It wasn't until I overcame my reluctance to watch older series that I discovered the real gold of the medium. I still remember discovering Macross, and describing it in passing to my friends as "Top Gun Meets Battlestar Galactica", and they instantly wanted to watch the show based on the insanity of the premise.
Funny enough, I'd describe Gall Force and Ideon -- especially Gall Force -- as more like Battlestar Galactica than Macross. The ending of Eternal Story really reminded me of the ending of the 2005 BSG show.
Funny enough, I'd describe Gall Force and Ideon -- especially Gall Force -- as more like Battlestar Galactica than Macross. The ending of Eternal Story really reminded me of the ending of the 2005 BSG show.
Oh, man, I LOVE Gall Force. That's probably my favorite thing Kenichi Sanada has ever been involved with (and I'm still mad that there isn't an HD version of the OVA Trilogy yet).
In regards to Macross, I mostly meant the Galactica comparisons in that you have an entire battleship of people being chased around the galaxy by an alien entity. The tone is rarely as bleak as Galactica--I think Yamato is more like that--but the weight of constant, relentless pursuit on the onboard denizens of the Macross kind of reminded me of that.
Except Frieren seems to be genuine European-inspired fantasy, not doing it for some nipponese wagie to LARP and fuck an elf in another world. It's like Lodoss War, there's good Gods and dark Gods and there's no tryhard twist. That's why I think the angel might be Serie, because she's an immortal elf who primitive humans would have probably seen as Godlike, and that's how real heroic mythologies start, the game of telephone. The mystery is interesting and Frieren is detailed enough to make me hope answers might come one day.
Again not to spoil the manga but the mysteries of the goddess become a real concrete issue several chapters later in a way that pretty much guarantees we'll eventually learn some specifics.
Freiren revisits a magic stele "left by the goddess" which she failed to analyse while traveling with Himmel. This time it's crumbled/broken and has a phrase added to it, and after reading that and attempting to resume her analysis her mind is sent back in time to when she originally visited it.
Cue months of worldbuilding and more setting up of current plots with certain long-lived characters as she travels with the hero's party to try to dig up invormation on the goddess' stele. They find an almost suspiciously jack amount of shit but ultimately figure out the words were part of a spell activation related to some of the deepest, undeciphered riddles in the goddess' scriptures--actually a cipher book containing spells she left to be used by priests--from a chapter explicitly related to time travel.
So Frieren can return, Himmel promises to go back to the stele and write the words on it after defeating the big guy, and they don't tell past-Frieren anything when she gets her mind back. Likewise Frieren tells the kids who have been waiting just a few hours for her to wake up nothing about what just happened.
But none of this explains how the causal loop was established in the first place. Rather it sets up a bunch of specific goddess-related mysteries that'll have to be revisited. (Also, iirc we never learn how this stele--one of a number of magically-protected artefacts that's been around for millennia and was in mint condition 80 years ago--wound up smashed.)
Also, that fresco from the anime? Not in the manga, so it was certainly added as a breadcrumb to link seasons.
The older anime viewers from the 90s/00s are precisely why I wanted to watch Tenchi. Ever since getting into Lodoss War, I was not only charmed by the old-school and earnest quality of that show, but the amount of Angelfire and Geocities fansites that still exist for this show, I was curious to visit more from that era. Maybe it was because the shows from that era were the only offerings for a ravenous US market, but anime of this time period really carries a nostalgic weight and reverence that's still echoed years later. Hearing stories about fans from the Toonami days, splurging on uber-expensive DVD sets or racing home after school to tape episodes of their beloved shows, back when anime was still kind of a dark horse of entertainment really set my curiosity ablaze.
Oh yeah, the old school fan sites for the series are superb! I spent far more time on fansites than watching the actual show. This is interesting to hear because my impression has been that people have stopped talking about Tenchi. I really rarely ever see anything for it these days. I go to anime cons pretty frequently, and there is hardly ever any art, merch or cosplayers of it. But if you bring it up around oldfags, they will all talk about how much they loved that show back in the day. So I'm glad that new people are watching it and old people are still speaking well of it.
When I started rewatching it, I kind of thought I had mostly misplaced nostalgia for a series that was innovative at the time but had since been overshadowed by newer works. But I found myself getting really caught up in it and found it's mostly underrated instead. For all the reasons you listed and more, it's just a fun show, the character dynamics are awesome, and the dub voices and the music are great. The Universe theme song and GXP opener get stuck in my head a lot.
This one took some time to grow on me, but I swear it's good
It just seems like a fun universe. I like all the royal family shenanigans and all of the autistic lore about the goddesses and treeships and everything. I'm curious what you thought about OVA 3 when they introduced Noike and other new characters. It was very jarring to older fans and got a bad rap because of it, but I liked a lot of the new characters, like Seto and Minaho.
The Tenchi series has been worked on by like 2-3 different guys, one of whom is responsible for the OVAs and GXP story (though a lot of GXP was changed from how he wanted it) and the others having a heavier hand in Universe, the movies, manga, and other stuff. The OVA continuity guy is the one who continues pumping out new lore and shows (Paradise Shido-hen) for the series decades later, but he's also a coomer responsible for all the harem and coomer shit in the series, while the other guys tried to make it more of a friendly space sitcom type thing. Although I don't like the coomer harem shit, I like a lot of the characters and backstory in the OVA continuity, even if it's mostly some guy making up new donut steel OCs over and over for 30 years, at least some of them are entertaining.
There are so many anime from this era I never saw at the time that I really should because I think they aged well, or at least are better than most new stuff. Oh My Goddess is one of them.
Maybe too optimistic of me but I wish it could stay in this situation, where it gets respect and there are a handful of series that are well loved by everybody (one piece, pokemon) and some that are considered "cool" (demon slayer) but the bulk of it remains niche and mostly unmolested by dirty westerners outsourcing their political views.
Again... probably asking for too much.
BTW, if anyone is curious, you can easily find Tenchi series on Youtube, people put the entire series in 1 video so its easy to watch. Tenchi Universe Tenchi OVA 1-3 Tenchi GXP
Very late with this but I find it funny how out of place Sakaki is here. Relatively normal looking girl and then you just have gacha and harem characters everywhere.
Really what I love is the creativity. Sure some of the ideas are stupid. I just finished S1 of Date A Live for the hell of it. Stupid show. Not family friendly lol. But in its stupidity, it was fun, and clearly was trying . its scary how much western media doesn't try. Im not even asking you to be good, but to be fun. Thats why i like anime, always a adventure.
Wasn't expecting someone to give praise to DAL here lmao.
DAL gets a lot of shit for a multitude of reasons but I agree that if nothing else I found it rather fun. If nothing else I do think the character designs are genuinely great at least for the main girls because for a medium that often gets a lot of flack for similar looking characters and outfits I could pick those characters out from a mile away and instantly know where they're from.
I'd lose it if Turn A Gundam, Iczer, or Five Star Stories got the attention of trannies. Fortunately that will probably never happen to those anime or MAZE since trannies are strictly flavour-of-the-month and generally get filtered by giant robots.
But question is will it stay relevant,
I'm sure a few users got in to anime during the late 90s early 2000s peak when Toonami aired every weekday, shonen jump had a US magazine they would print and sell at supermarkets, borders was 50% tokyopop and viz, western companies started trying to squeeze on to production committees of anime (IGPX, 2nd season of Big O, first YugiOh movie, etc.) and spirted away got an Oscar and I swear was aired on cable tv a few times (and off course it "ruined" a certain web artists life). Everything kinda fell apart after 2007-2008 and really didn't start slowly gaining momentum again until 2012 or 2013.
I think US manga sales just passed the old 2007 peak a year or two ago, boy and the heron is now the second anime film to get some western recognition and companies are starting to force themselves on to production committees with stupid bullshit Only things that didn't comeback where the old print magazines which isn't that surprising and Toonami while back is kinda an empty shell again. They had a few years of goodwill when they first came back and had a decent line up of uncut/remastered versions of old shows and a few new action series, but its pretty much a dumping ground for series that where popular 2 seasons ago and reruns of naruto, OP, and DBZ kai
I'd lose it if Turn A Gundam, Iczer, or Five Star Stories got the attention of trannies. Fortunately that will probably never happen to those anime or MAZE since trannies are strictly flavour-of-the-month and generally get filtered by giant robots
Bandai seems to be trying. They sent out a big Gundam care package to that troon breadtuber "Lady" Emily. But thankfully mecha still put most people off. It's amazing how mecha just invalidate a whole story to normies. I'm forever grateful for that.
Military sci-fi and stuff that's adjacent to that always attracts a fairly right-leaning crowd or at least centrist types. And that goes a long way to keeping things tolerant. The minute people with pronouns and shit get too wormed into a fandom is when shit gets weird.
@InvoluntaryCelebrity That's good to hear, the show isn't just gonna leave us hanging... and oooooh shit, if Frieren's mind goes back in time ala Steins;Gate, then that means current Frieren can interact with a living Himmel again, as if he's somehow returned from the dead. That's very interesting. Sure hope she doesn't fuck up the 2nd chance...
If we are posting Frieren spoilers then monument is destroyed by either the demons or Himmel’s party. I think Himmels party directly implies it when Frieren isn’t present. The demons might’ve succeeded in an objective, but for now they are just vaguely menacing in trying to revive the demon king.
