It’s been so cold out, I decided to just cocoon myself in my apartment this weekend and watch anime. I haven’t actually done that in quite a while. It was kind of fun. I watched the first twelve episodes of Gatchaman, and the first season of Big O. Looking back at some old posts on this blog, I see that I’ve had the Big O DVDs sitting around since 2006. The Gatchaman DVDs are probably almost as old.
Gatchaman was fun to watch, and very campy (as I expected it would be). I don’t think I’m interested in watching any more of it though. It was fun, and nostalgic, but repetitive. I have only vague memories of watching Battle of the Planets as a kid, but they’re good memories, and it was fun to see what the original source material was like.
Big O was quite good. Kind of ridiculous, but the visual style of it is really great. It’s clearly referencing a number of disparate influences, such as the old Bruce Timm Batman animated series. The first season ends on a cliffhanger, so now I’m wishing I’d bought the second season when I bought the first.
I haven’t been closely following anime news for the past couple of years, so I’m just noticing now that a number of the companies that were issuing DVDs a few years ago are out of business now, and used copies of some DVDs are going for pretty high prices. It looks like a new company has picked up the Big O license, so they may re-issue the DVDs. Here’s hoping!
If this cold spell keeps going, I may be watching my Samurai 7 box set next weekend.