Ani-Zone 23

For our holiday special, we take a look at the “Christmas” Episode (Season 1 Number 4) of "Gunslinger Girl".  In which a theoretically secondary character (a traumatized Orphan rebuilt into a Cyborg Assassin).  Is sent with her big brother/handler (a disgraced ex-Europol agent) to Naples over the holiday to bring back a former Camorra to testify against his old bosses.  What happens sets off multiple subplots that will run for years, starts a character arc, and proves there is more to the show than misery tourism and gun fetishism.

Back in the day, English Releases were scarce and Otaku were men.  Seriously, it was something like a 80-20 ratio or more, which makes the release of our subject, the 6-volume Shojo OAV “Here is Greenwood”, a real outlier.  A shojo story with a mostly male cast, very little boy’s love, and a fourth wall somewhere between permeable and non-existent.  It’s a story of growing up, growing stronger, and growing beyond yourself.  

The Eighties are rolling on, Japan is getting richer by the day, and the geeks at Gainax have saved up enough money to do their own OVA, instead of doing side work for other studios.  They celebrate this new creation by putting in every idea they can invent or remember, and by tapping their golden boy as a first time director.  Many miles away, a Hugo-award-winning author is working on a movie script about giant robots for a director whose most famous credit is a dark comedy based on a H.P Lovecraft Story.  It will not end well, but hear us tell how his other works informed Gainax’s debut (and how he might have invented the Gainax ending for them).

We’re off to outer space, and going back to the 1970s. To look in on Japan’s most widely known Sci-fi story. How well known? Enough that your in-laws may well know the theme, widely enough known that parodies and spoofs from the 80s live on. We look at what makes it work, and just exactly who its Daddy is, and what it passed on to the shows that followed it. Then we look at the many sequels and remakes and see what about the show is still relevant.

Hayao Miyazaki made his reputation adapting the works of others, and became a legend when he started his own Studio.  In between, he made “Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind”.  We look at this famous outlier, where the familiar tropes (plucky heroines, giant Flying machines) meet stranger elements (A very dusty style, if this isn’t a Ghibli, It’s a Sirocco).  In between, Miyazaki creates a half-dozen shots so good someone will steal them down the line, and this noted Europhile brushes closest to embracing a European “style”.  Lastly, this noted old-school creator brings in a hot up-and-comer and gives him a special project all his own.  But it’s just a nigh-mystic, world-destroying, Giant Machine/Creature, nothing we’ll ever see again..

This week we look at Ranma ½.  The show the really broke Rumiko Takahashi in the US.  Unlike her earlier works, this doesn’t require 2 years of Japanese to follow the jokes, but you’ll need a scorecard to keep track of all the romantic entanglements.  We cover all the major characters, and as many of the minor ones as we can remember, and debate the dirtiness of its dirty old man, and exactly which anime dad is worst dad.

The third of Yaz’s “Movie Trilogy” Venus Wars is noted for spectacular animation and a certain failure to reach goals.  Yaz still isn’t talking about it, so we whip off our shades, break out our Who albums and dust off some really old comics to try to figure out what was changed (which isn’t too hard), and why it was (which is a whole other ball of wax).

For our 20th cast we journey to another time another place, but some very familiar-looking character designs. Bubblegum Crises is a love-letter to American Cult Movies. Featuring , killer robots, pretty girls in power armor and rock and roll. One of the early OVA hits that built Animeigo, cemented Kenichi Sonoda as THE character designer of the 80s, and left thousands fans wanting more, if only because it ended so suddenly.

Many of the shows we talk about started before many anime fans were born. By the time Kousuke Fujishima’s, Ah Megami-sama finished, it had “lived” longer than some of its fans. We look back at one of the earliest magical girlfriend shows, and the three animated adaptions, spaced along its run. Broden joins us to remember romance and school hijinks that kept this property afloat for a quarter century and through multiple market crashes. We talk of manly senpais, annoying siblings, lots ice cream and a romance that fate can’t decide whether to protect against all comers, or destroy at any cost.

You may not know his name, but you've definitely seen his designs.  Before one of his works broke him worldwide.  Masamume Shirow was the king of dystopian  cyberpunk cop shows.  That may seem a narrow superlative, but Shirow is not your normal manga creator.  We look at his early days and works, and how the foreign market helped "make" him.  And the persistence and popularity of a mech design he helped codify, and the girls he drew to go in them.