The Mike Toole Show
The Least Essential Anime
by Michael Toole,
I've been watching some Doctor Who lately, which, depending on your point of view, makes me either way cooler or way less cool. The show is really hit or miss, but one of the neat things about the currently running season is the introduction of the Silence, a race of aliens who are terrifying to behold, but who vanish from your memory as soon as you look away from them. You know, an awful lot of anime is like this - a vast quantity of OVAs, movies, and TV shows flare and fade with remarkable swiftness. Actually, an awful lot of media is like this - Harold Robbins is one of the best-selling American authors of all time, but how many of his books can you name? Conan the Barbarian is flailing hilariously in theatres, unlike its theatrical predecessor - but an awful lot like the Conan 1998 TV series, which I didn't even realize had been made until a few weeks ago.
Let's dredge up some of these quickly forgotten anime. After all, it's easy to talk about the big list of the most essential anime films and shows, and it's even easier to wax poetic about epic stinkers like Garzey's Wing and YouTube clips or go to a on the subject at your local anime convention. But what about the least essential anime? What about the stuff that isn't just bad, or isn't necessarily awful, but just seems to dissipate, like smoke, immediately after its release? The discs and tapes quietly vanish from stores, there aren't many reviews, and even artwork is tough to locate. Let's look at a ten-pack of these lost non-classics, in chronological order of release.
Back when anime was still mostly fanservice, as the elfin title character jiggles her way through a series of chases and fights with bizarre, goofy little demons. "Cute & Sexy!,' cries the cover art desperately. Yeah, that's about it.
1999 would bring us Sakura Tange was a huge favorite among seiyuu fans in the wake of her turn as the title character in Cardcaptor Sakura; I can only imagine that the producers devised Trouble Chocolate as a way of giving her something to do.
In 1971, manga artist Advent Children looks good.
A couple of months back, I guested on the ANNcast and spent an entertaining handful of minutes trying to stump Justin and Zac with a list of obscure titles that actually got DVD release in region 1. I finally silenced their affirmations and remembrances with Tokyopop, who took an extremely atypical approach - they released it on two discs, subtitled only, and packaged each disc with a volume of manga. This has been done a few times, but it's usually a box set affair. Here, Tokyopop's version actually sneaked the discs into regular bookstores, but I doubt that helped sales very much.
We'll round out this list with a high-profile release. Sony's ill-fated PSP-only media platform. It probably holds the distinction of being the worst anime ever released on UMD.
Well, there's your ten. Obviously, there's lots more where that came from. It used to be that titles like this would be quickly forgotten, relegated to a single paragraph in the Anime Encyclopedia and left as a stub on ANN's own encyclopedia. But thanks to the internet and the amazing obsessive compulsions by us fans, we're able to a lot more anime than we really need to. Do you a show that seemed like a huge waste of time, but got released internationally anyway? Maybe one of my picks is actually a favorite of yours, and you're feeling the need to give me a verbal smackdown? Do you want to talk about old favorites like Soar High! Isami? Lay it on me in the comments!
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