1983: Fantasy Plus Reality Plus a Genre Queen

Patrick Drazen is old enough to have gone to the movies when the first anime to get to America was being screened: Osamu Tezuka’s 1959 feature film Saiyu-ki, dubbed, chopped and issued as Alakazam the Great! This version of the Son Goku legend lay dormant in his mind until the appearance of VCRs in the mid-Eighties, when Japanese videos could be seen in the West; there was no turning back. An interest in Japanese popular culture and its connection to Japan’s history, religion, and sociology has led to two books: Anime Explosion: The What? Why? And Wow! Of Japanese Animation (2002 by Stone Bridge Press, which plans to release an expanded e-book second edition in 2013) and A Gathering of Spirits: Japan’s Ghost Story Tradition (2011, a self-published paper book and e-book through iUniverse).

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1983 was a surprising year in the transition of anime to a new medium. While televised anime was enjoying its golden age of super-team mecha shows (Vifam, Genesis Climer Mospeada, Galactic Whirlwind Sasuraiger, Armored Trooper Votoms, and Super Dimension Century Orguss, just to name a few vehicles), sports-centric shows (Captain, Captain Tsubasa, Kinnikuman), and the last of the obligatory Time Bokan shows until 2000 (Itadakiman), theaters were capitalizing on trips to the stars (Final Yamato, Crusher Joe) and global adventure (Urusei Yatsura: Only You, Dr. Slump and Arale-chan: Hoyoyo, The Great 'Round-the-World Race). However, that's not to say that there were alternatives to the norm.

The two theater-based features released in 1983 and highlighted here were polar opposites; one was a scary but lighthearted fantasy adventure intended for children, while the other was a harrowing and intensely graphic true story about human cruelty and a matching will to survive. Both were based on major works by mangaka and are known in the west mainly by reputation. The one TV series that stands out in 1983 anime is a marker for an entire genre but it, too, is seldom seen now. Thus passes the glories of “old-school” anime.