Best 80's Anime?

The Something Awful Forums > The Finer Arts > VEGETA > Best 80's Anime?

XboxPants: Jan 30, 2006; Steven doesn't want me watching him sleep anymore.

How about shoujo? Glass Mask is an absolute classic, but not very popular in the US. There was an anime in '84, but it was only 23 episodes, so if it's not breaking the rules too much you might consider watching the 2005 remake instead which is still extremely "80s Style", but just with higher production values.

Technically the Rose of Versailles anime went into the 80s, too, but I have no idea whether the anime is also good or just the manga.

I feel like there was a bunch of classic shoujo in the 80s but I haven't seen a lot of it so it's not coming to mind, maybe someone else can chime in.

Speaking of stuff from '79, do you like robots? The original Gundam series is another great. The original series had some big animation problems (not to mention being real long), but it later got reworked into three movies and they're a great digest. So try to find them.

Nausica� of the Valley of the Wind is real cool. Well, all the Miyazaki stuff.

edit: Honestly there's a lot of great stuff from '79, You might do well to include that year. For instance, the first Galaxy Express 999 movie. If you like it there's a ton of similar works by the author, Leiji Matsumoto, you may have seen that Daft Punk anime movie thing.

XboxPants fucked around with this message at 09:16 on Sep 12, 2014

# ¿ Sep 12, 2014 09:08

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# ¿ May 10, 2024 16:46

XboxPants: Jan 30, 2006; Steven doesn't want me watching him sleep anymore.

Mr. Stay-Puft posted:

The worst part is, there�s still dozens of things I left off. I should just start a blog about this poo poo and be done with it.

You really should, I was trying to look up info for the OP but this is a tragically non-covered topic online. That post you just made is probably already the best source about it online.

Also I'm really glad you recommended some kinda Lupin III, I wanted to include that but I haven't seen any of the 80's stuff and didn't want to recommend something I haven't seen, so I just hoped someone else would know what to recommend. Glad you did.

# ¿ Sep 15, 2014 04:10

XboxPants: Jan 30, 2006; Steven doesn't want me watching him sleep anymore.

Daryl Surat posted:

By all means, do so! I'll add it to my RSS feed.

It was a good overview post, yes, but this comment kinda has me scratching my head. The topic may not be ubiquitous, but it's not "tragically non-covered" in the slightest. Fellow goon Mike Toole has a regular column, The Mike Toole Show that focuses substantially on the topic, as does Anime News Network founder Justin Sevakis with his Pile of Shame and former Buried Treasure columns. Dave Merrill over at Let's Anime tends to cover pre-1980s material but there's plenty in those 7 year archives from the 1980s. The Golden Ani-Versary of Anime had different contributors cover each year of televised anime from 1963 to 2012, and most everyone who volunteered for years in the 80s and prior are active posters online covering 1980s anime and prior. There are also some solid Tumblr archivists like Oldtype Newtype whose owner is actively scanning and uploading classic Newtype pages, and the aptly-named 80s Anime Tumblr.

Heck, even I've somehow amassed nearly a decade's worth of podcasts by now, and judging from my index of reviews it looks like roughly a third of that is 1980s anime at a glance. So that's something like 75-90 titles, and there are still noteworthy omissions because "oh, I don't need to talk about that because everyone already knows about those!" Others started podcasts to account for our omissions and infrequent release schedule such as Anime 82, Anime Nostalgia, Anime of Yesteryear, and so on and so forth. BTW: it's not from the 1980s, but I'll post a Mystery of Mamo review this week where we'll inevitably discuss Lupin the Third's 1980s incarnations as well. Some more, since we've talked Cagliostro, the third TV series, Legend of the Gold of Babylon, Fuma Conspiracy, and those Dezaki specials in the past already.

So the 80s anime coverage is out there online and it's active, though it's largely "80s and 90s" coverage. It may be the case is that most of these people don't operate in the day-to-day "recap of currently airing episode" style coverage that defines "the anime blogosphere" (now there's a word I hate having to type), but everybody seems active on Twitter. There's a good combination of people unearthing hard-to-find/untranslated things (Mike/Justin/Dave's forte) and others focusing on the more rudimentary work of "this exists, is worth seeing, and you can go watch it." AWO's probably more in the second group, though maybe we have some responsibility for people being able to see Bobby's Girl, Sakigake! Otokojuku, MD Geist, Baoh, Angel Cop, Mad Bull, along with various Tetsuya Saruwatari and Kazuo Koike manga scanlations. Maybe.

Those are pretty cool sources, and you're right that probably every 80's anime is covered online, but I think you've got me wrong. When I said it was an "uncovered topic", I didn't mean to say no one talks about anime from the 80's - these shows get plenty of exposure when you're looking at the anime community as a whole.

But the problem is that info is spread all over, in all kinds of blogs & columns like the ones you mention. You talk a lot about podcasts, and they're maybe a perfect example. They contain a ton of info, true, but that information is very difficult to quickly browse and search through.

If you're looking for a single resource (or even a regular feature somewhere) that focuses exclusively on 80's anime, and can help guide you to the best stuff, you'll have a hard time finding one. That's the thing that I think is missing ("uncovered"), even though any given show is sure to have coverage online somewhere.

# ¿ Sep 16, 2014 08:45

XboxPants: Jan 30, 2006; Steven doesn't want me watching him sleep anymore.

itskage posted:

I rewatched Lodoss War not too long ago becuase it was one of the first shows that got me into Anime in the 90s. It's pretty fun to see the classic D&D tropes going on in it, and the show is pretty good. Just watch out for some occasional pacing issues, and the gratuitous use of recycled animation. Especially around the episode opening/endings.

Isn't Lodoss War one of the ones that was literally an adaptation of the author's D&D campaign?

# ¿ Sep 19, 2014 10:27

XboxPants: Jan 30, 2006; Steven doesn't want me watching him sleep anymore.

Gimbal lock posted:

I'm looking for an old 80's cartoons that might have been an anime, this seems like the thread to ask. Details are hazy because last I saw this, I was like 6 years old or something. The movie identification thread doesn't seem to know so I'm heading straight to the experts. I think it was Japanese but it may have been European. The movie was about a young girl who couldn't drown. When drowning, her hair changes color but she's otherwise fine. I vaguely remember a scene when they want to prove in court that the girl can't be drowned, so they do it in the old witch hunt fashion and drown her in a tank during the court session. The whole thing either happens in Atlantis or the girl came from Atlantis, I'm not too sure. Her grampa knew about her not being able to drown because he's some rear end in a top hat who dropped her in the canals while she was still a baby, during a boat collision or something. That's pretty much the entirety of what I remember of it: Undrownable young lady that changes hair color. Any of this stuff ring a bell? Google ain't giving me poo poo.

Perhaps it was an episode of Spartakus and the Sun Beneath the Sea? That was a weird European Atlantis-esque cartoon from the 80's.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VGOMnE26jNo

XboxPants fucked around with this message at 19:01 on Oct 15, 2014

# ¿ Oct 15, 2014 18:56

The Something Awful Forums > The Finer Arts > VEGETA > Best 80's Anime?