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Missing the anime classics
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The 80's were awesome because even anime had bad hair
The arrival of Guin Saga reminded me of days long since passed. The days of scouring pawn shops for Central Park Media's Slayers releases. Staring wide eyed at the old ADV previews filled with Knights of Ramunes, Maze and City Hunter trailers. Boxes upon boxes of old VHS tapes are all that is left of those golden days.
It was a time when getting an episode per day at screaming 21k/s was considered top notch, and anyone with dual-ISDN was considered a demigod of the Internet Plane. These were the days when anime studios couldn't pop up out of anyone with a basement, a laptop, and an amateur J-pop idol. The quality of the stories were much stronger. While there were still cheesy, poorly done series on the market, every season brought about a wide amount of enjoyable variety.
These were times of Parn, Pirotess, P-chan and Ayanokoji Pai. A time when Record of Lodoss War and Magic Knight Rayearth fansites covered the Geocities and Angelfire nations. When being comedy meant there had to be at least one randomly produced giant mallet, and when Steampunk didn't mean "Oh yeah Steamboy was pretty good".
The age of fans painting cels and posting them on ebay, and a time when you could be pen pals with doujin circles to get their manga with as little as an email. The age before Final Fantasy sucked.
This isn't to say that there aren't any modern epics. Seirei no Moribito, Monster, Elfen Lied, Shingetsutan Tsukihime, Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann to name a few in the mainstream are certainly wonderful, but the magic simply doesn't spread as well as it used to.
It all began while at a nearby Books-A-Million last week. There were certainly a few different types in the Default Otaku area, from the blatantly Gothic Loli type to the average Tokyopop sniffer flipping through manga, and a couple of tabletop warriors talking around a Dungeons and Dragons Manual of the Planes. A relatively older man came up to me as I was shuffling through something anyone from the classics generation would kill to have--an artbook with Masamune Shirow illustrations. We started talking about a few older OVAs such as Black Magic M-66 and Dominion Tank Police. It managed to catch the attention of a few others around.
The 80's were awesome because the clothes were bad
As it turned out, a lot of the group hadn't a clue of the titles we rambled on about. Some of them barely had an idea about Birdy the Mighty, seeing as it had a recent remake, but the once mainstream series that no otaku dare admit missing were a mystery.
None of them knew of the great Armitage, which boasted a wonderful plot and a strong emotional message for any sci-fi fan. Record of Lodoss War was familiar, but not Legend of Crystania. Project A-Ko was universally unknown. Even by the old guy. Iczer returned blank stares until flipping through a few pictures.
Naturally, it was my duty to alert the internets. While my ex badgered me to jump on the painful grind online game Lineage II, I asked her if she remembered any of the old series. Venus Wars, Grandeek(though it is a bit newer) and Shadowskill came up. AnimeNFO managed to keep up a few titles that had slipped through the cracks of time, but most of the audience was fairly in the dark.
Have the classics been lost in the flood of new Naruto/Bleach/One Piece episodes? Though there is a new season starting soon that needs to be previewed, maybe its time to get back to our roots. Even though the art styles may be a bit dated, but the content is still there. Watching an original is much better that seeing yet another pastey School Love churnout.
The 80's were awesome because there were girls on the internet
Sadly, a lot of the old series have been long since lost. Either their licenses were picked up by companies that went out of business, or they were so obscure in Japan that only the deepest, darkest ftp archives in the darkest recesses of BBS remnants hold any memories.
For those who want a taste of what existed before Bleach, and those who got their start watching Dragonball Z/Sailor Moon/Blue Sub No.6 on Cartoon Network, here is a taste of the quality that too many fans are missing.
