Sunday, 08-Nov-2009 14:03:59 CST
Global
History of Anime
Nadia and American Morals
To say that Nadia was groundbreaking is
an understatement. If you've never seen any of it, put this down
and look someone up who's got them. It's best if you can see all
39 of them as the ending is quite wonderful (yes, it means that
you've got to go through The Island episodes to get there), but
take the phone off the hook when you get to the last four. If you've
got no one near you who has them, get the two "perfect" volumes
that are available from Orion/Streamline. While it's only the first
eight episodes (so far), you'll get the tiniest idea of how good
this show is. Unbelievably, it seems Gainax had trouble getting
other people to take this project seriously, and finally turned
to NHK (the government broadcasting agency) for help.
To be fair, it must have looked at the time to be a fairly difficult
property to sell to many: here is a show with a VERY strong environmental
message. It makes few concessions to Mankind's nastier habits (for
instance, Nadia herself is a vegetarian). This show was monster
huge in 1991 ... at AnimeCon, a convention IN THE US. Drawing impressive
numbers of people to Silicon Valley from across the country, AnimeCon
had two of the driving forces behind both Gainax Studios and Nadia
in particular as guests. Many things happened at this convention
past the obvious ones of people who had never met one another face
to face ... and one of those things was the fallout from Central
Park Media's announcement of Minna Agechau ... and the media's outrage
regarding this "scandalous" title. That Minna Agechau ("I Give My
All") was a softcore title no one will doubt (still, it is a VERY
tame softcore title). What is surprising is when the US media finally
discovers anime, it is portrayed as the logical extreme of pornography.
 With
the LA Times leading the charge, Fox News arrives and proceeds to
do an "exposé" on this new assault on American morals. Interviewing
attendees at this convention did nothing to dispel the concept that
this entire genre was filth. In the weeks leading up to the convention,
pressure was put on Central Park Media and on Sony (the original
creator of the show) to scrap the idea of this tape in the US market.
Because of this, the title was pulled shortly before its release,
and Dominion became the first release from this startup company.
Of course, this did not spell the end for Central Park Media, who
eventually spun off the Anime-18 label specializing in TRULY adult
titles like Urotsuki Doji. It changed the way that many view the
medium, but it didn't stop AD Vision from entering the marketplace
in 1992, and doing so with what could only be described as with
an attitude. Their early releases (Devil Hunter Yohko, Sol Bianca)
were the same sort of thing that Central Park Media was releasing
for some time, but from the beginning it was clear that their product
was going to be skirting the edge of accepted behavior very quickly.
It came as little surprise to anyone when they spun off their own
division that specialized in some of the nastiest products ever
brought to the market. Their Softcel line gained the reputation
for releasing nothing but the worst ... and their sales soared.
Of the top selling titles at tRSi, fully a quarter of them
are Softcel releases. Says a lot about the marketplace, doesn't
it?
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