Saturday Anime: History Lesson Part 2

Here we are again with another addition of Saturday Anime.  You know, last week I had such a good time reminiscing about anime from my childhood, I thought it would be interesting to continue along to the next stage of my fandom and talk about my early Teen years and a little place called Freedom.

Warning, this is where it may get a little blue, no Kids!

So as I continued to grow up and watched a lot of cartoons along the way, I saw a lot of American animation that impressed me.  Ren and Stimpy, Beavis and Butthead, Rocko's Modern Life...  They were all good shows, but they focused more on often crude humor and the quality of the animation varied greatly.  But one show stood out from the pack.  A show that was well animated, expertly acted, and didn't patronize it's young viewers with it's complex stories.  That show was Batman.  I would rush home every day to watch the Dark Knight get after the bad guys, and loved the cinematic action and film noir style.  And while it was not the only Action show for kids (Gargoyles comes to mind), it was the best, in my opinion.  My love of Batman also affected my tastes moving forward.  I now craved higher quality animation and stories, and I was often disappointed with American shows in that regard.  It was around this time that I started to wish I could find something different to watch, and I got my wish in the form of another video rental store.

Freedom Video was a fairly standard video store of the time.  It was housed in what was once a Gas Station in front of the local Mall in Marshalltown.  They offered the standard fare; hundreds of movies, an impressive selection of video games, and one section that would become very important to me.

I vividly remember the sign above this section, reading "Japanimation - Animation not intended for Children", and was emblazoned with pictures of characters from Battle Arena Toshinden and other shows.  I've long since come to dislike the term Japanimation, for I think obvious reasons.  As a teenager, I made two conclusions about this sign.  1, I was not a child, so no trouble there.  And 2, whoever owned the place must have loved the stuff, since they had put a lot more work into that sign than they did any of the others in the shop.  I remember worrying that someone would ask me to leave or shoo me away from this "Adult" section, but I perused the available videos anyway.  It took me a while just to gather the stones to add an anime tape to the pile of movies my grandfather and I were renting (I know, I know).  But after that first tape, I never looked back.

Ghost in the Shell was the first movie I rented.  And looking back, it was a pretty steep movie to start out on.

See what I mean?  And that's just the first few minutes.  I mentioned this in my list of the greatest Animated films, but it bears repeating.  This movie changed everything.  It instantly became the yardstick by which I measured any other action or sci-fi movie I saw.  It was this film that inspired my interest in Philosophy and cemented my fate as an Anime Fan.  The first time i watched it, I remember sneaking downstairs after everyone else was asleep to do so, for fear that if anyone else saw it, I would be forbidden to watch it.  Whenever I watched it after that, I still waited till after everyone went to bed because I knew I would be.  (As a point of reference, I was once forbidden to watch Chip and Dale's Rescue Rangers because there was one episode that included a group of Soda-addicted mice called the Cola Cult.  Just sayin.)  This was my rebellion.

On the surface, Ghost in the Shell is an action thriller with some excellent animation and a beautiful protagonist.  But the real story is the human condition itself.  The nature of what we are, and what defines human existence.  The nagging doubts that annoy a normal person eventually nearly paralyze the almost fully artificial Kusanagi Motoko.  The entire third act of the film is about Kusanagi's desperate need to discover the truth about her very nature.

Also, I feel I must mention, without Ghost in the Shell, The Matrix could not have happened.

From there, I rented several other titles from Freedom Video's Anime department, and continued to be blown away by what I found.

Blue Seed was my first taste of purely Japanese episodic anime, and did it ever stick with me.

At first, I only had the first two episodes available to me, so I wondered where the series went from there for years.  Based around a mass reappearance of ancient mythical beings known as the Aragami in modern Japan.  The protagonists work for the TAC, a government agency specializing in countering the threat.  Fujimiya Momiji was a fairly normal teenager living in Izumo.  One day, when walking home from the Shinto Shrine where her grandmother was training her to be a priestess, Momiji is accosted by a mysterious young man named Kusanagi who informs her that she has to die.  It becomes clear that he is no mere mortal when he is thwarted by TAC members Kunikida Daitetsu and Takeuchi Ryoko, and escapes by leaping from tree to tree.  The TAC members fill Momiji in on here origin and the fact that she is the descendant of the Princess Kushinada from the ancient fable of Susano O slaying the Eight Headed Dragon Yamata no Orochi.  Even as Momiji reads the legend in the Library at her school, Orochi himself attacks.  It seems that if Momiji is killed in a ritualistic manner within a ceramic field, the Aragami will roam the earth forever.  Even as Orochi is about to accomplish his goal, Kusanagi returns and rescues Momiji.  He reveals that he wants to kill the Aragami, but he also becomes attached to Momiji during the ordeal, and decides to protect her from them.

Another film I saw at this time that even I had to admit I wasn't ready for was Ninja Scroll.  The title alone prompted me to rent this film, and My expectations for anything involving Ninjas were obviously a little out of whack, having grown up a huge TMNT fan.  I am pretty sure there were no severed limbs, split skulls, or graphic portrayals of sex involved with any ninja show I had seen.  Ninja Scroll changed all that.

Warning, no kids, don't get me in trouble with your family here!

I continued to partake of other films from Freedom Video and Hollywood Video as well.  It wasn't long after this that I went from casual observer to collector.  Starting with VHS copies of some of my all time favorites, and DVD's of new favorites when they became more available.  Next time, I'll talk about some of my favorite series from that time period.







And now, your Moment of AMV Zen...