Sep 02 2006
Blast from the Past: Anime shows you may have missed
Based on blogs I’ve been seeing around the community a lot of bloggers appear to be new to anime. I recall even on the podcast mentioning shows and getting ?_? resonses. So I gathered a few anime shows that are pretty unheard of in hopes of promoting some of them to those of you guys who are looking for old stuff but don’t know what to check out. So let’s go down the list here with a brief summary & commentary of each.
Mamotte Shugogetten: This show you can prolly say is a ripoff from Ah! Megami-sama because the story is boy summons a girl from another world and she’s devoted to serving him. Eventually lots of awkwardness leads them to fall in love. However, unlike the goddess show, there’s another one whos devoted to him, and she’ll do anything to get his attention, even if it means completely fooling and brainwashing the original one. (Who luckily for her happens to be an airhead.) I own the manga for this series, and the whole time you’re sitting there going “When will Shao and Tasuke admit to each other their feelings”. Well not in this lifetime. Not even in the sequel anything got resolved. Maybe it was implied but personally I like hearing guys go “ORE WA OMAE GA SUKI DA!” But yea no such luck here.
Marmalade Boy: Most shoujo fans have probably heard about this but this is definitely a classic. If you think Da Capo started the “brother and sister fall in love trend” you obviously have not seen this show. Miki and Yu end up being step bro and sis when their parents decide to divorce and date each other’s partners and remarry. How weird is that? O_o; They all live in the same house too….AWKWARD. Oh yea I forgot to mention that soon as Miki and Yu are going smoothly, some girl or guy comes along and creates love triangle #325325235 and when that’s all out of the way they start thinking that they really may be related by blood. I also bought the manga set for this series (and sat through all 70something episodes) and the manga went by much quicker without all those love triangles. Oh I’d like to mention that Tange Sakura debut her seiyuu career in this show :). She voiced Suzu.
Himiko-Den: I gotta be honest, I don’t remember what the hell this show is about. It’s one of those shows I watched during the boom of “YOU CAN DOWNLOAD ANIME ON IRC NOW OMG111!11!” so I kinda massively watched shows. I remember I really liked the opening theme song by Sasaki Yuuko. I also remember I liked it cause it had some romance but it also had monsters and fighting and I should probably rewatch this show since my knowledge of japanese has skyrocketed since then.
Key the Metal Idol: I’ll be honest, but this genre of anime I tend to avoid. However, being that this was like year 2000 and th amount of anime you could access was like 1 series…every 2 months, I downloaded and watched it. I watched an amv of this show not too long ago and there were all these scenes which made me go…whoa this actually happened? This show contained weird shit like torture, murder, rape, abuse and other crap that if I think about now, why the hell did I watch it? The story was pretty interesting of having this girl go from robot to human but it confused the hell out of me, and probably a 2nd run would clear it up. The theme songs were cool too.
Shamanic Princess: I have no idea what this show is about either. Or rather, I don’t remember. I do remember I got the DVDs from Netflix and ripped them and manually fixed all the horrible subtitles but I guess if I had time I could rewatch it as it’s only like 6 episodes anyway. I think this had romance too but the guy was really fugly and there was a talking ferret too.
Nadia: The Secret of Blue Water: This anime was REALLY retro. Animation being old aside, the fact that it took place in like the 1900s, added on to the retroness but I liked it anyway. I only watched it at first because at the time I was like Anything by Gainax = GOOD (which is a horrible misconception by the way :P). The show wasn’t too bad and actually there was a movie as well which had Nadia and…damn I forgot his name a few years older.
Devil Hunter Yoko: Cheesy nude transformation scenes and Hisokawa Aya. She was like all over this show. The one problem with this OVA was in the 3rd episode, they spent the whole thing showing random PVs and shots of Hisokawa Aya singing songs and recapped footage. I mean this may work for a long series but in a 6 ep OVA YOU FAIL. I just remember Yoko was fighting demons and she had to be a virgin or something. I think one demon tried to sexx0r her but I couldn’t find the episode where that happened and BS player decided to poop on me.
Dr. Rin ni Kitemite!: Ask Dr. Rin and she’ll give you your weird chinese fortune. I honestly wanted to watch this series but raws were hard to come by so I saw random eps and Live-Evil never did get beyond episode 1 so I kinda gave up even trying to get the raws. It was a typical magical girl show and it was one reason I didn’t watch Happy 7. Too many similarities but at least in this show, the guy didn’t have like 15 girls to deal with.
TriZenon: Only reason I watched it was because it was by the same animation team as Slayers, which I was a big fan of at the time. It started out fun. We had Megumi Hayashibara, Mitsuishi Kotono and the lady who voiced Digi Charat (forgot her name) so the voice cast got me hooked. There was a girl in the series, who Kana (? i think thats her name, the blonde in this pic) thought was a guy and had a huge crush on her…until the last ep she found out its a dude. Bah what a waste, she shoulda gotten with her childhood friend. Well the show is basically lotsa robots and fighting but lotsa silly slapstick as well. Not the best but worth a look.
Trouble Chocolate: THIS IS MY FAVORITE ANIME!! And I’m not just saying this because I got my online handle from it 
Btw the girl with the green hair is indeed Hinano :D. The show is total parody goof slapstick. It begins with a guy eating some expired magic chocolate, getting drunk as hell, accidentally summoning a fairy who gets loose and takes the body of a wooden marionette. She of course is completely in love with him, but rather than be in love with a wooden chick, he’d rather eat buns or get his face rubbed between the boobs of 2 chinese girls (Maccha & Azuki). The main focus of the show is every episode a “card” goes outof control and they have to find a way to fight it and turn it back into a card. I think the original story was based on a radio show? I actualy had a chance to speak with the author Harada-san of the story (guess it wasn’t popular enough XD). He didn’t have much to do with the anime show though, and it seemed like the radio show ended up going separately from the anime. Noteable seiyuu are Tange Sakura once again, and Hikami Kyoko (noteable for voicing Rabi An Rose in Digi Charat.)
Jikuu Tantei Genshi-kun: Or as us USA fans may know this as “Flint the Time Detective”. Gosh does anyone remember this show? It used to air at the same time as the Digimon Dubs back in like 1999-2000. It was about a brother and sister, and a caveboy traveling through time and destroying the bad guys who have spread evil and destroyed the “time continuam” or something. I’ve been dying to see it in Japanese but most I saw is the Japanese openings and endings on youtube. The DVDs are like IMPOSSIBLE to find. They’re probably out of print and the english DVDs are only sold as dubs (cheapasses ~3~;). So yea if anyone finds inexpensive DVDs of this show in Japanese drop me a line!
Bakuretsu Hunters: Also known in the US as Sorcerer Hunters. The show was pretty mediocre but had some silly fanservice and lots of S&M crap haha. So if you like seeing girls in Dominatrix outfits, you’ll prolly love this show. Why did I like it? I think I said somewhere I have a thing for perverted guys, in which case our lovely hero was a big fat hornball ;). The other thing to note is the OVA was a freaking jiggle fest. Also, the manga I believe was done by a woman XD.
Brigadoon - Marin & Meran: This is one of those shows people prolly look @ the character designs and go “what the bleep?” I don’t remember why I watched it but it made me cry honestly. In the middle , in the end, and the episodes kept me on the edge. I first saw it raw so I had no idea what was going on but then I rewatched it a few years later and it was just as good, if not better than the first time. It’s definitely a “fairy tale of love and courage”. Oh and it has goofy looking cats and robots too. (it also has lolis for all you lolicons.)
Mahou Tsukai Tai: Also known as the Magic User’s Club. I love this show, in fact it cracked me up. I rememember I almost jumped out of my chair when I heard there was a TV series but I think the OVA was funnier. I don’t remember if they ever resolved the feelings between Sawanaguchi and the senpai in the TV series (actually I think they never did lol). There was fanservice, but it was funny fanservice and the guy probably lost 5 gallons of blood from all the times he had breasts shoved in his face. 
Iketeru Futari: This show is a ball of hillarious ecchi. It was made by Pink Pineapple (a hentai company) but there’s no actual HENTAI in this show. I mean the guy has a wild imagination and he keeps imagining all these perverted things, but there’s no hentai because the girl punches him into the sky Love Hina style everytime he tries to do something. There is however a ton of fanservice, and panty shots lol. The story’s about this girl who all the guys want but they can’t get close to her, and she even goes as far as to pretend she’s a lesbian. One guy though, tries anyway and eventually she falls for him. (So yes she is a Tsunderekko :))
Tenshi ni Narumon!: This was another classic that I liked. The show is about a guy who one day while taking a shortcut to school finds underwear ofa girl an while he’s collecting it, he trips and falls on top of the naked girl whose underwear he collected. Because he “accidentally” kisses her, she proclaims him to be her husband. The rest of the family, fulla weirdos, move in to his house and turn it into a circus :lol:. The girl, Noelle decides that she will become an angel so that the guy, Yuusuke, will like her. Well it turns out, she really is an angel, and shit hits the fan near the end when her 2 other halfs come and start a war because one of them wants to unite them, while the other wants to destroy them. Noteable voices here are the girl who voiced Rosette from Chrno Crusade and Mori Ai from Ueki. Ishida Akira is also in this show. There’s a 2 volume manga for the show, but it has no furigana so if your Kanji level sucks (like me) BEWARE!! It looks like it was drawn by a hentai dojin artist though lol.
Fushigi Yuugi: Ok I know everyone knows this show but there are people who don’t. In fact there are probably people who are like “I heard about it and that it has an annoying girl named Miaka but that’s it”. Ok yea I know “MIAKA! TAMAHOME” 10 times per episode can really get on people’s nerves, but this is one of those cheesy classics you just have to watch. There’s an anime called “Harukanaru Jikan no Naka De” or something which basically RIPS OFF Fushigi Yuugi. If you saw that show, you should like forget about it and watch this one instead because this IS the original “4 beasts of the north south east and west”.
Maze Megaburst Space: I think the Japanese title was “bakunetsu Jikuu” but I’m too tired to check that right now. I don’t care what people like about Angel Sanctuary, but if you’re gonna watch incest, then watch Maze. The anime didn’t quite cover “why” Akira and Mei “became one”. It didn’t really ‘explain’ their feelings to each other but the manga made it quite frank. Mei and Akira are brother and sister, who fell in love, had sex and literally became one. In the day Mei is a girl, and at night, she turns into her older brother Akira. Together they are known as MAZE. They leave their world and travel to some other world where their “love” will be accepted. Of course like once they’re one, Akira totally hits on every woman he can lay his hands on. For all you lolicons we got Mill who’s ready to have Akira (or Mei’s?) babies. Oh yes, Tange Sakura voices Mill (anyone notice a pattern here?) and Mitsuishi Kotono voices female Maze (Mei). Akira (Male Maze) is voiced by Seki Tomokazu. With such an awesome voice cast, you can’t lose! Oh and since Akira is a hornball that automatically adds points for me. The ending theme song, Junk Boy rocks my socks too.
Well that concludes this listing. There’s definitely more series that need attention but I’m too tired right now and my bed is calling me /)_=;
Tags: good old days
33 Responses to “Blast from the Past: Anime shows you may have missed”
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Kona on 
Fond memories.
I’ve always wanted to watch Brigadoon, but Tokyopop wants so much for the R1 DVD bundle that I’ve yet to buy it. I suppose it won’t get any cheaper… better get it before it goes out of print.
I wish I had the time to revisit some of these shows. Last time I rewatched Marmalade Boy (a year or so ago, I think), the whole world came grinding to a halt. I’m still a sucker for sappy shoujo.
Oh, my. Fushigi Yuugi brings back high school memories. Ack. And I remember fawning over Sailormoon.I used to enjoy Yaiba, Mojacko, and a bunch of novel-turned-anime type of series (i.e. Princess Sarah, Dog of Flanders).
I don’t think I can watch those Princess Sarah, etc. anymore. But I’d watch Yaiba again, plus I want to know what happened in the end. As for Mojacko, I’d give my left eyeball to have it licensed in North America.
Hmmm. I want to watch Trouble Chocolate now. Must find a copy.
Wow, I seriously haven’t seen any of these, except for Dr. Rin. I remember seeing the first episode and waiting for more…
I saw trouble chocolate at Hastings once. Maybe I’ll pick it up some day. Note to self: get a netflix account…
Oh man, Fushigi Yuugi. I’ve never watched that one, so basically the only association that I have with it is at one of our department parties last year, one of my classmates came up to me and said “Oh man, you have an anime blog. Have you seen Fushigi Yuugi? I totally have a crush on the main guy from that show.”
Also, not only have I not seen any of those, I think I’ve only heard of like two or three of them.
Also, I know what the next episode theme should be: THE TEST OF COURAGE!
WHAT i am not new and yet I have only seen TWO of the shows. Mamotte Shugogetten and Fushigi Yuugi. But is there a point in watching old and mediocre stuff? At least new and mediocre like Burst Angels has pretty characters and animation.
I don’t consider myself new to anime but I’ve never even heard of most of the shows you’ve mentioned lol. I’ve seen perhaps half of Fushigi Yuugi, though I’ve never finished it. But Marmalade Boy looks interesting.
Wow. Looking at those old animes really tells how much animes have progressed over the years in terms of drawing and coloring.
I really hate the animation style of some of those old shows…
Lots of good picks there, though I confess to not having seen half of them.
I wonder how many bloggers are all that new to anime though and how much its just that they saw the old shows years ago and new one are more fun to blog now.
Jeff> Tokyopop’s a ripoff
I wonder it it would be better to just get the R2 DVDs. But this show really was one of my favorite Sunrise productions, next to Infinite Ryvius.
Ten> Indeed XD It was the first anime I saw 2 dudes kissing too lol. I haven’t heard of Princess Sarah or any of the other shows you mentioned. Oh and FYI Trouble Chocolate’s been licensed by VIZ but people say it’s so crappy that everyone still has my fansubs floating around somewhere
Hung> Haha you saw Dr. Rin! XD Actually I heard there’s a service now called liek “rent anime” where its just like netflix but they only rent out anime so you donthave to dig through cheesy foreign films to find the anime DVDs.
Jp> Lmao someone had a crush on Tamahome! XD I think he was my favorite one too…the other guys were either too young too old or too girly.
tj> I guess back then, it wasn’t so mediocre, but if you compare it to stuff now, yea I guess its pretty mediocre and it’s been played out…but sometimes its nice and nostalgic to check out old stuff.
hayase> Marmalade boy is longer in episode count than Fushigi Yuugi by the way…so if you couldn’t finish FY….xDD;;
Tsubaki> Definitely a big difference especially considering most of those shows were done in traditional cel animation. (There’s also a huge progression in fansub quality that I never noticed until I learned Japanese :P)
Danny> I can sorta agree with you on most old shows especially ones in style similar to Devil Hunter Yoko. I don’t remember why I watched that one, but I really do dislike that old 80s animation style.
Tiran> It could be that maybe the generation who saw the old shows doesn’t blog anymore? I know I’m an old fart compared to some of the bloggers here (except for Jpsenpai and hungsenpai ;)) so the age range could probably be a reason.
I’ve been planning to re-watch Key the Metal Idol when I got a chance (been about three months now). I liked it, even if it was a little slow paced at times.
Like everyone else here, I haven’t seen more than half the shows listed.
I am a Yuu Watase Fanboy T_T
All of a sudden, I feel like a complete noob when it comes to anime after reading ur review. Most of them seem really foreign. Well, except for Fushigi Yuugi and Jikuu Tantei Genshi-kun, since both of them have been English dubbed and aired…somewhere.
One thing’s for sure, the animation quality has definitely improved over the years, though still maintaining the anime-ish characteristics (ie huge eyes, ridiculous facial contortions and overly disproportionated bodies, for most of them).
Anyway, I’ll just remain ignorant and pick higurashi no naku koro ni over these animes any day.;)
So many of these shows bring me back…
Yay, you mentioned Marmalade Boy, but the manga is oh so much better. As long as you avoid the shoddy Tokyopop translation, that is.
And god, Fushigi Yuugi, that’s easily one of my most hated shows ever. I could never stand to watch the idiocy of it. Now the “Tree and Rocks” Doki Doki AMV says everything about the show well.
Tenshi ni Narumon is pretty amusing, heh. Never seen Brigadoon, but I have always wanted to. They just don’t make some of these types of series like they used to.
j.valdez> I honstly wanna rewatch some of these myself but with all the new stuff there’s almost no time!
drm> yes yes I know
Yyi> XD A lot of people said they were “pwned” by this post (good thing I didn’t make it longer?) higurashi is something new for me too since I typically don’t watch horror animes, but if you like that stuff you actualy might like Key the Metal Idol
Link> Yes the manga as I said cut out a lot of love triangle crap to a point. Lawl FY I dunno I really liked it when I saw it, but I’m not sure if I’d feel the same way now. Brigadoon is really good, and left me with a satisfied ending, which is something I rarely feel these days.
I liked (but not loved) Mamotte Shugogetten IF you can get through the pretty lame comedy in the beginning (hints of romance and less lame comedy later on really picks the anime up imo). There’s also an 8-episode OVA for it, which I think is considerably better than the series, since it focused on what Mamotte Shugogetten was best at. You definitely need to watch the series first though. Good anime for the most part, though I see where the “Ah! My Goddess”-ripoff is coming from.
I didn’t like Trouble Choocolate that much, but maybe I’ll give it another shot. Only watched like 15 mins of it anyway (though I already have a backlog of like 300GB of unseen anime T_T ).
Comazon: NOO TC IS FUNNY ;_; Although I heard people can’t stand Murakata/Debora a lot
I saw the Mamotte OVAs as well (the animation style was more chibified than the TV series) but it reminded me a lot of the manga and how NOTHING gets resolved
Thanks Hinano for listing these animes! I will have to check out some of them. Sadly, I am probably the only one here that had no clue about these! Maybe its because I saw a lot of them in spanish and now I can’t relate the names to English or Japanese! I will see if I recognize any of them from the animation!
Hinano: You’re definitely right about the OVAs doing nothing about getting the anime resolved (soooo close though, it was downright teasing me). And it didn’t end up getting resolved in the manga either? Boo…
Though this may/will sound ignorant of me, how come sooooo many animes don’t ever wrap up relationships (give the people what they want, I say!)? Is it to leave room for more seasons or something?
Oh, and you talked me into it, I’ll try to get back into Trouble Chocolate later this week. You make it sound too good to pass up ;).
Lalita: Honestly you are not the only one
Comazon: I think the answer to your question is because many animes are made before the manga finishes so you have to buy the manga if you want a conclusion…in which case you can see why I hold a grudge against sakurano minene and her NO RESOLUTION SEQUEL xD I hope you enjoy TC it’s really a lot of fun but if you want some real plot moving crap I guess just watch the last 4 episodes
Ah, that makes sense (though I obviously don’t like that). Yay! I learned something today. Thanks!
Some of things are “things I always meant to watch but never did” so the only one I’ve seen is Fushigi Yuugi (”Miaka!” “Tamahome!”
). Not sure if I’d still enjoy it if I rewatched now, but I’ve been reading the manga lately and it was entertaining enough.
I did read the Himiko-Den manga once, by the time I figured out what was going on, it was the last chapter (although it finished so abruptly that I only knew it was the end because it said so). Always meant to see if the anime made more sense.
[...] I completely blame Hinano for this “blast to the past”. ;p After reading her post, I have been scouring videos on old childhood favorites. And where else can you conveniently access old clips from beyond? [...]
where the hell are my old school mecha shows?
HINANO FAILS.
JKJKJKJKJ
anyway, damn fushigi yugi. D:
bah I hate mecha shows >_> (except for evangelion and ryvius)
there may be new bloggers (like me ^^) who dont have a clue about some of these (honestly dont think i was born yet anways…) but i still watch some of those old shows (i got addicted to watching the old transformers for no reason….starblazers(english dubbed) was very hard to pay attention too…been harping about saikano for weeks(dont know how old it is tho) got bored and nearly died from overly crappy anime while watching gundam X (man and i thought sunrise was crap now….)
then again i have to point out the fact that im on episode 16 of bleach so my conception of old might be alittle screwed up (>.
wow if Saikano is old then the stuff I mentioned here is prehistoric
yeah, Trouble choco is my favorite anime. it’s so funny. can you help me to send me a great picture of Hinano. thanks.
I don't watch ANIME.
I want to know why people like it.. or what's cool with it.
I might want to try watching it someday,
what can you recommend?
I understand what you mean about no one remembering Flint (Genshi-kun)…I’ve been trying to find copies of that series forever but have yet to find it. I’ve even tried searching for raw version (I know NOTHING about translating Japanese, lol) but I can’t seem to find anything even with price not being much of an object. Not even the dubbed episodes other than what was released on DVD. Ah well, hopefully someone will find a copy sooner or later! ^_^
Thank you so much for the maze manga info!! =D
One question about it, when did Akira and Mei slept with each other? I’ve only watched the Anime series since its hard to find the manga volumes anywhere. Who confessed first? How did it happened??
I hope you can reply the answer back, I’m really pulling my hair about this. Arigatou Gozaimasu!^^
Farah> Basicallyl Akira told Mei he loves her and she said she loved him too and then they did it
This happened at the end of volume 5.
OMG, thank you soooo much! *hugs* =D
Aww, that’s so sweet~ Huah, I can rest my head now ^^ Ill buy the manga when I visit Japan, thanks again for the info!