Truly a good time to be an anime fan.

Should be working on my weekly post today, but I’m inspired by a comment last week by reader Wingking.

Sure, sure, it’s a widely held opinion that the upcoming Winter season seems to be lacking a little bit.  But is it all bad?  Let’s look back a year, shall we?

This time last year we’d seen a ton of Ghibli in theaters thanks to Ghiblifest and a local arthouse theatre having a long run of Ghibli in subbed 70mm prints.   It was especially cool to see the ones in subbed 70mm prints, the format they were originally designed for.  Even though we’d seen them all before, it was nice to see them in a theatre.

We’d also seen two first run anime films, Sword Art Online: Ordinal Scale and the incomparable Your Name.

Now, let’s fast forward a year.  We’ve seen Mary and the Witch’s Flower, A Silent Voice, and Night is Short, Walk on Girl.  (All three first run.)  We’ve also seen (for the first time) the classic Perfect Blue.  (The last two within the last month!)  The really cool part was that all four came to my local theatre way out on the rim of civilization.

What also inspired this post was sitting down and working on my calendar for the next few months…  Next week we get to see My Hero Academia: Two Heroes.  In November we get to see the much anticipated Liz and the Blue Bird.  In December, we’re going to see Mirai…  Three first (US) run anime movies in three months!  Yeah, we’ll have to drive a bit to see all three, but no biggie.

Screenshot (246)

So, let’s raise our glasses!  Kampai!  It truly is a good time to be an anime fan.

(Update:  How could I forget A Silent Voice?)

11 thoughts on “Truly a good time to be an anime fan.”

  2. Around here, there’s barely any anime in the cinemas. Outside of Miyazaki (I’d say Gibhli, but I’m not sure) there’s nothing certain. I’m fairly sure Your Name made it, but since anime is usually “Vienna only”, and I’m not that close. I’m fairly sure there are local special events that show some anime on a specially reserved day, but nothing like a cinema run. (I know they showed A Silent Voice at one such event.) Anime cinema is nearly non-existant where I live, now as ever.

    On the plus side, physical media are working at the backcatalog like never before, and for once they seem to be hitting my taste. Shows I bought this year: Haibane Renmei, Usagi Drop, The Eccentric Family, X (TV). There’s probably more, but those are the most notable. (Wondering whether I should buy Nadia – The Secret of Blue Water.)

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    1. Sucks you can’t see those movies in theatres… I find it a special experience. I’m glad that physical media works for you!

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      1. Well, I did see Perfect Blue on the big screen (must have been early 2000s). It was a really small cinema that decided to have two anime days (I stayed at the big city for those days). They got what they could (some of them had an English dub and German subtitles, like Roujin Z, which on top of that is actually an OVA). I don’t remember what film I couldn’t see because they accidently got Wallace and Grommit instead (well organised…).

        But I did see Perfect Blue.

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  3. Also, the first Fate/Stay Night: Heaven’s Feel movie dropped in the US last November, and Lyrical Nanoha: Reflection in January. I know those aren’t your franchises, but I was right there at the front of the line for both of them. Ghibli is one thing, but once upon a time those were the kind of movies I could only dream of ever seeing in a proper theater.

    Anyway, glad to be of inspiration! It really is amazing how accessible so much of this stuff is now, even compared to just five or ten years ago (never mind 20 years ago when I first started out and people were still passing shows around on third and fourth generation VHS tapes).

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    1. Yeah, it’s fun over the last year shifting from “will we ever get to see those in the US” to “I hope it’s close!”.

      Never mind closer to forty years ago when I watched Star Blazers on broadcast TV… and owning a VCR of my own was almost a decade and a half in my future! :)

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      1. I know, right? It’s like we can actually take it for granted that we’ll get the Love Live Sunshine and Heaven’s Feel II movies in US theaters next year. In the bigger picture, when you think about how these are basically very niche foreign films, made for fans of franchises that barely have a tiny toehold (at best) in the American pop-culture consciousness, that’s really pretty mind-blowing stuff.

        My family were fairly early adopters when it came to VCRs; we got our first one in 1984 (amusingly, we also bought our first color TV at the same time – my Mom was too afraid of radiation before that). But yeah, if you want to go that far back I was watching Voltron on broadcast TV as early as 1985, blissfully unaware of how heavily edited and repackaged it was. Back then, of course, you were totally at the mercy of what the syndication companies and your local TV stations gave you.

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  4. I’m actually headed out to watch the Haikyuu movie in theaters, it was advertised at the movies in L.A. when I saw “The Meg”.

    I didn’t know the My Hero Academia movie was coming out finally! I wanted to see it at the Anime Expo premier, but then I decided waiting in line for 9 hours wouldn’t be very fun :D

    HERE HERE! TO BEING A NERD! A great time indeed!

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