Anime at its Absolute Best

When you were a child did you ever watch something that was beyond your years? Something that you couldn't yet understand or analyze but that somehow resonated in your memory even years later? Often when I've tracked these bits of the past down as an adult- a scene in a movie, a cartoon, etc, I find that I can no longer find the significance that my child mind attached to them, that I can only relive their power by remembering who I was and what I felt at the time that I first saw them. But there are those others that prove to be even greater treasures when they are finally recovered, and the magnificence that you only saw hints of in the past can finally be fully realized and comprehended. Its an odd sort of consummation between the pure experience of the child and the intellect of the adult.

Within the past year, thanks to netflix and youtube, I have been lucky enough to find two of these half remembered experiences that have haunted me for some time. I'd like to share them with you now, simply in the hope that you might appreciate them as much as I have.

Both are anime shorts. The first aired as part of MTV's Liquid Television program in the 1990's. Its director, Yoshiaki Kawajiri, went on to make such cult classic films as Ninja Scroll and Vampire Hunter D Bloodlust. But I would argue that none of his later work can touch this early short.

The second piece was part of a trio of shorts produced by the great Katsuhiro Otomo (director of Akira and Steamboy). This short was directed by Koji Morimoto, who later contributed to The Animatrix. I think I saw it when it aired on the scifi channel...back then they actually had good programming and showed alot of obscure anime on the weekends.

Enjoy and please dont blame my mother for letting a kid watch such heavy content, she had no idea what I was up to. ;-)

Here is part 1&2 of Running Man

I've included parts 1&2 of Magnetic Rose, you can go directly to youtube for the other 3 parts (I promise its worth the effort!)