500 Essential Anime Movies- first impression

[Njr Scrawl]

By Helen McCarthy.

My copy has the Tokyo Babylon cover, not Steamboy. No matter.

Strong card & glossy jacket seem OK for the book's width provided good binding is used.

OK, the anime. The book deals with movies & OVAs, but not TV series. All illustrations are in colour. Not as great as it sounds however.

500 EAM is essentially a catalogue, in fact some online & printed catalogues give more text on certain titles. There is director etc info (but still no seiyuus :( ) Some of the pictures are headshots or faceshots (Plastic Little - 2 guys!), uninteresting. Some pictures seem like zoomed in photos of a TV screen, fuzzy & pixels showing.

The index is in faint ink & tiny print. I needed a magnifying glass x 5 power to read it.

Enough of the negative. New & old movies & OVAs are covered. As can be expected, a lot are what are debasingly called "old school" by fans, as the "old" days were mainly OVA & movie releases. But .hack, Chobits, Pokemon, Paprika are also included.

One curiosity is that (presumably) in order to reach the magic 500, mini-movies like the Azumanga Daioh & Marmalade Boy ones are included, & anything not made for TV. So The Evangelion movies, Rahxephon - with a brief mention of the TV series which spawned them.

The book has sections for its separate genres, & there are some new titles I am looking for now, like Ice Hell Prison.

500 EAM is a small "coffee table" book. Its like a quick-read tourist guide to anime movies & OVAs. But compared to Anime Encyclopedia, no match!

[Rolancehack]

funny how it sounds like they just ended up cramming as much crap in as possible instead of making it an "Essential" collection.

[Njr Scrawl]

funny how it sounds like they just ended up cramming as much crap in as possible instead of making it an "Essential" collection.

Having read & respected most other books & articles on anime by Helen McCarthy, the book was extremely disappointing. It sells, & I bought it, on her name. FRom Amazon. If I had been able to check it out in a shop, I would not have bought it.

Ironically it will on the surface, appeal more to collectors & "old school" fans, who (like me) have better books already, or know as much or more than the text says anyway.

[Ryos]

TBH, considering how often she bashed a few of the series I really enjoyed in the encyclopedia (right off the top of my head the overview of Crest of the Stars shocked me), I wouldn't bother with it anyway. I had no idea I was walking into a roast when someone gave it to me as a birthday present. I suppose cynicism is inherent the more familiar you are with an activity though (as the saying goes, familiarity breeds contempt).

[Thomas Alan]

TBH, considering how often she bashed a few of the series I really enjoyed in the encyclopedia (right off the top of my head the overview of Crest of the Stars shocked me), I wouldn't bother with it anyway. I had no idea I was walking into a roast when someone gave it to me as a birthday present. I suppose cynicism is inherent the more familiar you are with an activity though (as the saying goes, familiarity breeds contempt).

Then what's with the tons of people in the 100 shows thread?

[Njr Scrawl]

There are some good reviews in the book, I'm finding. Leda surprised me (& I even-more-now want Nozomi to release it on DVD).

But the disappointments so far outnumber the good reviews. And to get the 500, several shows from OVA series like Human Crossing are picked, while there are no Touch movies, or Legend of Galactic Heroes (unless I missed them).

The Cat Returns gets 1/2 a page & a small paragraph, while Virgin Fleet gets a full page & half is text, Sword for Truth gets a 2 page spread. D'oh what! Gunbuster has big pic of the glasses scientist, smaller Ota, even smaller Noriko. Rest is mecha, no Kazumi of Jung.

Perhaps one of the most interesting things I found was Appleseed OVA beside Appleseed movie with both Deunans, Briareroses etc. But then the Armitage III OVAs & Dual Matrix are in separate sections!

The books good points are in design. Sections dealing with school & sports, mecha, love & romance etc. Each colour coded & sections can be found from the page edge colour. Every show has a suggested age rating & further watching suggestion. 500 EAM would make a good present to give someone new to, or interested in anime as a genre.

[Steve_the_Talking_Pie]

Does it include non english released anime because there can't be 500 anime movies in the R1/ R2 (non Japanese) format?

Sounds semi interesting. If the price is right, I would pick it up to stick it in my book case.

[Njr Scrawl]

They are all licensed, or once-licensed titles. Some never got beyond VHS (Leda), some have had Blu Ray (Paprika), but flicking through, there are no Japanese-release-only I can see. Each title has the name of its US or UK (if only that) licensee.

[Nylock]

The Cat Returns gets 1/2 a page & a small paragraph, while Virgin Fleet gets a full page & half is text, Sword for Truth gets a 2 page spread.


Sword for Truth? It took me 3 attempts to get through that dreck (I fell asleep the first two times). Please tell me the 2 pages are telling people to avoid like the plague.

[Ryos]

Then what's with the tons of people in the 100 shows thread?

Well, it certainly doesn't make all fans jaded. I'm always very careful about how I word my interpretations of series in the Anime Recommendations & Must Buy Suggestions forum, for example, because out of everything I've seen there is only a handful of shows I didn't like and everything else had some sort of degree of like/love.

[Njr Scrawl]

The Cat Returns gets 1/2 a page & a small paragraph, while Virgin Fleet gets a full page & half is text, Sword for Truth gets a 2 page spread.


Sword for Truth? It took me 3 attempts to get through that dreck (I fell asleep the first two times). Please tell me the 2 pages are telling people to avoid like the plague.

1 1/2 pages are screencaps, 1/2 page text.

[Steve_the_Talking_Pie]

They are all licensed, or once-licensed titles. Some never got beyond VHS (Leda), some have had Blu Ray (Paprika), but flicking through, there are no Japanese-release-only I can see. Each title has the name of its US or UK (if only that) licensee.

I feel like 500 would have to include every movie ever released from anime companies to reach 500 (even including OAVs), however I would hardly call all of them essential.

[Steve_the_Talking_Pie]

The Cat Returns gets 1/2 a page & a small paragraph, while Virgin Fleet gets a full page & half is text, Sword for Truth gets a 2 page spread.


Sword for Truth? It took me 3 attempts to get through that dreck (I fell asleep the first two times). Please tell me the 2 pages are telling people to avoid like the plague.

I honestly enjoyed it, of course then again I enjoy crappy anime one shot OAVs and Grindhouse terrible movies. I got through it easy enough, but honestly I can remember about one scene from it. Not sure what really happened in it.

[Njr Scrawl]

They are all licensed, or once-licensed titles. Some never got beyond VHS (Leda), some have had Blu Ray (Paprika), but flicking through, there are no Japanese-release-only I can see. Each title has the name of its US or UK (if only that) licensee.

I feel like 500 would have to include every movie ever released from anime companies to reach 500 (even including OAVs), however I would hardly call all of them essential.

The book series is "500 Essential..." so they had to find 500 to include. So multiple Crusher Joe, Tylor OVA, & OVAs &/or mini-movies attatched to TV series has been included. All 13 Human Crossing OVAs!

Had the publisher gone for all OVAs & movies, some dull shows would have been replaced by better unlicensed ones. The book shows that there are some good OVAs & movies licensed, but also a large number of mediocre or forgettable ones, past & present.

[Steve_the_Talking_Pie]

So is Project Ako 3 entries? The movie, the OAVs, and Vs.? How about Human Crossing? Is it 13 or just one?

[Tora-chan]

So is Project Ako 3 entries? The movie, the OAVs, and Vs.? How about Human Crossing? Is it 13 or just one?
I got the book the other day, and I can tell you that Project A-ko get 4 entries. The movie and the next OVAs. The Vs. ones aren't in there. Human Crossing gets 13 entries even though other short series are bundled into 1. Other titles with several entries include City Hunter and Lupin III.

It's a bit of a random mix as to how shows are divided up as well as what's been chosen. I like the way the book nominates shows as being 'essential' for being interesting in some respect, not whether or not its actually any good. Otherwise there's no way some stuff (like Beyblade) would get in there.

[Steve_the_Talking_Pie]

Essential to me invokes thoughts of being necessary to watch which would not be the case. Nice to know of the 500 "essential" anime "movies" out there, 13 of them are Human Crossing.

[Njr Scrawl]

Essential to me invokes thoughts of being necessary to watch which would not be the case. Nice to know of the 500 "essential" anime "movies" out there, 13 of them are Human Crossing.

There are more OVAs than movies. I've not counted them(!), but I'm fairly sure.