My Love Affair with Anime (Part 1): The Beginning

My earliest memories of cartoons actually start with an anime: Voltron. At the time I didn't differentiate between "anime" and your everyday cartoon. All I knew was that a buncha cool looking fighters piloted big ol' machine that combined into an even cooler robot.

As time went on, I slowly began to understand the different origins of some of what I saw on television. My parents had always remarked about how cheesy Japanimation was, silly little cartoons that constantly reused the same couple frames of animation, coupled with horribly dubbed audio. Their experience growing up was with Kimba the White Lion and Speed Racer.

I was a little confused, because the bits and pieces of anime I saw were just the opposite. American cartoons featured bland, bright images in an episodic format that neatly wrapped up stories in twenty minutes. Anime tended to sport more elaborate set pieces and arching storylines, often moving into a more serious realm by comparison to it's Saturday-morning brethren.

My brother at the time may have had more of an interest than I did. He taped what he could, usually off late-night TV. I recall him mentioning the Project A-ko films a few times (which later produced the Agent Aika series), and at one point he had recorded something called "Record of Lodoss War" off Sci-Fi. I borrowed it, and was blown away.

The show turned all those fantasy novels I read and role-playing games I played into a moving picture. The visuals, bright and fantastic, the characters, clearly defined and heroic... it was epic, and I wanted more.

It oddly ended on a terrible downturn, with Parn escaping from a burning city while his apparent mentor was killed by the enemy. It was a jarring and sudden conclusion, and it wasn't until years later that I learned that Sci-Fi had packaged the first three episodes of a twelve-part OVA as a stand-alone movie.

But the seeds were sown. Any idealistic notions I had of anime were cemented with Lodoss War.

My Dear Marie

Having just finished the three episode Boku No Marie OVA, I figured "My Dear Anime Blog" would be a perfect title for this little journal, and a short little opening entry.

My introduction to the series was actually through a YouTube clip of the fight between Hibiki and Marie. The art on Marie - in particular her cute, satellite ears - and learned she was an android, and the video was from an OVA based on a long- running manga that delt with the issues of artificial intelligence.

Passionately fond of the topic, I shortly ordered the DVD for a few bucks from Amazon.

I wasn't disappointed. Marie is terribly more likeable than I had expected. The character designs are a little cliche outside of Marie (and the character she was modeled after in terms of storyline), but not without appeal. The story managed to be genuinely romantic, besides being quirky and awfully humorous.

The biggest downer is the simple fact that the OVA is a mere three episodes, while the manga lasted ten volumes, leaving many questions unanswered.

So now My Dear Marie joins Berserk and Pet Shop of Horrors as an anime I'm terribly fond of that unfortunately cuts short while the manga continues on. Maybe someday the manga will get it's English translation, or maybe I'll just have to go to the source material.