So I have just completed watching the Shadow Skill television series and I have come to a realization, anime did not exist before the year 2000. Anything labeled 'anime' from before then is either dead to me or 'not really anime'. This is a rather harsh and bitter pill to swallow for someone who has seen their share of Urusei Yatsura, who cut their teeth (or lost their virginity depending on how you want to say it) on the X OVA, and this rules out such classics as Ghost in the Shell, Ninja Scroll, and Akira, classics from the halcyon days when anime was about tits and explosions. This also cuts Shadow Skill, both the OVA and the series out of my index. Believe it or not this is a good thing, much as I weep to let them go. In order to put this into perspective I need to give a little background on Shadow Skill and my relationship with it.

     Back in the day when I was younger, before DVDs and the majority of casual internets, I watched all the anime I could find. This was difficult because I was nine (possibly younger) and had no money. I had watched Guyver (fuck yeah, Guyver) thanks to my local video store and had watched the X OVA aaaand I think I had watced Ninja Scroll by then, but that was about it. So one summer I go to my father's house, which is stay up late and play video games watch whatever you want on TV party central. Oh and he had porn comics above the sink I'd kill someone to have scans of now, but I digress. He also had illegal cable, which was all the rage back in the nineties and is so much less feasable these days, and so I got the action channel or actually whatever it was before it became the action channel... Showtime... Maxx? Can't remember.

     Anywho, one night I'm up late and this anime comes on named Shadow Skill. It blows everything else I have seen before out of the water. If I could point to one OVA and say 'That, that right there sealed my lasting love of this medium.' it would be Shadow Skill. The character design wasn't something I had seen before and the martial arts action combined breathtaking fluidity and bone crunching viscerality in the same momment. I was young so I guess I didn't care that the plot was disjointed? Looking back on it (having read the manga and watched everything but an insanely crappy cgi outing) I'm amazed I got it at the time. But I got it.

     Kurudan Assassination Techniques arose from combating slavery. Eigi (the shadow arts) is generally considered to be the more deadly of the two. It focuses entirely on kicks, the fighter's arms treated as shackled together. Because that's how they kept the women. Hyougi on the other hand focuses on punches and small stable footwork, because the men's feet were shackled to prevent them from running away. Hyougi is taught, post rebellion naturally, in schools in Kuruda. Eigi is taught one on one, master to student, like any secret art of assassination should be. Gau Ban, arguably the main character, is trained in Eigi, you know, the more deadly female martial art, by his older sister Elle who is possibly the strongest human fighter in their world, period.

     Let's take a second and think about how cool it is that in the rather patriarchal society that is Japan this mangaka thought 'Traditional gender roles? I see nothing wrong with my female lead being demonstratably stronger than everyone else and punching through a meteor while everyone else has their thumbs up their bums.' Also it's a hotblooded martial art family. They get stronger by shouting out 'I am invincible! No one can defeat my Shadow Skill!' It's an assassination style... that teaches the power of being hotblooded... I'm probably not explaining this well enough. Teaches being hotblooded. It's only gotten more epic with age. This is me as a little kid:

"My Mind. Is Blown... ... ... I need to train NOW!" Then I'd go run in the sand and do jump kicks. Because when your nine, jump kicks, fuck yeah.

     Now I'm a bit older than eight, I'm done with my teens, and I've grown into a consumer of a lot more anime. I didn't even know there was a Shadow Skill television show untill a few days ago, so I watched it. It was obvious to me that at the time, they had spent a lot of money on this. It was dated. Oh sure, I still loved it, but if anyone wanted me to reccomend them a title to show them what anime was all about? This would be far far away from my list. This just isn't what anime is these days. It's grown up some, a lot like I have.

     2000 isn't an arbitrary date either. Specifically Hajime no Ippo came out in October of 2000, and it's the earliest example I'd give someone if asked, so there is the cut off point. Love Hina, may it rot in hell, blew the harem genre to shreds and gave it the vast majority of the shape it has today. Love Hina released April 2000, and I hate Ken Akamatsu. 1999 was a tempting year, seeing Mononoke Hime, the first Pokemon Movie, and Perfect Blue released theatrically statesides, but honestly... Those titles have been left behind. Mononoke Hime is a timeless classic, yes, and anything by Satoshi Kon is Relevant, they have been surpassed by their decendants, and us fans need to move on too.

     Too often the 'top anime' of a fan will include Bebop, Trigun, and Ranma, or Tenshi, or fucking... any of those seminal works really and they will recommend these titles to new potential viewers. I think in so doing we are doing a huge disservice to them. What we need to do is figure out what anime means Now. We need to suggest titles that will become classics in time, and only bring up the things from before with veterans. History is important, yes, but eventually you have to teach it like history and not like current events.

tl:dr version: Because I watched this one show the next time someone asks me to recommend an anime I'm going to steer them towards Toradora or something like To Aru Majutsu no Index... Okay I clearly need to figure out what shows I should use.

Tags: anime, geekness
Current Mood: calm