What is something you wish you could tell your 20-year-old self?
That by the time you are able to support a family, everyone on the planet will be just as geeky as you…with a mini-computer in their pocket 24/7, obsessed with scifi and super hero movies, and desperate to stay in the loop on the most recent multi-player game.
From the beginning of the Golgo 13 story, 「剥がれた鍍金」(hagareta tokin, “The peeled away metal plating”).
Despite the fact that the manga Golgo 13 is about as conservative as you can get (openly misogynistic and racist at times, as well), I’ve been a fan since before coming to Japan in 1999. I hadn’t realized that the original anime movie that I saw back in Boston was based on what became the manga with the most printed volumes in the world in July 2021. This year marks its 50th anniversary, and the stories are being reproduced in larger format, grouped according to physical region.
The group of stories based in Japan came out a short while ago (I already got copies of stories based in France and the Middle East, and a book based in Italy is due soon). Interestingly, one of the stories is reproduced from December 2001 — four months after JAXA successfully launched the H-IIA rocket following a previous failure (hence, the “peeled metal plating” title).
Well, I managed to watch the first two episodes, but I really couldn’t continue after that.
Watanabe is right. Netflix screwed up by doing what all US-based companies do when they try to make scifi: they focus on the violence and forget about the ambiance.
But as he says at the end of the interview, “The value of the original anime is somehow far higher now.”
(Read the original interview in its entirety here, if you can stomach the political pop-ups.)
In case you didn’t know, the entire film of Akira has been available on YouTube since 12/23…in Japanese.
Kanedaaaaaaaaaaa!
Still, it’s free. I first watched it (in badly translated dubbed English) on the big screen in a cheap arts cinema in 1991.
Glorious.
Bought the original Japanese comics (MUCH better than the movie, which barely covers the first volume) and then the English translated comics. Then got the collector’s edition movie with a new English translation (both subtitles and dubbed).
Tetsuooooooo!
It’s online for free until 12/28, so if you’re sick of Santa movies go check it out!
Kanedaaaaaaaaa! Help me…..!
(It’s meant to advertise the upcoming Katsuhiro Otomo Complete Works manga collection, available at the end of January.)
Well, the writing was already on the virtual wall from the beginning. The anime had only one season.
White fanboys got butthurt by the use of diverse actors – anime is anime, but live action is real actors in the real world where “race” and ethnicity are still issues and women don’t actually look like hourglasses.
Ratings plummeted after the initial hype. Netflix always panders to the masses, so this is not surprising.