tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-90601703800217976452024-03-17T23:03:47.697-04:00let's animeLet's talk about classic (1960-1990) Japanese cartoons!d.merrillhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07704651182760972937noreply@blogger.comBlogger251125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9060170380021797645.post-41048562175100985892023-12-30T21:43:00.001-05:002023-12-30T21:43:42.921-05:00Jack And The Sonorama Christmastime was just here, and for us here at Let's Anime, Santa Claus, or Mandarake's mail order service, was kinda busy. One of the presents under the tree this year was a Sonorama single for the 1967 Toei film Jack And The Witch! If you've never seen this film, well, it's kind of nuts. It's a movie about a kid named Jack who loads up his junker car with his animal friends d.merrillhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07704651182760972937noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9060170380021797645.post-11677216046467713902023-11-29T00:07:00.001-05:002023-12-05T10:47:41.430-05:00When The Rings Of Time Come Together, We Will Meet AgainIn the fall of 1979 I was a cartoon-addicted elementary school student, spending my Saturdays with Scooby-Doo and old Warner Brothers shorts on network TV. Weekdays the UHF stations gave us Tom & Jerry, the Super Friends, Speed Racer and Battle Of The Planets. That autumn the elementary school playground gossip was all about a new cartoon that had just started airing on channel 46. This new d.merrillhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07704651182760972937noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9060170380021797645.post-44509829108917294322023-10-21T10:43:00.004-04:002023-10-21T10:45:00.612-04:00Anime Weekend Atlanta 2023It's October and that means it's time for another annual convocation of Atlanta's premier Japanese animation festival, Anime Weekend Atlanta! Every AWA is special, it seems every show's had their own specific vibe. 2023 is no exception; this is the third AWA after the 2020 cancellations, overall the 28th AWA, and this is the twentieth- and final - convention in its present location, the Cobb d.merrillhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07704651182760972937noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9060170380021797645.post-10094186035623052912023-08-31T23:56:00.000-04:002023-08-31T23:56:33.314-04:00Nobody Knows The Party RulesYou can hear it as you get off the elevator. Somewhere down the otherwise quiet hotel hallway is the muffled rumble and chatter of a crowd. Sometimes you can even smell it, the distinct odors of red wine, tonic water, off-brand tequila, lime wedges, and the occasional spilled beer. There’s a kooky flyer taped to the door, wedged open a crack with that hinged bar lock. Or maybe it’s closed and youd.merrillhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07704651182760972937noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9060170380021797645.post-51409771167536943422023-05-23T12:00:00.004-04:002023-05-23T13:51:06.526-04:00Anime North 2023It's that time of year again when the flowers bloom, when the pollen drifts, when spring comes to Ontario and when Anime North comes to Toronto. Since 1997 this festival of all things Japanese animation-related has been a yearly highlight of the Canadian anime fan calendar, and as the nation's top non-profit fan event the convention provides a weekend of excitement for, let's say thirty thousand d.merrillhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07704651182760972937noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9060170380021797645.post-69587972266803810312023-05-17T00:25:00.002-04:002023-05-17T00:25:53.286-04:00The Mister Kitty Story As many Let's Anime readers may be aware, when I'm not writing for this blog I'm usually working on something for the website Mister Kitty. My partner Shaindle Minuk and myself started Mister Kitty in 2006 or so as a website to publish our comics on the internets, which was the fashion at the time. Since then we've both released hundreds and hundreds of pages of our original d.merrillhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07704651182760972937noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9060170380021797645.post-91835316079477371292023-03-31T11:49:00.002-04:002023-05-15T21:07:30.933-04:00A Time Slip Of Forty Years: 1983 In Anime Film Let's look at the numbers. In 1982 there were 21 animated movies released in Japanese cinemas with a total running time of 1881 minutes. The next year saw slightly fewer films- only 19 - and a concomitant shrinkage of total length down to a mere sixteen hundred sixty-five minutes. You could marathon that in less than a day! But when you look at the actual films themselves forty years ago, ad.merrillhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07704651182760972937noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9060170380021797645.post-9298821864642795022023-02-28T00:01:00.004-05:002023-05-15T21:07:18.574-04:00May The Force Five Be With You Force Five! Not a wind strength measured with the Beaufort scale. Not the 1981 Robert Clouse action movie starring Hapkido master Bong Soo Han. Instead, five different Japanese animation science-fiction sockeroos entertaining us in the early 80's! If you were watching syndicated TV in those days, you might have caught any one of the five on your local UHF station, localized and packaged by Jim d.merrillhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07704651182760972937noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9060170380021797645.post-10758429775104553102023-01-31T00:59:00.002-05:002023-05-15T21:08:05.781-04:00Vengeance Of My Youth's Arcadia Sure. Have a pummeled kid look up mid-thrashing, exclaim “Captain Harlock!” and let the audience figure out that guy from the wanted poster earlier, with the eyepatch and the skull-and-crossbones suit, that guy is probably a space pirate. That’s how Captain Harlock debuts in 1979’s Galaxy Express 999 film, a walking bit of iconography at home among the movie’s space trains and cosmic d.merrillhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07704651182760972937noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9060170380021797645.post-74481225162352034892022-11-30T12:59:00.002-05:002023-05-15T21:08:22.122-04:001972: The Year Anime Got Groovy It’s 1972! President Nixon's plumbers are plumbing up what we’d call Watergate, while Tricky Dick makes a historic relations-normalizing visit to mainland China. Arab terrorists murder 11 at the Munich Summer Olympics, a three-man Japanese hit squad kills 26 at Lod Airport near Tel Aviv, and negotiators in Paris try to hammer out a Vietnam peace deal. Top American films include The Poseidond.merrillhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07704651182760972937noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9060170380021797645.post-44458779730618064062022-10-24T11:20:00.002-04:002023-05-15T21:09:35.560-04:00Anime Weekend Atlanta 2022Back in 1995 when we were preparing to cut the ribbon on our first Anime Weekend Atlanta, the expectation was that we'd have a fun little gathering of the local anime fans, and that would pretty much be it. We'd watch some videos, we'd buy some VHS tapes, we'd judge some costumes, and then we'd go home, and maybe we'd keep having one of these things every year, and maybe we wouldn't. Anime fandomd.merrillhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07704651182760972937noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9060170380021797645.post-63931053886925343452022-09-02T12:05:00.002-04:002023-05-15T21:09:48.629-04:00Annoying Adventures With The Tape Trading Taskforcethis
column originally ran in 2003 at Mike Toole’s “Anime Jump”
website, and has been amended with minor corrections, slight
alterations, and additional annoyances. Names have been changed to
protect the innocent and guilty.
Back
in the pre-DVD. pre-streaming era, when you had to swap stuff with
strangers through the mail to get any kind of decent Japanese
cartoons, brave nerd pioneers wouldd.merrillhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07704651182760972937noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9060170380021797645.post-69228558305553345202022-07-30T13:13:00.003-04:002023-11-30T16:29:42.208-05:00Anime North: Dateline 1997 1997 was the year Titanic broke box office records, Seinfeld and ER battled for the top TV ratings, and Japanese animation like Princess Mononoke and End Of Evangelion solidified the medium’s grip on an international audience starved for that brand of entertainment. Meanwhile in Toronto, a province-wide coalition of anime fans were gathering to start what would become Canada’s largest anime d.merrillhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07704651182760972937noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9060170380021797645.post-62206381558504031452022-07-01T12:03:00.004-04:002023-05-15T21:10:18.915-04:00Anime North is back! Well, we're back. Anime North returns to the Toronto Congress Centre and the Delta Hotel on Dixon Rd. (you know, out by the airport) for its 25th year of Japanese animation convention fun! Cosplay! Guests! Vendors! Late-night dances! Events! Videos! Gaming! All the fun you missed in 2020 and 2021 is back and in full force this year at Anime North. What are some of the can't-miss events at the d.merrillhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07704651182760972937noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9060170380021797645.post-15718914877353573962022-05-31T01:10:00.004-04:002023-05-15T21:10:32.335-04:00Blue Sonnet On It When the five part Crimson Fang: Blue Sonnet original video series was released in 1989, American anime fans immediately thought of one thing - the margarine brand "Blue Bonnet." But even without any knowledge of Masahiro Shibata's original Crimson Fang manga, fans in the US immediately grasped familiar story beats, which include an evil organization bent on world conquest, innocent youngsters d.merrillhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07704651182760972937noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9060170380021797645.post-11184458105831837882022-04-28T12:46:00.002-04:002023-05-15T21:10:45.149-04:00Knights Of The Seiya Zodiac portions of this article originally appeared at Anime Jump. Back in the 1980s – I know this is a cliché but it’s all I got here, so work with me - while the Gundam franchise was napping, before Nadia: The Secret Of Blue Water made Gainax stars, Knights Of The Zodiac was pretty much all we had. Of course we referred to it by the Japanese title, Saint Seiya, even if at the time we d.merrillhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07704651182760972937noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9060170380021797645.post-75820981035557243512022-03-29T11:38:00.004-04:002023-05-15T21:11:02.951-04:00The Queen Of One Thousand And Forty Years On
September 9, 1999, at 9:09am (Japan Standard Time), disaster will
strike the Earth! Speeding by on its thousand-year orbit, the giant
planet Lar Metal will miss us by inches, but in its wake comes
destruction on a vast scale. Professor Amamori of the Tsukuba
Observatory struggles with the biggest astronomical news of the
century, along with his orphaned nephew Hajime and Amamori’s
d.merrillhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07704651182760972937noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9060170380021797645.post-65729102203576814962022-02-19T21:01:00.003-05:002023-05-15T21:11:15.987-04:00Star Blazers And The Start Of A Fannish JourneyEditor's note: So back in 1999, I was on an email mailing-list of Star Blazers fans we called "The Cosmolist". Seeing as how 1999 was the 20th anniversary of Star Blazers' first appearance on American TV, it seemed to me that we ought to put together a commemorative print fanzine, a "Cosmo-zine," if you will. Was it my idea? I can't remember. Fans on the list swapped ideas for articles - recipes,d.merrillhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07704651182760972937noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9060170380021797645.post-33198738994305573132022-01-10T13:31:00.002-05:002023-05-15T21:11:33.537-04:00X: Mild Gift Author's note: This article was originally published in the twelfth (Spring 1999) issue of the fanzine "Let's Anime," and was intended to be titled "X: Mild Gift", though this title somehow got deleted. It was written as one unbroken sentence, and is reproduced here as before, minus the transcription errors born from trying to read my handwriting. Traditionally, the letter "X" d.merrillhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07704651182760972937noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9060170380021797645.post-29576023033846312072021-12-12T18:41:00.002-05:002023-05-15T21:11:45.943-04:00ninteen anime eighty-one part two Last time here at Let's Anime, we looked at the Japanese anime television of 1981. And let's make no mistake; that was so much TV, you’d think people didn’t have any time to get out to theaters to see anime films. Remember movie theaters? I miss seeing movies in theaters. Anyway, now we're going to take a look at what those people were looking at when they quit looking at their TVs d.merrillhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07704651182760972937noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9060170380021797645.post-27491379665989370332021-11-21T21:03:00.004-05:002023-05-15T21:12:05.196-04:00ninteen anime eighty-one part one Hey gang, earlier this year during the online Anime North convention, I delivered a virtual presentation all about what Japanese animation was like forty years ago, back in 1981. Well, those convention panels, even online ones, move pretty fast. If you aren’t careful you’ll miss something. I know I did! So that’s why today here at Let’s Anime we’re going to take that presentation and turn d.merrillhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07704651182760972937noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9060170380021797645.post-12581645081155918092021-10-18T11:07:00.003-04:002023-05-15T21:12:22.543-04:00anime weekend atlanta is back After a year off ANIME WEEKEND ATLANTA returns to the Cobb Galleria Centre and the Renaissance Waverly Hotel for four days of Japanese anime fandom fun! It's all happening October 28-31 and you can find out all about the show - including COVID-19 policies - at www.awa-con.com which is and has been the AWA website for years. Hint, the policy is "get vaxxed" and "wear a mask at all times," thank d.merrillhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07704651182760972937noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9060170380021797645.post-70745299192835290892021-08-07T19:12:00.002-04:002023-05-15T21:12:36.764-04:00Eagle Sam The Anime Olympic Eagle It's Summer Olympics time again and the world's athletes are sweating it out in Tokyo while the world watches... from home, because COVID-19 is still a thing and spectators aren't allowed into the games. Fans of Japanese animation have been making Akira references since the Games were announced, the news media has had fun misidentifing Odaiba's Gundam statue, and in general Japanese pop culture d.merrillhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07704651182760972937noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9060170380021797645.post-55338577507118553302021-06-26T15:57:00.002-04:002023-02-03T18:48:02.305-05:00I Was A Teenage Anime Club President As a former teenage anime club president, I spend a lot of time these days sitting on my porch in my rocking chair with my elderly cronies, sneering at the kids today with their hair and their clothes and their streaming video and their instagram influencers. Actually, I don't do any of that. Instead, occasionally I pull some stuff from my files and use that junk to write about our anime club d.merrillhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07704651182760972937noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9060170380021797645.post-86203066578585627182021-06-06T13:57:00.002-04:002023-02-03T18:48:24.948-05:00across the leijiverseLeiji Matsumoto: Essays On The Manga And Anime Legend McFarland & Co. Editors Helen McCarthy and Darren-Jon Ashmore Leiji Matsumoto isn't as well known in the English speaking anime-fan world as, say, Osamu Tezuka or Hayao Miyazaki. Tezuka’s manga career impacted every facet of the Japanese industry, and his animation aired across America for decades, while Miyazaki’s Academy Award-winning d.merrillhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07704651182760972937noreply@blogger.com5