My Taste In Anime

It's strange to think that in my life I have found this animation style, especially when considering I only had an inkling as to what it was really about. I was 15 at the time, and I'm nearing the 10 year mark with this hobby of mine, and I can honestly say I've gone through all kinds of stages to end up where I have today.

I began with exposure to anime reviews in a game magazine of mine entitled "Game Fan." In this magazine, they were promoting an anime named Macross Plus, and it had some really amazing design work as I peered through the pictures. My brother in the same token had read their review on Gunsmith Cats, and the both of us thought about the prospect of checking out some anime to see what we've been missing.

The only exposure I've had to anime before this realization was an airing of Dominion Tank Police on The Movie Channel and a really late showing of Galaxy Express 999 on the Sci-fi Channel. I didn't really acknowledge them as "anime" at the time, but they made an impact on my decision to press forward when I looked at those anime reviews in my game mag.

The experience that Macross Plus showed to a newcomer like me was something I couldn't have replicated in my childhood previously, especially since the production had a real knack for looking sleek and stylistic in its pop-covered sheen. The animation for all the combat sequences was quite breathtaking, and the tension was well built. Add in the smooth gunplay touch of Gunsmith Cats, and we had a great night of anime viewing that would change the both of us.

Showing an interest in buying more anime, I seeked out some other titles that came to memory. My second purchase was originally going to be Akira, but I read the back of the VHS Sleeve to Fist of the North Star and felt I could use a martial arts experience. The final result was endless laughter by me and my friends, the violence was just over the top, and the characters acted so corny. However, the previews at the beginning of the VHS were provided by the already deceased distributor Streamline Pictures. It was during this preview sequence that I became fascinated with wanting to see some of their older products, Wicked City and Neo Tokyo being the titles that made me really drop my jaw. But those two would have to wait until I got around to Akira, which was also a great viewing experience.

I even discovered Animeigo around this time and immediately bought Madox-01 for its unique sounding premise. Thankfully, it delivered on entertaining me, and I suddenly became familiar with their catalogue as well.

After buying some anime from Animeigo and Streamline Pictures, I shifted back to the guys at Manga Entertainment, given they did help me a great deal with Macross Plus. It was around this period I would view the single best piece of anime I would ever see, The Wings of Honneamise. The directing was at a nice, brisk pace, and the design work was breathtaking. Add in some rather cheeky humor and we had an experience that would likely grab a hold of me and show me what I really wanted in my anime viewings.

Another anime I will quickly mention is Robot Carnival, which was my first foray into uniquely presented anime. It had a collection of shorts that functioned in a sort of Fantasia-esque way with musical scores and no spoken dialogue for all but two segments. However, it was the two spoken segments that became my biggest favorites. Presence was a deep and brooding take on a man making a machine to better understand his own feelings, and A Tale of Two Robots being a parody on mecha shows by having a battle so old-school that the technology is what, in essence, is keeping the battle from progressing any further.

Not too long after this, I became familiar with the concept known as "fansubbing." It was around this period I also became hungry for newer and more unique experiences than what I was having, and my first calling card was Hyper Police. Hyper Police had the strangest universe, it embodied humans and other entities, like beasts and gods for instance. There was also some moments where characters would have to go through the legal system to get things done, and even go through some of the politics tied to their world. For being a series that seemed atypical at first, it became very intriguing and influential on me as well.

I would watch plenty of anime in the coming years that have been well worth my time, such as Perfect Blue and The Castle of Cagliostro. But it was during this particular segment of my life, when I was 18, where I discovered director Mamoru Oshii, my overall biggest influence in my time being an anime fan.

I found out about Angel's Egg from a site I always frequent named theanimereview.com, in which it was given an A. Curious as to the unique stylings and dark atmosphere, I was eager to watch something that had some challenge to it. I got a fansubbed VHS, in which the second segment of Twilight Q was included, and I found myself spellbound by the visual and symbolic approach to Oshii's directing. Angel's Egg was a visual feast of breathtaking visuals and constant underlying meaning with each and every scene, and I would find myself analyzing it for quite some time. The Twilight Q segment that came afterward was also directed by Oshii, and it showed a real unique storytelling method that was dialogue driven and ultimately content with screwing up the viewer's perception of reality.

Both productions would give me a double-whammy of artsy proportions, as they were unlike anything I've ever seen in my entire life, and it was at this point I wanted to own everything the man had ever done. I would then discover such other gems from Oshii like Beautiful Dreamer, the first two Patlabor films, and his live-action film Stray Dog. I would also give Ghost in the Shell another viewing and don a newfound appreciation for it as a result of knowing the director better from much research.

At this point, I became fond of many other directors, like Hideaki Anno. Of course, a friend of mine practically shoved Neon Genesis Evangelion down my throat, but I would promptly thank him for it afterward. It was a very emotional series that seemed to stem from bouts of pain the director himself felt, and I could feel it onscreen whenever Shinji or anyone else had their doubts about themselves or their world. Evangelion had a profound effect on me, but it would be barely trumped my another of his works that really shook the hell out of me. This work was Gunbuster.

I actually wasn't impressed with Gunbuster upon my first viewing on a funny note, as I dismissed it in the wake of Evangelion as being something of an atypical mecha series and wrote it off as "fun, but not life changing." A year later I would watch it again, and this time, the results were surprising. I saw hope in character Noriko Takaya, as she was actually one of the strongest, most determined characters I had ever seen. Even when she had her doubts, she was sincere about her position and did the right thing when it came time for her to make a decision. Of course, it helped a lot when I got to witness the sequence in the fourth episode where she was crying to herself in her room before a big battle, which really gave me a little buildup to say the least.

But the most interesting aspect of Gunbuster that I felt was how Anno changed direction after this and made a more negative outcome with Evangelion, almost as if the differences between them was a matter of who Anno was in 1988, and who he was in 1996. They're both big favorites of mine, even today, but the differences they have are definitely quite staggering.

After Gunbuster, I can safely say I was completely shaped into who I am now, though I've definitely seen some awesome anime aside from those notable productions that shaped my interests. As a result of what I was exposed to in the first few years of being a fan, the 80s have an strong hold on me, I can't deny that. The 90s are also quite dominant when considering what distributors had out at the time. But as the 2000s are coming to a close, with 2010 not too far away, I can definitely say I am hardly in touch with this decade and I'm looking to watch some series I've missed throughout the last five or so years that I've been meaning to get to.

Along with a few classics of course. ^_^