My first experience with anime came several years before I even knew anime was a thing, a wholly different style of animation hailing from its own country with a unique cultural identity at its core. The show was, by chance, Dragon Ball Z, airing on some random block of late morning cartoon programming picked up by the rusty over-the-air antenna at my family’s lake house. This was before Dragon Ball Z had made its mark on Cartoon Network and become the blockbuster leading man of Toonami’s anime lineup–in fact, I suspect it was before Funimation had begun dubbing the show on its own.

I couldn’t have watched more than 10 minutes of the show. I didn’t know what was going on or who the characters were, but somehow it made a lasting impression–more than a decade later I can still remember that the episode took place on Namek, placing it somewhere in the Freeza saga. But that knowledge springs wholly from an image I have in my mind: I didn’t know what the hell a Namek was then, and certainly didn’t retain an ounce of exposition at 8 or 10 years old. I just remember the trees, the rocks, the sky: that blue-green color pallet that distinguishes Namek from Earth. And I’ve realized, lately, how absolutely incredible that is.

A couple months ago I began watching the anime adaptation of Dragon Ball. I’d watched plenty of it on Cartoon Network as a teenager, but was looking for something relaxing and entertaining with a Japanese flavor that would last me awhile. I needed some shonen, basically, and got it into my head to revisit Dragon Ball. Unlike Dragon Ball Z, I remembered it being a light-hearted adventure with no episode-long incidents of beefy dudes powering up. I’ve long seen Dragon Ball Z as cheesy, overwrought, poorly paced and generally a shining beacon of the worst form of cliche Japanese storytelling.

But what I’ve come to appreciate is how incredibly iconic, warm-hearted and influential Akira Toriyama’s creation truly is. Dragon Ball Kai, a condensed re-telling that closely follows the pace of Toriyama’s manga, cuts out most of the junk that made DBZ awful. It’s the original Dragon Ball, though, that highlights the magic of Toriyama’s art and storytelling. In Dragon Ball he crafted a world that mirrors the wide-eyed innocence of his protagonist, a version of Earth bursting with wonder. At times it reflects the rustic nature of rural Japan, but with dinosaurs and anthropomorphic animals commonplace. At times it veers off into wild science fiction with the inventive capsule technology and charmingly goofy vehicle designs. Most of all, it fosters a peerless sense of adventure; that the world is vast and never-ending, with a new pastiche of cultures waiting just beyond the next mountain range. On Dragon Ball’s Earth, everything imaginary is real and anything is possible.

Perhaps we’re not meant to think of Dragon Ball as if it’s envisioned through Goku’s innocent eyes–that kind of storytelling concept may have been beyond Toriyama’s intentions when he began a quirky adaptation of the Chinese fable Journey to the West. Panty jokes are everywhere, the villain is a jester, and all Bulma wants from the wish-granting Dragon Balls is a boyfriend. But Toriyama’s relentless creativity turned his young adventurer and the world he explores into two sides of the same coin. Goku resonates because of his innocence, his kind-hearted hope and determination and skill. But the world resonates as much for its art style as it does the wide swath of cultures and imaginary creations it invokes. Can any cartoonist of the past 30 years claim to have influenced an entire genre–an entire industry and generation of artists and readers–in the way Toriyama has? Some, perhaps. But few.

The theme of adventure so strongly reflected in the early fantasy-heavy portion of Dragon Ball takes seemingly clashing ideas and makes them work together effortlessly. The quest for the Dragon Balls spans the globe, so naturally the characters have to get around quickly. Bulma showcases the advanced science of Toriyama’s fiction, materializing high-speed jet planes or motorcycles out of capsules with a characteristic “Bomb!” But even with these devices commonplace, the world is vast and untamed, full of regions unreached by technology or outside influence. We’d expect science to have mapped out the whole of Earth, yet fantastic new locales constantly wow Dragon Ball’s characters.

Goku is the perfect mechanism for this sort of exploration, of course–he knows nothing of the world, so every new locale is filtered through Goku’s innocent acceptance. By the time the other characters express their incredulity, we’re already indoctrinated. Why wouldn’t he fly around on a magic cloud? No damn reason at all!

Penguin Village may be the best example of this–by charging headlong into a high-speed pursuit, Goku finds himself in Penguin Village, which takes the anthropomorphism to an extreme (even the sun has a face in Penguin village) and introduces a baby who can repair anything with telekinesis and a random girl who effortlessly beats up an opponent even Goku struggles to defeat. The characters and environment here are a touch more exaggerated and cartoony than usual. Similarly, the land of Korin has its own identity with the Native American touchstone of the totem pole greatly fantasized into Korin’s tower. Toriyama deftly wields this skill time and time again, creating character expressions and landscapes so iconic that we can recognize them years or decades later. Toriyama didn’t invent the large eyes that have defined anime for decades, but he did help solidify them as an indelible style–you’re not likely to mistake Toriyama eyes, hair or eyebrows for the work of any other artist.

His art style holds more power in the fantasy adventures of Dragon Ball than it does in the more serious sci-fi heavy DBZ, but the power of his influence endures. For me, it was the trees of Namek. For Japanese pop culture, it was the blonde fury of the Super Saiyans and the themes of hope and redemption that rippled through the minds of prospective young artists and manifested in Dragon Ball Z heirs like Yu Yu Hakusho. Perhaps the animation industry would be better off without an endless string of anime and manga working from the Dragon Ball formula. Toriyama changed a generation of art, and it’s only fitting that his early work–the work that doesn’t get Dragon Ball Z’s level of attention–captures one of the most enchanting and cohesive worlds ever put to paper or cel.

Hayao Miyazaki is, undeniably, one of the most talented and celebrated filmmakers in the history of Japan.  Not that his ability need only be measured against that of his countrymen; short of Walt Disney and the rising star of Pixar, no other animation company in the world exists to match Miyazki’s own Studio Ghibli. My first exposure to his work was Princess Mononoke, and I instantly latched onto it as the best animated film I’d ever seen.  It was visually stunning and thematically complex, altogether different from anything I’d seen before.

And it remained my favorite for at least half a decade, even as I’ve journeyed back through Ghibli’s productions.  Now, I haven’t yet seen them all — there’s something intensely frightening about the prospect of there being no more Miyazaki for me to experience for the very first time.  After watching absolutely wonderful films such as Spirited Away and Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind, I was just as enraptured by Miyazaki’s creative talent, but growing more secure in the notion that Princess Mononoke was the height of his craft.

Then I saw Lupin.  And, a couple weeks later, I saw it again.  And again, after a few months.  With the exception of Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann (a hopelessly addicting and energizing work of animation), no other movie or television series has penetrated my mind so thoroughly as to be an evening’s entertainment three times in less than a year.  Now, when I think of Princess Mononoke, I still see it as Miyazaki’s grandest vision, examining the spirit of mankind, celebrating the mysticism of nature, and questioning the interaction of those two worlds, that’s not really what he does best.  His skill, reduced to its purest form, is instilling an incomparable sense of life, soul, and adventure into two dimensional drawings.  My Neighbor Totoro and Lupin III show that Miyazaki is at his best on the smaller scale, and The Castle of Cagliostro is quite possibly the most hilarious, heartwarming, and fun heist film ever made.  Maybe it’s not quite a heist movie, in classic Lupin form, but it is an exercise in pure adventure, with the charismatic thief at the top of his form and at a pinnacle of lovability that he’d never quite reach again.

Unlike his heavily fantasy-laden works, Lupin is a movie more or less grounded in reality.  There are no mystical forest creatures, no airships or magical powers.  Yet somehow, Miyazaki manages to perfectly balance the real-world setting with Lupin’s absurd antics without ruining the believability of the film.  In one of the movie’s greatest — and most ridiculous — moments, Lupin bungles his meticulous plan to use a rope to get from one steep roof precipice of Cagliostro’s castle to another, and ends up leaping the distance in great cartoony bounds, bear hugging the sheer wall and holding on for dear life.  It’s entirely impossible, but by subverting our expectations and showing Lupin succeed in a wholly unexpected way, the warm appeal of Miyazaki’s presentation makes the scene a laugh-out-loud good time rather than an oh, please cringe-inducer.

The Castle of Cagliostro immortalized Lupin and no doubt helped the obscenely popular franchise continue for a solid three decades.  It’s almost a shame that Miyazaki’s work with the character is so brilliantly perfect and charming; when protagonist and director both shine so brightly, you know later efforts may never be able to capture that same quintessence of movie magic.  Of course, Miyazaki has continued to direct incredible works of animation, but with Lupin stealing the favorite slot in my heart, I wish the pair could be reunited once again, just to see what would happen.

Akira.

It’s one of those names that sticks with you.  Strong, mysterious, foreboding.  What does it mean?   Who is Akira?

Perhaps the name’s indelible quality actually results from the film itself, because Akira is one of those films you’ll never forget — even if you’re not entirely sure who or what Akira is by the end of its two hours.

Akira set a high bar in 1988 as an audio-visual powerhouse, propelled by a massive budget topping $10 million.  The meticulously detailed animation has endured for 20 years and can stand to-to-toe with the best produced even today.  Every scene bustles with activity.  Every background captures the grimy, worn-down feel of a post-war cyberpunk Tokyo, a city wallowing in its own filth and corruption.  And the movement, often a sticking point for Japanese animation, attains a Disney-esque level of fluidity.  When huge crowds riot in the streets, entire swaths of the landscape explode into rubble and dust, and biker gangs hurtle through the city, it’s obvious that budget was worth every cent.

Even throwing down a cool $11 million couldn’t truly tap into the full scope of Katsuhiro Otomo’s saga; despite the overuse of the term “epic” in the post-Lord of the Rings era, Akira personifies the term.  Otomo’s original manga, a 2000+ page landmark of graphic fiction, tells a vast, complex tale impossible   to contain on film.  Thankfully, his illustrative prowess makes the transition.  Kaneda’s red biker jacket and sleek motorcycle are transcendent; they will, quite probably, be cool forever.  The bikes and their wicked neon light trails remain one of the film’s most enduring images, despite their relatively small amount of screen time.

And then there’s the antagonist Tetsuo, who begins life as a kid with self-confidence issues and a mean streak and ends things as a maniacal, super powered psychic.  His character makes the jump to celluloid, but his story arc can’t quite do the same.  Akira’s expansive, convoluted narrative simply can’t be accurately stuffed into a two hour film, and the end result is a bit of a mess — major characters are cut completely, disparate pieces of the story are cobbled together, and only a tiny fraction of the entire saga gets its due representation.  Even the film’s namesake, the poster child for creepy Japanese children, hardly gets any screen time!  Akira is the ultimate result of psychic-powered government experimentation; he actually becomes a major part of the graphic novel’s plot, which feels far more appropriate than his brief, phoenix-like resurrection from bottles of preserved organs in the film’s final minutes.

Considering Otomo’s involvement with the animated production — and the fact that his manga didn’t end until two years after the movie’s release — it’s more appropriate to view Akira as an alternate version of the story rather than an attempted translation from one medium to the other.  A far-too-brief, not-so-coherent plot replaces the manga’s endless series of action scenes and long arcs of character development.

Even so, the film is carried on the strength of its superb animation and bizarre, stunning soundtrack.  And it was the animated version of “Akira” that helped ignite an appetite for anime in the United States, which is likely why it’s still recognized in the realm of pop culture to this day.  But maybe it’s not all about the cool motorcycles, wowza explosions and entertaining psychic powers.  When you get down to it, Akira is a pretty dark film — it begins with Armageddon, and it’s hard to say whether the city born from Tokyo’s ashes, a wretched hive of scum and villainy, really deserves to be saved at all.  On the flip side, Kaneda’s youthful determination doggedly propels a strong thematic undertone that the human spirit is worth fighting for — all you have to do is believe in yourself.

With a two-part live-action version of Akira in the works and slated for 2011, we may get to see just what it is that makes the story so captivating.  Maybe those badass bikes really are all you need…or maybe it really was just the name all this time.

Tracing Gundam’s history will, unsurprisingly, bring up another similarity to the Star Wars saga.  The fact that the latter trilogy ended up becoming a key piece of cinematic history was fairly miraculous, considering the myriad production problems it faced and the sheer inventiveness required for its groundbreaking special effects.  Gundam’s road to existence was, perhaps, longer and rockier — the original series, broadcast on television in 1979, didn’t exactly set the ratings board on fire.  It was canceled 9 episodes short of its intended 52-episode run.  But that wasn’t the end.  Thanks to the success of Gundam models in 1980, interest picked up, and the series was reconstructed for a theatrical run.  The second and third entries in the series, entitled Soldiers of Sorrow and Encounters in Space, contained a significant amount of newly-animated footage.  The end result is a trilogy that is even more sobering, serious, poignant, and focused than its television counterpart.  Though its mecha combat may always be Gundam’s lasting legacy, it is the characters and their message that will endure.  From within its disturbingly cold depiction of war as a senseless, hellish slaughter, the desperately hopeful ideal of Newtypes emerges as a powerful, novel concept.

The movie trilogy’s focus was altered significantly from the original series to explore the Newtype theme.  Though it starts as a mechanism to propel a classic underdog story — Amuro and his beleaguered companions on White Base barely survive encounter after encounter thanks to their mysterious battle prowess — it has shifted considerably by the end of the series.  In true human form, members of both the Federation and the Zeon seek to use something they don’t understand to gain the upper hand in war, taking advantage of the young warriors to further a questionable political cause.  There are also those on the opposite end of the spectrum who merely shrug off the possibility of a new form of human evolution.  But the story is predominately told through the many eyes crewing the White Base, and, just as they do, as viewers we hold onto the hope that some magical powers will keep them alive through every battle.

It doesn’t really work that way, of course.  Friends, companions, mentors — the innocent and the battle-hardened — all die throughout the series.  But the most interesting element of the Newtypes is born out of all that death.  Even as Amuro awakens to his incredible potential and begins to decimate his Zeon opponents in battle, he inadvertently kills Lalah Sune, the most gifted and pure Newtype in the cast of characters.  Wracked with grief, desperate for revenge, Amuro and Char play out their vengeful duel, but in the end it is a spiritual connection with Lalah that gives Amuro the strength the continue.  Despite his injuries, Amuro uses his newly-awakened state to communicate with his friends, guiding them to safety.  And it is the children, exposed to war, yet still determined and cheerful, who guide Amuro from the disintegrating remains of A Baoa Qu — because Newtype evolution isn’t about skills in battle or uncanny reflexes.  It’s about a new level of existence, a new form of human relationship transcending the limits of verbal communication.  Essentially, Newtypes embody the hope that humanity can become something more, something better, than we are.

It’s a shame, really, that the rest of the Gundam time line largely forsook Mobile Suit Gundam’s delicately balanced sanguine aspirations for humanity and its bleak depiction of our current existence.  Zeta Gundam and Char’s Counterattack retain the bitter sentimentality of the original, but far too many of the sequels and offshoots became little more than just another giant robot anime.  Don’t swallow those tongue-in-cheek references by Yōji Enokido — the original was anything but.

Though the gradually-building focus on Newtypes and the philosophical framework developed around them elevates Mobile Suit Gundam to a status few works of animation have ever matched, it wouldn’t be possible without a solid foundation to build from.  And that’s what Yoshiyuki Tomino and company created; they broke through the conventions of the robot anime genre, defying expectations for a predictable good-versus-evil struggle.  Ironically, several characters on the Zeon side of the One Year War are the most appealing; Char’s enigmatic cunning has inspired a Red Comet clone in countless productions, and Ramba Ral’s bravery and commitment endears him to Amuro and makes it that much more painful when he dies.  Even the hulking Dozle Zabi is hard to totally hate when he reveals a tender dedication to his family.

Each central character grows significantly over the course of the three movies, and loss is often a guiding factor.  Amuro constantly questions why he is fighting, struggling to understand his own emotions as well as what drives his friends.  He loses a crush, a father, and a love interest across three movies — a hard burden to bear, even in the easiest circumstances.  Sayla is forced to hide her identity, grapple with the harsh realities of combat and deal with the transformation her brother has undergone.  Kai searches for purpose, fights his fear, and has the prospect of love ripped from his grasp before he has a chance to truly experience it.  Bright and Mirai do their own awkward dance, which is only complicated by Sleggar’s brief, though important, time with the crew.  Even Hayato and Fraw Bow change from their first appearance to their last, gaining confidence and settling into a position they carry out to help their friends.

And then there are those who don’t make it — the Lalahs, Ryus, Garmas, Sleggars and Matildas of the One Year War.  The deaths in Mobile Suit Gundam rarely feel contrived or senseless, enforcing that sense of bitter realism that pervades the trilogy.  Their names attach faces and personalities to a statistic each film drops within the opening backstory, which describes the effect of a devastating colony drop onto the continent of Australia.  The influence of Japan’s tragic history with atomic weaponry can be seen throughout their popular culture to this day, and Gundam undeniably shares in that burden.  In a series depicting a war in which six billion die, the depth given to so many characters hammers home the fact that war is people killing people, and even the survival of characters we grow to love means the sacrifice of plenty who did little to deserve their fate.

Metropolis is a true work of art inspired by and dedicated to Osamu Tezuka, who was instrumental in the formation and development of both anime and manga over the past half century. Though it was completed several years after his death, Metropolis is, in essence, the culmination of Tezuka’s lifetime of work: it builds on elements from his original Metropolis manga but significantly alters the plot to mirror Fritz Lang’s film, and addresses a swath of issues that show up across the body of his creations. Strife appears within the rigid caste system, within family, and between people and their mechanical creations.  Can the spirit of love conquer all? And, ultimately: what does it mean to be human?

The vast urban sprawl of Metropolis is meticulously and beautifully animated, and the characters are pure Tezuka: simplistic and exaggerated, instantly distinct, and especially expressive for their cartoony manifestation. The most impressive scenes bustle with traditional animation and hundreds of characters. The computer-generated imagery hasn’t aged as well, but by and large it blends well enough into the picture. The music is also a delight, and the jazzy soundtrack perfectly meshes with the film’s art deco style that is simultaneously futuristic and old-fashioned.

As an homage, Metropolis is an incredible feat. But as a movie, if Metropolis has any real failing, it’s that the film simply tries to do too much. Atlas’ struggle to overthrow the upper class becomes little more than a bridge between Kenichi and Tima’s time on the run and their capture by Duke Red, and Tima’s turn to Armageddon and subsequent redemption feels rushed and confused in the film’s final moments. The plot isn’t my favorite, but Metropolis is one of the few films in which I feel like plot is a secondary concern to the spirit of the adventure, as Kenichi and Tima’s blossoming friendship is just a tiny part of a vast world that’s realized in a manner rarely matched in cinema.

And even if the wealth of characters were to be stripped away — even if the soul of the movie, realized in so many wonderful characters who each give us a tiny glimpse into some aspect of humanity, be it greed, nobility, sorrow or love — even then, I’d still love Metropolis for finding that sublime union of the visual and the aural. As the Ziggurat falls, bringing an end to the greatness and prestige of Metropolis, it is not the sound of a deafening explosion we hear. It’s not the crash of debris, the buckling of steel, or the breaking of glass.

It’s the blues. A little bit happy, full of soul and tinged with sadness, Ray Charles brings an intimate quality to Metropolis‘ final moments that’s simply, purely human.  For that, it is unmatched.

-Kamina