With all of the recent announcements of high profile titles of yesteryear getting new releases, there has been a buzz of excitement among some fans. From the attention and intense discussion created by the new releases of Card Captor Sakura and Sailor Moon, a casual fan could hardly be faulted for thinking that these were the latest and greatest titles of the moment, not properties that are actually more than a decade old. Most old shows tend to fade from memory. Some veteran fans may continue to hold affection for them, but many newer fans look quizzically, do some quick net searching and then often dismiss a title with the words “that show is so old.”
This is not the fate of CCS or Sailor Moon, but how many other shows from their era continue to generate excitement now? Very few, if any, I will bet. But more importantly, when does a show become “old?” Sometimes one is surprised how that label can be applied to shows which were “the latest and greatest” only five years ago, yet…that was five years ago. A mere blink of the eye for some of us who have been following anime for many years, but an eternity for those who may have only gotten into anime recently.
Today we come to you from the mezzanine level coffee shop inside the largest used anime and manga store on the shopping street of the Fandom Post’s sprawling office campus, called “Chris’ Castoffs.” This large 10,000 sq.ft. store apparently represents the 1% of his collection he decided to unload to help meet some of his daughters’ school expenses.
With me as usual is Brian Threlkeld and joining us today for our special roundtable discussion is Jimmie Mobley and Dale Abersold, two long-time anime and manga aficionados. Gentlemen, the barista will be happy to take any orders you have and there will be unlimited refills for this session, on Chris’ tab of course. While it may not sit well with purists of all stripes, during the warm weather I like a nice iced latte.
BT: Coffee. Black. (Old-school and hipster-new at the same time!)
JM: Black coffee works for me too. Glad to be here!
DA: Peppermint tisane, please.
GBS: So now that we’ve settled into our comfy chairs with our preferred means of caffeine intake, it’s time to get to the heart of the matter.
When does a show become “old?”
JM: I agree that five years truly isn’t as long a period of time as some may think. If you go by that as a measuring stick for a show being considered “old” then Black Lagoon (which is now airing on Toonami but originally aired in Japan in 2006) would probably fit but to me it’s as new and relevant as any current anime series now. Personally I would consider at least a decade or more for a show to be considered “old” timewise but a bigger question for me would be is the show still enjoyable to me even with its age. I do follow the new shows as much as I can but I also rewatch quite a few shows (including a certain show involving two female traffic cops *wink*) and as long as I continue to draw enjoyment from them then they’ll never seem “old” to me.
GBS: It’s kind of hard to think of Black Lagoon as being old, though part of that may be that the OVA Roberta’s Blood Trail was released more recently here. You bring up some very good points though. Enjoyability and rewatch value are two factors that I think are key to people’s perceptions of what is old for them.
BT: How old something is is obviously relative to how long you’ve been a fan. I think that the titles I started with, back in the late 90s, like Slayers or Evangelion or Cowboy Bebop, feel old now, some 15 years on. But when it was only about 10 years, they didn’t feel so distant. As much as time passing, I think that also had to do with how I was as a fan at that time, in the mid-aughts, and how fandom and the industry was, as well.
GBS: A very good point. When you become a fan is going to have a big influence on what you think is “old.” Another factor is probably when you are first introduced to a show. For someone who watches Card Captor Sakura just now, having never seen it before, it could possibly come across as fresh.
But I think there’s definitely a time limit to this. I highly doubt that anyone being introduced to Speed Racer (Mach Go Go Go) today for the first time would mistake it for being “new.” From the character designs to the music to the entire feel of the show, it’s probably very apparent that it’s from an earlier generation.
DA: Age is relative, age is in the eye of the beholder. Now that I’ve got my clichés out of the way, I think the way to determine how old a title is is how it is generally perceived by the fandom.
BT: Is there a big divide between perceptions of old, and the aesthetics of the medium that more objectively separate one era from another?
GBS: An important consideration, no doubt. For the moment, I’d like to focus on perceptions. I think we can safely argue that almost all viewers would perceive Speed Racer as being old. The whole slippery matter of “perception” gets more complicated, and is far more debatable, when one looks at more recent shows like CCS and Sailor Moon, and evolves into clear argument fodder when it comes to something only five to ten years old like Black Lagoon.
BT: See, and “recent” isn’t even what I’d use for CCS, or certainly to Sailor Moon (though of course relative to Speed Racer).
G.B. Smith
Greg Smith has been writing anime reviews and a review column on anime dubbed into English for several years, first at AnimeOnDVD and now for The Fandom Post. His occasional column on English anime dubs, Press Audio, appears whenever he comes across a dub worthy of a closer look. He is also the deputy editor for our seasonal and year end retrospectives.