Forum - View topicThe Mike Toole Show - The Magnificent 1997
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everapril
 Posts: 112 |
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Utena seems to be far and away the most beloved and enduring show to come out of this year that was otherwise filled with derivative shows: Including Cutie Honey F and Flame of Recca both of which I've watched.
Cutie Honey F is a strange beast given the source material but I'll watch any magical girl anime especially back in the 90's and early 00's. Flame of Recca didn't do much to set itself apart from other tournament fighting shows early on (with the exception of the ninja weapons ok, some of those are pretty cool) and doesn't really come into it's own until after the tournament ends and it goes into its final arc. Of course, the anime never adapted that far, so it never got the chance to raise out of total mediocrity to being just pretty ok. It's fun. I still carry a flag for it. I really wanted a Kougan Anki y'all. Clamp Campus Detectives also came out this year? I never watched it but it seems to have a mild cult following (or is that just because it's Clamp?) Of course being stateside and 10 years old in '97, Toonami had just starred airing and I was rushing home to watch Voltron. |
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MarshalBanana
 Posts: 5498 |
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1997 sadly not a year I personally want to revisit, but it sounds like a great year for Anime, then again 07 was as well.
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EricJ2
 Posts: 4016 |
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From 1997? It's Tenchi in Tokyo. And because I've been defending it for twenty years, it's not so secret, either. 
(Insert default "Didn't watch past the first six eps, huh?" joke.) I'd say "I'd never even HEARD of the others", but that wouldn't be true-- Back in the early days of DVD, we were grateful that Bandai US would put the entire series of Don't Leave Me Alone Daisy on one disk set, along with Haunted Junction. A radical idea that wouldn't catch on until ten years later... Last edited by EricJ2 on Sun Jul 23, 2017 3:57 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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Kimiko_0
 Posts: 1796 Location: Leiden, NL, EU |
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Utena is overrated if you ask me, but so-called "symbolic" anime never work very well for me.
Battle Athletes (the OVA, not the TV) didn't really work for me because sports. Vampire Princess Miyu felt like it left out too many details that were I suppose were in the manga, resulting in a story that doesn't really make a lot of sense in the end. I thought I had watched all of Slayers, but apparently I somehow missed Slayers Great. Unless it's also known under another name, like the first movie. The same goes for Cutie Honey Flash. The version I watched was Re:Cutie Honey, not Flash. Why do I hear an OP theme snippet with "Flash!" in it when I think of Cutie Honey then? Weird.. Oh, Mononoke Hime is also from 1997. That was a pretty good movie, as usual for the elder Miyazaki. I'm currently going through my Ghibli collection again, so I'll get to this soonish. Highlights from 1997 for me would be Hyper Police and Macross 7 Dynamite. Hyper Police is light-hearted fun, but with some unusual depth. It'd fit in the current furry popularity now that I think about it. Macross 7 Dynamite isn't related much to its parent season, but shows a colorful part of the Macross universe that you don't get to see much of in the main Macross series until Macross Delta (although Macross Zero also had some elements of it in a way). |
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zawa113
 Posts: 7358 |
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Oh my Arceus, was that a terrible anime! Hakugei was so terrible, that even remembering its existence and how on Earth did I seriously finish watching it kind of makes me want to cry. On the plus side, that was actually the first Osamu Dezaki anime I ever watched, given that the man also did Black Jack and Rose of Versailles, my opinion of him could only go up. Maybe it's just fate that every good anime director has to make at least once piece of irredeemable garbage, I dunno. But I don't care how cheap you might find Hakugei, it is just not worth it. As for other 1997 stuff, let's see.... Slayers had a third season. It was decent, the second season was better, but Try was ok. Perfect Blue, while not my favorite Satoshi Kon work, seriously put him on the map for making weird but good anime movies. The Jungle Emperor Leo movie was ok too. GaoGaiGar is probably my favorite though (it doesn't help that I've never actually seen the older Berserk anime, maybe once Discotek gets ahold of it, I can then. I've read the manga to around vol 20 though, I quite enjoy it. But I'm sure you read these comments, Mike, and I'm also assuming you had something to do with Discotek getting Chargeman Ken, so take note! We really want 1997 Berserk if at all possible! The prices it goes for second hand on eBay is just too much!), but GGG is over the top and ridiculous and that all makes me happy. And I also like Ryosuke Takahashi a lot (I also want Discotek to get VOTOMs, Dougram, and other Ryosuke Takahashi things), and he produced it and did some script stuff. I quite enjoyed Volfogg the most of the robots, he's kind of mostly in the back, chillin, doesn't do a ton of the fighting, but he's cool, I liked him. Didn't quite understand why his personality-less GunGlue and GunDober were named.... well, GunGlue and GunDober though. Was not a fan of Mike Sounders though, he was pretty clearly the robot version of the kid tagging along with the adults that no one likes being around. But I guess they made a toy out of him, thus, he served his real purpose. |
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Animegomaniac
Posts: 4157 |
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I love, really love, Battle Athletes Victory but I'd attribute its sense of comedy and parody... once you see "Akari house" in action, it's something you'll never forget and I have to mention Mr. Miracle whose training consists only of knowing how sports stories work... to Kurata's writing partner Yosuke Kuroda. As a team, they did Excel Saga and the two sports episodes from that series is like BAV even right down to the question "Is that really a sport?".
The OVA series was done just by Kurata and it's just ok. There's some comedy but there's no character comedy, it's just situational. The TV series takes an absurd situation and settings but adds some pretty usual characters to do them. The OVA has some of those characters even if they don't act the same and the more extreme ones are only in the TV series. Berserk 97? I've heard of it for so long but never seen it anywhere. I'd say it was the most influential show in the NA market that's not licensed anywhere... if it wasn't for the fact that Evangelion exists. I think. I mean, it use to. I know I watched it before, somewhere... And for the required "I know anime" listing, there's also Hyper Police from 1997, a show about animal people before the whole moe thing so quite of few of them were very animalistic. But mostly the guys because, yeah.... A great action comedy with some surprising twists and turns. Best of all, there is no status quo in this series. No random order, episodes can't be skipped and things that happen like spoiler[marriage and having a literal litter with a samurai unstuck in time], don't just disappear or cease being plot relevant... including one early one that negates its own premise spoiler[and title, come to think about it.] Wow, all three of these great series need rescuing. Well, there's still Revolutionary Girl Utena, that's still in print. Um, is "no comment" still a comment? |
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Lord Oink
Posts: 876 |
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I'm fairly confident Pocket Monsters would take both those categories. The franchise is still going strong after 20 years. |
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Zalis116
Moderator
 Posts: 6900 Location: Kazune City |
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Some other 1997 highlights: Berserk '97 -- I respect it, even while I resent its more-obvious-than-usual "625-minute manga commercial" nature. Maze: The Megaburst Space -- too bad we never got the home video version, due to lost/destroyed materials. While it definitely got weird at the end, it had some fun Ranma-esque genderbending hijinx, and a surprisingly strong dramatic arc around eps 8-10. Don't Leave Me Alone, Daisy -- kind of from the era where humanoid (or let's be honest, gynoid) robots and artificial intelligence were a sort of unmined, undiscovered frontier in media. As also seen in Ken Akamatsu's A.I. Love You manga, I Dream of Mimi, My Dear Marie, Hand Maid May, and Chobits. But beyond the straight-up stalking and kidnapping stuff, one of the more stealthily-disturbing elements was how
I do plan on watching/finishing GaoGaiGar, Battle Athletes, and Haunted Junction at some point. Stuff like Utena and End of Evangelion don't need additional elaboration, but yeah, I'm thinking the 2018 version of this column is going to yield some more enduring classics. |
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Zin5ki
 Posts: 6680 Location: London, UK |
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There is, of course, a certain infamous film about eerie super-robots and their role in the apocalypse for which the year of 1997 is responsible...
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Angel M Cazares
 Posts: 5499 Location: Iscandar |
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Even though to me Revolutionary Girl Utena is a masterpiece and the best anime series ever created, I don't believe it is the most beloved show from 1997. Utena is a critical darling, but it never became a super beloved title among the general fandom. |
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Raoh
 Posts: 357 Location: Florence, OR |
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Why make a retrospective about 1997, but leave out both Evangelion films, as well as Princess Mononoke? 1997 also gave us Slayers Try, the last Slayers we would get for quite awhile.
Let us not forget that it also gave us Gundam Wing: Endless Waltz. I also enjoyed the Sakura Diaries OVA, but that didn't come here until the early 2000's, if I remember correctly. I didn't enjoy the first Berserk much. Not a fan of cutting out characters. Puck is in the newer ones, though. |
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Takkun4343
 Posts: 1569 Location: Englewood, Ohio |
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I've only seen two 1997 anime and both of them, I haven't seen in years, but I'd say Berserk '97 firmly beats out Virus Buster Serge. Even then, I'd rewatch the latter just to check out Toshiyuki Tsuru's episode.
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zrnzle500
 Posts: 3768 |
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I saw the '97 Berserk last summer when the 2016 one was airing and I was quite fond of it, moreso than the 2016-17 one. It certainly isn't perfect visually like the more recent iterations but the story has always been the main draw for the series for me anyhow. Aside from Mononoke Hime and the Eva films, my repertoire from 97 otherwise is pretty thin AFAIK.
I think Kurata did a good job with Oreimo, aside from the ending. It certainly isn't the worst incest show he wrote the adaptation of (Imocho). He also is doing the currently running Made in Abyss. |
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No Comment
 Posts: 83 |
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Yes, I've been curious about Meremanoid for a while. I stumbled upon it in ANN's encyclopedia a few years ago, and there's very little info on it. It doesn't help that it received a PSX game a couple years after the anime, which a lot of results are focused on. I know there are some Italian subs floating around, and I think you can find it entirely raw, but I'd love to see an enterprising individual one day give us some of this esoteric Meremanoid in English
Speaking of anime from 1997 that I'd love to see in English, Tokyo Pig definitely qualifies. The heavily edited dub only covers 28 of the 61 episodes. Besides that, there's some awful HK subs on the internet that barely qualify as English... which I made the questionable decision of sitting through a couple years ago. Even though the mangled translation frequently gets in the way of the humor, I still enjoyed it-- it has that Nabeshin energy, and a delightful art style. I'd love to see it get some actual English subs one day. As for my favorite secret TV anime... I've got nothing noteworthy from 1997, and my answer would probably be more interesting if we were talking OVAs, but I'd probably go with Ghost Sweeper Mikami. There's seems to be a lot of nostalgia for it in Latin America where it aired on TV, but it receives little attention in the USA. It's probably not a show for everyone, but I love it. The main male character is probably the most stereotypical part of the show, a fairly one dimensional pervert, but if you look past him, there's a cast of strange and lovable characters, and I love the vibrant color scheme of the show. Also for a long running Toei show in the 90's it's animation is fairly good, and occasionally surreal. The manga is also my dream choice for the next anime to receive a Ushio & Tora or Jojo's-esque adaptation. Frankly, the manga has some problems of its own that would need to be tweaked for the best results, but I'd love to see the entire story put to the screen. At least Sentai has released the TV anime on DVD. Good column as usual |
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EricJ2
Posts: 4016 |
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Basically, it's a deconstruction of Tenchi (the sitcom Universe)'s canon, namely, just what WOULD happen if Tenchi met a normal girl, the other characters got whatever they "wanted", and there was no more reason to hang around anymore? On paper, that sounds like it should be reasonable, but when Ayeka sees it happening and the "family" drifting apart--spoiler[as per the villain's plan]--we're on her side and it's surprisingly affecting... No! This shouldn't be happening to our characters! Somebody stop this! 
Most people don't get past the goofy "Monster of the week" first six episodes before they changed the director/runner, and even those were old-school goofy enough in their own way--The episode where our characters all try to get part-time jobs in Tokyo, and all end up helping to build the villain's latest weapon, is traditionally silly enough to be one of Universe's episodes. We now pause for the obligatory Tenchi OVA-traditionalist "No, no, no, it's a serious scifi epic just like GXP, it shouldn't be so silly, and it's badly animated too; how can any decent fan watch this and look himself in the mirror?" protest. |
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