1992: Anime Goes Over the Moon

In the late 1990s, Brian Ruh became seduced by the dark side of anime–the academic side. After reading the chapter “Vampires, Psychic Girls, Flying Women and Sailor Scouts” by Susan J. Napier, Brian decided that he wanted to become an anime scholar too. After all, what else was he going to do with a philosophy degree? He went on to get an M.A. in Asian Cultures and Languages from the University of Texas at Austin and then a Ph.D. in Communication and Culture from Indiana University. Along the way, he's written articles, book chapters, reviews, and a column for ANN. He also wrote the book Stray Dog of Anime: The Films of Mamoru Oshii, and is currently at work on a second edition to be released in 2014. He can be found on Twitter at @animeresearch, where he opines about anime and tells terrible puns.

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Until I began investigating all of the shows that came out in 1992, I didn't really have any idea of the embarrassment of riches this year provided. I had originally decided to write about 1992 because it was around this time that I began re-discovering anime. I was born a couple of months after Star Wars first came out in the theaters–this created a wave of SF entertainment, particularly cartoons, throughout my formative years. My afternoons were filled with watching the likes of Battle of the Planets, Voltron, Starblazers, Robotech, and Tranzor Z, although I didn't know it as anime at the time. In late elementary and junior high school, I grew more towards Star Trek and the like, but early in high school I found myself back in the anime groove, thanks to a friend with a couple tapes of Robotech and Gunbuster.

Although I had my own subjective experiences of anime in 1992, at first I wasn't sure how to get a handle on what the year looked like for the Japanese industry. I figured that if I wanted to hit some of the highlights, it couldn't hurt to check out the covers of the major Japanese anime magazines–Newtype and Animage. Of course, I knew this wouldn’t be the whole story, but it would point us in the right direction of what was popular (or at least what the magazine editorial teams thought would sell) that year.

1991: The Kids Are All Right

Thomas Zoth (ABCBTom) has only been reviewing anime for a year, but he's been a self-identified anime fan since 1997. The picture gets more complicated if you factor in Nick Jr. shows like The Noozles and Belle and Sebastian from when he was a kid. He writes frequently on Twitter, somewhat frequently for Fandompost.com, and when he feels like it at his blog, hungrybugdiner.com. He also wrote a journal article on the politics of One Piece in the Forum for World Literature Studies.

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The highest grossing Japanese movie of 1991 is Isao Takahata's Only Yesterday (Omoide Poro Poro, or more literally "Memories With Tears."), and it serves as a good summation of the year itself. Many know Only Yesterday to be one of Ghibli's best, yet it is one of the only remaining Ghibli titles not to have any American release from Disney. It's a quiet, subtle film that would not be able to attract the large audiences Miyazaki's more family friendly, and less culturally specific works.

Only Yesterday isn't alone: 1991 is full of acclaimed, yet woefully overlooked classics.

Only Yesterday is fitting in another way. The story revolves around a woman named Taeko, who is tempted to leave the corporate rat race in 1980s Japan and run off to the idyllic furusato, or hometown, where she can live in peace off of nature's bounty. It's easy to see why it would resonate with a Japanese audience in 1991, as who wouldn't want to get away? 1991 was the final year of the Japanese economic bubble, and the nation went from economic excess and overvalued assets to a period of economic malaise that has arguably never fully lifted. After the bursting of the bubble, there would never be another Wings on Honneamise, released in 1987 with a huge 800 million yen budget, or another Akira.

The cyberpunk opus of 1991 was instead Roujin Z, written by Akira's Otomo, but directed by Hiroyuki Kitakubo. Unlike the brutal phantasmagoria of Akira, Roujin Z was a social satire about the care of the elderly. Roger Ebert gave the film three stars, and spoke of the potential of anime by saying "I cannot imagine this story being told in a conventional movie. Not only would the machine be impossibly expensive and complex to create with special effects, but the social criticism would be immediately blue-penciled by Hollywood executives." The title is currently unlicensed in America.