Star Blazers: The Show that Got Me into Anime

There were so many great characters in this
series.

For plenty of people that are into anime, there's this or that show that really got them into this type of show. Whether it was One Piece, Naruto, Dragonball, or even something much more obscure. For me that show was Star Blazers, aka Space Battleship Yamato. I remember the show being on somewhere around 6AM in my area in the early 80s, and I'd sprint down the stairs each morning to watch it.

The show was totally different from anything that I had seen before. The only other anime airing at the time was old episodes of Astro Boy every Sunday morning, and I wasn't terribly keen on that show. Meanwhile, all of the Western made cartoons that I was watching had a very different, and as far as I was concerned, boring art style. Star Blazers was totally different. The art was very unique (though later I'd learn that Leiji Matsumoto's style was very unique unto itself), and the series' story followed a massive arch. I wasn't used to such long stories being told. I'd be lucky if the show I was watching at the time was a two parter, but something that went on for 26 episodes was amazing.

There was plenty of action either from the Argo / Yamato going toe-to-toe with enemy ships, especially blasting the Wave Motion Gun, or Wildstar hopping in his fighter plane for some dogfights. The characters were pretty good too. There was the whole relationship between Nova and Wildstar, and Captain Avatar was great as a patriarch in the cast.

Captain Avatar is probably my
favorite character, probably even
more than Wildstar.

Also, there were so many themes that Star Blazer visited that I'd never seen in a cartoon before. Seeing Nova and Wildstar's feelings for one another slowly blossom was nice. What really blew me away was when Captain Avatar died after seeing the Earth one last time. It was a really sad scene, and something that I'd never experienced watching all of the usual cartoons I'd come across at that time, so it sort of shocked me that a show would kill off such a big character.

After the series ran its course it was taken off the air, and I was very, very sad because I had to go back to my usual cartoons, all of which paled in comparison to Star Blazers. It wasn't until several years later, when Robotech came along that I'd get the chance to see some more anime. Nonetheless, my interest was peaked, and I knew I had to watch this stuff whenever the opportunity presented itself. In the 90s, I'd watch Dragonball and Sailor Moon whenever it was on, and when I finally got a part time job, I started buying videos of shows that looked interesting.

The Argo / Yamato firing its Wave Motion Gun.

I even started to research more about Leiji Matsumoto and Star Blazers, searching out other similar series. With that, I discovered Captain Harlock, Queen Emeraldas, and Galaxy Express, all of which make up the core of my favorite anime series. Still, I have to look at Star Blazers as the most important of all the anime I've come across, at least to me, because without it who knows if I'd be as interested in the stuff as I am today.

The Original Slayers Anime Is Pretty Good!

Lina and company hanging out together.

It's been over a decade since the last time I've sat down and watched some episodes from the Slayers anime. The show is one of my favorite series to run in the mid 90s, and it still holds up really well now. Slayers followed the adventures of Lina Inverse, a gifted sorceress, and her friends as they traveled around getting into all sorts of adventures. It's a good mix of action and comedy that stays consistently entertaining throughout the show. There have been plenty of follow-up seasons and stories in the Slayers universe, but it was fun to return to the very first season of the series.

I think my first exposure to the series was from an issue of Gamers Republic in the anime section that they'd have towards the back of the magazine. There was a small write up there discussing the show, and my interest was peaked. After that I started to see mentions of the show every now and then on message boards, so I finally got around to watching the series, on VHS no less!

One definitely needs to do a good job with their suspension of disbelief while watching the show, though, because there are some pretty convenient plot twists like Gourry just so happening to have the Sword of Light, or Lina having access to the Giga Slave spell all of a sudden. There's also stuff like the more or less meaningless deaths of Zolf and Rodimus, which seemed like a really contrived means of trying to make the audience a little bit sad. If you can look past stuff like that, then Slayers can be pretty entertaining.

What makes the show for me are the characters, as I really like Lina and Gourry. They have good chemistry together, and both of them can make me laugh. There are plenty of other interesting people to make appearances in the series as well, but these two are at its core, and make or break the show for me.

At some point, I really should make some time to check out all of the seasons that followed these original stories in the series, but for now I've been happy just to revisit Slayers.

The Weekend Anime Post

It's still technically the weekend for me for another two hours, so I'm squeezing this in before it's too late!  Just like the last couple of weeks, I've been keeping myself busy with a fair amount of shows.  I finished off watching Gosick, and am keeping up to date on Say I Love You and My Little Monster with my wife.  Also, I checked out a couple more episodes of Blast of Tempest.  So, I'm going to hop right into things.

For Say I Love You, I'm still annoyed at Yamato because he obviously doesn't have a clue how his behavior is upsetting Mei.  Aiko had a chat with him about it, and he apologized, but we'll see if he changes for the long term.  Aiko and Asami are doing their best to help Mei through everything, but she's obviously having a tough time right now.  It also looks like there's a new guy getting introduced into the mix named Kai who seems to be interested in Mei, or at least the little decoration for her mobile phone.  Hopefully he'll be competition for Yamato.

My Little Monster was pretty good as the show took place during a school festival and Shizuku started to figure out that she's a bit too serious and cold to the point where she's upsetting her friends.  She's also slowly starting to sort herself out with Haru, emphasis on the word "slowly".  I figure it'll be quite a few episodes more before they're officially a couple at this rate.  Also, I thought Natsume was cute when she was talking with Mii-chan about how Shizuku was so cold to her.  She's quite the sensitive girl.

As far as Gosick goes, I'm glad that I finally finished the series.  While the first half of it was a lot of relatively short stories with a Poirot-lite feel to them, the second half started to explain Victorique's origins more, as well as the plans her father had for her.  The show did take some liberties with history, plunging things into war during the 1920s, as opposed to when World War II actually started, but I was willing to let it slide.  Finding out what happened to Victorique's mother, as well as the true nature of Brian Roscoe was very interesting, and seeing Victorique and Kujo separated and eventually reunited was nice as well.  (The part where they reunite, anyway, obviously the other part was kind of sad)

Finally, I watched a couple more episodes of Blast of Tempest, which I'm starting to like quite a bit.  I've learned a little more about how Yoshino and Mahiro met, and Mahiro was a little brat as a kid, which would help explain his attitude now.  Also, we're meeting more of the enemies the two will face, as well as seeing just what kind of power Hakaze actually has.  (She destroyed a mountain!)  For all her attempts to stop Samon, though, it looks like the guy may have a trick up his sleeve for dealing with the girl, and making sure she doesn't interfere with his plans.

Anyway, that about wraps things up for this week's anime.  More in about seven days! ^_^

The Weekend Anime Post

It's been a bit of quiet week for anime viewing in my neck of the woods largely because I haven't done any marathon sessions through an entire series in a few days time. Still, there was a decent amount watched what with staying up to date on "Say I Love You" and "My Little Monster", also my wife is getting into Gosick, so we've watched about twelve episodes of that. On top of that, I've started watching Blast of Tempest. Okay, maybe it's not been all that quiet a week of anime, but it felt a little less hectic anyway.

Say I Love You

I really don't like Mega-tan.

So, the show has introduced a villain of sort, a girl named Megumi, referred to as Mega-tan, who is some super popular teenaged celebrity model that has started going to Mei's high school. She's a self-centered, manipulative twit who has her eyes on Yamato. At first he tells her to go away because he doesn't like her attitude, and he wants to hang out with Mei. However, Mega-tan manages to convince him to help with a photo shoot since her agency was having trouble wrangling up a male model for it, and he's a handsome chap that would be good to fill the spot.

I find myself really hating Mega-tan, but I guess that makes her a good villain. She's totally taking advantage of Yamato's kindness to get closer to him, and muscle out Mei. Moreover, Yamato is completely oblivious to the fact his actions will hurt Mei. He's a nice guy, but pretty dense sometimes. If he screws this up, he totally deserves to lose Mei. I haven't any sympathy for him given the way he's behaving right now. Gah, so angry!

My Little Monster

This week's episode was good for a few chuckles. Haru is finally learning that his odd behavior can be a bit off-putting to girls, as he tries to find a new way to win over Shizuku. For me it was mostly random gags that made the episode work, like showing how Haru has been bugging Shizuku, some of his conversation with Oshima, Haru trying to help his class get a good spot for the school festival, and Haru daydreaming about Shizuku at the end of the show after she said she was going home. (As you can see, it was a very Haru-centric episode!) Shizuku sorting out her feels is also interesting, and I wonder if she gets her driven personality from her mom, who has not yet appeared in the show since she's always working. Maybe we'll find out in time.

Haru's view of Shizuku does not necessarily coincide with reality.

Also, it looks like Kenji is getting interested in Shizuku, so Haru may have a rival for her affection in the not too distant future. In the end, though, this week's episode was largely lighthearted fun, but then again that's much more this series' strong point, and it makes a nice counterpoint to the heavier overtones in Say I Love You.

Gosick

If you want to make Victorique happy, bring her sweets.

I've watched the first twelve or so episodes in the series so far, which I actually saw when the series first aired. The missus hasn't seen the show before, so she's getting up to speed with it. It's good fun, though. We're both big fans of mysteries like Poirot and Miss Marple, so this series has a bit of a similar feel to it with all of the mysteries that need solving.

Each case is condensed into two or three episodes, with interesting twists along the way. All the while we see the show's main characters, Kazuya and Victorique, slowly falling for each other. It's kind of bitter sweet though because Gosick takes place in the 1920s, and we know there's still a second world war to be fought that will tear the two apart since Kazuya is Japanese and Victorique is European. Even the show hints at this. So for now I watch them solve mysteries and enjoy their time together while they can because we all know it won't last, even if they always care about each other until the end.

Blast of Tempest

I like the way Blast of Tempest goes
about using magic.

So far I'm only three episodes into this series, but it seems pretty fun. I like the quality of the animation, and there's been a ton of action so far. The series is about a clan of mages in modern times that are trying to raise some weird being that will destroy the world. There are a pair of high school boys trying to stop them with the help of a princess mage stranded on a desert island. So far it's mostly been fast paced action with a bit of time spent explaining back stories, and who everyone is.

The way the show goes about using magic is kind of neat. There aren't any fireballs or lightning bolts flying around everywhere. Instead magic is used for healing, protection, and defense, but can be construed for offensive purposes. So, mages will do stuff like build force fields around themselves and their weapons, and use magic to move faster. This causes them to become extremely deadly as their strikes now have tremendous impact.

Where I'm at now, the show's protagonists have just escaped their first encounter with a real mage, and are off to their next destination. I'm enjoying the action so far, but wouldn't mind a little more explanation about the enemies besides them being a bunch of crazed fanatics.

Anyway, that's all I have to discuss for the anime I've watched in the past week. What have you been watching?

The Weekend Anime Post

Mei is slowly learning about friendship with the help of
Yamato

For the weekend I feel like changing it up, so instead of yacking about RPGs I'm going to yack about anime. What I've been watching recently to be exact. So I'll get right down to it.

First up I've got a couple of romances that I've been watching with the missus: Say I Love You and My Little Monster. They're both pretty good, and focus on people who are more socially reclusive. In the case of Say I Love You it's one character in particular that doesn't get on too well with others, a girl named Mei. However, when one of the handsomest boys in her high school takes a liking to her she slowly learns to come out her shell and trust people. Up to this point she's always strongly believed that other people can't be trusted because they'll always betray her in the end. Thanks to this lad (his name's Yamato by the way), and some of his friends, Mei is starting to become more social, and getting more comfortable doing stuff with others. Obviously there is a romance budding between her and Yamato as well, but it's also nice to see how she is growing as a person and becoming more social.

There's a lot of comedy in My Little
Monster

My Little Monster focuses on a group of kids, most of whom have difficulty making friends or outright don't care about having any. So far this one is a lot more lighthearted than Say I Love You. It has a nice comedic shtick to it, especially between the show's two main characters, Shizuku and Haru. I like Haru's amazing depths of social ineptness. Deep down he really would like to have friends, but he just doesn't know how to go about it. Shizuku, while cold on the outside, does have emotions, and it's interesting to watch as she comes to terms with her feelings for Haru. I'm also really liking the supporting cast. Natsume is cute, and helps keep the mood cheerful. Sasahara seems a nice enough guy, but I've not found myself becoming all that attached to him. Recently the show introduced Haru's older brother, and it doesn't sound like Haru has a good relationship with his family. I'm curious where this may lead as the series continues to unfold.

"Another" is pretty great.  Sooooo many dead junior high students, though.

Lastly, I did a marathon session, watching the horror series Another. I really liked it. The show is about a cursed junior high school class, where everyone in that particular class is at risk of being part of a string of deaths that year. There are certain conditions that need to be met for it to happen, and when it does, it's guaranteed that a number of kids in that class and / or close relatives will meet grizzly ends that year. This series was a lot of fun with several tense moments where you just know someone is about to die, and you are telling them, "No! Don't do that!" "Run!" and so on. Of course they can't hear you, and they die, but it's one of those shows that draws in the viewer like that. There's also a mystery to solve as members of the class try to find a way to undo the curse. It turns out that one of the main reasons that some years the curse comes into effect is if there is one more person in the class there is supposed to be. It's a dead person that doesn't realize that they are dead, and the people in the class suffer from there memories being altered to accommodate that person. It was quite the interesting twist when the show revealed who this person was. I also liked quite a lot of the characters in the show, which made it all the harder when some of them died, and a lot of people die in it. The main characters, Koichi and Mei, are pretty great too. I really liked watching them get to know each other and grow closer over the course of the show.

That's about all I had time for this week, and a lot of it was me getting up to speed on the shows, as I'd never seen My Little Monster before so I needed to catch up on that, and I got so drawn into Another that I got through the whole thing in a couple of evenings. I was hoping to watch some Gintama, but for the second week in a row Crunchyroll has "Classics" from the series re-airing. I guess the show is getting preempted by stuff in Japan right now or something, so there's nothing new going up. It's disappointing because I was glad that the Kintama arch was finally coming to an end, and hoping that we'd get to see the Shinsengumi again soon, but I suppose I'll have to wait a while longer.

Anywho, that's what I've been watching over the past week. If you're into anime, what have you been watching?