Hellooooo my sweet watchers! Having a good summer time?

As for Lovux, she’s been watching a lot of old anime lately. And by old, I don’t mean those who have like 10-15 years behind them, but a bunch of classics from the 70s and 80s that are older than I am. And now, my question for everyone who’s reading this is:

How do you feel about old-school anime? Have you seen any anime from the 70s/80s (or maybe the 60s?)? What did you think of it? And if you haven’t seen any old-school anime, would you like to do so? Or not? Explain your reasoning.

As for myself, it should be obvious that I LOVE old-school anime. Not only because my most beloved, unshakeable all-time favourite anime happens to be made in 1986, but because I am way more excited about watching older animes than I am about most animes made in the 00s. I have several old animes on my to-watch list, compared to only a handful of “modern” shows.
But an unfortunate problem about liking old anime is that… you’re pretty lonely about it. You can only find a dozen episodes subbed and then the fansub teams seem to go on a never-ending hiatus. I can’t blame them if real life kicks in and makes them unable to keep up their fansub hobby, but one important factor is the support from the fans – the fans make it worth for the fansub team to keep on doing their work. But alas, old-school animes in general aren’t labeled as “cool” or “interesting” and therefore not popular, and therefore it’s not worth it for the fansub to go through all the troubling that comes with translating and timing and encoding and what not. Today, an anime needs pantyshots on moe girls and white-haired pretty boys with ambiguous relationships with other pretty boys to be “cool” and “interesting” and thus popular. That, or shiny, flashy epic “IMAFIRINGMAHLAZORZ” mecha robots.

I’m not saying that all modern anime are like that, but several are. I’m not even saying that old-school anime are completely without flaws or fanservice either (*cough*Panytshots*cough*), but it wasn’t as overdone and “in your face” as today. From what I have watched, many old-school animes put more focus on the characters and the story-telling, to make sure the characters make developments and come across as actual humans, not one-dimensional tools used to portray a stereotype we’ve seen hundreds of times or to press your fetish buttons. Human drama is a priority here, not the flashy epicness, even if it DOES get dragged-out at times (but that’s a common problem even for modern animes).

Maybe it’s the animation that scares people away? While I can agree that the lineart of the characters can be really shaky at times and that the colours are limited to whatever jars the animators had at the studio at the moment… there’s a warmth and genuineness that can’t be matched with today’s CG-animations. It’s the same thing with live-action films – I think the puppets used in the old Star Wars movies are much more charming and full of life than the computer-made, “ perfect” nothings in the new movies.
(^ if THAT is your reason you don’t watch old-school anime, because it’s a completely aesthetic problem, then I sincerely ask you to jump off a cliff)

With this journal, I don’t want to say that all anime as of today are shallow, inhumane or sucky and that the old ones are perfect and flawless. If you get that impression from this journal, I humbly apologize. It’s not that I have an outright certain preference between the two. If I stumble upon an anime whose summary seems interesting, I’ll watch it. I love anime for what they are, nor for what decade they are from.
But I do think it’s a shame that there are anime fans who aren’t as open-minded.

One of the most important factors why I like old anime so much is probably because – I grew up with it (and I’m sure many of YOU did as well). My first anime ever was Starzinger ([link]), or maybe it was Sandybell ([link]), but the memories I have from those shows will always be very dear to me. They helped me grow up to the person I am today, and they have given me tons and tons of inspiration. Starzinger in particular, which leads us to my latest obsession.

Starzinger happens to be created by Matsumoto Leiji, who is one of Japan’s most influential manga-kas through all time. His style is very easy to recognize, mostly because he only has three types of characters – brave heroes with emo haircuts, skinny-as-hell women with Rapunzel-hair and three-feet tall comic-relief pygmies. But I swear; those three types have withstood the tooth of time greatly, and are way more memorable than today’s cutter-cloned moe girls and yaoified bishounen. Not to mention that deep characterizations and thoughtful stories that never jump the shark must be that man's specialty!! Starzinger learned me that. Years later, I learned that from Galaxy Express 999. This summer, I learned that from Captain Harlock.
A funny thing about Matsumoto’s work is that his characters make cameo appearences in each other’s works, i.e. he loves cross-overs. After a prequel that tells us the backstory of one of the main characters from Galaxy Express, where the charismatic Harlock shows up as a side character, I was really eager to watch his own series from the 70s. Did so roughly a month ago… and it was mthfckn awesome!! It had a few short-comings, but still manages to be one of the best and entertaining series I’ve ever seen. Good story, good characters, good music… So in less than two weeks I managed to watch as good as ALL Harlock-centric material there is (and that’s a lot). Then I went for the Galaxy Express 999-stuff. Marathoned the three movies in a day, and I am completely stunned. I even tried some series of which you can only find a few episodes subbed (such as Harlock’s second TV series, and Queen Millennia, which apparently was a ground-breaking hit in Asia when it came), and it just left me hungry for more, more, MORE!!! MOOOOORRREEE!!! Damn you Matsumoto Leiji for creating such an addictive universe (literary!) with wonderful characters.
(And it certainly helps that one of those wonderful characters happens to be a tall, handsome, cape-clad bishie that is so manly, people nicknamed him GARlock... )

... Okay, I’m done. Take care. Go swimming. Pick flowers. Smash mosquitoes. Watch the clouds in the sky. Enjoy your summer time – don’t just sit in front of a computer and read about a poor otaku girl’s insignificant thoughts on old cartoons from Japan!


Ginga Nagareboshi Gin