Monday, August 31, 2015

Japanese Anime and Solar Echoes (part 1)


I believe my first exposure to anime was Voltron, back in 1984. Although I somewhat enjoyed it as a kid, I eventually formed the opinion that most anime was mecha-based, a genre involving giant robots piloted by humans. I could never see this as realistically happening in the future—it just doesn't seem likely that the military will ever design colossal robots to fight with super-sized laser-swords. I also saw Akira, a popular anime movie which many consider as one of the greats, but it didn't appeal to me, either. I swore off anime and it was until the very early 2000's that I would give it another chance, at the urging of a fellow gamer. He insisted that anime was much more than mecha and a lot of it very different from Akira. I hesitated at his recommendation, an anime series with a ridiculous-sounding title, but I gave it another chance. I'm glad I did, because I can honestly say that his recommendation is what drew me back into anime--a stylized genre of animation where science-fiction flourishes. What was the anime that started it all for me? It was a series known as Cowboy Bebop.

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