Obligatory blurb:
Animewatch is a column about Anime (A.K.A. Japanimation) originally written for the Fabulous Fiction Bookstore and Fabulous Fiction Comics & Games by Animemeister Jay Scott Raymond. The views herein are expressly my own and I make no concessions here to those who lack the wit to love Anime.
Konichiwa fellow Otaku! How many of you out there don't have a laserdisc player yet? Holy technophobes Batman! My psychic laserdisc sense tells me far too many of you haven't made this investment!
For an Anime collector (or any video collector for that matter) the laserdisc format is ideal. Tapes wear out and you have to be careful of magnetic fields. Laserdiscs can't be erased by a magnet and they don't wear out (not in a human lifetime at least).
For the serious fan, look to Pioneer. They are putting out Anime in the ideal collector's format. They are putting out their discs in CAV format with the original Japanese dialogue on one sound track, a quality english dub on the other track and even sub-titles via closed-captioning! You can watch these discs in the original Japanese, in Japanese with sub-titles, in English or even in English with sub-titles! The translation tastes of all fans are covered! So far the titles they have anounced have been: Tenchi Muyo, Moldiver, Green Legend Ran, and Kishin Heidan; more on the way!
Remember to check Advance Comics for upcoming Laserdisc releases. If you want these you must tell Bob! He doesn't stock laserdiscs but will be glad to special order them for you!
Enough of this riveting discussion, on to the reviews. In this installment I am reviewing two of the more mind-bending Anime movies out there: The Ultimate Teacher and Lum The Forever (Urusei Yatsura movie # 4).
Have you seen Project A-KO? It is great, hilarious, weird, funny and amusing but makes no sense whatsoever. This lack of sense is not detrimental to it; if anything it adds to the humor.