Thursday, September 19, 2013

GUIDE TO JAPANESE ANIMATION


Two hundred years ago
(in 1985)
nobody knew
nothin' 
about
Japanese animation.

Sure,
there was 
Speed Racer
and 
Star Blazers 
and stuff.
But there was also this 
MASSIVE
hidden world of 
movies and TV series
from Japan
that had no way of 
getting to the US.

And then one day I was at
a teeny tiny comic book convention in
Valley Forge, PA
and I stumbled across a table
where a bootleg VHS copy of this
was playing:


Macross: Love -  Do You Remember?

I immediately bought a copy and watched it 
over and over and over again
even though
I HAD NO 
IDEA WHAT THE HELL
WAS GOING ON!!!

It was completely in Japanese with
NO SUBTITLES!
And there was
no such thing as
internets
to help me find out
WHAT THE HELL
WAS GOING ON!!!

But there were giant robots 
shooting lasers and missiles.

I can understand that
and
I soon bought other movies:

Black Magic M-66
Vampire Hunter D
Angel's Egg
Area 88

All of them were incredibly cool and
incredibly different from American cartoons

AND I HAD INCREDIBLY NO 
IDEA WHAT THE HELL
WAS GOING ON!!!


My growing fascination with anime
eventually led me to a Japanese book store
in Philadelphia called
Books Nippan.
That's where I found this:



It was originally the program guide for 
a Japanese animation festival at
Baycon '86.
But this edition was distributed
by Books Nippan
as a primer for people
like me that needed to 
know what the hell was going on
in their bootleg anime VHS tapes.


If you like anime,
you should really find
and thank him since he's one of the 
original pushers of anime on the
American public.

The book is filled with
basic synopses
of over 50 
old-school anime titles.

Like Urusei Yatsura:


Lupin:


Lensman:


Crusher Joe:


Nausicaa:


Area 88:


Vampire Hunter D:


And my first love,
Macross: Love - Do You Remember?



Since Japanese storytelling is often 
a bit wonky compared to what we're used to,
the synopses were often only marginally helpful.

In the case of
Angel's Egg,
which is just a moody,
stream of consciousness story,
there wasn't much to explain:


But in the pre-interweb
days this book
was a life saver!


If you're into old-school anime,
see if you can find a copy of this book!



2 comments:

  1. You're absolutely right about the awesomeness of Toren Smith ... but sadly, he passed away earlier this year. -.- Pour a 40 oz of Pocari Sweat on the curb in his memory.

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  2. GAH! i had no idea mr. smith passed away! I'm totally raising an glass of Otokoyama to the man!

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