Nostalgia Nugget: Looking Back at 2017

Peering into the future of 2018?

It is time to take a look back at 2017 and a glimpse into 2018. I feel I did a pretty good job providing weekly fresh content on the site. I ended up focusing a bit more on certain themes over the months, and had a lot of fun. I also ran a few series through 2017 and helped shake up the mix a bit.

I started my Goldsmith Award series of Movie Music Musings. These focused on poorly reviewed or received films with great scores. I kicked this off in January with 2016 and ran it to July with 2011. I might pick it up this year, as it was fun to see what films bombed those years and how great some of the music really was.

February I focused on Robotech. It was a lot of fun revisiting and really digging into that series. It was probably the most anime heavy month of the year. I went pretty light with animation in general. I didn’t even get in a MIyzakii movie review in this year, and I had Kiki’s Delivery Service all lined up to watch, but just never got around to it.

Getting Season 11 started.

Instead I ended up focusing a lot of writing on Season 11 of Mystery Science Theater 3000. It is a great time to be a fan of the movie riffing puppet show. We got a new season, we got a live show and people were excited about both. I was doing pretty good reviewing a new episode from season 11 each month… until October when everything went nutty. Still have Season 12 to look forward to in the not too distant future, so I better get my reviews for Season 11 wrapped.

I turned May into a Star Wars focused month again. That was mostly focusing on musings and nostalgia. I delivered a full review of RogueOne out in December. I did see The Last Jedi, but I want another viewing at home before I write that review. It will appear on the blog in 2018 for sure.

Facing the uncertain future.

A big surprise to me was actually writing about current movies in the month of their theatrical release. War for the Planet of the Apes and Blade Runner 2049 both got reviews shortly after I watched them in theaters. Both were excellent science fiction films, and the Apes film in particular felt like a wonderful triumph of a series. I spent three posts gushing about it in many aspects and don’t regret a single word.

While I did miss out on writing about Miyazaki I did manage to write a new 007 review. It had been a while since I revisted the series for the blog, but I finally wrapped up the 1960s films with You Only Live Twice. I also finally got around to writing about one of my favorite directors David Lynch, as I took an in depth look at Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me, one if his darkest and most disturbing films. I hope to continue looking at delving a bit deeper into these waters in 2018.

Is it time to move beyond these reboots?

I had to give Star Trek some blog time as well and September was pretty Trek heavy with a deep dive into Insurrection and looking at music and the films from a wider angle. I’m creeping my way through the Star Trek films and need to give Beyond another view before I write about it. I’m not sure how I feel about that film after my first viewing.

I stuck with the horror film focus in October and once again had a lot of fun with the short reviews and some dives into different aspects of the genre. I had a blast writing about Subspecies II in which I delved far deeper into the film than it perhaps deserved.

November is usually reserved for all MST3K all the time, but this year I shook things up a bit by focusing on cheesy 1980s fantasy films. This was so much fun to write and watch, I might do it again next year. I finally got a review of Hawk The Slayer up, something I’ve wanted to do for years.

Game on!

About that time something happened that changed the course for this blog. While doing all this research on Dungeons and Dragons for the Barbarian Age blog post, I discovered that the Role Playing Game was alive and thriving online. The more research I did the more I realized that I missed writing and storytelling from this perspective.

Long story short, I’m actually playing D&D again. The game has changed quite a bit since when I last played in the early 1990s. It focuses a lot more on storytelling and characters – which means you end up writing all this material for the character you are playing. To be honest all that writing is going to eat up the writing time I can spend on the movie blog.

Soon... soon.

So 2018 is probably going to be a lighter year for this blog. I’ll keep posting things each month, but I’m not sure I’ll be able to keep up the weekly schedule. I’m thinking there will be fewer deep dive reviews. Instead I’ll focus on the shorter reviews and more editorial blog posts that don’t require quite as many screen captures and editing.

That said, I’m going to be writing some new material for my other blog Storytelling in All Its Forms, focusing more on my D&D experience and how that works out. I can say I’m currently playing two different campaigns and I’m really enjoying the experience.

Thank you so much for reading my work in 2017 and commenting. I really appreciate it and all the encouragement you’ve provided this year. If you have any suggestions or films you’d like to have me review, don’t hesitate to reach out to me. I’ll be happy to give it a try.

Hope you had a great year, and that 2018 is even better.

Nostalgia Nugget: The Barbarian Age

"Don't blame me for 'Red Sonja'!"

What happens when you combine Star Wars and Dungeons and Dragons? You get Conan the Barbarian of course. Ok, so that was kind of a trick question, but there is a method to my madness.

I like to think of the early 80s as the Barbarian Age of Fantasy. Within the years of 1982 and 1985 or so, we got a ton of fantasy films that featured muscular tunic-less guys wielding swords, fighting wizards, saving the (usually topless) girl from some evil creature (who may or may not be a puppet). Some of these films were backed by big budgets and major studios.  Others were made outside of Hollywood for a pittance and forged a name for themselves in the burgeoning world of direct to VHS releases. I’ll readily admit that I have a nostalgic place in my heart for these fun and often silly films. But I always wondered what caused this sudden explosion of fantasy films that hit hard and then faded away by the time 1989 rolled around.

The 70s were rough, even for Sinbad.

Like many things that occurred around this time in film history, I think it all starts with the astounding popularity of Star Wars in 1977. Prior to that film science fiction was seen as a low profit genre for major studios. There were some hits over the years, but they were few and far between. 20th Century Fox was hoping Star Wars would bring in a quarter of what Planet of the Apes made for them in merchandising and spin offs. But I don’t think they were holding their collective breath. Instead the film exploded in popularity, and a whole new group of filmgoers were exposed as a new target audience. Make a film packed with fun adventure, exotic visuals and a rollicking sense of fun and you had something.

D&D: 80s style!

Many studios took the most obvious route here, mimicking Star Wars as best they could with their own science fiction films. Disney unleashed The Black Hole. Paramount resurrected their television series into Star Trek:The Motion Picture and even Roger Corman’s production company got into the act with Starcrash and Battle Beyond the Stars. But a few other studios decided to expand their sights outside of science fiction and target another genre that had been forgotten: fantasy films.

Fantasy was always around in some form in filmmaking. But by the time the 1970s rolled around, audiences were demanding gritty and less glitzy. Fantasy films reminded them old Hollywood. It’s not hard to see why, when you watch the films like The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad or all the sword and sandal films from the 1960s. They feel a bit stagey even if there is plenty of fun to be had with them. Not that the 70s were devoid of fantasy films. You still had movies like TheGolden Voyage of Sinbad, The Land Time Forgot and a handful of others. But they never brought in the money like other films did.

The other element that may have played a part in this was rise in popularity (infamy in some cases) of Dungeons and Dragons. The tabletop role playing game had been around for a while, but more and more folks were picking it up. Who could resist dungeon delving with your friends and slaying goblins by the dozen with fireballs? This same crowd was part of the group that made Star Wars the huge success it was. A fantasy film of the same caliber could also be a moneymaker.

Hawk's party is ready for dungeon delving.

One of the first of these new waves of fantasy films actually feels like a Dungeons and Dragons adventure brought to life. It is called Hawk the Slayer (1980) and hits all the requirements. You have a band of adventurers including a Hobbit sized thief, a towering giant, and an elf who can shoot rapid-fire arrows. Our hero, Hawk swings a sword with skill, and leads his band into a castle to face a deadly overlord played by Jack Palance. The movie is played pretty straight, but ends up being amusing because of the over the top acting, low budget special effects and wobbly sets. All in all it is one of my favorite fantasy films of the era, and I’m very sad I didn’t discover it until the 2000s. I’m not the only one who missed out on this flick, because it didn’t’ do well enough to deliver on a much hinted at sequel.

There was a breakdown in communication.

Right behind it was a bigger budget and much more impressive film, even if it did feel like a throwback to the 1950s style of filmmaking: Clash of the Titans (1981). Ray Harryhausen’s swansong features his amazing blend of stop motion animation and other visual effects that compete for screen time with Harry Hamlin’s hair and Laurence Olivier as Zeus. The movie is sluggish at times, but hits all the fantasy/mythological sweet spots. That Medusa scene manages a wonderful blend of suspense with the lighting, the effects and spine tingling music making it all work. As a kid, this movie was one of my absolute favorites, and I watched it over and over again. I wasn’t the only one, because I’ve seen quite a few writers, directors and artists talk about this movie being their gateway drug to all things Harryhausen and Greek mythology. That said, the film did Ok in its theatrical run, but not enough to convince other studios to jump on the bandwagon.

It wasn’t until the one-two punch of 1982 that we saw fantasy really take off. We got The Beastmaster and Conan the Barbarian in the same year. Both films were more entrenched in the sword and sorcery feel of pulp fiction by masters likes Robert E Howard and Fritz Leiber. The two films featured physically strong characters seeking out revenge against tyrants who slaughtered their families. Both include magic, monsters and scantily clad women aplenty. Both films avoided the stodgy feeling of the earlier Hollywood fantasy style and went for a healthy dose of blood and nudity. The two films shared many stylistic similarities, and were successful in different ways.

"Ok, which one of you stole her fur bikini?"

The Beastmaster did moderately well in theaters, but really boomed in on home video and cable reruns. It has quite a bit of humor woven into the story and while it can get violent the film never gets too dark. It didn’t have the budget for stop motion effects, so it used animal actors and creative costume and makeup to delve into the magical aspects of the story. I think there were just as many fans of Tanya Robert’s bathing scene as there were for the cute ferret companions in the film. The Beastmaster stays fun all the way through, but also keeps a pretty solid tone of adventure.

He just had to wear the helmet for tribe picture day.

Where Conan the Barbarian exceeds is in the way it makes the world feel real. The film has a darker, more serious tone, and the violence is brutal at times. It captures the untamed savagery of the original stories, even if it isn’t based on any one of them. Director Milius keeps the dialogue to a minimum, focusing on visual storytelling and avoiding some of the poor acting that would infuse later fantasy films. Let’s not forget the wonderfully primal and powerful score by composer Basil Poledouris. Conan the Barbarian would be much less effective without tracks like Anvil of Crom and Riders of Doom. This film was a big success in theaters and on home video and cable. It was this film that brought about a boom in fantasy films in the early 1980s.

"If I don't make eye contact, maybe he'll go away."

Both films did eventually have sequels and spin offs. The Beastmaster didn’t see its sequels till the 1990s, well after the fantasy boom had ended. But there were enough fans to make The Beastmaster 2: Through the Portal of Time a success on home video and get the sequel The Eye of Braxus five years later. Conan the Destroyer managed to arrive only two years after its original film, but suffered in a major shift in tone. Going for more of a mix between Hawk the Slayer and The Beastmaster, you end up with a film that ups the humor and tones down the brutality and sensuality of the previous film. It wasn’t received well, and plans for the third film were scuttled in favor of the spin off Red Sonja a year later. Sadly that film was even worse. This is one of those films that so much potential but a weak script, a jumbled tone and bizarre performances just keep the whole thing from coming together. It’s not even that riffable.

I couldn't make this up if I tried.

But many of the films that flooded the market afterwards are very riffable indeed. It seemed like every few months a new muscular hero exploded onto screens to fight monsters and save half naked women. Some films like Ator the Fighting Eagle (1982) featuring Miles O’Keefe were lower budget retellings of Conan the Barbarian. Others went to other sources, like Corman’s The Warrior and the Sorceress (1984) which is based on Akira Kuroasawa’s Yojimbo, but with evil puppets and a four breasted witch. Sometime we got women warriors swinging swords like Hundra (1983) or Barbarian Queen (1985). In fact Corman's production company made quite a few of these films. Most popular were the Deathstalker movies, which started out as blatant Conan retells, but turned into more lighthearted films, with Deathstalker and the Warriors from Hell even making it to MST3K. Speaking of the riffing puppet show, they also tackled Outlaw a sequel to the movie Gor which was based on a sword and planet series written by John Norman.Other times we got a film that managed to balance everything just about right, even on a low budget. The Sword and the Sorcerer (1982) is a lot of fun, and manages to keep things moving and amusing for most of the running time. There were oddities like the ultra-dark Dragonslayer in 1981, where baby dragons devour a helpless princess. Then there were the odd fusions of robots, and lasers with fantasy that lead to movies like Krull (1983) and the Lou Ferrigno Hercules (1983). You also had movies that were more inspired by fairy tales like Ladyhawke (1985) and of course the wonderful Princess Bride (1987). Even Arthurian legends got a new coat of paint with the dreamlike Excalibur (1981) and Sean Connery as the sparkly Green Knight in Sword of the Valiant (1984).

"I know I dropped my eight sided dice somewhere."

A few fantasy films of the era dropped the muscly barbarian archetype and went for more Dungeons and Dragons inspired fantasy. You have a movie like Wizards of the Lost Kingdom (1985) which is aimed at a younger crowd, but filled with magic and action (as well as hilariously bad dialogue, goofy costumes and some wonderfully ripe acting). The animated film The Flight of Dragons (1982) actually includes a character who loves D&D and gets pulled into a fantasy world to fight wizards and monsters. The movie The Dungeonmaster (1984) fuses arcade games (inspired by Tron) and D&D into a weird anthology-kinda film with Richard Moll chewing scenery as the titular villain. And then there is the ridiculous television movie Mazes and Monsters in which a young Tom Hanks plays a teenager whose obsession with D&D drives him insane. Hilarious for all the wrong reasons.

Eventually the interest in fantasy films died down. While many of the low budget ones did all right on home video and cable, big studios were losing money. Films like Willow (1988) necessitated a lot of money for visual effects, costumes, location shooting and even with big names behind the camera (Ron Howard directing a story conceived of by George Lucas) they movie just didn’t make as much money as they wanted. This was really the last hurrah for the fantasy boom of the 1980s, and the genre once again sunk into the mists of time outshone by cheaper to make action flicks.

Hard to say which one is making the goofier face.

In the early 90s fantasy fans had to get their fix from anime like The Heroic Legend of Arislan (1991) and my favorite of the era The Record of Lodoss War (1990) (which wore its D&D roots on its cloak). But then a funny thing happened, a little movie called Jurassic Park (1993) showed that visual effects could be made to bring a whole new dimension of realism to fantasy films. Creators didn’t have to rely on puppets or stop motion any more – CG could bring dragons to life! Sure enough we got Dragonheart in 1996 And while the film wasn’t all that good, the dragon was fairly impressive for the time (and voiced by Sean Connery no less). But it was the Lord of the Rings trilogy helmed by Peter Jackson that brought fantasy films and television to the mainstream in a big way. And while I love where we are going visually with these fantasy films, I will always enjoy taking a trip back to the Barbarian Age of fantasy.

Don't mess with the Barbarian Queen!

Nostalgia Nugget: She is filled with secrets…

Can't you just hear the music now?

With a new season of Twin Peaks rolling out in 2017, I figured I’d jump in with some nostalgic thoughts about the series. I also realized that for being such a big fan of David Lynch, I’ve written precious little about his work on this site.

I admit, part of it is intimidation. Dissecting the multiple layers of his work is a daunting task. But it is one of the reasons I enjoy watching his films so much. I figure that Twin Peaks is a good place to start. Since this blog focuses mainly on movies, I’m not going to do a full series review. I’d be too tempted to do an episode-by-episode breakdown, and I’m sure there are other sites out there that can provide more insight than I can. I will review Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me in the future. So I might as well talk a little bit about my first experience with David Lynch’s groundbreaking show.

The mystery that started it all.

Here is a quick summary for anyone who isn’t familiar with the series. It takes place in a small logging town in the Pacific Northwest called Twin Peaks. The homecoming queen’s body washes up on shore wrapped in plastic. Her death devastates the town. FBI agent Dale Cooper (Kyle Maclachlan) arrives to help solve the mystery of who killed Laura Palmer (Sheryl Lee). During his stay he meets all kinds of colorful characters who may or may not be involved in the crime. There are also a bunch of side stories unspooling involving various relationships, some other criminal activities and small town shenanigans. The more that Cooper and Sherriff Truman (Michael Ontkean) uncover the more complicated the case becomes. It becomes apparent that some kind of supernatural force is at work in Twin Peaks and that killing will not stop until it is confronted. But finding the nature of this force and the best way to stop it is one mystery that may never be solved.

Helpful townsfolk, good thing. Fish flavored
coffee, bad thing.

I came the party late. While Twin Peaks was all the rage I was trying to survive the jungles of high school. I didn’t watch much television at the time, spending more time hanging out with my friends, working at the video store and doing homework. Sure I heard about the show, and the famous tagline “Who killed Laura Palmer?” But the whole concept just didn’t’ grab me at all. At that point I had seen two David Lynch films: Dune which I enjoyed (and still do) and The Elephant Man which I saw as a little kid an it scared the hell out of me.

I really didn’t get into full David Lynch fandom until college, especially when I saw Lost Highway in theaters and it blew my mind. But I’ll save that for another post. After that experience, I searched the video store for everything Lynch related and watched all of his work I could get my hands on over the course of a year or so.

Father and daughter can't see eye to eye.

So for my first viewing of Twin Peaks was after all the hype died, and after the backlash that savaged Fire Walk with Me was forgotten by most folks. I watched the pilot episode that was the movie version released in Europe. This two-hour “movie” included an ending where Agent Cooper and Sheriff Truman catch up with Killer Bob (Frank Silva) and he admits to the murder. It is a strange surreal sequence (I will probably repeat that phrase quite a bit when discussing David Lynch films) that does give the movie an ending, but it was something that Lynch never intended as the true ending of the series. When the series was broadcast and rebroadcast, the movie ending was never shown. For many years, the only way you could see it was on that old VHS tape.

"Some day, my log will have something to say
about all this." 

I remember watching the pilot and being fascinated by the unusual characters, the way you get a real sense of place while watching the series, and dark mystery entwining everything. Mystery is a key element in all of Lynch’s work, and in Twin Peaks it is at its most accessible (especially that first season).

There was also a lot of humor in the show, and much of it just a little bit off. These days the humor in Twin Peaks is something that doesn’t seem so strange. Offbeat and absurd humor has permeated the television landscape. But back in the 1990s most television humor was of the sitcom variety, especially when this series first aired.

I watched all of the first season very quickly. When that final cliffhanger hit at the very end, I was dying to know what happened next. Lynch and Frost had managed to put every character into come kind of massive moral quandary or mortal peril. It was the ultimate soap opera season finale.

The trip into the Red Room continues.

There was only one little problem; the video store I worked at didn’t have the second season. I had picked up a book called Lynch on Lynch that covered some of the second season plot lines. It was very bare bones, and in a way that might have been a detriment, because I imaged something quite different from what I finally saw.

But I was able to watch Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me. By this point I had seen Lynch’s work up to that film, so Blue Velvet, Wild at Heart and Lost Highway were seared in my mind. Fire Walk with Me felt like a natural extension of those films, so stylistically it didn’t feel like such a vastly different thing. But the plot and extremely dark undercurrent to the film was deeply troubling. It felt like Twin Peaks but viewed threw a very dark lens (which makes sense considering you are following a very troubled woman through her final hours of life).

Agent Cooper's long walk begins.

The movie really disturbed me, more than any other film of Lynch’s. I admired and was a bit put off by the film all at once. I haven’t revisted Fire Walk with Me very often over the years because of those feelings.

I finally got around to seeing season two of Twin Peaks when it was released on DVD many years later. I went back and viewed the whole series over a month or so. I had to watch the pilot on VHS again (the original DVD release of the first season didn’t include the pilot for legal reasons). It was a fun trip diving back into that world, and enjoying so much of the first season again.

It all comes full circle.

What clicks so well about that first season for me is the delicate balance it strikes. Lynch adds that layer of dark mystery to the whole tone of the show and that first season really carries it until the final episode of the season. But the mix of colorful characters and absurd humor works too. Those characters get just enough screen time to make things fun. No one forgets the Log Lady once they’ve seen her. Most of the lighter moments don’t outstay their welcome and feel like they add to the overall atmosphere of place in the series. Then you get the final element of satire around the tropes created and perpetuated by evening soap operas. It is a crazy concoction that shouldn’t work but Frost and Lynch really manage to pull it off. Twin Peaks in its first season is a place you’d like to visit, as long as you stayed away from the woods.

Double R Diner is double cute!

Season two is the very definition of mixed bag. It has some strong episodes at the start and the end of the season, but the middle is a mish mash of tonal incongruities, aimless story arcs and character moments that never come together. Gone from the middle of the season is the dark sense of mystery and it is replaced by strange to be strange. I know a lot of folks accuse Lynch for doing that all the time. But I disagree. The imagery in a David Lynch production always feels like it follows a dream logic of some kind. Especially when you see more of his work, you spot trends in those images and they create a language that makes sense. In season two, we lose that language and stuff just happens because someone thought, “well this is Twin Peaks so any old strangeness will work”.

The humor goes from absurd to just being silly at times. Pulling off absurd humor is tough and requires an ability to see things in a fractured but humorous lens. Instead we get humor that is kind of dumb and falling in along those more traditional sitcom tropes. Also they end up beating a joke to death a few too many times. Season two had a rough production history  with Lynch have very limited involvement. Some of that was bound to impact the final product.

Sadly, Earle is rarely this calm.

Then there is Windom Earle (Kenneth Welsh). When you first hear hints and whispers about him early in season two, it sounds like the set up for something really interesting. He was Agent Cooper’s old mentor and partner at the FBI, but something snapped within the man and he killed a few people and attempted to take Cooper down too. Cooper describes him as a genius of cold calculating intellect. Pitting him against Coopers more intuitive powers of investigation would have been a real duel of minds.

When Earle shows up it is like the writers forgot all the set up for the character and turned him into an over the top mad man who is anything but cold and calculating. A few episodes he is directed to go over the top with ridiculous disguises and crazy antics. They tone him down a little bit over time, but the set up for this character and the execution couldn’t be further off. I don’t blame Welsh for the issue, he’s a fine actor. I just think the writing and directing of his episodes had a very different idea in mind for the character than the one Lynch hinted at in his episodes. It was a real disappointment to me on the first viewing of Season Two and one of its biggest missed opportunities.

The final episode of Twin Peaks second season has Lynch back in the helm. He takes a similar approach to the one he did for the season one finale. He drives all the key characters to extreme moral quandaries or mortal peril. He places the beloved Agent Cooper deep in the heart of the darkest depths of Twin Peaks and leaves him there. He takes that cliffhanger trope and pushes it hard into Lynchland territory. It is a beautiful thing.

You got a little something there on (in) your head Coop.

Nearly a third of the final episode takes place in the bizarre and disturbing Red Room. Cooper faces himself (literally), the Killer Bob, the small dancing Man from Another Place, Leland Palmer and Laura Palmer. The dead speak (backwards) the heavy red curtains blow in a breeze, and nothing feels safe. It certainly foreshadows the tone of Fire Walk with Me in many ways.

I can see how this episode grabbed some viewers and completely alienated others. It becomes very obvious what Lynch liked about working on Twin Peaks and what other elements didn’t interest him. He liked playing with the television format. He liked telling continuous stories. He liked diving into the dark elements of the characters, but also highlighting the absurdity of their lives. But he didn’t have time for some of the silliness that surrounded some of the plot lines. Especially in that odd and explosive way he handles Audrey and Pete in the bank.

To end a show like that was going to only leave people feeling angry, especially the ones that had hung in there through the middle of the second season when it felt like the wheels were just spinning and we weren’t getting anywhere terribly interesting.

Twin Peaks on DVD! Cooper thinks it is damn fine.

So maybe this third season of Twin Peaks will give some closure to those final mysteries. It will certainly give a chance to revisit this very unique and special place and meet up with some of these infamous characters. But with Lynch going solo in the director’s chair I get the feeling this will be a much darker and surreal journey this time around. David Lynch has transformed quite a bit as a filmmaker since the second season of the series. And Fire Walk with Me is an indication of just where the third season may end up. I’m fine with it, but others may find it all a bit too dark.

In any case, I urge anyone who is interested to at least check out the first season of Twin Peaks if they haven’t seen it before. It is really an entertaining series, especially if you are familiar with those old evening dramas from the 1980s. And the music… damn…

Nostalgia Nugget - Talking 'bout My Generation

Love the colors and sweep of this fan art for
Robotech: The Macross Saga.

I’ve always been an animation fan. Animation allows the creators full freedom with they’re imagination, bringing almost anything to life. When animation is used to maximum effect it can present fantastic worlds and truly bring dynamic visuals to the screen without having to worry about budget limits for special effects. One of the places where this is most apparent is in Japanese animation or anime. Unfortunately much of the recent stock of anime has been suffering the same issues we see in Hollywood entertainment – a fear of moving beyond what is established as a money earner. This has lead to endless sequels and pale imitations of older series and movies.

I won't say that there isn't anything new or exciting going on in anime these days, mostly because I'm not following it with the same passion I had for the medium back in the mid 1990s and early 2000s. But one of the reasons I stopped following it was because it was starting to feel a bit stale. I have a lot of fond memories of being a huge anime fan and I’ve written about work like Ghost in the Shell and Millennium Actress. But what got me into anime in the first place? That seed got planted quite a long time ago, back in the mid 1980s with a little show called Robotech.

Let me set the stage a bit for you. It was the Reagan era of cartoons. There was plenty of concern about too much violence in cartoons impacting kids. So there was an effort to tone down violence and have clear consequences for doing bad deeds. In some ways it was like the Hayes Code but for children's entertainment. At the time I wasn't aware of such things, but it was obviously impacting a lot of the kids animation of the early 80s.

Probably about as violent as it got.

Stuff like Care Bears, Smurfs and evan the goofy Pac-man cartoon didn't have your typical Looney Tunes level of violence. In fact all you really had were characters shoving each other or making threats to shove them. Even when George Lucas decided to bring his Star Wars universe to the small screen the scripts to the Droids animated series was severely edited because it was too Star Warsy with people getting shot at by blasters and injured.

But I'm a bit off topic here. This was the landscape of cartoons that I experienced up to that point. Oh sure I watched Bugs Bunny and Scooby Doo as well as The Superfriends which all had various levels of violence, but also had a very light feel to them overall. Besides they were from older decades. And like any kid I was looking for something that I could call my own.

By 1985 some of the draconian oversight had mellowed and shows like Transformers, He-man and the Masters of the Universe were bringing some action, fantasy and sci-fi to the small screens after school. But most of those shows were simple one-off stories. Characters reset at the end of the episode and things started over again in the next episode.

Skull Leader blazing away at enemies.

I think this was the main reason Robotech blew me away. Within the first couple episodes the Zentraedi attack and the devastation is real. Buildings aren't reset in the next episode, they are in ruins. Fighters were destroyed with pilots inside, unlike G.I. Joe where everyone seemed to eject from cockpits at the last possible moment. There were consequences in Robotech.

I was also not used to actual romance building across episodes. Rick and Minmei's romantic antics were a big part of the show. At the time, my grandmother lived with us and I swear she was just as into Robotech as I was. She was also a big General Hospital fan, so the soapier aspects of this anime series appealed to her, especially when the love triangle between Rick, Minmei and Lisa started to develop.

Roy: The man, the myth, the hair!

The only trouble with this serial story format was that I ended up missing episodes. Sometimes I had too much homework and didn't finish it in time to watch an episode. Other times a friend came over to play and he wasn't a fan, so I missed quite a few episodes that way. My favorite character was the lead pilot for the Skull squadron, Roy Fokker. I missed a few episodes and when I come back he was no where to be seen. I asked a friend at school who was also watching the show and he says, "Oh yeah, Roy died. I think that green haired girl killed him."

That blew my mind.

Sure the nameless characters had been getting killed, but no one with lines. No one who had actual backstory. No one who was in a relationship (and yeah it was bizarre to me at the time to see an animated show featuring an interracial couple so prominently). And Roy had just died, and Rick Hunter took over Skull Squadron. And then Rick's buddy Ben dies. I could understand how Rick felt, because I was just as dumbfounded and disturbed by his death as well.

Wait a minute? Who the hell is this? You're tearing me
apart Robotech!

Yeah, the cartoon character was changing because of his actions and the world around him. This never happened in Inspector Gadget. In some ways, I think this kind of soured me on the show after that. I wasn't a big fan of Rick in the first place and he was getting all mopey. Much to my grandmother's annoyance I stopped tuning in regularly for Robotech.

It was part of my regular after school viewing block. I believe Star Trek followed it, and my grandmother loved Star Trek, so we never missed an episode of that show. That meant we'd catch the odd episode of Robotech. It got even stranger. Suddenly the episode had a new intro with new faces, robots and vehicles racing across the screen to the same opening title music. There was this blonde woman riding around on a tank and point a gun at me. What was going on? Well, I missed the first few episodes of The Masters saga, so it took me a little bit to realize that Dana was Max and Miriya's kid! I was a bit intrigued by that turn of events, but was still pretty lost trying to pick up the story threads in the middle. 

Didn't see this too often in any show in 1985.

But I want to point out something that I don't think Robotech (and its source anime series) gets enough credit for. It was a surprise to be watching an animated series where the main character was a woman who was tough, resourceful and brave to a fault. She was the leader of the brigade and by the end of the series had the full respect of her men. You just didn't see that back in 1985. You also did see a black character in such a prominent role as Bowie in this series. It was a real surprise to me back then. I think that says much about the times as it does the innovative approach to animation that was being taken in Japan. These series had a global feel to them, and it worked with the planetary invasion plot line. But it also gave kids watching a good message about everyone working together, no matter what race or gender you were. Maybe it wasn't a coincidence that Robotech was on right before Star Trek in my neck of the woods.

Competing with Jem for most awesome 80s act,

One day Robotech comes on and the opening credits were different again! They changed for each new storyline. Suddenly I'm seeing a new group of characters riding these bad ass looking motorcycles that turn into body armor. The earth is completely devastated and as the main characters travel through it, the people they meet are desperate and dangerous. I'd never seen anything like this in any animated series. I was actually pulled into this storyline a bit more, and caught quite a few episodes of it. I thought Annie was a cutie and really was surprised to find out that Yellow Dancer and Lancer were the same. I can't confirm or deny if it was a Crying Game moment. But yeah it kinda was.

I do remember seeing the last episode of Robotech and being a bit confused (because I had probably missed most of the key episodes featuring Ariel who plays an important part in the ending). But the action was intense and there was a real feeling of closure to the episode. It had this kind of bittersweet triumph - yeah the Invid were repulsed, but the Earth was in bad shape. Could humanity ever come back? 

Max should have been my hero. He wore
glasses like me, but didn't die first and got a hot
alien wife. Talk about inspiring!

I assumed the series was just going to continue. But the next day it started over again with The Macross Saga. Instead of being excited to watch the whole thing again and maybe catch some episodes I missed, I skipped it. 

Skipped it, but never forgot it. 

In some ways I think it became something more mysterious because I never did see the whole thing. My mind would drift back to it and I would remember the intensity of the action, the ways the characters changed over the course of the story and the depth that the world seemed to have. It was this shining beacon of originality in my memories.

A little over a decade later I got into Japanese anime for many of the same reasons. Here was animation that was not afraid. They could tell any kind of story. They let their imaginations run wild. Anime was storytelling in a way I had never really imagined.

Dana rushing to get to the tanks and start defending earth.

Except that I had experienced it (in a way) before. I started to run into other people my age, and we all had the same story. We remembered Robotech and it was our gateway drug into this "new" medium. The internet was just really taking off and I was connecting with all these people across the country that were fans. Some of the older fans had other gateway shows: Speed Racer, Astroboy and Starblazers. But my anime generation was the Robotech generation of anime fans. After us would be the Sailor Moon generation, the Pokemon generation and of course the Toonami generation. 

For a while, when anime fandom was still a unique thing, this was a badge you wore. It helped connect you with other fans. But these days anime has become ubiquitous. It is everywhere you look, and no one really thinks twice about it. Hell, I don't have to explain what anime is to most people, unlike the 1990s when you got strange looks for watching foreign cartoons. I don't hear too much talk about the anime generations any more, and I think that is probably a good thing. I'm sure I show my age too much anyway blogging at length about Robotech.

So it is easy to say that Robotech was the perfect show at the perfect time for a lot of sci-fi/adventure fans out there. Almost everyone I know who managed to get pulled into it back in 1985 has fond memories of the show and talking about (or playing) it with their friends. 

Great bit of fan art showcasing the Macross Saga.

When I saw it appear on Netflix download, I added it to the cue immediately. But I waited. I was afraid to take the journey again. Would it be as I remembered/imagined it? Probably not. But I was curious.

The first episode started and that great opening title music kicked in and it was 1985 all over again. Wow, talk about a nostalgia trip. I watched all of The Macross Saga, and then took a break to catch up with some other shows. When I went back, Netflix had dropped the show. I was sad, because I was really curious to see how The Masters Saga played out.

Nearly five years later it came back to Netflix download, and I didn't waste time. I finished the series. I may be part of the Robotech generation, but in 2017 I finally watched the complete series. Better later than never.

Revised 2/2/2017