Categories
Art

Gener8ion

I’m not quite sure how to describe the Tumblr called Gener8ion — 80s/90s retro Japan? — but I just know that I love the visuals on display.

Categories
Music

City Pop

On top of that fantastic Shinichiro Yokata mix I mentioned the other day, I’ve also been musically obsessing over “city pop” of late, after I came across this piece. Just let all the YouTube mixes on that page guide you through the smooth sounds of 80s Japan. Kinda goes well with my current 1986 movie marathon too.

Categories
Anime

Daicon III & IV

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Following on my 80s anime playlist, I re-watched the two Daicon shorts, which I still find to be fantastic, especially the second one. These are animated shorts that were created for two conventions — Daicon III and IV — and have never been released commercially since they liberally borrow from all sorts of famous properties. Daicon IV is especially glorious, with its use of ELO’s “Twilight,” and was created by a who’s who of now famous anime directors — it was also the inspiration for the opening to the Train Man (Densha Otoko) series. Here are versions on YouTube: Daicon III & Daicon IV.

Categories
Anime Film

Aim for the Ace!

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You may remember that a few weeks ago I shared a really great primer on 80s anime. Since I’ve been enjoying dipping back into some of those old series, I decided to go one step further and try following that complete primer, going through everything that is recommended. Since it sticks to movies and OVAs, it’s not as time consuming as you’d think.

First up on the list is Aim for the Ace! (Ace wo Nerae!), a 70s series that follows a high-school girl as she competes in tennis tournaments. It’s one of my wife’s favorite series (she played tennis as well), and so I definitely knew about it but had never watched any of the TV series. The movie I watched, which came out in 1979, is a condensed version of that series, and you can tell, as it just zooms past so many things, feeling a bit manic at times. I quite enjoyed it though, in part for the fun 70s fashions and style, but especially for the very interesting ways they animate the tennis action. Sure, it’s over-the-top and pretty emo, but I liked watching it.

Categories
Anime Film

80s Anime Primer

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Following on the 80s anime I’ve been watching and posted about (Zeta Gundam, Macross, Queen Millennia), I’ve come across this really great primer to 80s anime. The list — that goes from 1979 to 1990 — is watch-friendly as it’s completely made of movies and OVAs (direct-to-video), so it’s easy to sample a lot of these (compared to having to get through an entire series). For me, it’s definitely a nostalgic list, and features a lot of stuff that I’ve either watched or knew about, but haven’t thought about in years. Think I’ll need to revisit quite a few of these.

Categories
Anime TV

The Super Dimension Fortress Macross

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I recently noticed that the Robotech series from the 80s was added to Netflix (in Canada), and so I thought I’d start watching it. I have memories of really liking the series back when I was kid, but also that I had barely watched any of it, probably because it was only available on cable, which we didn’t have — so I probably only caught episodes here and there at a friend’s house. So I excitedly sat down to start watching it and… I couldn’t get past the first 5 minutes. Never mind the fact that broadcast quality is surprisingly poor (I guess they didn’t take good care of preserving the original tapes), but what really got to me was the voice acting, that made my ears bleed. I was curious to see if watching the original Japanese series would make it better, and it indeed has.

Robotech was famously made up of 3 different series from Japan, slightly edited to make it all work together, so it could get over the minimum required number of episodes for syndication at the time. The first series that was used is The Super Dimension Fortress Macross, which runs 35 episodes. I’ve watched the 4 so far, and not only is the voice acting so much better (well, except for Minmei, who can be a bit grating), but so is the music, as well as the general quality of what I’m watching — and even from just the few minutes that I watched of Robotech, I could tell that they did some weird editing as well.

It’s yet another piece of 80s anime on my current watchlist (alongside Zeta Gundam and Queen Millennia), but I like alternating between these shows, watching a few episodes here and there. And it’s good to finally get a good look at the Macross storyline — and if I enjoy this, I’ll probably continue with The Super Dimension Cavalry Southern Cross, which was the second series to get incorporated into Robotech (the third series that made up all of Robotech, Genesis Climber MOSPEADA, wasn’t even part of the Super Dimension series).

Categories
Anime

Queen Millennia

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This is an old Leiji Matsumoto series from the 80s that I somehow had never heard of, despite the fact that in the US it had been released alongside the 70s Captain Harlock series, which is one of my favorite series of all time (albeit I watched it in its French incarnation, as Albator). I’ve only watched the first episode, but was immediately sucked into the mysterious storyline that starts with the discovery of a 10th planet that is on a collision course with Earth. I’ve purposely not done any more digging about the series, as I don’t want to get spoiled, but it does indeed appear to tie into the rest of Matsumoto’s stuff. Yet another series to add to my current watchlist.

Categories
Anime

Mobile Suit Gundam: Iron-Blooded Orphans

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As I mentioned in my fall 2016 post, the second season of this Gundam series started this month, and that got me wanting to check out the series from the start. I’ve gotten into Gundam this year in a big way, but have been sticking so far with shows that take place in the Universal Century timeline — I’m currently more than halfway watching Zeta Gundam, that aired in the mid-80s — but I’ve been in the mood to watch something Gundam that is more modern (sometimes there’s just so much 80s-style animation that you can take in) and despite this being one of the non-UC series, I’d heard good things about it and so figured I’d give it a shot. The first season runs 25 episodes, and I watched the first 4 over the weekend, and really enjoyed what I saw. So far, it’s the darkest Gundam series I’ve watched, as it deals with child soldiers and the horrors of war (although the horrors of war is a running theme in Gundam), with a main character (the pilot of the main Gundam suit) who is a child who show an absolute and scary level of desensitivity to violence. I’m very much looking forward to watching the rest of this series.