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As I've noted elsewhere, I was introduced to the wild and wonderful world of anime in 1987, a year that would have a profound effect on my life.
I became a fan of Japanese animation very quickly, seeing in it as I did a culture of animation that saw the technique as a means of storytelling as legitimate as live-action for drama, comedy, science fiction and fantasy, not just as "entertainment for children". (In fact, I was shocked at first at the kind of material the Japanese thought was appropriate to show to children!) Most of the anime I saw was second- and third-generation copies of VHS tapes recorded off Japanese TV; the incredible market for anime in the US and elsewhere outside Japan was still a decade or two away, and anime fans were few and far-flung.
Two of the series I became series I became very fond of (perhaps because of their female protagonists? yes, definitely because of that) were Urusei Yatsura and Cutey Honey. As the home-video market developed and evolved - and as anime fandom grew to the point where US video distributors saw they could make money marketing these "strange cartoons" - I began to hold out hope that these two series would find their way into the American market, and I could finally add high-quality versions of them to my collection. (If they could keep the Japanese audio and add English subtitles, instead of dubbing, so much the better.)
AnimEigo fulfilled my desire for Urusei Yatsura; over a period of several months they would release UY in DVD sets (50 in all) that collected 20 episodes each on 5 discs each set. The OVAs and feature films would follow, and I have every bit of UY* produced in my collection.
But I began to despair that the other series I wanted, Cutey Honey, would ever see the light of Region 1 DVD. Even in anime fandom, Honey is a niche; its age (1973) and the relative crudity of its animation doesn't recommend it to fans of recent, lushly designed and animated productions. Until the other night...
For some reason, I looked up Cutie Honey on Wikipedia... and saw that "On November 26, 2013, Discotek Media released a DVD boxset of the complete series in North America." 2013... almost four years ago! How had I not known about that?! But in the hope that maybe there'd still be a few copies left in the market, I went to Amazon.com, did a search for "Cutie Honey"... and was rewarded with "Cutie Honey - The Complete Series", "The Original 1973 TV Series". 4-disc set containing all 25 episodes, Japanese audio with English subtitles... perfect! And all for about $30!! Needless to say, I snatched it up!
And I'm enjoying it. Picture and sound are great, especially considering the series is now almost 44 years old. (and a vast improvement over the third-generation copies I'd been watching over the years!) And the series itself, and the characters, are as weird and wonderful as ever!
*unless there's been new material released in the past few years that I don't know about...
I became a fan of Japanese animation very quickly, seeing in it as I did a culture of animation that saw the technique as a means of storytelling as legitimate as live-action for drama, comedy, science fiction and fantasy, not just as "entertainment for children". (In fact, I was shocked at first at the kind of material the Japanese thought was appropriate to show to children!) Most of the anime I saw was second- and third-generation copies of VHS tapes recorded off Japanese TV; the incredible market for anime in the US and elsewhere outside Japan was still a decade or two away, and anime fans were few and far-flung.
Two of the series I became series I became very fond of (perhaps because of their female protagonists? yes, definitely because of that) were Urusei Yatsura and Cutey Honey. As the home-video market developed and evolved - and as anime fandom grew to the point where US video distributors saw they could make money marketing these "strange cartoons" - I began to hold out hope that these two series would find their way into the American market, and I could finally add high-quality versions of them to my collection. (If they could keep the Japanese audio and add English subtitles, instead of dubbing, so much the better.)
AnimEigo fulfilled my desire for Urusei Yatsura; over a period of several months they would release UY in DVD sets (50 in all) that collected 20 episodes each on 5 discs each set. The OVAs and feature films would follow, and I have every bit of UY* produced in my collection.
But I began to despair that the other series I wanted, Cutey Honey, would ever see the light of Region 1 DVD. Even in anime fandom, Honey is a niche; its age (1973) and the relative crudity of its animation doesn't recommend it to fans of recent, lushly designed and animated productions. Until the other night...
For some reason, I looked up Cutie Honey on Wikipedia... and saw that "On November 26, 2013, Discotek Media released a DVD boxset of the complete series in North America." 2013... almost four years ago! How had I not known about that?! But in the hope that maybe there'd still be a few copies left in the market, I went to Amazon.com, did a search for "Cutie Honey"... and was rewarded with "Cutie Honey - The Complete Series", "The Original 1973 TV Series". 4-disc set containing all 25 episodes, Japanese audio with English subtitles... perfect! And all for about $30!! Needless to say, I snatched it up!
And I'm enjoying it. Picture and sound are great, especially considering the series is now almost 44 years old. (and a vast improvement over the third-generation copies I'd been watching over the years!) And the series itself, and the characters, are as weird and wonderful as ever!
*unless there's been new material released in the past few years that I don't know about...
Forgotten OC
I was searching through my old sketchbooks and notebooks last night, looking for drawings and notes I made about one of my earliest creations, the belly dancer Sayyina. (She might have actually been the first OC I created, since she was inspired by the belly dancers at Busch Gardens Tampa, where my wife Janet and I worked for a couple of year in the very early 1980s.) And I came across some drawings of a character that I'd completely forgotten that I'd even thought of! I don't remember doing the drawings, and I didn't write down many notes about the character. But I did create about six or seven pages of sketches, and even a couple of logo ideas. The series would have been entitled "Muscle" Shoals, PI. The title character, Patricia Shoals, is a private investigator whose nickname is "Muscle" because of her physique; bodybuilding is her hobby. I chose six pages of sketches - well, five pages of sketches and one good sketch from a sixth - to give you an idea of what was running
I've been away...
...but now I'm back! My wife and I took a road trip to visit a friend (fellow DA member Jimmy Dimples) in NC, two of my brothers in VA and a third brother in SC. I hadn't seen my brothers in ten years (ever since my father's funeral), so it was fun being able to visit them. What wasn't so fun was having to deal with an overheating car in Charlotte NC that took $700 in repairs to make drivable again. Thankfully, Jimmy was willing to drive down from Mt. Airy (two hours each way) to pick us up and bring us to our hotel, then drive us back down to Charlotte to pick up the car two days later. Other than that, it was a fun trip. But despite my best intentions, I wasn't able to work on as much art as I hoped, so I'm way behind in creating and posting artwork. So I've got some catching up to do! So if you've left messages for me, and you're pissed I haven't replied to them yet... this is why. (Plus my apologies for not answering before now.)
''Contest Jitters'' update
Don't get too excited: there aren't any new finished pages. Yet. What there are, though, are newly reworked versions of some existing pages. This is something I've wanted to do for awhile, because one of the reasons I haven't been enthusiastic about finishing "Contest Jitters" is that there were parts in which I couldn't stand to look at some of the work I did. So I've spent most of the time since the New Year finishing the reworking of the pages. I also wanted to re-paginate the story so that they all fit into standard comics size, for eventual publication as digital as well as (I hope) print publication. During that process, I also found opportunities for expanding a few scenes, and laying (I think) a better framework for the events to come. (And I worked in a cameo appearance by yerz trooly.) The repagination process also lengthened the story, from 16 to 23 pages. Some of the original long-scrolling pages had material that easily took up one and a half to two print pages. (It's
F*CK IAN!
I haven't been checking in here as often as I should (my apologies for that), so unless you're also a member of my Patreon page, you probably don't know about the big road trip my wife and were taking this past week. The plan was: up to NC to visit friend and fellow DA member @JimmyDimples, and my cousin Susan in Laurel Springs; over to Tennessee to visit another cousin (Julie); over to Richmond VA to see two of my three brothers; then down to Myrtle Beach SC to visit my third brother. (It's been years since I've seen my brothers, and literally decades since I've seen my cousins Susan and Julie.) The most ambitious trip my wife and I have ever planned (and most likely never will again). And it was going well, until the middle of our visit with Julie in Tennessee. That's when we found out about Ian. A tropical storm which suddenly formed in the Caribbean, and was forecast to come up the Gulf Coast of Florida, and possibly over Orlando as Hurricane Ian*. So we felt we needed to cut
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Comments12
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My favourite anime from back in the day is Escaflowne, followed closely by Fushigi Yugi, Rurouni Kenshin and 12 Kingdoms.
More recent favourites are Yona of the Dawn, Fairy Tail, Shiki, Rage of Bahamut and Alderamin on the Sky.
Personally I feel that there is too much anime today, and really good shows are getting lost in the shuffle. I rather have fewer choices and better written shows, than more shows at a lesser quality.
More recent favourites are Yona of the Dawn, Fairy Tail, Shiki, Rage of Bahamut and Alderamin on the Sky.
Personally I feel that there is too much anime today, and really good shows are getting lost in the shuffle. I rather have fewer choices and better written shows, than more shows at a lesser quality.