Mistakes of Youth: The Blog (Powered by EXCELLENCE!)

Note: I’m basically talking out of my butt for this one. If there are any big mistakes, let me know.

When I watch 90s anime it’s always kind of a weird experience. Despite growing up with the stuff, each time I start on any given 90s title, I feel a little lost. This is probably because when I’m watching a 90s show, I’m watching it completely out of context.

Let me explain. If I were to watch something made in the 1960s, I’d watch it knowing that a lot of the shows made in the 60s were Astro Boy clones. If I were to watch something made in the 1970s, I’d watch it knowing the climate of fandom in the 70s, and so on. I’ve learned about various decades’ fandom through literature and anime like Genshiken and Otaku no Video, but each time I turn on some 90s show, I come to the realization that I know almost nothing about that decade’s fandom in Japan. Aside from reading the Notenki Memoirs, my knowledge of 90s fandom is very limited. As such, I’m wondering– are there any anime or manga titles that depict fandom in the 1990s?

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Last night I watched the cam-sub of Rebuild of Evangelion. While the movie doesn’t suffer as much as the Zeta movies do from compression (the Zeta movies were damn near incomprehensible) it does rob the earlier installments of the show of their lighter charm. Naturally, since this movie is an anime-blogger-like summary version of the first six episodes, it constantly punches you in the face with all the “important stuff” leaving the lighter moments of the opening episodes on the cutting room floor. These lighter moments are important, I find. People accuse Evangelion of having a lot of filler at the beginning, but let’s be honest, it needed it. The series gradually eased you into the real meat of it, and didn’t just drop you smack dab in the middle. This is what makes it work well for me, and I find it a lot better than, say, Bokura No’s approach, which was forcing tales of death upon you week after week. That said, redone Operation Yashima is great.

Also, there’s something of a small plot hole in the movie, and I hope it gets addressed in the form of added footage in the DVD release. I made this point earlier, but I’ll touch on it again– the movie introduces Toji with him smashing Shinji’s nose in. I found this introduction to be quite awkward since it never really had any sort of build up. Now, the plot hole here lies in how Toji knew Shinji was the Eva pilot in the first place. I figured I might have missed such a detail watching it raw, but with subs it seems there’s never a scene showing how he came across such information. If I recall correctly, the original series had a scene in which the entire class finds out Shinji is the pilot (it was established that there was a rumour going about that he was the pilot) and ask him a bunch of questions in the middle of class. In the movie, they don’t have this scene at all, let alone tell you about the rumour. It strikes me as quite clumsy of Gainax to overlook this. Hopefully they’ll fix it.

Finished Devil Hunter Yohko last night, and it was good. The show doesn’t go out of its way to impress you with a complex plot or original story telling, but it’s well done popcorn action plus T&A that any guy can get behind and ride for a few hours. As such, you can’t really write much about the show, but I do have a few observations, one of which lies in the style change that happens between episode 5 and episode 6. There wasn’t that much time between the production episodes 5 and 6, so why does the last episode look all angular and late 90s all of a sudden? Not that I have any problem with that, as I find the designs of the last episode to be the best, but it just strikes me as odd. Also, the last episode is like an episode of Tsukuyomi with action, except for instead of Neko-Mimi-Vampire lolis we have girls in China dresses cutting up demons. Good to see Shinbo exercising his weirdness as early as the mid 90s.

My other observation has to do with the promo art for the series. The two other girls on this cover that aren’t Yoko and Azusa don’t show up in the show at all. Well, the pink-haired one looks like a re-coloured Haruka, but I’m drawing a blank on the other. Any hardcore Yohko fans have an idea?

So Bad Boy, showing your back.
And smoking a cigarette,
Caressing the scar from the fight.
So, Hey, Bad Boy, you are
Just a little klutzy
Compared with others, Bad Boy.

May or may not write more about Devil Hunter Yohko later. That last episode sure was 90s, angular, and Shinbo, though. Quite a departure from the rest of it.

Current
Clannad: It’s good. I think it has nice characters and a number of good scenes, but thus far the main stories have been kind of weak.
Dragonaut: I don’t even know why anymore…
Ghost Hound: Still moves at a snail’s pace, but that doesn’t really bother me at all. Something of a plot seems to be developing, and I’m hoping it involves more Miyako screentime.
Hakaba Kitarou: Deliciously dark and enjoyable. Needs Nekomusume :3
Hayate no Gotoku: Nearly over, and I shed HOT TEARS OF SHAME. Another year-long season, please?
Kaiji: Show kind of got weaker after GAMBLEBOAT but it’s still fairly enjoyable. I hope E-Card is more complicated than it looks.
Minami-ke ~Okawari~: Most certainly different, but that’s not a bad thing. It looks good, but you can tell Asread is still a bit green with some cuts here and there. Probably not as funny as the last one, but still enjoyable. You can tell they’re trying.
Rosario + Vampire: Apparently has no inbetweening. Yeah, this animation is super cheapo, but the characters are always on model, so that’s good. I could probably stand it for another nine episodes.
Shana II: Stuff happens.
Wolf and Spices: Pretty good, but not totally awesome. Probably a step above a lot of stuff airing right now, though.
Zoku Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei: EXTREME. Shinbo and Co. play with original manga material, usually with hilarious results.

Mr. Sunshine used some underhanded marketing tactics and got me into watching They Are My Noble Masters. I’ll check it out soon.

Not so current
Baccano!: Finishing the rest tonight. Just plain fun, but I hope all the stupid commotion makes sense in the end.
Devil Hunter Yohko: Finally finishing this after many years. Lots of nudity, action and dirty jokes– so basically good stuff for growing boys.

Devil Hunter Yohko was the shit (as the kids say) back when my buds and I were something like 12/13 years old. Along with the first Tenchi movie, it was one of the first UNCUT AND UNEDITED anime we ever set our impressionable little eyes on. VIOLENCE! GORE! SEX! CURSING! DIRTY JOKES! It was a dream come true for us, just going through puberty and discovering what happens “down there.”

Looking back on the first episode now it’s uh… quite rough. You can’t really say something like Devil Hunter Yoko is really good or bad, it just is. Further episodes look better, given Madhouse had budget due the success of the first one, so I guess it gets better. I’m going to watch it all just because I own it, and never really got around to finishing it. Well, I did “finish” it but watching the end dubbed with the volume on 2 during a sleepover trying not wake parents up hardly counts as watching. Also, Shinbo did the last episode, so that’s another reason to finish it.

Also, I totally didn’t know Mugihito was in the first episode. Awesome.