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[odirra000]

70s Anime Retrospective

i've watched about 26 different anime released in the 70s. At its best there were a few TV series that I stuck with for the enjoyment I got out of them. At its worst it was dropped after 1-2 episodes or after 30 minutes of a movie. There was a developed trend that formed thanks to the popularity of a few series and the rest attempted to follow suite, causing 70s anime as a whole to get a bit monotonous and difficult to get through.

The Lists

Completed

By nature of having been completed, anime in this list represents my personal top 10 of everything I watched in the 70s.

Everything will be ordered from most enjoyed to least enjoyed

Lupin III: The Castle of Cagliostro

Tomorrow's Joe (Movie)

Future Boy Conan

Rose of Versailles

Lupin III

Aim for the Ace!

Galaxy Express 999

Space Pirate Captain Harlock

Lupin III: Lupin vs. Fukusei-ningen

Space Battleship Yamato Series & Movie

Lupin III: The Castle of Cagliostro

Miyazaki's first feature film as director!

Beautiful animation & proper Lupin depictions. A great place to start for anyone interested in getting into Lupin III. A classic.

Tomorrow's Joe (Movie)

Thanks to the movie being a condensed version of the TV series, I was able to get passed the notorious prison arc. It's pretty clear within the first few story beats that Joe is a bit of a rascal. The prison arc really exaggerates that character trait to cartoonish levels that will leave you scratching your head. I imagine the manga gets through this arc a lot faster than 20 minutes of "showcase the least amount of original source material" episodes.

Besides that, this is some great storytelling. Many different characters with different motives, priorities, philosophies, and ideas clashing together. An exploration of different types of rivalries through Joe and his different opponents.

Themes of doing your best, handling death, acting for yourself vs acting for other people, doing something out of pure enjoyment rather than for money, full devotion to a craft, and more.

Recognized as one of the top 10 greatest stories of all time in Japan and has influenced many, many stories to come. A favorite amongst the working class and political revolutionaries of the time.

This goes down as one of my favorites of all time. Highly recommend starting with the movie or skipping every other episode through the prison arc.

Future Boy Conan

Cool! Miyazaki makes a TV series! Hands down the best TV series of the 70s. This is mostly credited to the more modern episode count of 26 episodes (roughly equivalent to 2 seasons of anime today). Every episode is impactful and doesn't feel like a waste of time.

The story is a classic anime template of this era.. sci-fi, post nuclear apocalypse, and a fascist/totalitarian/anti-environmentalist group vs. freedom/tree-huggers. Very similar to Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind.... which makes sense since Miyazaki started writing the manga in 1982 (4 years after directing Conan).

As with pretty much everything Miyazaki has been involved in, the focus is interpersonal relationships and believable characters.

An enjoyable watch.

Rose of Versailles

An neat historical fiction story set during the moments before and the beginning of the French revolution. Gives me slight Legend of the Galactic Heroes vibes with how many characters there are. Sometimes gets hard to follow, but for the most part it's entertaining and considered a classic.

It also has the first bisexual & gender nonconforming icon with Oscar. A woman in the French military during the 1700's?? How does she do it?? Watch it to find out!

Lupin III

What's interesting about this series is that it rated incredibly poorly in japan on release. Apparently it was slightly darker and felt a little too 'realistic' to japanese audiences. The initial director, Masaaki Osumi, was fired for refusing to adapt the source material to appeal to a broader (ie. children's audience). Miyazaki and Isao Takahata were brought in as replacements and eventually the show was cancelled.

Because of this director swap, there is some controversy over which interpretation of Lupin characters is the "correct" one. For me personally, I find the Miyazaki's version more entertaining and enjoyable. There wasn't enough substance to the dark themes to really warrant their use. There's not much to being edgy just to be edgy.

This is absolutely not a TV series you need to watch every episode of, but it's similar to Future Boy Conan in that it has a much lower episode count thanks to its cancellation. You could also skip this entirely and start from Part II.

Aim for the Ace!

This is one of the most popular sports stories of all time and is still ranked within the top 50 best anime productions of all time on many japanese anime/manga polls over the years since it's inception.

This story is responsible for a tennis boom in the 1970s, became the template for many other characters in shoujo anime. The clumsy wallflower with hidden potential, the popular narcissist, and handsome coach with a tragic fate. Sound familiar?

Aim for the Ace has been re-interpreted so many times it became a cliché. One of Gainax's first works, Gunbuster - Aim for the Top!, is a sci-fi/mech parody of the story and one of my favorite works of all time.

This truly is a classic story and a treat to experience. (manga might be better.. up to you)

Galaxy Express 999 (film)

Winning the Japanese Academy Award for most popular film in 1980, Galaxy Express 999 has a unique story from the rest. A 10-year-old's journey to get what he thinks he needs and accompanied by a mysterious woman.

A fun watch! Can feel a little long, but overall an enjoyable experience.

Space Pirate Captain Harlock

Earth's government got you down? Tired of your incompetent government leaders wasting their time watching horse racing? Do you wish something could be done to stop the aliens from invading? Then join Captain Harlock and his merry band of "pirates" and do the work yourself!

This is yet another influential story created by the same people that made Galaxy Express 999. Robots with human souls, stoic & badass space captain with a cape, and a kid that just wants to go home to mommy only to realize fighting for what's right is better, and more can all be found here.

~50 or so episodes and can feel pretty long at times. Takes a lot of inspiration from Space Battleship Yamato with its own variations.

Not a super necessary watch, but definitely one to remember.

Lupin III: Lupin vs. Fukusei-ningen

Uhh.. I got nothing for this one. Don't watch this unless you are looking for something very, very weird.

Space Battleship Yamato Series & Movie

I'm honestly surprised this is was popular. The lost at space, stoic spaceship captain, macguffin, idiot kid that misguides his sadness from the loss of his brother into hatred towards everyone around him & has a crush on the alien woman tropes all started here.

As the first "anime first, manga later", Yamato is the reason anime became popular in Japan. The series went entirely unnoticed (and i can see why), but the film took off and acquired a cult following because of its more 'serious tone' (think blues clues vs. avatar the last airbender).

Where Masaaki Osumi's Lupin III failed, Yamato succeeded and set the new standard for anime.

It's probably worth a watch of the film if you're an anime history head, but is definitely not a required viewing.

Dropped

Devilman

uh.. this.. umm.. isn't devilman..

Mazinger Z

Go Nagai really only knows how to design one kind of person lmao. clearly the trend setter for super robot anime, but not worth 92 20min episodes.

Cutey Honey

Clearly Go Nagai is the king of anime TV series.. it's too bad the TV series of the 70s are incredibly weak.

One of the OG magical girl stories.

UFO Robo Grendizer

wow chill Nagai

Magnerobo Ga-Keen

the original darling in the franxxx with only slightly less less sexual connotation and a hilariously aloof main character. I bet kids loved this at the time.

Candy Candy

too much of a kid's show for me to watch even 1 episode.. let alone 115 of them.

Remi, the Nobody's Boy

what is it with anime dad's being assholes? At least Remi's new musician dad seems okay. This is probably good to watch if you're very young and need to learn the basics of morality. apparently this is more popular in other areas across the globe outside of Japan.

Cyborg 009

suffers from "too many episodes" disease. definitely inspired megaman and animation quality is pretty good compared to the other tv series. probably better off reading the manga instead.

Doraemon

Probably somwhere in the top 5 longest running anime of all time with 1787 episodes. Very, very much so a show for kids. it's pretty cute and very popular... but wow yeah no thanks.

Couldn't Find :'(

Tiger Mask

ughhh really wanted to watch this.. sports anime... king from tekken... wrestling... pls...

The Dark Red Eleven

Another sports anime about soccer :'(

Machine Hayabusa

Wow.. this is virtually unknown in the west. Doesn't even have an english wikipedia page. basically this is speed racer

Go For It! Genki

Cute kid kicking ass

[odirra000]

Pokemon, Flashcarts, and Digital Gaming

holy shit pokemon games are expensive...

For example.. this is Pokemon Emerald (yellow is CIB and blue is loose) that is insane. 150-170 for a loose copy of pokemon emerald???

I've spent the last couple of weeks looking for pokemon games so i can actually go through and catch them all. I went to see about getting the games that I needed and wtf they were all AT LEAST 100 bucks on ebay and other re-selling websites. Completely unacceptable.. but I was fucked up to the point where I justified buying games for 80 dollars max because that's how much sword and shield are with the expansion pass. All when I could have just puchased a single flashcart (or more) and downloaded ROMs of every single DS game in existence. Luckily, since I want the mon's 'legitimately', I would have needed at least one authentic version of each gen to trade to anyways. So at least I have that going for me.

But seriously, I can take a flashcart of Ruby/Sapphire, get a second console with a real Emerald, use the gameboy connector cable and trade pokemon from the flashcart to the real emerald. Then from the real Emerald I can transfer to gen 4! I can do this all the way to pokebank then into pokemon home with no problems.

Plus, I can do this for 3DS games as well or even Wii games since my Wii has homebrew on it. I have no intentions of re-selling any of my games so the idea of investing money into gaming with the intent to make more money later is out of the question.

I want to play games and I specifically want to play them on the hardware they were meant to be played on. Playing the handheld games on my computer can be enjoyable at times, but I get the most fun being able to play them the way I used to.

Which brings me to game collecting with modern games... I'm just going to do them digitally now. I can back up all my games from the Switch to my computer with a MicroSD to USB dongle so the whole "you don't actually own your games" argument doesn't really work there because it's essentially the same as physical.. but better. I could potentially make copies of the games I own by copying the data onto multiple SD cards, insert the card into a switch, and bam, I'm good to go. I suppose the only thing that would prevent me from using the game legitimately is if Nintendo for some reason ends up just locking your account. At that point, I'm sure I could just hack the switch and play from my game backups anyways, or even ROMs at that point.

For having a physical representation of the games I love, I could always find someone on etsy to make me a case for it and hell, even going all out and just get a flashcart for a single game that I put onto it and putting that into a case, haha. Probably overkill to be honest, but I guess it will depend on how badly I want a physical copy of it and how much the original costs.