Do You Still Ocasionally Watch Really Old Anime?

Invisible Crane

Adventurer
After watching the rarely seen english dub of Minky Momo (aka The Magical World Of Gigi) on youtube I was wondering if anyone here still on occasion watches really old anime (i.e nothing dating up to 1990 since lets face it, with the attention span of modern anime fans, anything from 6 months ago is considered old)......oh and on a personal note watching the Minky Momo dub allowed me to play my now favorite game of "spot the Robotech VA"
 
I depends on what you class as old. I watched the first two Tenchi Muyo seasons recently. Problem if allot of older anime needs remastering and looks like ass on modern HD TV's / monitors.

That said I do enjoy the odd older show if the story is good. I think Loddoss will be the next one I will watch
 
I mainly own films from pre 1990, the Ghibli Collection and Akira, but I would like to go back and watch series that I watched as a kid before I knew what anime was like Ulysses 31 and The Mysterious Cities of Gold at some point.
 
I probably watch more old stuff than new. I look at it like this, if I've got a fridge full of food, and its full to the brim, some of its tasty, some of it's just fine, but all of it's in date, why go out of your way to buy more food? Maybe you crave something that you don't have in the fridge, but I've got this huge back-catalogue of shows, films and OVA's at my disposal and with so much diamonds in the rough it's almost fun in and of itself to just wade through it all. If a show comes out today and its good today, then I'm sure that it'll also be good in a few years or a decade, so why rush out to watch something as soon as it airs? I've got so much to eat as it is!

Truth being told there's many reasons as to why one would want to watch a show as soon as it airs, I mean it's fun to talk to people as something is airing, discovering it as others are and sharing the experience together as a community. It's the same reason I played Pokemon Go back when it released last year, I'm a big Pokemon fan and so I was always interested in trying it but the hype itself was intoxicating, and although people still play it today, nothing compares to how it was that summer when it was fresh, stampedes were common place, the news was talking about Pokemon in ways it hadn't since the 90's and if somebody had their head fixated on their phone screen, they were probably playing Pokemon Go. It's fun to watch something new, and when a show takes off it's nice to be a part of that movement. At the same time, time itself is valuable and so it's nice to have a curated backlog of titles.

People talk about how old shows were better, I don't think that's necessarily true, sure some of that hand-drawn goodness is amazing to look at, I still nevertheless think that there's more better shows being made today than ever before, or at least an equal amount, but due to the fact that the 80's was such a long time ago a lot of that content has been curated and reviewed to death and so the "trash" so to speak has been filtered because believe me, a lot of trash was made back in the day. Like with video games, everyone wanted a piece of the pie and so all sorts were being made with everyone following the Gundam train including Tomino himself, but as always we only remember the good stuff and the really bad stuff, rarely the mediocre stuff, or the okay stuff. In that sense its easier to find good stuff from the past, doubly so with the internet at your fingertips, and as with a lot of new shows the jury is out on whether or not it's any good until time has passed, sometimes, other times it's evident right off the bat.

Having said that the bubble economy was a real thing and so the late 80's lead to things being created that'd never be created ever again, be it the type of music, games or films being made, which makes it a unique time to look back on. Being a young medium a lot of creators were experimenting like crazy back then, Gainax was General Products, Oshii was going nuts, and so as somebody like myself whom is probably more interested in the business, history and creative side of things, spending more time reading and writing about anime than actually watching it, its a pivotal moment in time for me.
 
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I never tend to be up to date per se. And while I haven't seen as much Anime from the 80's and older than I would have liked I've certainly seen my fair share. Especially OVAs, I've seen a couple of hundred of those. As for TV series from the last century I've currently finished 55 in total, though most of those are titles from the 90s. There are literally still hundreds of things I want to watch that didn't come out this century and hope to continue chipping away at that.

Somewhat mirroring what @qaiz was saying and thats when it comes to the latest season sure there are a bunch of titles that always sound interesting but I think alot of people waste their time on shows that aren't so good in the end. Which is a shame when literally decades worth of great titles are sitting there waiting to be experienced, titles that have stood the test of time and have risen to the top amongst shows best left forgotten. So it does make me sad when some Anime fans tend to only stick to the newer stuff and when they do watch something older it tends to be the usual suspects of Cowboy Bebop etc.

Something I've constantly done and is on of my favourite things to do is to look up old shows and discover just what is out there and available to be seen. It's led me to discover some real gems. Shows like Kurogane Communication and The Daichis Earth Defense Family. It led me to watching stuff that is very obscure like Aa Harimanada a 90's series about a Sumo Wrestler trying to beat a win streak which was an okay show and something weirdly quite unique for Anime. I want to eventually watch all the World Masterpiece Theater titles and a few years back I saw Romeo no Aoi Sora which is one of the best Anime I've ever seen.

There is so much stuff out there that most Anime fans have no idea even exist. It can be so much fun finding these titles and even though I have a pretty good grasp on all the Anime series ever made at this point after years of looking stuff up etc I still am often far more excited to track down an older show than anything from a current season.

I could go on but I think I've waffled enough lol
 
I happily watch older shows. We have it pretty good these days with some classics actually getting decent localised releases (in the US, at least) which makes it much easier, though there are still a few I'd like to see which I've been too cheap and/or lazy thus far to track down from other territories. One day!

R
 
I guess I'm going to be the first person on this thread to answer "no". Most of the stuff I watch is through streaming, and old series don't tend to be available in that way. Even the relatively older stuff (generally from around 2000) that I have the discs of on my shelves I just never feel like watching.
 
I'll watch anything as long as I enjoy it. The problem is that the industry in the UK is geared towards the new, and revisiting classics is the exception to the rule. I don't have too many pre-90 anime. I consider anything pre-2000 old now. Let's face it, that's 17-27 years old. I've got a lot of time for the Cowboy Bebops, the Escaflownes, the Outlaw Stars and the Patlabors of this world.
 
I depends on what you class as old. I watched the first two Tenchi Muyo seasons recently. Problem if allot of older anime needs remastering and looks like ass on modern HD TV's / monitors.

I get what you mean. I'll give an example. I recently came across the rarely seen English dub of Minky Momo (aka The Magical World Of Gigi) and let's just say it's the strangest thing I've seen
it goes from trying to save a dying cat to stopping a war......it will make sense if you watch the whole thing
 
Honestly, no. Character designs and general art from anywhere before the mid to late 90's is very unappealing to me. There are exceptions to the rule, I've seen and enjoyed Gundam 079 and I'm currently watching Dragon Ball, which is 80's, but generally, I'm far less likely to watch anime from the pre-2000s. Out of my ~300 entries on MAL, you could probably count those from before 2000 on two hands.
 
I would probably watch more older titles if it weren't for region locking. I know it's not an insurmountable barrier these days, but it's gotten to the point where my usual means of watching anime is through my ipad, so it's much easier to just choose from whatever's available on streaming service x's app.
 
Most of what I watch is old but then again I am old. 10 years ago or so I kinda slowed on watching new shows as I thought they were not my thing anymore. But I have since watched some new shows as they were exceptionally good eg. Deathnote & Code Geass. To me they are new!

But I still prefer old stuff from the 90s and some before. It is hard to find them and I have to scour foreign versions to buy them. Bootlegs have crap subs which ruin it and streaming often means stuff like Galaxy Express 999 is not licensed for here on Crunchyroll so I can't finish it that way.

I also have boxes and boxes of old dvds and vcds I took out of storage the other day so I should get round to watching them some time!

I've also found some hidden gems on youtube too. I actually have a Minky Momo anime cel I've had for decades.

I also threw out a ton of old and obscure VHS of old animes when I was moving last year which I kind of regret as I could have transferred them to digital format and shared.
 
There is a lot of older material that has been ignored by western fandom that would probably enrich fans understanding of how Japanese pop culture evolved (as well as the parodies and references to older anime). Stuff like "Rose of Versailles", "Aim for the Ace!" etc. I really wish companies like Discotek and the Right Stuf would release more of the 1970's TV anime. I really enjoyed "Rose of Versailles", "Devilman" and forgotten 1980's titles like "Giant Gorg". Really looking forward "Go Shogun" subbed for the first time and "Crusher Joe" on blu-ray.

Having said that, I'm not some old curmudgeon who says anime was only good prior to [insert year here]. Cel based animation possibly peaked during the late 1980's going into the 1990's, but has it's limitations. Modern animation for the most part is far more detailed and with modern digital effects (filters and the like), it's arguably better now than older anime.
 
Yes, to be fair I don't stick to any one era or have beliefs that any time produced nothing but shows I dislike. Just depends what I'm in the mood for watching really.
 
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