Hello everyone!

Doctorkev

School Idol
Hi guys,

I‘ve been a lurker around these forums for a year or two but thought I should finally bite the bullet and formally join.

It’s thanks to this site that I discovered the Anime Limited and MVM Christmas sales and now my wallet is significantly lighter. Last year’s damage to the finances was bad, this year may be even worse!

I’m a good bit older than the average anime fan, as I remember watching anime as a wee kid in the late 1980s and early 90s - stuff on UK cable TV like Robotech and Captain Harlock, plus PAL VHS rentals like Space Firebird and Warriors of the Wind. I remained an anime fan all throughout university and my subsequent professional career, and now I subject my poor kids to anime too!

My all-time favourite anime are: Neon Genesis Evangelion, Made in Abyss, Girls Last Tour and Steins;Gate, but I also love too many other shows to count.

For the last couple of years I wrote for AniTAY.org, which was a Kinja site affiliated with Kotaku. Then the idiot owners of that site wrecked their own user blog system and with very little notice shut everything down, and hundreds of writers lost their work. Thankfully I had the time to painstakingly back up all my stuff and now we’ve moved to the same domain, but using Medium this time. It’s taking a long time to get everything transferred over manually... UGH.

Anyway, this site is always my first port of call for UK-based anime news, and the forum is always fun to read and informative. I hope to be a regular and productive community member.
 
@Doctorkev:

Greetings, Doc. Nice to have you here. 😁

I'm 38, so also one of the older anime fans on here. Sorry to hear about your troubles with your writing.

Good to have another Eva fan here; I'm really into both the original and Rebuild. I like Steins;Gate, too, and recently bought a copy of the Steins;Gate movie. I've been waiting absolutely years to see that!

I've got MVM's collector's sets of Girls' Last Tour and Made in Abyss still to watch as well, so looking forward to those also; I've heard many a good thing about them.

How are your kids enjoying the anime viewing? A bit of Ghibli as a starter, is it? 🙂
 
How are your kids enjoying the anime viewing? A bit of Ghibli as a starter, is it? 🙂
I’ve just finished watching Revolutionary Girl Utena (TV series and movie) with my 15-year-old daughter. I’ve been wanting to watch that show for about 20 years so I jumped at the recent blu-ray release. She enjoyed the TV series but viscerally hated the movie. I’m going to write an article about the 3rd blu-ray set and the movie soon.

My youngest son is 9, so recently we watched a few Ghibli movies - Spirited Away, Nausicaa, Princess Mononoke and Castle in the Sky. Castle in the Sky is my personal favourite Ghibli movie. I watched it on UK TV way back in 1988 and was blown away - I’d never seen anything like it. My son is also a big My Hero Academia fan. The action scenes get him so hyped up he jumps up and down he can’t contain his excitement.

I recently convinced my wife to watch Steins;Gate with me, but apart from the ending she wasn’t impressed. I was going to watch the movie with her but she’s not keen. I resorted to buying the Australian blu-ray a few years ago because it looked like we were never going to get the movie here. I’m glad I was proved wrong.

I can’t wait for the final Evangelion Rebuild movie. I wasn’t quite sure what to make of the 3rd one, I honestly have no idea where Anno plans to go with this one.
 
I can’t wait for the final Evangelion Rebuild movie. I wasn’t quite sure what to make of the 3rd one, I honestly have no idea where Anno plans to go with this one.
Oh man, me neither! 😆

Yeah, 3.0 was a big surprise. I think the finale can probably turn things around, though — and then some, if the opening 10 minutes are anything to go by. (They were screened officially at an event in Paris in July last year and are now very easy to find video of online.)

I've been left buzzing by each new trailer for the film that comes out. It's exciting stuff.
 
Welcome to the forums! I remember checking out the AniTAY.org aspect of Kinja/Kotaku from time to time so it's nice to see someone from there turning up here none the less.

We also have a Discord which is always active each day if you want more discussions!
 
Welcome DoctorKev! I see we like a lot of the same more recent series (and yes I do also watch vintage stuff sometimes). I look forward to seeing what you bring to these forums :)
 
Welcome to the forums! I remember checking out the AniTAY.org aspect of Kinja/Kotaku from time to time so it's nice to see someone from there turning up here none the less.

We also have a Discord which is always active each day if you want more discussions!
Joined the discord - never even noticed there was a link to that at the top of the page until now. I’ll join I. With the chat at some point!

AniTAY.org still exists, separate from Kotaku now. Thankfully we owned the domain name so took it with us after The Kinjapocalypse. The new AniTAY Medium site is still missing huge quantities of the backlog articles but new stuff is still getting posted.

Also, the affiliated ”TAY” site (Talk Amongst Yourselves) also went its own way and their new domain is TAY2.org. I’ve been crossposting my stuff there too, but it‘s mostly for video games rather than anime.

These last few weeks have been such a lot of hassle. I’ve written over 100 articles for AniTAY and they all got wiped out when G/O Media purged all the user blogs. 😭 Of course Kinja used a non-standard image file, so although Medium let me transfer all the text from my backups, I had to manually convert every single image from .webp to .png then paste individually...

I hate the internet right now.
 
Welcome DoctorKev! I see we like a lot of the same more recent series (and yes I do also watch vintage stuff sometimes). I look forward to seeing what you bring to these forums :)
Thanks!

I keep up with seasonal anime (think I’m watching, like, about 12 shows this season), but I try to watch older things often too.

I’m super hyped about Cyber City Oedo 808 coming back - I recorded that off Channel 4 in the 90s so I could watch it with my friends (None of us were old enough to watch it but I don’t think it left any lasting scars). Not seen it since then, but I remember thinking it was great. Counting down the days until the blu-ray arrives.
 
Thanks!

I keep up with seasonal anime (think I’m watching, like, about 12 shows this season), but I try to watch older things often too.

I’m super hyped about Cyber City Oedo 808 coming back - I recorded that off Channel 4 in the 90s so I could watch it with my friends (None of us were old enough to watch it but I don’t think it left any lasting scars). Not seen it since then, but I remember thinking it was great. Counting down the days until the blu-ray arrives.

I don't keep up with seasonal anime as they air for the most part but do binge watch some new shows when the whole thing/a season has aired (mostly end up waiting for physical releases though).

I'm hyped about it too! I have one of the old CPM DVD releases from the US and have already pre-ordered the new Blu-ray from Anime Limited :)
 
I remember watching anime as a wee kid in the late 1980s
Same here. Although I didn't know they were at the time. Ulysses 31, Dogtanian, Mysterious Cities of Gold and 80 Days are all the ones I remember and more so than most western cartoons.
Castle in the Sky is my personal favourite Ghibli movie. I watched it on UK TV way back in 1988
Was it 😮 The first anime I watched knowing it was anime was AKIRA on the Beeb in the early 90s. My first Ghibli wasn't until I rented Spirited Away after it won the OSCAR. I then saw all of them on Film 4 and now have them all on Blu-ray.
Warriors of the Wind
Wow, you're the first person I know that's seen this. How much was cut from Nausicaa? And how did you find it?
 
Same here. Although I didn't know they were at the time. Ulysses 31, Dogtanian, Mysterious Cities of Gold and 80 Days are all the ones I remember and more so than most western cartoons.
I watched all of those too! Bought them all on DVD as an adult and watched them with my kids. Still find it difficult to choose between Ulysses 31 and Mysterious Cities of Gold as to which was my favourite. They both still stand up really well to rewatching today too, not something you can say of too many 1980s cartoons. Ulysses 31 used to give me nightmares.
Was it 😮 The first anime I watched knowing it was anime was AKIRA on the Beeb in the early 90s. My first Ghibli wasn't until I rented Spirited Away after it won the OSCAR. I then saw all of them on Film 4 and now have them all on Blu-ray.
Laputa: Castle in the Sky was broadcast on ITV on the morning of Saturday December 31st 1988 (don't worry I didn't remember this specifically - I had to look this up for an article I wrote a while back). I remember watching it vividly - partly because my uncle walked into the room and asked "What's this rubbish you're watching? Tom and Jerry's much better." He was wrong.
Wow, you're the first person I know that's seen this. How much was cut from Nausicaa? And how did you find it?
My parents rented it for me from our local video store back in the early 1990s. It was on the shelf next to the other kids films. I don't remember too much about it, I'm afraid, as I was still pretty young at the time... though I do remember being totally confused by the ending. I wasn't confused when I re-watched the full, uncut movie with my son this year though.
 
I watched all of those too! Bought them all on DVD as an adult and watched them with my kids. Still find it difficult to choose between Ulysses 31 and Mysterious Cities of Gold as to which was my favourite. They both still stand up really well to rewatching today too, not something you can say of too many 1980s cartoons. Ulysses 31 used to give me nightmares.

Laputa: Castle in the Sky was broadcast on ITV on the morning of Saturday December 31st 1988 (don't worry I didn't remember this specifically - I had to look this up for an article I wrote a while back). I remember watching it vividly - partly because my uncle walked into the room and asked "What's this rubbish you're watching? Tom and Jerry's much better." He was wrong.

My parents rented it for me from our local video store back in the early 1990s. It was on the shelf next to the other kids films. I don't remember too much about it, I'm afraid, as I was still pretty young at the time... though I do remember being totally confused by the ending. I wasn't confused when I re-watched the full, uncut movie with my son this year though.
Lol the bbfc cut Nausicaa theirs nothing in that movie that's unsubtle for kids.
 
It's nice to see a lot of older anime fans on the forum, so welcome, Doctorkev! I will be 60 this coming year and remember watching the original airings of Speed Racer on US Television back in the mid 1960's - but I haven't watched anime since until my two daughters got me hooked on it when I was already 50 years old. Anime is great for any age - I even have shown six Studio Ghibli movie marathons in my home theater to a dozen friends who are even older than me, most in their 60's and 70's, and one who was 92 - and they all loved them and kept coming back for more! My favorite Ghibli films are When Marnie was There, Nausicaa, Princess Mononoke, Howl's Moving Castle, From Up on Poppy Hill, Only Yesterday, Porco Rosso, Whisper of the Heart, and Ocean Waves.
 
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It's nice to see a lot of older anime fans on the forum, so welcome, Doctorkev! I will be 60 this coming year and remember watching the original airings of Speed Racer on US Television back in the mid 1960's - but I haven't watched anime since until my two daughters got me hooked on it when I was already 50 years old. Anime is great for any age - I even have shown six Studio Ghibli movie marathons in my home theater to a dozen friends who are even older than me, most in their 60's and 70's, and one who was 92 - and they all loved them and kept coming back for more! My favorite Ghibli films are When Marnie was There, Nausicaa, Princess Mononoke, Howl's Moving Castle, From Up on Poppy Hill, Only Yesterday, Porco Rosso, Whisper of the Heart, and Ocean Waves.
Thanks for the welcome! I’ve got a few friends my age who are vaguely aware of anime, and will enjoy stuff that I physically give them to watch, but they don’t tend to seek any of it out for themselves. There’s still a big problem getting UK adults to treat animation as anything other than disposable kids stuff.

Mind you, as with any entertainment medium, lots of anime is disposable trash, but there is so much good anime out there it frustrates me that it doesn’t receive the wider recognition it deserves. I keep several volumes of the Cells at Work manga in my consultation room at work and give them to visiting medical students to read... I often find the students themselves are very aware of anime and manga. When I was a student, these were still extremely niche interests so I suppose at least among younger people there is a much wider acceptance of anime and manga,

I have an older friend in his 70s who recently watched A Silent Voice with his wife and grandson and loved it. I only found this out because he asked what I’d been reading lately and I mentioned the plot of the original source manga I’d recently finished reading and he said “If they made that into a film, then that’s what I just watched last weekend,”, which I found most unexpected!
 
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