Where It Started
I don’t exactly try to hide that I am a … somewhat avid? … consumer of certain types of Japanese fiction in various forms. This started decades ago with anime. And even that started first with the Americanized stuff that was released just as “normal” cartoons. Think of things such as … say … Battle of the Planets (originally Science Ninja Team Gatchaman) and Star Blazers (originally Space Battleship Yamato).
Since, at the time, I was also a regular customer at the New York Forbidden Planet store, I also regularly saw the Gundam and Mazinger and what-not models they had on display in their basement, so I was certainly … aware? … there was more to it than the limited stuff I was seeing.
I remember, at the time, thinking they were “really cool” and, of course, the utterly different art style was really nice. However, the Americanization had done what it typically did at the time – it cut out much of the overarching story and also removed any serious … consequences … of actions. Merely as an example – almost anyone “killed” (or annihilated or vaporized by the Wave-Motion Gun of the Yamato (the original “BFG”) was merely a robot – no one “real” died.
For Star Blazers, this, of course, made next to no sense since the Yamato was on a mission to keep all of Earth from being destroyed, but – whatever, right?
Robotech
Then came what was, for me, the one show that “broke” the mold. Yes, I’m speaking of none other than Robotech – the monstrosity which was three separate and completely unrelated anime series stitched together to make a veritable … Frankenstein’s Anime Monster. The first arc of the story was, for me at the time, positively gag-inducing (I would have happily ripped out Minmei’s intestines, strangled her with them, and tossed her body out an airlock for the Zentradi to recover, the “love triangle” story was so bad).
However, what made the story utterly fascinating for me, was, early on, the episode that ended with Roy (who was Rick’s … cousin?, I think) landed back on the SDF after a particularly grueling round of space combat. And then … in a closing image – there’s blood clearly shown on the pilot’s seat.
What happened next was what was riveting. Roy died. Yes – someone who had, until this point, been presented, clearly, as a major side character in an Americanized version of an anime was dead. No “badly wounded”; no “it wasn’t really him”; no “it was an android” … or any shit like that. An actual human main character – who we, as the audience, had gotten to know – was dead as a result of space combat.
Ok – I was hooked. Yeah, I still hated Minmei, and tried really hard to grit my teeth through the whole Minmei-Rick-Lisa love triangle. [At least it did end with Rick pairing with the relatively solid and not-crazy-that-way Lisa.]
Expanding the Horizons
I don’t even recall how it came about, but somehow, in the late ’80s, I’d gotten in touch with an anime club down at Rutgers New Brunswick. Remember, this was before there was “really” any sort of Internet, so it was mostly BBS (Bulletin Board Systems) or some sort of mailing list – and finding those was non-trivial.
They invited me to come for a Saturday showing of a couple of things which they’d managed to, somehow, get from Japan. Specifically, they had VHS tape copies of … hold your breath … Tonari no Totaro and Project A-Ko. Note – these were not subtitled and there were no dubbed versions at the time.
These were raw, fresh off a plane from Japan, in the original Japanese. Someone had, somehow?, translated the scripts and printed them out – two large stacks of a lot of pages … of which there was only one copy, of course. So it got passed around among the 10 or so of us gathered there to just bask in this anime goodness.
[Oh, while, these days, everyone knows how god-like Hayao Miyazaki is, and Totoro has become fairly … standardized? … Project A-Ko is an absolute gem of a movie.]
Before I left Rutgers to return home, I made arrangements with the club organizer to make me VHS copies of both movies and print off the scripts as well. Again, this was back in the days when the only way to copy a movie was to have two VHS players with the output of one connected to the input of the other … and let the movie play through its entire run-time.
Somewhere, buried in all of the other VHS tapes (and with no way to play them), I still have those two treasures of my personal past.
I’m pretty sure there was one more weekend showing I attended – to watch Castle in the Sky Laputa, the first episode of Bubblegum Crisis, and The Dagger of Kamui – again, of course, without any sort of translation other than a paper script we all passed around. I say this simply because I positively remember watching all three in their “raw” form although I don’t recall the exact circumstances. This is also one of the reasons I passed down a Priss T-shirt to my older son.
Now I could fully understand and embrace the awesomeness which was Japanese fiction.
Moving into Manga
Around that time, I was also starting to semi-seriously collect comic books. A friend I met as a result of a college internship at IBM was an avid comic collector, and we would meet at a comic store in Greenwich Village in New York City – every Thursday evening. We’d go to the store, buy waaay too many issues, and then stop for a couple of slices of pizza before catching the PATH train back to Jersey City and then going our separate ways once more.
This was also around when manga (Japanese comic books) were making major headway into the American market. I can’t remember all of the stuff I collected, but definitely know I’d gotten the complete translated run of Maison Ikkoku, and a good chunk (from the beginning of Ranma 1/2. Yes, Rumiko Takahashi was appreciated, at least by me, even back then.
Subtitled Anime Blasts Into The West
Somewhere around that time, Animeigo started releasing subtitled VHS versions of a lot of stuff, and I was ordering consistently. Yes, I definitively have VHS tapes for Bubblegum Crisis and, I’m pretty sure, The Dagger of Kamui. I also have VHS of a good portion of the start of Ranma 1/2 as well as a bunch of other stuff. [It’s buried away and I do, actually, have plans to dig through them and compile a list – mainly so that I can sell it to someone who might be a collector of such – if I can find someone, that is.]
Moving to DVDs Also
Of course, after collecting a metric ton (ok, perhaps I exaggerate – but not necessarily by a lot) of VHS, time and technology advanced and I started getting DVDs … including DVD versions of some stuff I had previously owned on VHS. I had to make sure I could still watch it, right.
Also, anime was becoming more … accepted … in the West. I don’t recall what I did or did not watch during all of this. I know that I did see Cowboy Bebop (yes, the anime truly is as legendary as you’ve ever heard). But, otherwise … time passed.
The Dark Ages, Then Streaming
More time passed, including many life-shaping (and life-changing) personal events which I won’t get into. Fast forward to a few years ago when I wanted to get back into anime. I have always vastly preferred subtitled over dubbed (with, oddly, only one exception – the aforementioned Cowboy Bebop; dunno why but the English VAs did a truly stellar job with it). So, in that regard, I am definitely a “subtitle purist”.
I started watching some of the anime that Netflix carried (no, you don’t get a link to there – if you can’t figure it out, that’s probably for the best). And, shortly thereafter, I also got a subscription to Crunchyroll. (No, I’m not shilling for them and that’s not any sort of sponsor link – it just goes directly to their main site.)
Ahhh… the blessed days of consuming anime were back, baby!
Beyond Streaming
As a result of one particular show on Crunchyroll (no, I won’t name which one) I got into a few fairly extensive discussions with some people about that show. That led me to the expanded discovery of fan-translated versions of the source manga for that show – revealing there to be so much more to the story than just what had been adapted.
The Internet being what it is, there were, of course the usual set of online arguments and such about the way the source manga (since it was still ongoing at that time) would go and about the different characters.
This also led to a reasonable desire to actually support the author with more than just having watched the adaptation. [One of the standard reasons for an adaptation is actually to drive / increase sales of the manga.] When I searched for a way to purchase (even though I had already read them) that manga as well as the previous work of the mangaka (manga author), that led me to the only place I could find …
BookWalker
Seriously – I’m not shilling for them. I get absolutely nothing if you click that link – it’s a clean link.
Here, I could purchase ebook versions of the collected volumes of the manga (which I did). And there, I also discovered so much other stuff, including what are known as Light Novels (often called just “LNs”).
I’m not entirely sure how best to describe them if you’ve never encountered such. They’re typically serialized stories, spanning several volumes, with the story still “in creation” by the author. They include sporadic illustrations of the characters or pivotal(-ish) scenes.
If you’ve ever been a fan of the old Hardy Boys or Nancy Drew sorts of books, I would suggest those are the best Western equivalent, although LNs have definite story progression and character development for the length of their run and are, indeed, telling a complete and comprehensive story along the way – not just individual episodes which can be read in any order.
I’ve grown rather fond of several, with So I’m a Spider, So What? being the first of those. [Or read my other previous blog post about The Saga of Tanya the Evil.]
What’s My Point?
Amusingly, I’d planned this post to be about a specific (current) Light Novel, but I then decided to throw in a bunch of backstory. I hadn’t quite expected to do this much backstory, but, apparently, when I have something to say … I can’t shut up about it.
There’s going to be a (much shorter, I promise) next post regarding that specific title.
Stay tuned for the rest of it!
