The Mike Toole Show

Ten Years Later

Ha! Gotcha. What really impresses me about January 2002's offerings is the fact that, with virtually no exceptions, every single title came out in the west, either on TV or home video. In fact, the only notable exception is The .hack//SIGN. But fans already know and love those shows. I'd rather talk about two April offerings that came out in North America, but aren't quite as well-ed.

I'll start with His and Her Circumstances - check it out!

That same April of 2002 would give us Viz were able to release the 7-volume manga easily enough (it's still in print), the 52-episode series proved too tough a prospect - they only made it to episode 28 before cancelling it all. They should've struck a deal with Takuto...

An awful lot of the rest of April 2002's offerings came our way - fare like Cosplay Complex. But the best release of this period before the rock-a-lanche of new goodies in July had to be Yokohama Shopping Diary.

That's right, another show with "shopping" in the title! Actually, the Yokohama Shopping Diary OVA series I'm referring to is the second series - there was a previous stab at it in 1998. House of Five Leaves. The OVA adapts some chapters from the middle of the manga, which involves the cafe getting wrecked and Alpha hitting the road. YKK is a sweet, quiet little delight, and it bums me out that I can't point you at a legit stream or DVD to watch.

As with previous seasons, July of 2002 would give us an awful lot of shows that came out in the west - Kobato.. The confusing, tattered plot is about the Guard of Rose, a team of six hotties who storm a dangerous underground prison in Utah(?!) to prevent a criminal mastermind from blowing up the earth. It's interesting to watch 6 Angels, because unlike Gundress, it's a complete work with decent enough animation, character design, and performances. Amano's music is a rotten, jangly synthesizer affair, which is odd, given his excellent work for Giant Robo. Kobayashi's direction is good enough during specific scenes, but 6 Angels absolutely, positively does not work as a movie - it feels alarmingly disconnected from itself. I think it's telling that shit like Gundress did get licensed, but 6 Angels stayed on the shelf.

2002 also saw the rise of goofy, Pani Poni Dash!! Thing is, SHAFT also provides animation work to a number of less exalted shows - and I can think of few shows less exalted than G-On Riders, a TV series all about cutie-pie alien-fightin' magical girls, all of whom wear glasses. There's really nothing wrong with that - it's a bit pandering, but hey, whatever! The thing is, the show took pandering to a whole new level, opening the series with our plucky heroine, Yuuki, losing her underpants right at the start of an alien invasion. The aliens turn out to be bumbling underage girls, and Yuuki ends up ing the Grand Reflect Armor, an agency that uses stereotypical girls (quiet shrine maiden, bodacious nurse, etc.) to repel the invaders. Even the normally pliant otaku audience in Japan scorned G-On Riders, which simply took the "guys no, it's actually a PARODY" hand-waving defense a little too far - I can't find 'em anymore, but it used to be easy to find clips of the show on Nico Nico, jammed to bursting with japes and insults from the show's very target audience. We in the west, however, remain safe from G-On Riders... for now.

August would roll around and yield good stuff, like Halko Momoi. It's been a decade since Komugi hit the scene, but I think it holds up.

Oh god, we're only like halfway through the year! Alright, let's see what's next. 2002 was the year of Japan and South Korea's World Cup, so we got soccer anime like Hungry Heart: Haibane Renmei.

I know that some of you just sat up and nodded vigorously. Haibane Renmei was, once upon a time, a fairly big deal - an auteur project by Geneon, so you'd think that a reissue was imminent - but when? It's been two years, guys...

October would also be capped by a movie, which is one of the most interesting failures I've ever seen in anime - Tamala 2010 screened in arthouse theatres across the US, but got no DVD release here - which is also probably for the best.

The fall and winter of 2002 would bring more fare that probably didn't deserve to get released here but did anyway, like Macross Frontier would also be coming out here.

I'll close this look at ten years ago by pointing out a great piece of animation that, like Tamala 2010, isn't necessarily what we think of as anime. That'd be S.o.K - he's still working. You can easily find Mt. Head just by typing the name into google, but the video doesn't look legit - more's the pity, I'd love to see more of Yamamura's work!