Ten years make a difference

While thinking about the topic of another post (this one for “Feminism Wow!”), I felt reminded of one of the first anime series I watched while knowing ‘this is anime’: “Sailor Moon”.

As I still have the special issue about the series I bought then, I picked it up and sheaved through it. While there isn’t much to be said about the series as a such (it would warrant a post of its own, we’ll see about it), it reminded me of something else. The special issue came out about ten years ago ... autumn 1998. It had questions in it about whether or not the series would be out on video cassettes (only a couple of episodes where ever published that way).

The manga series was still published (in German, at least). “Sailor Moon” was mirrored for printing, turning the ‘original’ direction of reading into the western type. (As in Japan, reading is done the other way around.) With “Dragonball”, published around the same time, another publisher was trying whether or not people would buy an un-mirrored manga. They did - today mirrored printing is an exception from the rule in Germany (only “Oh! My Goddess!” is still published that way, but then, the series started shortly after “Sailor Moon”). In fact, currently the only mirrored manga issues I have are the great “Star Wars” manga (four issues each for the ‘old’ trilogy and two for “The Phantom Menace”).

Today there are some series published on DVD (as video cassettes are dead by now). I personally own part of the “Cat’s Eye” series (not all of the DVDs, though), the few issues of “Detektiv Conan” (known in the US as “Case closed”) that were published (luckily, the OVAs still are), and “Devil May Cry”.

On the other hand, most anime series shown on TV at the moment aren’t really interesting to me. RTL II, a German TV station, used to show interesting series (they were the first to show all seasons of “Sailor Moon”, too). Today, it’s mostly “Pokemon”, “YuGi-Oh” (whatever way that is written) and “Naruto”. I’m more than fed up with “Pokemon”, “Digimon” and all other “mons” around. (Except perhaps for Clovermon.) “Naruto” is a typical series for boys (as is “YuGi-Oh”) where one fight follows the other and the basic storyline simply is how the hero becomes stronger and stronger by defeating new adversaries (pretty much the same goes for “Dragonball”, just by the way ... but at least it’s funny).

Ten years make quite a difference, in the anime-scene (at least, quite some movies and series are available on DVD), on TV, with all the technological means (flat screens, far more modern computers, DVD players, mp3) and with my life, too, of course. Ten years ago I was a student in Karlsruhe, today I’m working for a logistics company.

And now I wonder what will be in ten years time. Well, should my blog still exist then, I will probably write a post about it. Apart from that, I’ll just have to wait and see.