AWESOME ENGINE » Hate Fun 2000

HATE FUN 2000! Ojamajo Doremi #

Brack — Sat, 12 Sep 2009 12:59:58 +0000

The first big franchise show of this rundown. This is the second series of Ojamajo Doremi. The first series was picked up by 4kids during the 2000 anime boom, but they didn’t really know what to do with it when they got it. However it was a success all over the world, so make of that what you will.

What’s it about? A clumsy girl, Doremi, who becomes a witch along with her friends. And then they get up to witch hijinks in a wholesome, moral sort of way.

HATE FUN 2000! Digimon Adventure 02

Brack — Sat, 12 Sep 2009 12:59:57 +0000

Opening not embeddable

Another franchise show, this time based on the Tamogotchi spin-off where you’d raise monsters and then fight them against other kids’ monsters. This was the second series of the anime. Possibly a step down in quality from the original series and Mamoru Hosoda’s work on the films, but really it was still far better than it probably deserved to be.

HATE FUN 2000! Saiyuki

Brack — Sat, 12 Sep 2009 12:59:56 +0000

This was the state of the art in bishounen in the year 2000. Well, bishounen shot through the prism of Yuji Moriyama.

Based on Kazuya Minekura’s manga (which in turn was based on Journey to the West), it had already had an OAV series the year before. Like a lot of G Fantasy strips (E’s, Kuroshitsuji, Nabari no Ou), it feels a lot like shonen written for a female audience. Given that it started in 1997, before we really started to see a big shift to attract a fujoshi audience in Shonen Jump, I wonder if it was something of a trend setter in that respect?

The Yuji Moriyama designs though give the whole thing a weird vibe, like they weren’t quite willing to go all the way with the prettiness of the main characters so had Moriyama come to butch them up and make female characters more appealing to male viewers.

HATE FUN 2000! Doki Doki Densetsu Mahoujin Guru Guru

Brack — Sat, 12 Sep 2009 12:59:55 +0000

The second season of Mahoujin Guru Guru. Well more of a sequel as there’d been a gap of five years between the series. Not seen any of this season, but liked what I saw of the first. It’s a silly parody of console RPGs based on Hiroyuki Etou’s manga. This second series just adapts more of the manga, continuing pretty much where the first left off.

HATE FUN 2000! Boogiepop Phantom

Brack — Sat, 12 Sep 2009 12:59:54 +0000

The first show of the year 2000 to embody much of the decade’s anime. Late night, low ratings and based on a light novel.

People like this a lot, but I never got around to watching it. Had I seen it in 2000, I suspect I’d have loved it. However my tastes have veered from the cerebral to the aesthetically visceral in the last 10 years, and I’m not really inclined to catch up here. Director Takashi Watanabe hasn’t really worked on much that set my world on fire, though I have liked Seishi Minakami’s scripts on Satoshi Kon projects, so it might be worth checking out those episodes.

There was a boom in interest in urban legends in Japan in the mid-nineties (similar to the X-Files/UFO boom) best illustrated by the Hanako-san films about the ghost that supposedly haunts school toilets. This is an extension of that craze, with Boogiepop the character thought of as an urban legend by other characters in the story. As the decade progresses interest seems to fade in urban legends and turns more to traditional folklore and magical realism (though part of that seems Harry Potter driven too, rather than just a natural progression).

HATE FUN 2000! Pilot Candidate

Brack — Sat, 12 Sep 2009 12:59:53 +0000

Or as you may know it Candidate for Goddess.

I know next to nothing about this. Some kind of sci-fi mecha show that Bandai released in English, and appeared on Cartoon Network/Adult Swim. Mitsuru Hongo directed, and they are someone whose work I have consistently failed to see (Outlaw Star, IGPX, Reideen, Spirit of Wonder).

So there you go.

HATE FUN 2000! Carried by the Wind: Tsukikage Ran

Brack — Sat, 12 Sep 2009 12:59:52 +0000

Well you’d think I’d have seen this action comedy about swordswoman Ran and martial artist Meow.

Akitaro Daichi, Madhouse, original material, produced for satellite channel WOWOW, it seems like something I’d be onto. However in the year 2000, that really didn’t mean that much to me. Nor in 2002 when Bandai put it out on DVD. DVDs that now seem to be OOP. I’ll have to hunt this down.

Eerily Youtube had just suggested this following video for me just before I checked what was next on my list:

Yeah, really gonna need to see this.

HATE FUN 2000! Mon Colle Knights

Brack — Sat, 12 Sep 2009 12:59:51 +0000

Your second Satoru Akahori show of the 2000s. And your second show designed to sell a trading card game, Monster Collection. It actually pre-dates the Yu-Gi-Oh Duel Monsters show by 3 months.

More typical than Sakura Wars of an Akahori script, this can easily be seen as a direct descendant of NG Knight Lamune & 40, with heroes sent into another world and an over the top, somewhat effeminate villain and his sexy henchwomen.

Saban adapted it for Fox, then it moved to Disney following all that general upheaval. You can get DVDs of it in the UK for 99p in the clearance bookstore chain here.

HATE FUN 2000! Oh! Super Milk-chan

Brack — Sat, 12 Sep 2009 12:59:50 +0000

The show that upset Adult Swim viewers, well, before Tim & Eric came along. It has some really, really odd comedic timing. Like someone on a load of downers trying to be madcap. Really odd.

Original opening:

HATE FUN 2000! Mushrambo

Brack — Sat, 12 Sep 2009 12:59:49 +0000

Or Shinzo as it was called in the US. Another show Saban adapted for Fox, this Toei created by committee show was thumped by HUNTER X HUNTER in the ratings in Japan, and sort of fell off the radar. Until the odd announcement last year that the awesome Kenji Nakamura was to adapt it into two films. I think these have since gone straight to DVD as compilation films, and Nakamura (Toei’s most interesting director) has the very promising looking Kūchū Buranko starting soon.

Hate Fun 2000! Daa! Daa! Daa!

Brack — Sat, 12 Sep 2009 12:59:48 +0000

Two kids become adoptive parents to a UFO baby that crashes to earth.

It made it to some European countries, but for an English version you’ll need to go with fansubs. In the same way that director Hiroaki Sakurai would capture the manga aesthetic of Cromartie High in its anime adaptation, he really gets the aesthetic of both Mika Kawamura’s manga, and the general aesthetic of shojo aimed at that middle school demographic.

Watched the first episode, there’s lots of narrative elements you can see that appear in a lot of these series – heroine’s world turned upside down, heroines expectations of how the world should work thwarted, forced to share space with a “horrible” boy – these all sprung to mind as elements I’ve seen before, but also make perfect sense for the age range it’s aimed at. There’s also a nice line in absurd humour, mainly provided by the sitter-pet, Wannya. In particular, the tale of how Wannya and the baby got to Earth, takes a huge sci-fi concept and reduces it down to something incredibly mundane. It’s great.

Also, extreme reactions:

HATE FUN 2000! Gate Keepers

Brack — Sat, 12 Sep 2009 12:59:47 +0000

Another guy who was big in the late 90s/early 00s, but kind of dropped off, was Keiji Gotoh. Before Gate Keepers, his character design work had been seen on shows like Nadesico, Sorceror Hunters, Those Who Hunt Elves, Hyper Police. While he was in the process of making the transition to director here (in the Chief Animation director chair), his actual character design work falls off once he starts regularly working as director.

Which is a shame as his character design work is very distinctively his, something lacking in a lot of character designers today. Though to be fair, the character designer he does tend to work with now is his wife Megumi Kadonosono, so he’s probably got his reasons. But we’ll get to those shows later.

I seem to remember interest in Gatekeepers around it’s release, primarily due to Gotoh, as the video game and manga it’s based on were never around in the UK. It’s the story of alien invasion in the sixties, thwarted by superpowered Japanese school kids. It was followed in 2002, by Gate Keepers 21, a sequel set in modern times.

HATE FUN 2000! PlatinumHugen Ordian

Brack — Sat, 12 Sep 2009 12:59:46 +0000

Go Nagai’s number one fan, Masami Obari gets around to copying Evangelion. I remember seeing some of this and not being impressed, but at the same time, I can’t recall why. Obari is another guy whose work you’d never mistake for someone else, even when he’s blatantly showing off his Nagai love (the Sirene looking lass in the credits). And he’s a great animator.

However, I’d question his merits as a director. I don’t think I’ve seen anything he’s directed that’s left a lasting impression, outside of when his work’s been re-cut as a music video.

HATE FUN 2000! Dotto Koni Chan

Brack — Sat, 12 Sep 2009 12:59:45 +0000

I think I’ve may have found the SHAFT show I’d like.

The anime tales of KONISHIKI as a young boy directed by Nabeshin. Apparently huge (pun intended) in South America, this is another show I had never heard of until I started doing this series of posts. KONISHIKI doesn’t actually do his own voice, instead it is provided by anime’s top androgyne Kujira (Orochimaru from Naruto).

Yeah, I totally want to see this.

HATE FUN 2000! Yu-Gi-Oh Duel Monsters

Brack — Sat, 12 Sep 2009 12:59:44 +0000

The reboot of the Yu-Gi-Oh franchise, now based firmly around the Lovecraftian collectable card game, and the show that brought Yu-Gi-Oh to the west. Arriving in the states in 2001, it was the show needed to rekindle the “anime fad” in the US as Pokemon was reaching it’s natural peak 3 years in. Given how successful 4kids were with adapting Pokemon and Yu-Gi-Oh, it’s fascinating how they lost their way when they tried to adapt other shows for their viewers as they grew up, grossly underestimating their audience’s intelligence. That was, of course, best illustrated by Alfred Kahn’s “Kids today don’t read, they read less today” comment.

HATE FUN 2000! Clockwork Fighters Hiwou’s War

Brack — Sat, 12 Sep 2009 12:59:43 +0000

Italian opening there, as that’s all I can find.

Created by writer Shou Aikawa (Ayakashi Ayashi) and directed by Tetsuro Amino (Macross 7) this seems to be a show totally overlooked in US/UK fandom. It’s about a pair of brothers who use Karakuri to battle evil. Aikawa would return to crazy uses of karakuri in Oh Edo Rocket. Distinctive character design comes from G Gundam’s Hiroshi Osaka.

HATE FUN 2000! Ghost Stories

Brack — Sat, 12 Sep 2009 12:59:42 +0000

Completely irrelevant mystery show gets “comedy” dub from ADV. Of course by “comedy” I mean time sensitive popular culture references that rely of recognition rather than actual humour.

HATE FUN 2000! Hidamari no Ki

Brack — Sat, 12 Sep 2009 12:59:41 +0000

Well, here’s another show that I’ve never heard of. It’s a Madhouse show based on a Tezuka manga about a doctor (one of Tezuka’s ancestors) and a samurai’s friendship in the 19th century. Someone’s uploaded it all to youtube (unsubbed) if you are interested.

HATE FUN 2000! Time Bokan 2000: Kaitou Kiramekiman

Brack — Sat, 12 Sep 2009 12:59:40 +0000

Another show that passed me by. I think it’s safe to say that UK anime fandom had a near zero interest in the Time Bokan franchise in 2000. In fact, I think it’s going to take the Miike directed Yatterman film to muster any real interest.

This was the 8th Time Bokan series, the twist this time being that the Kiramekiman duo are theives, and their three goofball enemies are the police. Otherwise it’s the usual mix of superheroics, slapstick and crazy looking mecha.

HATE FUN 2000! Transformers Car Robot

Brack — Sat, 12 Sep 2009 12:59:39 +0000

Transformers is one of those topics I’m loathe to write about as its fandom is so obsessive there’s plenty out there written already.

So lets just mention the uneasy mix of 3D and 2D animation in the opening. This wasn’t new, I remember Lost Universe have some particularly egregious usage of 3D animation. But the use of 3D animation to represent giant robots fighting is something that permeated the decade.

Here’s the US opening, that wisely does away with all that 3D nonsense:

HATE FUN 2000! Banner of the Stars

Brack — Sat, 12 Sep 2009 12:59:38 +0000

This seems to have it’s followers, particularly among older fans who got into anime because it was more science fiction they could devour. It’s the sequel to the Crest of the Stars series, based on the novels by Hiroyuki Morioka.

However I don’t care much for sci-fi and less for bland character designs, so I never watched it.

HATE FUN 2000! Love Hina

Brack — Sat, 12 Sep 2009 12:59:37 +0000

The second show from 2000 that really got a following via fansubs (Saiyuki being the other).

While it gets a fair amount of justifiable criticism for it’s incredibly derivative nature, when you look at what else was coming out the time, you can see why it stood out and got its following via fansubs (including early digital fansubs). The clean digital look, polished animation and a opening theme that hits you like a fist made of sugar add up to something that stood out from a lot of the other otaku targeted shows of this year.

That said, I gave up after about 8 episodes. There’s only so long you can watch the romantic fumblings of idiots.

HATE FUN 2000! Corrector Yui

Brack — Sat, 12 Sep 2009 12:59:36 +0000

Was this the last Kia Asamiya adaptation? He sort of seemed in demand there in the mid to late nineties, then went to work in the US, and now you don’t hear much about him at all. Is he simply just doing design work under his real name nowadays?

Anyway, this was a sci-fi take on a magical girl show, a direction the genre didn’t really follow. Viz released some of this, but then sort of lost interest. Presumably after the audience had voiced their own similar disinterest by not buying much of the first four volumes.

HATE FUN 2000! Sakura Wars

Brack — Sat, 12 Sep 2009 12:59:35 +0000

A key part of the alternate history fad that sparked off in the late nineties, the Sakura Wars games presented an early 20th century where young women fought off a demonic invasion using steam powered robot suits.

The game had already had an OAV series, so in the post-Eva anime market, it was a natural choice for TV show. It was overseen by Lain director Ryutaro Nakamura, and the story provided by the super-prolific Satoru Akahori. Akahori was a key creative force in the expansion of the franchise, being involved in the anime and the manga.

ADV picked up the title, but without the game alongside it, I’m not sure it made the impact it could have. However the game franchise remained popular in Japan, and new games continued to be released throughout the 00s along with new OAVs. To this end, it’s reported that a Sakura Wars game is finally getting an English language release this year. Albeit one that is 4 years old.

It’s odd with the belated steampunk fad that’s picked up in UK/US over the past few years that I’ve not really seen Sakura Wars included in that, given it’s combination of costuming (the characters disguise themselves as theatrical performers) and steam powered robots. Maybe the videogame release will raise its profile again?

HATE FUN 2000! InuYasha

Brack — Sat, 12 Sep 2009 12:59:34 +0000

Oddly, for a show that was massively popular, a big important part of the post-Pokemon anime explosion and based on the work of a creator who was instrumental in getting me into manga and anime, I’ve seen all of two episodes of InuYasha.

That’s not really a commentary on the show, simply I was one of those “I’m not watching a long running show” guys at this time and when I did get over that hump it was One Piece that sucked me in, rather than this tale of timeslips and demons.

The timing of it’s arrival on the US Cartoon Network in 2002 was fortuitous, four years after Pokemon, it was likely the right show to catch those kids who’d started on Pokemon in 98 and keep them interested in anime.

HATE FUN 2000! Muteki-oh Tri-zenon

Brack — Sat, 12 Sep 2009 12:59:33 +0000

It’s a Megumi Hayashibara vehicle by Takashi Watanabe (Slayers). And a lot other EG Films folks that worked on Slayers and Lost Universe. More of a Asami Sanada & Jun Fukuyama vehicle, but Megumi is there as third wheel and does the theme song. Now EG Films TV projects are great animation, so the fact that this never made it into English and the fairly rubbish Lost Universe did, suggests this is really rubbish. Even though Slayers’ Rui Araizumi was involved in creating the characters.

It did get a Gameboy game though.

HATE FUN 2000! Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Children

Brack — Sat, 12 Sep 2009 12:59:32 +0000

Spin-off anime of a spin-off video game!

I’m willing to bet this isn’t very good.

HATE FUN 2000! Sci-Fi Harry

Brack — Sat, 12 Sep 2009 12:59:31 +0000

Yay a Shinya Ohira hyper realism OP. I wonder if Ohira influenced the Waking Life/Scanner Darkly folks?

I’ve seen a little of this and must finish it at some point. A George Iida tale, and so naturally it’s a tale of ESP horror. http://www.chthonian.net/harry/ has lots of information on the series and Iida. I totally ripped the plot off for a Call of Cthulhu campaign (using material from Delta Green). ESP/psychic horror seems a particular line of fiction that’s fallen into disuse, perhaps because we’re out of the peak of folks like Uri Gellar’s popularity. Instead we have the fake psychic fiction of Psych and The Mentalist and the not-a-psychic-honest-guv faux psychic trickery of Derren Brown.

HATE FUN 2000! Legendary Gambler Tetsuya

Brack — Sat, 12 Sep 2009 12:59:30 +0000

Mahjong gambling adaptation set in post-war Japan. While fansubbed, it didn’t really catch on with English speaking fans the way the more recent Fukumoto adaptations seem have done.

HATE FUN 2000! Argento Soma

Brack — Sat, 12 Sep 2009 12:59:29 +0000

More Evangelion cloning, this time from Big O head honcho Kazuyoshi Katayama. Whatever merits this may have, history is likely to forget it in the mix of similar shows produced. And Katayama is likely to be remembered for the more idiosyncratic Big O than anything else.

HATE FUN 2000! Gravitation

Brack — Sat, 12 Sep 2009 12:59:28 +0000

Is this one of the biggest yaoi shows of the decade? Not my area of knowledge, but seems like it has had some cross-over appeal, and more importantly longeivity. Director Bob Shirohata proved he hadn’t lost his touch with his audience when he brought Hetalia – Axis Powers to anime.

HATE FUN 2000! Gear Fighter Dendoh

Brack — Sat, 12 Sep 2009 12:59:27 +0000

Who knows how many kids developed an Oedipus complex after this show? For this is a show that decides to make the sex symbol of the show the mother of one of the leads (who the kids watching are supposed to identify with, and thus buy the toys and videogames). True, she’s wearing a mask and wig disguise when she’s the sex symbol, but she’s the kid’s mum nonetheless. SPOILERS btw.

That odd decision aside, this is fun little mecha show, one that seems to be Sunrise trying to feel out new franchises for the decade. As such it has the creative team behind one their 90s hits Future GPX Cyber Formula on it – Mitsuo Fukuda & Chiaki Morosawa. More on them later.

It didn’t end up being that big a hit, and the Gear Fighting concept wasn’t revived. More Sunrise grasping for magic to come in later years.

HATE FUN 2000! Hajime no Ippo

Brack — Sat, 12 Sep 2009 12:59:26 +0000

A prime example of a long running show scuppered in the US by its release format. 15 volumes at $29.98, you’d have dropped around $450 on this buying it as it came out. With Geneon now gone from the US market and no-one in a hurry to re-license the volumes are very varied in prices, some under the original price, others rising in price. Looking at Amazon UK, I can see the first box set (volumes 1-8) is now going for £190.85, as opposed to the original price of $79.99.

Voted #98 in TV Asahi’s 2005 top 100 anime survey, the popularity of the manga meant it got a sequel series earlier this year. And for a late night anime it pretty much killed it, getting strong ratings for late night anime and running far longer than shows typical for that audience.

HATE FUN 2000! Vandread

Brack — Sat, 12 Sep 2009 12:59:25 +0000

I’m even more surprised at how evergreen Vandread’s proved than Descendants of Darkness. Possibly because it’s never really been on my radar, looking like your bog-standard sci-fi anime, and one that looks more like a 90s anime on the surface at that.

However, it’s been released 4 different times by Pioneer and then Funimation (single releases and three different collections), the latest being this year. And Funimation have just licenced the two compilation OAVs made of the show. It’s amusing to see the review ANN did back in 2002 mention that GONZO were “developing a reputation for going all out with an opening episode for a series, then skimping on the budget for the next few episodes.” Well it didn’t take them long to get that fully developed.

In going through old reviews for this there was one that pointed something out that hadn’t clicked before. Namely that a lot of shows had got only the following message from Evangelion’s success – put girls in giant robots. Like that was the only reason Evangelion was a hit. Vandread runs along those lines to the point of harem extremes, but people seem to like it due to its sense of humour and the wacky mankind splitting along gender lines gimmick it opens with.

Otaku no Video’s Takeshi Mori created the show and directed it, and as we shall see the majority of his work this decade is along these girl-heavy sci-fi comedy adventure lines.

HATE FUN 2000! Boys Be

Brack — Sat, 12 Sep 2009 12:59:24 +0000

Teenage romance show that got outshone by Love Hina. Director Masami Shimoda may be responsible for some of the most relentlessly middling shows of the decade.

HATE FUN 2000! Dr. Fabre Is a Detective

Brack — Sat, 12 Sep 2009 12:59:23 +0000

Yes, the arabic opening. This is all I could find, such is the off the radar nature of this entomological detective show.

Well, I say off the radar, but actual information in English is available as it’s one of the shows Enoki Films have in their catalogue.

HATE FUN 2000! Descendants of Darkness

Brack — Sat, 12 Sep 2009 12:59:22 +0000

A show with a surprisingly long life. Picked up by CPM, now in Manga Entertainment’s catalogue, it was also screened on the Sci-Fi channel in 2008. Not bad going for a workmanlike 13 part shojo manga adaptation, whose popularity is likely due to yaoi themes present.

HATE FUN 2000! Mr Digital Tokoro The Comical Cartoon

Brack — Sat, 12 Sep 2009 12:59:21 +0000

Now here’s something I have never heard of. It’s a series of CG shorts that act as a vehicle for comic George Tokoro (Ponyo’s Father in Ponyo). Director Hiroshi Chida would got to make the much more polished Boneheads, a short that featured on Nickelodeon’s Random Cartoons:

HATE FUN 2000! Hand Maid May

Brack — Sat, 12 Sep 2009 12:59:20 +0000

This show almost seems like a “me first” product, trying to pre-empt the official adaptation of Bunjūrō Nakayama & Bow Ditama’s Mahoromatic by making their own story of a robot maid (that would appear in 2001).

The work of serial offender Shinichiro Kimura (Burn Up Excess, Charger Girl Ju-den Chan, Popotan) it’s basically a porn plot, stripped of all the truly pornographic material that plot would seem to demand. The anime equivalent of Nuts magazine. Which is pretty much most of the shows Kimura worked on this decade, so I guess he knows his audience.

HATE FUN 2000! Dinozaurs

Brack — Sat, 12 Sep 2009 12:59:19 +0000

What were we saying about terrible CG robots back in the Transformers Car Robot post? Well here’s some more.

Called Dinozone in Japan, this was another Saban adaptation for Fox. It was, of course, designed to sell transforming dinosaur toys. Toys that were as garishly coloured as they appear in the cartoon.

HATE FUN 2000! Brigadoon: Marin and Melan

Brack — Sat, 12 Sep 2009 12:59:18 +0000

BRIGADOONまりんとメランOP2
Uploaded by yasusi286. – Full seasons and entire episodes online.

Crikey, finding this OP was a little tricky. Lots of clips of fetish-y bits* of the show on youtube and AMVs, but nothing of the opening and ending credits. Gaogaigar’s Yoshitomo Yonetani and Read Or Die’s Hideyuki Kurata come together to create this odd mecha show very loosely inspired by the legend of Brigadoon.

Tokyopop licenced it during their dalliance with being an anime distributor. I think it’s out of print now, but you can find new copies still for cheap prices.

* Nothing overtly kinky, but obviously it knows that there’s different levels of innocence in their viewers. And so those viewers with the least amount of innocence have clipped their favourite bits and put them on video sites. And those seem to be the cosplay bits, the growing bits and robosexual bits.

HATE FUN 2000! Strange Dawn

Brack — Sat, 12 Sep 2009 12:59:17 +0000

I mentioned before that we in the UK seem to like anime shows where the protagonists travel from our world to a fantasy world, and here’s another show in that vein.

While not fully embraced as it aired on FIVE, back when it was Channel 5 and jokes about it’s reception were still rife and relevant. But it was during that time when every station wanted it’s own anime show and FIVE certainly did better than the BBC (who ended up with Monster Rancher).

You see Strange Dawn is rather classy and a little off kilter. Two school girls find themselves transported to a fantasy world, but unlike your Escaflownes and your Fushigi Yuugis, the world they are transported to is not to scale. Instead it populated by Liliputian sized beings who believe the girls are god like beings who will end the war in their world.

It’s the brain child of Junichi Sato (Sailor Moon, Sgt. Frog, Magic User’s Club, Aria) and the scripts are overseen by Michiko Yokote (Hare+Guu, Genshiken, xxxHolic, Mononoke). Princess Tutu’s Shougo Kawamoto also weighs in on direction.

Never got a complete release in the US. I know it was due to be released in the UK, but I’m not sure if it never surfaced of if it’s out of print. So you’ll likely have a bit of a hunt on your hands tracking it all down.

HATE FUN 2000! Ayashi no Ceres

Brack — Sat, 12 Sep 2009 12:59:16 +0000

This show I remember as being quite hyped among the fan scene at the time, due to the popularity of Fushigi Yuugi in the UK fandom. Maybe it’s due to being brought up on Narnia, but all those 90s shows where kids ended up in magical worlds seemed to strike a chord with us.

This show didn’t seem to strike the same chord. Beyond the initial excitement I can’t recall anything about it. Viz put it out on video fairly quickly in 2001, but it’s telling that nothing else of Yuu Watase’s work has made it to anime since.

HATE FUN 2000! NieA_7

Brack — Sat, 12 Sep 2009 12:59:15 +0000

Extra-terrestrials are used to make point about immigration and discrimination. No it’s not District 9, it’s Yoshitoshi ABe’s NieA_7.

Probably the show that has the smallest gulf between the whimsy and humour of ABe’s art and writing and what ends up on screen, it’s also overlooked compared to Lain and Haibane Renmei. Going back to the first episode this week, it wasn’t quite as good as I remember (except the music, which is a great collection of ragtime), but it’s definitely worth a look if you’ve not seen it yet. Certainly one of the better TV anime from 2000.

HATE FUN 2000! The ones that got away, part one.

Brack — Sat, 12 Sep 2009 12:59:14 +0000

That brings us up to the halfway mark of 2000. However there’s a few shows I’ve missed either due to lack of OP footage, or mixed messages on what the show was.

Monster Rancher: The Road to Legend

This appears to be a second series of Monster Rancher. However can’t find much information on it, so not entirely sure.

Nintama Rantaro & Ojaru-maru

Not sure if these were a direct continuation or if there was a significant production break. And also which OP to use if they are “new”.

NEXT: Hamsters, Maids, Lilliputians, Demons and Transforming Dinosaurs.

HATE FUN 2000! Medabots Spirits

Brack — Sat, 12 Sep 2009 12:59:13 +0000

WE ARE SUPER GUYS!

Not seen this series, but I did check out the first episode of the first series (the Nelvana English dub). Very good. My gut instinct says this is probably the best of the post-Pokemon shows licenced for TV. The animation might be cheap, but it’s very stylish. And when there is movement, it’s loose and flowing.

HATE FUN 2000! Hamtaro

Brack — Sat, 12 Sep 2009 12:59:12 +0000

Ritsuko Kawai’s hamster characters leapt from storybook to screen in 2000. And stayed there until 2006.

Viz brought it to the US in 2002, and I can’t help thinking it’s going to be overlooked when people look at Viz’s growth this decade compared to Shonen Jump and Naruto.

HATE FUN 2000! – Nyani ga Nyander Nyander Kamen

Brack — Sat, 12 Sep 2009 11:59:59 +0000

Ah the first show in this daunting list of a decade’s worth of anime shows and a show that apparently does not exist according to Anime News Network. Despite being the creation of Takashi Yanase. The man who created Anpanman, and therefore a big deal.

Luckily Keyframe has a synopsis:

Nyago is not the best cat in Cat Town, he can’t climb trees and always seems to be either half asleep or with his head in a book. However because of his kind and caring heart he was given the power to help others and protect the town from evil by the wise spirit of the mountain.

Upon hearing a cry for help Nyago dons the costume of Nyanda Kamen, the super cat admired by one and all – gaining flight and superstrength but losing his tail in the transformation. With the help of his pterandon partner Hen, Nyago is there when anyone in the town needs him most.

Well that sounds like a ton of fun for kids. Superheroes, cats, dinosaurs. What more do you want?

A transformation sequence!

The ending.