Though Art and Anime go hand in hand for me, my passion for anime has outgrown itself...
I especially love anime, even moreso when it is true-to-life. Don't know why really. I think my love of realistic fantasy artwork just naturally expanded into the life-like motion that was anime. Couple this with the growth of animated television while I was growing up, and one might think that it was instilled in me. However, I'm not so sure. I remember watching shows like Looney Tunes and Hanna-Barberra, but even then, I leaned more towards shows like He-man and the Transformers. Still, I absolutely hated those moral "G.I. Joe" endings. You know, the ones where they always told you the moral of the story. I preferred reading between the lines to all that shameless explicitedness. Shoot, half the time, I found more in the story than what they said we should have learned. Personally, some things are better left unsaid.
And then Robotech came out. Just like Dragonlance, I became enthralled. Only this time, there was no apparent reason. I mean the beginning story was cool (Codename: Robotech), good enough to suck me in. Riding the waves of the Transformer craze, the idea of transforming airplanes was nothing new. Aliens from outer space, that was nothing new either. Cocky fighter pilots, we were all used to that. Still, there was just something about the show as a whole, something which just held me captive. I suppose I was still fascinated with the whole transforming robot thing. After all, my imagination constantly ran wild with the endless possibilities of such a creation and what it would be like if they really existed. Even now, whilst I reminisce, I can picture myself riding down the highway, testing that new Cyclone prototype, the envy of a 1000 wide-eyed onlookers. Ah, those were the days.
Still, that's not what held me enthralled before my waning picture tube as I rushed home from school every day just to make sure that I didn't miss taping a single second of that show. And once I plopped down for that meager half-hour of animated enjoyment, I forsook everything: homework, chores, even playtime with my fellow friends. "Glued to the television" is what my mom used to say. My whole life whirled around this show. If I was outside playing a game, I would conveniently schedule my breaks at a certain time of the day. If I had chores or homework, I would always do them during commercials and around the show. When the show first started, I could easily catch the show after I got out of school;but when they changed to an earlier time slot, I found myself running home to catch the show. I would even time myself. 12 minutes from school exit to front door step. And when I taped the show, I did it while watching just so I could pause out the commercials. When cable went down, or storms interferred, I wouldn't just get upset, I would get downright mad.
But my blissful torture was not to last forever. Inevitably, when the show finally went off the air a few years later, I was left with a void which I longed to fill. Robotech was more than just another show... it was the show. Even now, it is one of the best shows I have ever known. It was a soap opera for kids, and I loved it! Without Robotech, I often wonder where I would be today. Yup, that show caused me much pain, but it was all worth it. It's hard to believe that as young as I was, I really fell into the drama and action and intrigue which that show expressed, with plot twists and people who actually died. Now there's one thing I hated about G.I. Joe. No matter how many bullets were fired or bombs exploded, the heroes always somehow survived. That's so lame. I must've been like 13 or 14, and even then I thought it was lame. Even then, I understood that show. Even then, I understood Robotech. But alas, I wax nostalgic.
And then came Macross Plus. Although not the first, this film was and is among one of the many films that would fill the void which Robotech left. Though still not Robotech, anime films were, as far as I was concerned, the next best thing. Of course, for any anime lover, there was only one real film at the time, none other than Akira, the one that took America into the next generation. My first taste of that show was a bandit copy my friends had picked up in the computer room at my high school. Some poor sap had left it behind, we discovered it, and as they say, the rest is history. His loss was our gain. Of course, we thought it was a porno, but oddly, no one complained. If poetry could be given a graphical face, Akira was it. This film was not just a cartoon, it was eye candy. Every motion, every detail, was so painstakingly perfect, it was hard to imagine that it could get any better.
There is this one scene where this guy rest up against a chain link fence, and the chain link fence doesn't just move, it shakes. This was just something you didn't see in American cartoons. Two-dimensional characters just did not affect the world around them. Smoke wasn't supposed to fly in the same direction that the wind was blowing someones coat. Beads of sweat on someones forehead wasn't supposed to drip off and ripple a puddle of water. Action did not need a reaction in a 'cartoon.'But in this anime, it wasn't like watching a cartoon. It was like watching a movie... a real movie. Visually phenomenal. And do you want to know what the real kicker was? It was all in Japanese! Not even one subtitle! It wasn't only a bandit copy, it was a bandit copy of a foreign import! It was one of lifes greatest jokes, ironical at best. Here was something which would transform the very expectations of what I now demand from artwork and animation, and I couldn't understand a single word of it.
Only now, years later and after getting the Special Edition DVD, can I now appreciate the tremendous effort it took to bring that thing to life. Only now, with the English dubbing, can I also fully enjoy the story as well. The subtitles don't do the real story any justice. But then again, I didn't originally like it for the story.
