This is a thread dedicated solely to cool retro anime or manga. Anime that feature action, violence, philosophy, sadness, and are from the year 2000 or earlier.
Screw anime filled with generic anime babes and slice-of-life nonsense! I don't want Isekai, I don't want school romance! I don't want feel-good otaku-pandering nonsense! I don't want comedy! I want men at war, I want real drama, I want high stakes, I want COOL anime!
Shows and movies from this era include: Trigun, Cowboy Bebop, Akira, Vampire Hunter D, Darkside Blues, Midnight Eye Goku, Ninja Scroll, and countless others
All of us already know about the legendary shows and manga that formed the foundation of modern media, but a lot of relatively unknown films and shows also inspired many modern creators, so this is a good place to share more obscure yet still well crafted media from ye olden times, while also discussing anything retro or "old" you're watching.
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To get the thread started, I'll talk a bit about a show I've watched recently; Trigun.
It's been on my watchlist for a very long time but I always sort of skipped over it out of laziness. The only thing I knew about it was the fact that it had an AMAZING intro that I would watch on Youtube constantly. Eventually the day came and I've been hooked since.
It's obviously a show targeted more towards kids in Japan, around the 12-13 age, because there's very little blood and only a few on-screen deaths. It's not as vulgar or grotesque as adult-oriented animation, which I found to be both a good thing and kind of bad. I felt as though the show was holding itself back by a lot of its censorship requirements, which meant it wasn't allowed to do or show a lot of things that were instead implied. It was still very mature, but the lack of blood or explicit scenes directly showing anything excessively "adult" did affect my interpretation of it. I don't think it was a bad thing, as I think that any extra vulgarity would have distracted from the point and dignity of the show.
I still found it to be very excellent (and COOL), as the animation, music, and narrative were extremely captivating. Vash is an interesting character and I loved the way that the mysteries surrounding him were portrayed by the show, with the viewer slowly learning more about him and his philosophies as the series went on. It's also an interesting gimmick, the fact that Vash is himself a pacifist, and sort of strangely immature. The show makes it clear that Vash is in a deep amount of pain and lives in fear due to his curse, that every person he comes into contact with dies outside of his hands, which is one of the reasons he's a pacifist. He fears causing more harm than he already does with his continued existence.
However, I find it equally as interesting that, even though Vash is a pacifist, the show portrays him as wrong to be as such under many different circumstances. The truth is that pacifism, in a world like Trigun's, is a coin flip, and 99.9% of people simply can't or shouldn't take that flip. It's objectively better to kill people sometimes-- it's the only way you can preserve your own life while still ridding the world of whatever villain you're faced with.
What makes Vash special is that he's the only person in the world who is both capable and willing to take the coin flip, at whatever personal sacrifice he must make. The only thing he HASN'T sacrificed for his personal philosophy is his life and his gun, both of which are the only things that have stuck with him throughout his hundred year long journey.
Not only that, but it presents many very interesting and intriguing moral dilemmas that directly challenge Vash's pacifism, and it's always cool to see how he manages to survive and succeed without breaking his creed, and how other characters are either forced into or willingly take the "easier" path of killing people.
I think it's very interesting, that a show with such a clear moral message and point also intentionally writes a protagonist who is willingly and blatantly wrong for believing what he does, while still being RIGHT at the same time. It's a kind of nuance I appreciate, and I plan to read the manga soon.
>>517
i've been reading midnight eye goku, (i had no clue it existed untill i saw this thread, so thanks op.) it's a great mix of pulp and cyberpunk. it's not generic in any way, either. for whatever reason the art style reminds me of the stuff you see in western comics and its tripping me out. also i spotted ads from coca cola in the story several times and i have no clue as to why its there. also another thing thats pissing me off is people calling this manga "silly". how so? is it the tired trope of people feeling that anime is for children? how is the peacock woman "silly"? i personally saw the concept as interesting and i appreciate the motif of hypnotising eyes and peacocks.
also i thought the chapter about the sister asking to save the brother to be brillant, i was not expecting the ending to go down the way it did.
>>528
so part of a problem i've discovered is all of the translations you can read online only goes ip to Ch. 8, Yuko Part 2 (of 4) which is a shame because i would have liked to learn who gave goku the cybernetic eye and why and if any consequences would come of it. also vid media only went so far with the translation and other companies did the same. i'll probably watch the anime soon because it'll end up looking really cool considering the style and visual flair of the manga.
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>>528
The film version of Midnight Eye Goku has been on my watchlist forever, and you're right, I imagine the animation is spectacular. It'll be a fun night when I get around to it.
What about MEG drew you to it first? I have a collage image of the movie like in the OP but didn't post it, so I'm assuming you were going off of the name alone?
>>530
i had all the names of the shows you mentioned in another tab to crosscheck if any of them was in my list of anime and manga to watch and read and once i saw what Midnight Eye Goku was about i knew i had to read it immediately. the (cybernetic) private eye is a fantastic concept to use (like "do androids dream of robotic sheep") and i figured it would be enjoyable.
>>531
That's interesting. What do you think you're going to move on to after you're finished reading/ watching MEG?
For me, I think I'm going to try and seek out something maybe a bit more fantasy-oriented, because almost everything mentioned ITT is science fiction in some sense of the word. I've already seen Ninja Scroll and I admittedly don't know too many non-sci-fi retro anime. If you have any recommendations, post them!
>>534
It depends on what you mean by "fantasy" (like sword and sorcery or in general?)
Ushio & Tora comes to mind, Buddy comedy of a demon and a kid (who where supposed to kill eachother) and end up uniting together to fight yokai.
>>534
trigun and vampire hunter d have been on my need to watch list for a while, ninja scroll sounds cool because i really like historical settings. might start with trigun because 25 episodes don't sound as bad to watch vs like two hours of vampire hunter d although i heard there was cool genre mixing involved. might checkout the original manga for trigun because it was the original format and it might be interesting to watch the anime later and spot the diffrences, if any.
>>539
In my opinion, the Trigun anime is better than the manga, because it has better pacing and the process by which the watcher learns more about Vash and the world is much more interesting.
Things that were big mysteries with little hints and foreshadowing placed in the show are just sort of dumped on the reader in the manga without any ceremony and it just felt kind of weird.
I also love Vampire Hunter D, and I think that both of the movies are absolutely spectacular watches with very good and interesting animation and a cool world, but Bloodlust is by far the better of the two and it makes me wish for more.