Ask John: Are There Any 80’s Anime that Compare to Orange Road?
Question:
As I find myself in my 30’s now, the anime that I always go back to, my anime version of comfort food, is 1987’s Kimagure Orange Road TV series. No matter how many anime I watch, no many how many anime seasons pass, KOR is still my favorite anime of all time. I have two questions. Firstly, what’s the anime that you find yourself returning to whenever you want to feel happy. And lastly, I find myself always wondering if I missed something. I also love Maison Ikkoku, Touch, etc, but are there any other anime from that time period that evoke the same balance of nostalgia, romance, drama, animation style and comedy that KOR does?
Answer:
I began routinely watching untranslated, imported anime in 1987, the same year that the Kimagure Orange Road television series premiered on the NTV network. So it’s with a degree of embarassment that I admit that although I own the 1988 movie and the OVAs on AnimEigo laserdisc, and own all of AnimEigo’s domestic DVD releases and AD Vision’s DVD release of the 1996 second movie, I’ve never actually watched all of the Orange Road anime. I’ve watched all of the OVAs, including the obscure original 1985 “pilot” Shonen Jump Special OVA and both movies, but I’ve only watched a handful of the TV episodes in untranslated Japanese. In the late 1980s, Orange Road anime was every difficult to find in America because it was still relatively new in Japan, and anime typically took a very long time to filter from Japan over to the underground American fan community. As the 1990s rolled in, my attention was primarily centered on other titles, so I just never got around to watching the Orange Road television series, although I do vividly watching TV episode 40, the episode in which the family cat Jingoro dreams of growing to giant monster size, because a close friend loaned me a VHS tape filled with random untranslated anime episodes.
In my own experience, anime fans tend to develop a nostalgic bond to the first shows that they watched. Dirty Pair and Gall Force were among the very first imported anime I ever watched, and they remain among the titles that I’ve re-watched more times than any other anime. Late last year and into the beginning of this year I watched the 39-episode Yoroiden Samurai Troopers television series along with a friend who first watched it on English dubbed American television broadcast as “Ronin Warriors” then re-watched it on untranslated laserdisc as “Samurai Troopers.” Even though both of us can now watch the show and realize that the program has tremendously inconcistent production values and a very haphazardly, spontaneously written narrative that lacks continuity and even logic, my friend still dearly loves the show because it has personal nostalgic value and because it’s exemplary of a variety of fully hand-crafted anime that doesn’t exist anymore.
Orange Road and Maison Ikkoku are widely recognized as the definitive romance anime of the golden era because they are the two programs that exhibit the best balance of pathos. Viewers may look farther back to 1982’s romance anime The Kabocha Wine, the narrative predecessor of Aya Nakahara’s Love Com, but The Kabocha Wine doesn’t evoke quite the same degree of melancholy that Orange Road and Maison Ikkoku do, nor has it ever been as well known or as extensively watched by English speaking fans. 1983’s Aishite Night likewise doesn’t evoke nearly as much of an emotional investment from viewers as Maison Ikkoku or Orange Road do. The Mitsuru Adachi anime of the era, Touch, Miyuki, and Hiatari Ryoko!, are well-respected and beloved, but they’re also a bit more subdued and dramatic than either Orange Road or Maison Ikkoku. In fact, the first and arguably only romance anime to really build an intense following immediately after Orange Road was 1994’s Marmalade Boy which, like the equally beloved 1996 Hana Yori Dango, is a different style of story from Maison Ikkoku and Orange Road because the late 80’s shows followed the male protagonist while the 90’s shows were told from the female protagonist’s point of view. These days, Orange Road and Maison Ikkoku are still highly respected, and their now out of print American DVDs are highly prized and very expensive collector’s items because these two shows are the highlights of golden era romance anime.
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I was only a baby when Kimagure Orange Road came out in Japan; first watched it back in ’09. Watched the TV series and the first movie and enjoyed it the first time. The second time around, I dropped it. KOR, Maison Ikkoku, Touch, and the “trendy anime” trilogy haven’t aged very well. I can’t watch them anymore knowing that most of the plots just wouldn’t happen today. Dear people from the 1980s: IT’S CALLED A CELL PHONE! It’s much more reliable than a land line. Even brick phones would suffice given the era! Even White Album, a 2009 anime set in the ’80s, isn’t immune to this. That show’s fourth episode alone had me screaming at my monitor over the lack of cell phones. For someone who was only ten years old when Bill Clinton got re-elected, that’s saying something.
Not everyone has a cell phone, even nowadays. It’s still a luxury item like cable tv.
@Luscinia Hafez
You are seriously criticizing anime set in the 80’s because they lacked cellphones? Wow, this is one of the most bizarre things I’ve seen around here.
You may not remember because as you said, you were “only ten years old when Bill Clinton got re-elected”, but even in the US, cellphones didn’t become common until the late 90’s. In the early 90’s, it was possible to buy one, but they were huge, impractical and very expensive. In those times, people used beepers/pagers.
I don’t think what Luscinia is trying to say is that shows set in the 80s would have been more accurate if they contained more cellphones (obviously that is not the case).
I think what she was trying to say is that it is hard for her, as a younger generation person, to appreciate older shows because she cannot relate to them as well. She has fewer memories of a time when cellphones were rare and unsophisticated. Sitting through a show where many of the problems that the protagonists face could have been solved via a cell phone or other new technology is frustrating.
At least, that is how I interpreted her comment. She can correct me if I am wrong.
Since when are cell phones more reliable than landlines?
As a child of the 80’s, I find that comment… adorable.
I’m not sure what the sticking point is on these plots, but if it’s an issue of not being able to get in touch with another person at a critical moment, just try to imagine their cell phone is out of a service area, or the battery is dead, or something. I know its tough to imagine a time when you had to be tied to a landline to talk with someone, but it really happened! I’m not sure if these were the Dark Times are not…
tsunamiumi: I’m a guy. There are no girls on the Internet.
The lack of cell phones combined with the Meiko/Na-chan angle killed Marmalade Boy for me. I just can’t watch it anymore. Lack of Skype and cell phones aside, WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH JAPANESE PEOPLE? A TEACHER DATING HIS JAILBAIT STUDENT? THAT IS SICK!
@ PockyBox: Even dead batteries are becoming a discredited trope. We’ve now got batteries than can charge damn near instantly and we’ve got solar panels.
Nostalgia is as it is and if you didn’t experience mentioned shows as they first came out you’ll never. Ever. Know them completely as ones who’ve done so. Few shows can ever stay timeless, even “period” flicks become dated so now as you are “young” and am of the now~now generation – stuff don’t stick to your conscious anymore as did it to the “old farts” with fewer shows to grab our attention then.
+
Dispute me on that? Go to youtube and look up the redlettermedia review of the ’09 Star Trek where it talks of the flood of information pouring out into your cells and tv and how that movie made it big in the bank. Now ask yourself do you recall much of that movie now. Did it stick in your head and do you have a copy to even what to watch again… The “old farts” (myself) do this often and Kimagure Orange Road is pulled off the shelf every other year or so for it.
Forlourned: Even stuff from the 2000s is already showing its age. Look at Peach Girl and look at MILF (A 2010 movie, I know, but it was the first newer movie I could think of). WHO THE HELL USES A FLIP PHONE THESE DAYS? If I see one IRL, I either cringe or laugh at how backward the user is.