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Old anime: Are you a fan?


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honeyandclover5



Joined: 30 Dec 2010
Posts: 2
PostPosted: Thu Oct 23, 2014 8:51 am Reply with quote
So upon looking at my anime collection, I noticed one thing. I love older anime. Among my favorite are:

    Rose of Versailles
    Jungle emperor Leo (the 1980s version)
    City Hunter
    Legend of the Galactic Heroes
    Any Lupin Series

Those are only a few. Most of my collection/favorite anime comes from the 90s but I wouldn't consider them ancient like the other ones. As a 19 year-old girl some people find this strange, but I just love older animation. It has a certain charm to it, but that is probably just the film major in me talking Laughing

Do you like older anime? Why or why not? Plus any suggestions for anime is welcomed!
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Touma



Joined: 29 Aug 2007
Posts: 2651
Location: Colorado, USA
PostPosted: Thu Oct 23, 2014 10:55 am Reply with quote
I do not like or dislike anime because of its age.
There is old anime that I like and there is old anime that I dislike.

Here are some that I like that I think qualify as old, but I am not certain because I do not really pay attention to when things were made because I just do not care:

Bubblegum Crisis: sort of a super sentai show, with an all-female team.
Blue Gender: hard, serious science fiction.
Cat's Eye: crime caper show with three sisters as art theives.
Cybuster: science fiction and mecha
Dirty Pair: science fiction and comedy. The original (?) girls with guns.
Escaflowne: a girl-gets-taken-to-another-world fantasy, with mecha.
Geneshaft: science fiction, space opera
Hyper Police: science fiction, action, comedy
Magic Users' Club: mostly comedy, some romance
Princess Nine: girls' baseball
Record of Lodoss War: fantasy, from a role-playing game.
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VampireNaomi



Joined: 30 Aug 2010
Posts: 146
PostPosted: Thu Oct 23, 2014 12:38 pm Reply with quote
While I don't want to make generalizations about the good old days because there are terrible older anime series and brilliant new ones, there's just something about the general feeling in 70s and 80s anime that I enjoy. Some of it is probably nostalgia because I watched a lot of old children's anime as a kid, and seeing similar character designs, tropes etc. is nice.

My favourite anime of all time is Takarajima, which is a 26-episode adaptation of Treasure Island from the late 70s. It's got great music and character designs, and compared to every other Treasure Island adaptation I've seen, it gives the plot and Jim&Silver dynamics way more room to develop because it's a series and not just a movie.

Other than that, I like a lot of World Masterpiece Theater series, such as Perrine Monogatari and Anne of Green Gables. Those sure make you cry. I wish more dramatic shoujo from the 70s was legally available, and I'd pretty much sell my soul if someone released Sengoku Majin GoShogun on DVD.
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zawa113



Joined: 19 Jan 2008
Posts: 7358
PostPosted: Thu Oct 23, 2014 3:18 pm Reply with quote
I simply adore 80s anime! I've just started watching SPT Layzner (because, while there are exceptions like Panzer World Galient), I really like Ryosuke Takahashi. I was looking at the space station thingy that was in it and all I could think was "wow, that would probably be CGI now". I simply love cel animation, I like 80s character designs, I like the color palettes that seemed to disappear around 2000 when everything went digital with painting, and I like how much more space operas there are (as I love space operas too). There's been more scifi anime lately, but it felt like there was a good 5 years with almost no scifi where you can't throw a stone into a pile of 80s anime without hitting ten of 'em.

Most of my "plan to buy" anime list is scifi, and most of it is usually Discotek (sometimes Nozomi) as those two are the most likely to license the kind of things I like. I will be buying Orguss as soon as it's up for pre-order on RightStuf most likely. I got Cobra when Nozomi put that out, and during the last Nozomi sale, I got all of the 80s Dirty Pair and I just find them both highly enjoyable and very 80s.

Anyway, for some of my favorite 80s anime and why:
Armor Hunter Mellowlink
A spin-off of Armored Trooper VOTOMs (including some scenes that cross over between the two in a "oh, so that's what was up with that explosion at the end of VOTOMs second arc"), Armor Hunter Mellowlink is about a guy named Mellowlink who is out for revenge. His entire squad was pretty much sent to the front lines to die and he wants to kill everyone who made that happen. With a giant anti-mech rifle. Not because he can't pilot a mech (he can), but out of principle. And he is badass. It starts off as a series of revenge episodes, but by the end of a 12 ep series, there's been some conspiracy revelations and more baddassery.

Dirty Pair
Girls with guns at its finest imo. Kei and Yuri have this tendency to just blow things up without even meaning to. They might literally spend an entire episode trying to prevent someone else from accidentally blowing up an entire planet, only to accidentally lean on the big red button at the very end. Action likes to be over the top and there's just a lot of 80s fun to be had. There's no ongoing plot so it's fun to watch one episode at a time or 5.

Gunbuster
I showed this to my friends during Otakon, it really is special. There's not many anime that you can say start out with catty high-school "sempai" stuff going on and ends with that same girl piloting a mecha to save the world twice and have it feel like it inexplicably progressed to that point naturally, but somehow, Gunbuster does. I still don't know how, but it does.

Macross
A pretty standard choice I must admit, but some things are adored because they are good and deserve it. I feel like this has been talked to death so much that I'd rather spend my time talking about things not as well known.

Rose of Versailles
I was so psyched to get and watch this when Nozomi announced it and it did not disappoint! The artwork might be a turn off for some people, but I bought a damn Rose of Versailles art book because I thought it was awesome. While I'm not 100% sure how accurate some parts are to history (I know for a fact that some characters had age changes from real life for story purposes), sometimes history is a good place to draw stories from because they're plenty interesting on their own. And some of the pain characters go through can just be heart wrenching.

Space Adventure Cobra
More stupid fun, really. The dude has a magic "hit anything" gun in his left arm, his cigar can be used as a breathing apparatus underwater, and Lady Armaroid is just awesome. It's sort of the thing that you should know if it's for you or not based on that.

And some of my favorite 90s anime and why:
Digimon
Yeah, I will admit, mass nostalgia helps on this one. I didn't know it was anime at the time, but I've watched it since (especially when it came out on DVD). For what could have been a series there just to sell a bunch of toys, it actually bothered to give the characters personalities, personal struggles, realistic lessons learned in a non-patronizing way, really, it gave the series characters. Sure, expect for Patamon and Gomamon, I'm mostly talking about just the humans as the Digimon were far less interesting as characters, but I'm ok with that.

GaoGaiGar
The 90s version of stupid fun for me. This is a super sentai series where all of the members are giant robots. Not the cockpit controlled variety, but the transformers variety I guess. Except for Gai, a cyborg who can transform with some of the robots. If you want to see a bunch of mecha fight, you've come to the right place. And that damn opening song? It will never leave your head! I bet if this had aired around the same time as Ronin Warriors or Reboot on American TV, it would be remember as a fond classic.

Martian Successor Nadesico
This might look like just mecha. Akito might look like a reject Shinji (having the same English VA doesn't help), but that's not true either. It has these elements, but part of it is how brilliant its story telling is. In-universe, there's this show that all of the crew watches called Gekiganger III, a parody of 70s mecha shows combining shows (and which got this awesome OVA that Nozomi put on their release and is so worth it!), but whatever the characters are watching in the background secretly tells you what will go on with the main plot, but you don't notice it until it happens, so that's really damn clever of it. Even knowing this fact won't help you until it happens. In addition, the entire crew seem to think they are in a comedy anime, not a semi-serious scifi anime, so the whole crew is damn fun to be with too. These are people who will have major fights between themselves over the fate of a Gekiganger III action figure.
The movie wasn't particularly useful though, the TV show ended just fine on its own, all it really needed was the Gekiganger III OVA (which is a recap of an imaginary TV series). It also has one of the funniest recap episodes ever in a show.

Outlaw Star
Also major nostalgia. It's a fun scifi series that has tons of fun with anything it wants to. There's space pirates, space races, spaceships with grappling arms that are used to fight, etc. And the characters, while pretty one note, are still fun and have good dialogue with each other. The ending wasn't particularly good, but it's the journey that counts.

Patlabor
Sure, there's mecha, but it's more focused on the characters. One of my favorite episodes is where everyone is hungry and they order some food from the one place that delivers to them out in the middle of nowhere, but it's late. So they keep sending guys over there to bring back the food. And more guys. And more guys. And the ending is too funny to say anything more. Some episodes will be more exciting action mecha too, but for me, it's the former type that stood out to me.

Sexy Commando
Definitely a Stupid comedy. It's like a 90s version of Cromartie High School. That should be enough info to know if you'd like it.
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Minami-Asakura



Joined: 07 Sep 2014
Posts: 104
PostPosted: Fri Oct 24, 2014 5:36 am Reply with quote
The 80s were the golden age of anime.

Anime after the 2005's became a mere shadows of what anime once was. Uou can count the really good anime one or two hand at most since them.
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Mr. Oshawott



Joined: 12 Mar 2012
Posts: 6773
PostPosted: Fri Oct 24, 2014 1:44 pm Reply with quote
Yes, I watch old anime shows every now and then; in fact, I'm in the midst of watching one. The fine details of the coloring and shading was what made anime shows from the mid 1980s to the mid-2000s so enjoyable. While the more modern-day digitally-produced shows may not be as detailed, I still enjoy them to their fullest.

In summation, as long as the artwork of an anime show looks good, the time in which it was made makes no difference to me. Wink
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CoreSignal



Joined: 04 Sep 2014
Posts: 727
Location: California, USA
PostPosted: Fri Oct 24, 2014 10:35 pm Reply with quote
honeyandclover5 wrote:
As a 19 year-old girl some people find this strange, but I just love older animation.

I gotta say, that's pretty rare'Smile'

But I'm glad more and more younger fans are discovering older shows. I think it's great that every couple days, someone will start a thread, make a reddit post, etc. about watching LoGH, Evangelion, or Cowboy Bebop for the first time.

As other people have said, I don't think the age of a show matters. If the story and characters are good, then it's good, regardless of when it came out. Armored Trooper Votoms came out in 1983, but I didn't watch it until 2010, and it became one of my favorite mecha shows of all time. I watched Gunbuster a couple months and ended liking that it as well. Also, hand-drawn cel animation from the 80's and 90's have a distinct, hand-crafted look. I love digital animation too, but sometimes it can look too sterile.

classicalzawa wrote:
I simply adore 80s anime! I've just started watching SPT Layzner (because, while there are exceptions like Panzer World Galient),I really like Ryosuke Takahashi. I was looking at the space station thingy that was in it and all I could think was "wow, that would probably be CGI now". I simply love cel animation, I like 80s character designs, I like the color palettes that seemed to disappear around 2000 when everything went digital with painting, and I like how much more space operas there are (as I love space operas too). There's been more scifi anime lately, but it felt like there was a good 5 years with almost no scifi where you can't throw a stone into a pile of 80s anime without hitting ten of 'em.

Most of my "plan to buy" anime list is scifi, and most of it is usually Discotek (sometimes Nozomi) as those two are the most likely to license the kind of things I like.

Me too!, Ryosuke Takahashi is one of my favorite directors as well, mainly because of Votoms. Yeah, the 80's was the golden age of epic sci-fi and space operas. I love the art direction of that era. It's reminiscent of the cover art you would see on sci-fi novels and movie posters from that time. I'm really glad a company like Discotek is around, so I can collect all these classic shows.

Minami-Asakura wrote:
The 80s were the golden age of anime.

Anime after the 2005's became a mere shadows of what anime once was.Uou can count the really good anime one or two hand at most since them.

I don't know about that. It's true we'll probably never see lots of epic space operas again, but if you're not a fan of that stuff, you probably wouldn't like 80's anime too much. Someone who really likes slice of life shows would have very little to watch from that era. There are plenty of good shows from the 2000's as well, so this is over-exaggerating.
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EricJ2



Joined: 01 Feb 2014
Posts: 4016
PostPosted: Mon Oct 27, 2014 7:29 pm Reply with quote
CoreSignal wrote:
honeyandclover5 wrote:

Anime after the 2005's became a mere shadows of what anime once was.Uou can count the really good anime one or two hand at most since them.

I don't know about that. It's true we'll probably never see lots of epic space operas again, but if you're not a fan of that stuff, you probably wouldn't like 80's anime too much. Someone who really likes slice of life shows would have very little to watch from that era. There are plenty of good shows from the 2000's as well, so this is over-exaggerating.


Then again, I've had problems finding that elusive Really Good Classic comedy after Azumanga Daioh, and that was early 00's--Starting to look like '05 was the cutoff date.

But keeping it to 70's-80's (I don't consider 90's "old", and the obvious good ones are already getting reissued anyway):
- Urusei Yatsura: To understand UY is to understand how anime changed in the 80's, and how it first caught on in the US. Few comedies ever caught the same free-form "jazz" riff without going completely to pieces--For the majority of us college-club pioneers, this was the first show that taught us that anime was the Anti-drug, and had Lum in it as well. Anime smile
- Dirty Pair: Yes, another vote--When "Armed and dangerous" means "Trigger-happy and catastrophically accident-prone" (not to mention cute).
- Galaxy Express 999: It's as melodramatically silly and crayon-drawn as anything Leiji Matsumoto did, but there's a fairytale aspect that draws you in like Star Blazers and Captain Harlock never did. Basically, you start to realize that Tetsuo and Maetel are Pinocchio and the Blue Fairy in space.
- Lupin III: With or without Miyazaki's cleanup, Yasuo Yamada's voice was libidinous greed personified. Cool
- Project A-ko: The sequels didn't have the ex-UY writers and animation directors, and rarely got that same crazy in-jokey mix of lunacy and geek pop-references, but the original movie is Still Crazy After All These Years.
- Macross: You normally wouldn't catch me watching a "fleet" space-opera, but there's an odd, earnest naivety to this one that makes you believe the whole thing--Maybe pop idols can save the universe.
- Sherlock Hound: Apart from Lupin, there's not much of pre-Cagliostro Miyazaki worth watching, but Hayao cribbed enough of Lupin into this one to make it a rare addiction.
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walw6pK4Alo



Joined: 12 Mar 2008
Posts: 9322
PostPosted: Tue Oct 28, 2014 11:42 am Reply with quote
I don't feel like listing shit because I've seen hundreds of pre-1990 titles, so I can absolutely consider myself a fan of older anime. But that too allows for distinction, what is now considered old? Is it anything made before digital fully took over, is it anything pre-Eva, or maybe even pre-Gundam? There was a thread on /a/ a few days back about how someone thought they had unearthed Armitage as some hidden gem and it made my head swim for a few seconds, because a 1995 OVA that's run on TV and seemingly well-known shouldn't be considered hidden. You'd think with services out and charts out there that link and recommend anime that it just simply becomes harder for anime from any year to hide.

Although I do think age of a show matters to a point. Once you start going back into the mid-70s and earlier, the painfully low budgets become obvious and you either have to really love that series or care for its provenance to get through it. It's just an entirely different world versus watching the relatively high budget OVAs of the 80s.
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xyz



Joined: 10 Jan 2002
Posts: 243
PostPosted: Tue Oct 28, 2014 10:30 pm Reply with quote
I like these...
honeyandclover5 wrote:

    Rose of Versailles
    City Hunter
    Legend of the Galactic Heroes


and
Heroic legend of Arslan
Akachan to boku
Hana yori dango
Berserk
etc...
These are not really old old but I first watched them when I got into anime in the 90s. I like anime with nice character designs and story, old or new. But yes, old anime titles have better story.
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CoreSignal



Joined: 04 Sep 2014
Posts: 727
Location: California, USA
PostPosted: Wed Oct 29, 2014 12:34 am Reply with quote
EricJ2 wrote:
- Urusei Yatsura: To understand UY is to understand how anime changed in the 80's, and how it first caught on in the US. Few comedies ever caught the same free-form "jazz" riff without going completely to pieces

How could I forget?, good pick, Rumiko Takahashi in her prime.

EricJ2 wrote:
- Project A-ko: The sequels didn't have the ex-UY writers and animation directors, and rarely got that same crazy in-jokey mix of lunacy and geek pop-references, but the original movie is Still Crazy After All These Years.

Whoa, I never knew that the some of the UY staff worked on Project A-ko, that explains why it was so fun and crazy. And that also explains why the sequels sucked.

walw6pK4Alo wrote:
Although I do think age of a show matters to a point. Once you start going back into the mid-70s and earlier, the painfully low budgets become obvious and you either have to really love that series or care for its provenance to get through it. It's just an entirely different world versus watching the relatively high budget OVAs of the 80s.

Same here. It's not likely I'll be watching any anime before the '70s. The oldest anime I've seen is the original Mobile Suit Gundam and that's sorta inbetween the 70's and 80's (aired from 1979-1980). It's just that the budgets and animation techniques from that time look too limited now, especially TV series.
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EricJ2



Joined: 01 Feb 2014
Posts: 4016
PostPosted: Wed Oct 29, 2014 5:32 pm Reply with quote
CoreSignal wrote:
EricJ2 wrote:
- Project A-ko: The sequels didn't have the ex-UY writers and animation directors, and rarely got that same crazy in-jokey mix of lunacy and geek pop-references, but the original movie is Still Crazy After All These Years.

Whoa, I never knew that the some of the UY staff worked on Project A-ko, that explains why it was so fun and crazy. And that also explains why the sequels sucked.


Although A-ko #3, Cinderella Rhapsody, while lighter on the geek pop-refs, does manage some cute by-play between the characters.
(And introduces the strategic "boyfriend", to keep us from getting that idea about the three... Rolling Eyes )
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eight_car



Joined: 23 Aug 2005
Posts: 12
PostPosted: Wed Oct 29, 2014 6:23 pm Reply with quote
80's anime is awesome.

Especially just about everything produced by Studio Nue at the time.

I have TONS of VHS tapes of studio Nue anime!

And for the all-time greatest 80s anime

MACROSS
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MsRaedeLarge



Joined: 03 Oct 2014
Posts: 3
Location: Los Angeles
PostPosted: Wed Nov 05, 2014 2:09 am Reply with quote
Robotech was my first anime ever (before I even realised the true awesomeness of anime) and it still holds a special place in my heart. It definitely sparked my interest as a child and helped pave the road for my anime addiction.
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Dapper Fellow



Joined: 05 Nov 2014
Posts: 4
Location: Alexandria, Virgina
PostPosted: Wed Nov 05, 2014 4:35 am Reply with quote
Quote:
Although I do think age of a show matters to a point. Once you start going back into the mid-70s and earlier, the painfully low budgets become obvious and you either have to really love that series or care for its provenance to get through it. It's just an entirely different world versus watching the relatively high budget OVAs of the 80s.


Not so dear boy! I personally find the anime of the 1930's to be an exhilarating thrill of both the comedic and dramatic persuasions! See for yourself.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=giJyKwVvQpo

Now that, is an old anime!

By the wayside, is the embedding of the "Youtube" videos supported by the forum?
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