Anime and manga talk

[DollyKim]

Before we take over any other threads let's bring it over here. Needless to say keep it to family friendly terms of service abiding titles please.

I go back to battle of the Planets (Americanized Gatchaman) and Robotech (Americanized Macross, Super Dimension Cavalry Southern Cross, and Genesis Climber MOSPEADA) It did lead me down the rabbit hole of different Gatchaman dubs, I think I have Macross and Mospeada somewhere.

Sailor Moon hit me in college, I have both dubs and the 2011 manga, along with the new Crystal stuff or what ever it is. Just haven't had time to rewatch the old stuff and get in to the new just yet.

Of all the other titles I currently have access to, mostly magic girl of some sort, Kyoko Ariyoshi's Swan would be the next one I'd get in to if it were possible. I'm really liking the big eyes 70s shoujo look.

[Jobee]

I love anime and manga. I watched Sailor Moon on TV when I was a kid. I've been collecting manga ever since. I started collecting anime DVDs in college. My tastes have certainly changed. I liked magical girl anime when I was younger, and nowadays I prefer office romances.

[General-RADIX]

I have watched and looked into... well, a lot of anime. Sailor Moon was probably the first that I both became aware of and could actually watch (my age was a single digit at the time), followed by Pokemon: The Series and whatever I could catch bits and pieces of on Toonami. (I knew about DBZ, but that was more of a "teen years" thing as Mom wouldn't let me watch it.)

Some personal highlights: Ghost in the Shell (1995), Cowboy Bebop, Last Exile, The Vision of Escaflowne, and two obscure titles we had on LaserDisc (Wanna-Be's and Lensman). The most recent series I watched all the way through was Soaring Sky! Pretty Cure; I hope to get caught up on its successor, Wonderful Precure!, but that's gonna depend on how heavily the replacement frontend tries my patience.

Dad's a fan of Robotech and had gotten up to vol. 12 of the "Jack McKinney" novels (pseudonym of two authors); I've been sloooooowly picking at those as my ADHD allows. Besides my preferences heavily skewing '80s and '90s, I'm interested in that period of early Western anime fandom where it tightly overlapped with sci-fi fandom (and furries, but Robotech doesn't exactly have those); these novels could only have been produced in that cultural environment, I feel.

[SetsunaKou]

:hugs: I didn't mind the chat in the SM resin models thread but this is great, too!

For us, our true love is Sailor Moon (fans since 1995 and love every iteration---anime (dub and sub), SeraMyu (musicals), PGSM (live action series), and to a lesser extent, the new 'Crystal' anime series and the manga. The manga is beautiful but with a super depressing ending and final plot! Glad the anime deviated from it and made a much happier 'ever after.' Our favorite series of the anime was the 5th and final season which featured our beloved Sailor Starlights!

Anyways, aside from Sailor Moon, we also love 'La Corda d'Oro' (Kiniro no Corda) which is a serious rival of SM in terms of how much we enjoyed it! It's a semi-magical/semi-slice of life anime about a teenage girl who is gifted a magical violin which allows her to play beautiful music though she never picked up the instrument before. But only for her, and the 'fairy' tells her that it's because her love of music is shining through and the music which ensues is from her heart and she is destined to create forever bonds with it. Along the way, she attracts the attention of a dozen or so fellow students/teachers/college students who all seem inexplicably drawn to her, to her music, etc. It was originally a video game in 2004, where you played the heroine and you could choose which path she ends up with and which guy she falls for. Simultaneously, the manga was released and of course has a 'canon' love interest ending, along with an anime series from 2006 - 2009 which, while semi open ended, also gave major hints as to who she really loves. There's a musical show from 2007, tons of CD dramas and CD Vocal music, Classical concerts, 'Neoromance' concert events; and also spinoff series/games/manga which continue up to now. I absolutely love this series, too, since it's visually breathtaking as well as uses real classical music all throughout so one can learn about the Masters and take a liking to opera/classical music as well! The vocal image songs of all the guys are almost all based on real classical pieces so it's awesome to 'hear' the classics integrated into new tunes with vocals!!

Also, we are fans of Harukanaru Toki no Naka De (which is a 'sister' show to La Corda d'Oro---same production company which produces 'NeoRomance' so they have all the same stuff and even 'cross' over during live concert events and CD dramas/etc. It's also gorgeous but this one is set in ancient Japan during several Eras. Haruka 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 (maybe even 8 by now? But we stopped at 4...;laughs:) It's about a teen girl and her 2 friends (boys) who fall down a well and end up in ancient Japan where she is deemed the one who can save the land by summoning the White Dragon to aid against the Black Dragon who is threatening the country at that time. Very mythological and lots of ancient Asian references. Again, it was a game/anime/manga so you can choose which guy the heroine ends up with (but she has a canon ending in the manga). Each series was set in a different 'Era' of Japan about 100 years apart from each other.

Over the years, we've also enjoyed 'Gundam Wing' (2001); Yu-Gi-Oh! (2005 - 2010) (the original one only really); and 'Amnesia' (Idea Factory) but not to the degree of Sailor Moon and La Corda d'Oro.

Final Fantasy X and X-2 were also favorites back in 2002-2004 for us! Fun game and in depth love story which FINALLY had a happy ending in X-2! :laughs:

Those are our anime obsessions over the past 30 years and ones in which we cosplay, create dolls, plushies figures and statues of for our collections.

[DollyKim]

One thing I can say about Robotech is the episodes themselves are short. During the broadcast the "previously", theme song, and "next time" took up a sizable chunk of the run time. The Macross part is easy enough to follow being the main character joins a war against space aliens while having to chose between two women. Southern Cross in either iteration is kind of boring. Mospeada has a lot of characters to keep track of and suffered the most from censorship.

It did lead to the term "Macekered" (pronounced massacred) to describe any anime that is over Americanized and censored after producer Carl Macek because he basically made up new stories, or barely used the original idea, and dialog to go with the footage. At least with Sandy Frank and Battle of the Planets/Gatchaman stories are pretty close just more palatable for the American market.

[victoriavictrix]

Oh man, how could I forget Cowboy Bebop! Larry and I watched that to death!