Roots of Anime Fandom in Tampa, FL.

As my 44th birthday is coming up quick, a few days in fact, I spent this Saturday afternoon pondering how anime fandom has evolved over the years. There are many places I once visited in my youth that are no longer around and so their story must be told. So let the adventure begin!

One Christmas back in the 80's, I got an electric wok. I also received a cookbook called Oriental Cuisine. It was broken down into different parts of Asia, China, Korea, Southeast Asia, and Japan. Each chapter had maps and drawings and a short history of the region. It also had tasty looking recipes. I was at Joto Japanese restaurant, and couldn't decide what I wanted and took a chance  on sukiyaki. Well, the Asian cookbook I had did have a sukiyaki recipe and I tried it at Joto's so I started my culinary journey with Japan. Some of the ingredients were hard to find at Publix so riding around one day, I saw Kotobuki on Dale Mabry, just past Neptune, and next door to Wright's. I went inside and with the help of the employees found everything I needed to make sukiyaki, still one of the best sauces I have ever had. Also, I noticed that Kotobuki had candy and ramen with pictures of Ultraman. I also saw cute cartoon characters. So I bought a few anime snacks mainly because Ultraman was one of my favorite Saturday morning shows. The stage was set.

A few years later I was in the 9th grade and met Patrick Conroy who was a big fan of Robotech. In the mid 80's, Robotech was on broadcast. Anyway, Pat would ride his bike to my house and we played Metal Gear on the NES, before Solid was added to the name. Sometimes we would go to Kotobuki because they rented anime tapes that were all in raw Japanese, and sometimes, the commercials were left in. The toy commercials were amazing. At the time I had no idea what I was watching. I had two VCRs and I would dub shows like Jo-Jo's Bizarre Adventures, Ranma 1/2, and whatever Sci-Fi or Fantasy posters I saw hanging up inside Kotobuki. This was back when to buy anime, tapes were expensive and had to be mail ordered. I mainly watched anime but would sometimes watch the Japanese comedy shows, such as, The Drifters, and Shimura Ken no Bakatono-sama, a crazy show that reminded me of The Benny Hill Show. Comedian Ken Shimura played a foolish prankster that was always in trouble. He wore white Kabuki makeup with his hair sticking up. It was so good back in middle school. Now I was helplessly hooked on Japanese entertainment.

In that same area, on Dale Mabry, just before Neptune and across from Plant High School used to be a comics and gaming store called Merlin's. The first time I went inside I bought two Tokusatsu magazines for the Ultraman and Kamen Rider pictures. You couldn't find them in magazines like Starlog, so I had to by the import magazines. They even had Japanese toys like the Zentradi Battlepods and you could also buy Gundam model kits. Then suddenly Merlin's vanished. They reopened on Fowler near USF for a few years before closing for good.

It was hard to find anime outside Asian markets. You had to buy Starlog and request a catalog from an Anime company. Then, you would probably end up getting two episodes for $30 to $40 and that was steep as a junior high student without a job. So the best place to feed your addiction were cons. My first real con experience was at Necronomicon at their old location and not at Sable Park. There were no cosplayers. It was at the Holiday Inn Cypress on Cypress Ave. The big guest was Piers Anthony. I remember going to a panel by author Peter David called Does Humor Belong in Science Fiction? David was discussing humor in the unexpected, then an army of Pizza Hut delivery guys marched in carrying stacks of pizza. David told them to feed the attendees and they handed out boxes to everyone. I have never laughed that hard during a panel. He must have ordered 100 pizzas because boxes were everywhere. I'll never forget that moment. Anyway, I bought a bad copy of Akira at Necronomicon for $5. Despite how bad the quality was, I still have it as a reminder of the struggle.

I used to spend Saturday afternoons driving to Largo to go to Camelot Comics & Gifts. It was the only place to get Robotech on videotape at $30 for only 2 episodes. The last time I checked, you can order the entire series for $41.30 and compared to the good old days that is a steal. Just as Merlin's went so did Camelot. This was pre Sunset video and Blockbusters in Tampa didn't even have a Anime section. There was nothing. I was so jealous when my friend returned from a trip to Simi Valley, CA and told me that Blockbusters had an Anime section and so many titles.

The last place was so small that I don't even remember the name. There used to be shops in Feather Sound and there was an anime store. I'm not sure how long it lasted back in '92. It seems like I blinked and then it was gone. Anyway, inside that store I discovered a magazine called Mangajin that taught Japanese through comics. There were ads for teaching English in Japan. Around 92 anime was drying up in Tampa so I decided to go to college and go to Japan to keep my anime dreams alive. When I was in junior high and then high school, there was only two anime fans, my friend and I. No one was interested in Ultraman, MS Gundam, Dominion Tank Police, or Kung Fu movies. That has changed for the better today. I was just at Publix and the cashier saw my Godzilla shirt and told me he was a kaiju fan. I never thought the word kaiju would be used and understood all this time later. What was once only for nerds has branched out further then I ever thought possible. So if you wanted to know about anime fandom in Tampa from 1978, the year I first saw Battle of the Planets, to 1992, this is how it really was.

Manga Memories

Where to begin? It is hard to look back into my past and find out when I first began collecting comics. I can't remember the first comic I bought but I'm guessing it was Spiderman. The old cartoon from the 60's was syndicated in the 70's and I remember watching it in elementary school during the after school cartoon block that also showed another of my favorites, Star Blazers.

One favorite TV show came on Saturdays at 6am and I was up early to catch the Batman TV series with Adam West and Burt Ward. I prefer the fun and camp of Batman '66 to the later gloom and doom Dark Knight and Christopher Nolan movies. After Batman was Ultraman about Hayata, a member of the Science Patrol, who is given a magical Beta Capsule by a mysterious alien, that transforms him into Ultraman. This started my kaiju love affair that is still going on strong today.

My life changed during the Summer of '77 when I was four years old watching Star Wars at a small movie theater on Hillsborough Ave. I was obsessed with collecting Star Wars toys and comics. So, TV shows and movies greatly influenced me with comic buying. In the 70's I was reading Star Wars, any comic about sharks, thanks to Jaws, Rom the Space Knight, and I loved the Micronauts. Of course, some of the coolest toys in the 70s were the Shogun Warriors with the flying fists so I had the comics also.

Then in 1978 the Superman movie came out and I loved it. That started a Superman comics buying craze. Also that year I started watching Battle of the Planets about a team with five members who must work together to save the earth from the evil Zoltar. Gold Key put out the comics and I had to have them.

I was raised on a unique blend of Western comics and Japanese comics that at that time and still under 10, I didn't know those comics were Japanese or care. So when did the transition to manga begin?

That happened in '87, I was placed in Advanced Art at Monroe Middle School in South Tampa, and a friend of mine from elementary school, John Holland, was also into comics and we were in the same art class. We used to go the Book Worm, a tiny comics and used bookstore on Manhattan, just past the McDonald's on Gandy Blvd. John got me interested in being a serious collector and introduced me to Eastman and Laird's Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, back before the silly cartoon, the turtles were dangerous and had a niche cult following. We were interested in the Ninja Turtles because the first issue was already commanding a high price on the market. So we were looking for anything that would be the next hit like Adolescent Radioactive Black Belt Hamsters and Geriatric Gangrene Jujitsu Gerbils. This started me on the path towards indie books and away from Marvel and DC.

However what really grabbed me was eating lunch at Monroe in the cafeteria. I was with Ed Jenkins and we were talking comics. Ed was talking about a cool book he was reading that was filled with crazy action and like nothing I had ever read before. I took interest and went to my local comics shop to get it. That was Ben Dunn's Ninja High School. This manga/anime inspired comic hooked me in and wouldn't let go. I had grown up with Sho Kosugi ninja movies on HBO and Storm Shadow from G. I. Joe but wasn't prepared for the impact that Ninja High School would have.

There was the all to common high school setting, that was actually new and fresh in 1987, with cute girls who could actually fight, sometimes in bikinis, with great artwork and a good story.

Also in '87, John and I were shopping at Goodwill, we loved browsing thrift stores on the Weekends, and found a gorgeous comic with killer cover art by Frank Miller that was deep in Japanese history called Lone Wolf and Cub. Here is the issue I bought for only 15 cents.

Worth every penny and I read it multiple times. This led me to start reading books on Japanese history.

At that time Robotech was broadcast on TV and my friends and I were big fans. We used to go to Merlin's Comics that used to be in South Tampa near the Publix on Dale Mabry and Neptune. It was here that I first discovered Eternity's Robotech comic.

A few years later I was in college at the University of South Florida and had Japanese roommates. I was taking Japanese 4 and my Japanese friends would give me their manga magazines after they finished. This helped my Japanese reading level immensely. The manga mags had Samurai stories that reminded me of Lone Wolf and Cub.

 

In 1999 I was accepted in USF's Study Aboard program, which meant I would be studying Japanese at Kansai Gaidai University in Hirakata City, near Osaka, in Japan. One of my friends, Midori, who was a 19-year old girl back in 1999, gave me my first Japanese manga in tankoubon, (paperback book form,) and that was Detective Conan. Known in the US as Case Closed, this was the manga I took with me for the long plane ride to Japan. Stayed tune for more manga adventures. The seeds were already planted throughout my life and then I was in Japan seeking out manga.

 

 

 

 

Mobile Suit Gundam Part 1: Blu-Ray Collection Review

Prepare for multiple Christmases throughout 2016 and beyond as the good people at Right Stuf release more Gundam series on Blu-Ray.

Right Stuf teamed up with Sunrise and all the series are going to be released, finally, in North America. This is great news for me because for years all I had was the movie trilogy on DVD, which basically took the entire 43 episodes of Mobile Suit Gundam and condensed it all down into three movies. I am a completest so I craved more. I don't care if some of the episodes are considered filler, if I love a series, I have to have all of it, warts and all. Now I can put away the movies and my old video cassettes of various Mobile Suit Gundam random episodes and Victory Gundam that I've had since I was a teenager. Back then I didn't care if I had the entire run of a series, in the late 80's you were lucky to have one episode. The episodes I had were from a Japanese market in raw Japanese with the commercials left in. Just like they were broadcasted in Japan. It was cool and an extra bonus to see Japanese toy and McDonald commercials.

Some will be hating on the 70's artwork and design, but I prefer the personal touch of hand drawn animation to the crystal clean and over processed CGI art today that is so bland and uninspired. In 70's anime, a lot of detail went into the vehicles, mechas, and spaceships that was so cool. Mobile Suit Gundam looks just as good as other 70's anime such as Battle of the Planets, (aka Gatchaman,) and Star Blazers (aka Space Battleship Yamato.) Who cares if the fashion and characters looked funky, it was the 70's and fit in perfectly.

Mobile Suit Gundam was created by Tomino Yoshiyuki who was inspired by the 1959 Robert Heinlein Science Fiction novel called Starship Troopers. Both are great examples of military Sci-Fi, involving humans who pilot robotic suits. Set in the Universal Century, MS Gundam tells the story of the gift and hot tempered teenager, Amuro Ray. The Principality of Zeon becomes independent from the Earth Federation and so starts the Year One War. In the midst of fighting, young Amuro, stumbles onto the giant mobile suit called Gundam. As Zeon attacks, Amuro climbs inside as an inexperienced military man to stop them. Even in these early action scenes, you can tell that Amuro has a knack for piloting a giant mecha.

However, Zeon will not be easy to beat due to the quick-witted and strategic genius, Char Aznable. A wonderful villain who frustrates Amuro throughout the series. Char is my personal favorite villain in all anime. He always manages to dodge Amuro's angry attacks with excellent counterattacks and witty dialogue. It is so much fun watching Amuro and Char battle each other. You need both to provide the perfect dramatic angle.

How does it look on Blu-ray? Excellent. Along with Gatchaman on Blu-Ray, 70's anime has never looked so fresh. Mobile Suit Gundam is beautiful to see in HD. This is coming from someone who watched it originally on VHS, with so many lines running down the screen.

The audio is fantastic. A quality surround sound system will make you feel like you are watching Gundam inside a movie theater. For the sub vs dub debate, I will answer both. I am watching MS Gundam in the English dub so I can catch all the delicious details and art without reading. Then I will watch it again in Japanese for the complete effect.

The only thing lacking is Special Features and that is typical for anime. You get the usual stuff like clean openings and closings.

Interestingly, MS Gundam during its initial run failed to find an audience and was in danger of being cancelled. Bandai bought the copyrights and quickly has plastic models out on the market. Then the anime took off and spawned an empire of toys, video games, and a series that continues on and on.
The popularity of Gundam has had a tremendous influence that led to Robotech, Evangelion, and countless mechas shows.

If you get the chance, I highly recommend traveling to Tokyo to visit the Gundam Café in Akihabara and also Tokyo Diver City in Odaiba. The later is a mall with a 59-foot Gundam greeting you at the entrance. Inside, there is Gundam Front, a museum that also has a IMAX-style theater that features two Gundam anime shorts. Tokyo Diver City also has a Gundam Café, I'm not sure if it is the same as the one in Akihabara. In Osaka, you can visit Gundams, a huge store devoted to Gundam in Den Den Town aka Nipponbashi.

So MS Gundam on Blu-Ray comes with my highest recommendation. Next up for me is Part 2 and Zeta Gundam Part 1 that is coming soon. Thank you Right Stuf on a job well done.

Book Review: A Rough Guide to Anime

With the popularity of anime cons and cosplayers showing up at cons across the world, a handy guide to navigate through the many different anime genres and key shows is needed.

Print is having a difficult time with everything online and up-to-date, however real books that you can hold, touch, and actually flip the pages is still desired by many. When all the gadgets fail and only a light source is available, a book will come through for you.

That is why the Rough Guide to Anime by travel writer, Simon Richmond, is the perfect gift for new friends and even old schoolers may find some interesting tidbits here and there.

Published back in 2009, the Rough Guide starts off with a solid history of anime and not just the titles but the dedicated artists and animators who toiled long hours to get it right.

The early history of anime is still valid and well researched by Simon Richmond and shows the fan just how far the art form has evolved up to 2009. Is you really love something, you should take in a little history to better appreciate what is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.

Next, the Rough Guide moves into the 50 titles that make up the Canon. This is where the newbie will have a field day. When you have exhausted all the current season shows and you are still wanting more, you can glance at the Canon and read up on a specific title to see if it is right for you. The reviews are intelligent and well researched and provide just enough information not to spoil anything.

The Rough Guide also has a chapter on how anime is created, and another chapter on the many genres, and a listing of books, magazines, websites, podcasts, and online stores that carter to the raging anime fan.

What I found particularly useful, and something less likely to change even in an older book, are the places in Japan to go to see anime and find stores to get your fix. I know the obvious choices like Akihabara and Nakano Broadway, but I didn't know the Toei Animation Studios has a free museum opened to the public or that Ishinomori Shotaro, creator of Cyborg 9 and the wonderful Kamen Rider, has a museum in Ishinomaki called Ishinomaki Mangattan Museum.

However with all these good points there are a few flaws. There are numerous grammar errors that were somehow messed by the proof reader. Also, Simon Richmond, writing about Gatchaman says that it is 60's anime when it actually debuted in 1972. The biggest flaw is that there is no mention of Den Den Town the electronics, anime, and manga shopping district of Osaka. Nakano Broadway is only briefly mentioned and only in connection with Mandarake, when there are so many cool otaku shops worth checking out.

For all it faults, The Rough Guide to Anime is still an entertaining read. Now that it is out-of-print, a good used copy can be found at many online used bookstores for only $1. This is something to give to that new fan who wants to dig a little deeper than what is currently popular.

Overall, I give it a solid C. It would earn a B it better care was taken at the proof reading stage. This is a book that seriously needs an update.

My Otaku Dating in Osaka: 1999 - 2000

 

            Before leaving for Japan, I shared an apartment with three Japanese roommates. When they found out I was going to be studying in Japan, I got advice from everyone.

           My friend, Junichi told me to never tell Japanese girls that I like anime, manga, or video games and avoid referring to myself as a otaku. 

            My other roommate, Midori, a 19-year old female, said the same thing but she told me that certain manga was acceptable like Case Closed (Detective Conan.) I knew that I shouldn’t be taking the train, on a date, reading a big oversized hentai manga so I never did that.  Midori gave me two volumes of Case Closed, in the original Japanese, to read on the flight because it’s so long to get there and to help me improve my Japanese reading ability.

            I wisely stored this information, somewhere deep inside my brain, because I wanted to meet hot Japanese women and I wasn’t going to let some hobby get in the way.

            When I first got to Kansai Gaidai University in Osaka, Japan (in Hirakata City) there were girls everywhere because it’s a language college. 

            I started getting numbers and going out right from day one at college. On one date, I tried to appear very normal and thinking, “I’m not going to let my otaku side come out at all. I really want this to work.”

           So we strolled the streets of Umeda with the Kanji signs blazing bright red and orange against the black night. We had dinner at Meguro’s in Umeda near a shopping arcade. In all my time living in Osaka, I have never found a better cheap restaurant than Meguro’s. At Meguro’s women get a discount and men eat for around 1800 yen and it’s an all you eat buffet. The first floor is Kaiten Sushi, which I always thought of as Roto-Sushi. You sit at a small table next to a conveyor belt with different types of sushi and sashimi rolling by. In addition to sushi, Meguro’s had bananas with chocolate and various cakes. For the most part, Japanese women are very thin, I believe my date was around 90 pounds so she didn’t eat much. I had 12 plates of various sashimi plus 2 plates of cake, then it was time for the second floor which was pizza, fries, spaghetti, different pastas, and salad. Again, I over did it. I wisely avoided the salad and consumed half a large pizza (around 6 slices) myself. My date was still trying to keep up, eating only one pizza slice.        Next was the third floor with soba and udon noodles and more sashimi. So of course I wolfed down a big bowl of udon.

            We had a great time at dinner, as we walked around Umeda’s shopping district, then tragedy hit. While walking around I noticed Mandrake, a big store packed with retro anime and manga goods. I might have looked at it too long because my date asked me what I was interested in. I could have lied at this point and made up some story about helping humanity by joining the Peace Corps but I didn’t. I believe in being honest and real with people so I let it out. I said, “I like watching One Piece and reading Case Closed to help me practice Japanese.” She didn’t response. So I passionately pursued how much I love watching One Piece to which she replied her 8-year old brother liked it too. She was just looking for a Western guy to hang out with and I wasn’t normal enough so we didn’t really talk that much afterwards.

            I decided I was going to be myself around Japanese people and not take my roommates advice and tell people exactly what I was all about.

            A month later, I met Ikumi (see photo at the top) and her friends at the International Center.  We hit it off right at the start and I found out she was a big fan of Final Fantasy VII and I told her that I liked Cased Closed and she didn’t mind at all. We took the train out to Amerika-mura (American Village) to eat at a nice garlic restaurant Ninnikuya, a Japan wide restaurant chain, and I ordered my usual garlic pizza with white Alfredo sauce.

            The next time we went out, she invited her friends along for karaoke. I sang a few Japanese songs like Morning Musume’s Love Machine and when I started dancing, her friends joined it and we all sang the chorus together. That was fun. She had some otaku friends that sang anime songs like Sobakasu from Rurouni Kenshin by Judy and Mary.

            The best time was close to the end of the year for me. On my birthday, May 3^rd, she invited me to hang out at her dorm room. My friends advised me on the usual pre-date talks. I was really excited about this. I was finally just being me and it was working out just fine.

            I got to her dorm apartments for female students and quickly ducked into her tiny room. You really should be discreet in Japan.  I have no idea what Ikumi wanted to do but I was about to find out. Ikumi told me that she was a whiz at playing FF VII so we decided to do that.  Being polite I offered to go get something to eat and I snuck back out like a ninja.  Back in middle school I read several Stephen K. Hayes books on Ninjutsu and stealth, never knowing when such knowledge would be practical until that night.

            I returned with a bento for her and my usual snack consisting of 12 fried takoyaki balls, 24 doughnut holes from Mister Donuts, and 2-quarts of Chocolate ice cream from Lawsons.  Watching Ikumi play Final Fantasy VII was just breathtaking. She never once read a strategy guide or looked up FAQs online. She was so into that game and made few mistakes playing.  We took turns playing until 8am and then I decided to go.  I wanted to leave earlier before other students woke up but I got so immersed in the game that I lost all sense of time.  It does help to play with a hot Japanese girl.

         I dashed out of there and returned back to the men’s dorm rooms a couple of blocks down the road.  That was one of my best dates in Japan and I wasn’t ashamed to bring out my otaku side at all. It actually helped me better to be direct about it. Also, Ikumi and I are still good friends.

Comic City Osaka 28 Intex-Osaka 2000.3.12 (Sun): My First Doujinshi Con

During the freezing cold winter month of February 2000, I went on a class trip with Professor Hester’s Youth Culture and Consumption class.  Professor Hester was a lecturer at Kansai Gaidai and he had the best field trips.  There was a huge convention devoted to amateur manga or Doujinshi. From all over Japan, different artists and writers would self-publish and mass-produced their own manga stories.

            On the big day of the convention, I was sitting there, next to a thousands of Japanese people, with two of my classmates, Trevor, the most hardcore otaku in the class who started up his own anime club at WSU,  and Casim, the casual fan who just wanted to go out and see a con, close by.  I remembered talking to Trevor about anime when I first arrived at Kansai Gaidai. and when I brought up how popular Dragon Ball Z was, he didn’t take to that idea very well. He told me his anime club prohibited watching Dragon Ball Z.  That seemed like a strange idea to me. I was planning on finding some Dragon Ball Z stuff to bother him with.  Just for fun, but I think Trevor took it all extremely serious, which wasn’t really my true intention at all.

            Sitting around and waiting for the convention to open, Professor Hester walked by gave us each a big thick book with a cute boy and girl anime picture across the colorful cover.  Trevor looked through it like a nuclear scientist studying the blueprints of a nuclear reactor.  I never saw him so taken with anything so intensely.  So I decided to look through my own guide.

 

            The first few pages were sample manga stories followed by a layout of the many different rooms, and then all the titles were listed alphabetically in Japanese.  If you couldn’t read the Japanese the book showed the same listings with pictures.  There must have been over 5000 booths set up. 

            I think that these artists and writers captured the true spirit of manga.  They were free to create their own storylines and they could use or disregard known characters at will.  They have much more freedom then their professional counterparts who had to work within a certain framework and who had to publish by set standards.  Here, everything was laid out, exactly as the artist had envisioned it.

            As the Con started, we all got up and people went running around to get to different areas. I wasn’t really sure about what I wanted to look for so I just stuck with Trevor and Casim.

The fun for me was walking around and speaking to different people. I took several flyers from people selling their manga or just on the verge of putting their own manga together so all they had were one sheets and small flyers for free. Some manga were printed and sold on expensive paper and others were just drawn onto construction paper.

 

Always on the search for the unusual, I bought my first yaoi manga that was based on Konami’s Castlevania, and featured Simon, Dracula, and female bisexual vampires called, Dracula X:  Sweet Angel. Simon was in it but he had a minor role. The artwork was excellent.

 

Other strange manga included a hentai version of Cardcaptor Sakura, that I passed up.  I saw a homosexual version of Dracula, from the Castlevania series, called Alucrad that I did buy just because it was so different.

 

Video gamers have grown up playing Castlevania but how many of them have seen the Count get it on with Simon in a rare expression of man-to-man loving.

            On my buying spree, I bought another one called X-Day that depicted those wonderful sexual events associated with the Christmas season.  Inside, there was an ultra-cute anime girl in sexy Santa attire.

 

Also, Easter is a nice holiday but it’s not really a great holiday unless you have a happy, voluptuous bunny, playing with a huge carrot that I saw on a cover of Cardcaptor Sakura.  The artwork was incredible. The lines were drawn lightly and had a dreamlike quality that I really admired. 

 

            Overall, the biggest sells at the manga convention were yaoi comics, based on popular characters like Cased Closed, Final Fantasy, and even Dragonball Z.  I remembered Dragonball Z because Trevor seemed so mad when he said:

“There’s your Dragonball Z!”

And there it was, showing Goku as a homosexual.  Japanese females in their 20’s, were buying tons of yaoi manga.  Most of the yaoi was man to man and I wanted to see more lesbians but that’s not want the paying customer wanted.  There were so many lesbian possibilities, such as the women living together at the onsen in Love Hina.  That would have made an interesting spin.

            Browsing around,  I met someone ever nerdier than me.  His level of geekness was astounding.  He was in his early 20’s and he was with his young Japanese wife.  She had on glasses and she told me that she met her husband at a Star Trek Convention back in America.  Trevor, Casim, and I hang out with them for a while.  They took us around showing us different cool stuff.  His wife told me, during one of the many conversations, that she liked to dress up in a Star Trek uniform with her husband.

 

 

            As the day ended, it was very sad to leave the convention.  There were still so many booths that went unseen.  You could have spent a good week, just going through all those manga books.

 

Case Closed: Captured in Her Eyes Movie Review

    Have you ever wanted to go back to being a kid knowing what you know now?  You would probably hesitate to do so after watching Captured in Her Eyes. 

     Jimmy Kudo is an intelligent high school student who is forced to take a poison that transforms him into a kid.  Kudo takes the name Conan Edogawa and helps Detective Richard Moore by solving cases that Moore can’t on his own. Moore’s daughter, Rachel, casually dated Kudo when he was full sized.  Part of the appeal of the Case Closed series is how much fun childhood looks to adults and how Conan gets a second change to do so.  However, there are many frustrations such as Conan, who is still in love with Rachel, unable in his current condition to do anything about it.  If only Conan could reverse the effects of the poison and terminate his situation.

 

         Watching Captured in Her Eyes, there are several scenes that make childhood look fun set up against the problems and frustrations of childhood.  During the opening sequence at Tropical Land amusement park, Rachel and Jimmy are seen laughing and enjoying each other’s company for the moment.  Towards the end, there is a similar scene set at Tropical Land that show Rachel and Conan together, but it is not the same for Conan because he can only remain a kid in Rachel’s eyes.

 

            In the beginning, Conan witnesses the murder of a detective in broad daylight.  This mysterious killer will continue to baffle police and the Moore Detective Agency throughout the movie. 

 

            When the killer murders another detective during a wedding party, Rachel develops amnesia and is it up to Conan to use his small size and great thinking ability to save her and hopefully bring her memory back.

 

            Captured in Her Eyes does a great job of capturing your attention right at the beginning.  Like in any good mystery, smaller mysterious are solved and explained as Conan desperately tries to solve the big mystery of who the mysterious killer is and what is his motive.  The scenes move fluidly from the start, however the ending was a letdown.

 

            For all the build up and empathy invested in the characters, when the action kicks in during the ending, Captured in Her Eyes falls flat.  Part of the reason is how hokey the scene looks with Conan riding a high-speed skateboard sailing through the air to land on a roller coaster.  There was a lot of realism in the movie up to that point.  If this was a crazy anime like Fooly Cooly it would work fine because the viewer would expect something that could never happen in real life.  However since Case Closed is presented as being somewhat possible the ending jars the viewer by showing hokey stunts and situations that could only occur in animation.

 

            Overall, Captured in Her Eyes has a lot to offer anime and mystery fans of all ages.  If only the ending was tighten up more, this would have been a great movie.  There are still wonderful moments and sly humor to make Captured in Her Eyes worth the DVD purchase.  You may want to re-watch it to see how certain mysterious as set up and explained. 

 

           

 

 

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