fun but I heard Dominion Tank Police really isn't that good in retrospect. I still intend to give it a watch before I make up my mind, of course.
DKop wrote: Tue Apr 24, 2018 1:10 pm Ditto. At least 2040 was consistent in its animation budget, and plot, and character development, and multiple releases on DVD. Crash did, none of those things. Although to Crash credit, episode 1 is the best one, and if it was only that episode, I would have nothing against Crash as a whole.
Curious. Why does Crash get any hate? I thought Crisis' early episodes weren't nearly as good as its later episodes but I felt like Crash was more consistent overall from start-to-finish, and therefore slightly stronger. I wonder what disappointed you guys about Crash?
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Re: Thirty Years Ago: The Best Anime of 1988

Post by gaijinpunch »

I need to watch Crash again... probably will. Never watched AD Police either... shame on me.

Appleseed, in my circles anyway, got about zero love. I had read the English adaptation which blew me a way. It was the first anime VHS tape I got, along w/ Akira, one Xmas. Remember when we had to write down what we wanted and give it to our parents? (For reference, I was 16 I believe).
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Re: Thirty Years Ago: The Best Anime of 1988

Post by DKop »

My full exposure to Crash came from a girl I knew in England on myspace who sent the DVD too me as a gift, only to shortly later go crazy and delete all her friends online, including me.

My first exposure to the first episode was from a mpg file on kazaa in the early 2000's and thought after the first episode "oh wow, this is pretty good. Why are people hating on this?" After watching the last two episodes, I knew why. They seemed to be tacked onto Crisis to make the series feel really complete, but that didn't pan out that way, and these seem to be ideas for those later episodes somehow condensed into three episodes.

In terms of AD Police, you got two ver of Ad Police. One being the OVA that was being put out around the time Crisis OVA were coming out, which are really good episodes for a short 3 parts series. The 12 episode series released by ADV is a low budget, cheaply animated tie into the 2040 series. I have that ADV set on dvd, but I've to this day never sat through all the episodes, it needs to happen.
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Re: Thirty Years Ago: The Best Anime of 1988

Post by Fvlminatvs »

I thought it would be interesting to point out that Yoroiden Samurai Troopers came out in 1988, which would start airing on weekday mornings before I had to catch the bus for high school in the mid-90s as Ronin Warriors. It was my jam, dude. I felt like it was Sailor Moon for guys. My brother and I would wake up earlier than we had to before school in order to catch it. Then... one tragic day... we got up, dressed, and got our breakfasts and turned the TV on to see... The Littlest Pet Shop. They'd cancelled its run for that crap. We were pretty mad.
DKop wrote: Tue May 01, 2018 1:32 pmMy first exposure to the first episode was from a mpg file on kazaa in the early 2000's and thought after the first episode "oh wow, this is pretty good. Why are people hating on this?" After watching the last two episodes, I knew why. They seemed to be tacked onto Crisis to make the series feel really complete, but that didn't pan out that way, and these seem to be ideas for those later episodes somehow condensed into three episodes.
I have to rewatch Crash. I thought it was, overall, better than Crisis if only because the early Crisis episodes were very rough. I do think the last episodes of Crisis are better than Crash, though. I think I should go back and rewatch the shows.

When it comes to certain OVA series, I find that I am far more forgiving if I stagger my viewing (1-2 episodes per night or so). For example, I originally thought Iria: Zeiram the Animation was tremendously flawed when I first marathoned it back in the 1990s. Interesting, engaging, but ultimately very flawed. However, I recently rewatched it in a more staggered fashion over the course of 3 or 4 days and I discovered I was far more forgiving of its errors and ultimately more engaged. Hell, I liked it so much that I went and bought the DVDs despite having it on (bootleg) VHS.
In terms of AD Police, you got two ver of Ad Police. One being the OVA that was being put out around the time Crisis OVA were coming out, which are really good episodes for a short 3 parts series. The 12 episode series released by ADV is a low budget, cheaply animated tie into the 2040 series. I have that ADV set on dvd, but I've to this day never sat through all the episodes, it needs to happen.
What is funny is that I really thought AD Police had some great ideas but was far too bleak and dark in its execution. Also, I thought that the episodes needed to be longer and they felt like they rushed to a conclusion too quickly for me. It was also a pretty rough tonal shift going from it to Bubblegum Crisis, which felt like mahou shoujo meets tokusatsu in the Blade Runner setting.

Then again, I blasted through AD Police and perhaps should give it a second go the way I did Iria.
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