The History of Thoroughly Otaku Milly

So since I'm writing up my anime-ography on my facebook page, Animeted Milly, I thought that it would be nice to throw a copy up over here too!

Without further ado, a trip through Milly's anime history (animeistory, if you will):



I think the first anime I ever saw was Ninja Scroll, in a trailer(trailer park trailer, not movie trailer) about 15 years ago.  I think I was most shocked that rather than being made for children, this was clearly a film for adults.  Not too long after that, someone else popped up with Akira, which I also watched and enjoyed.

Shortly thereafter, I began to notice the existence of shows such as Sailor Moon and Pokemon and I adored them!  I saw the first 3 Pokemon movies in the movie theater even!  (Mind you this is still before the time of DVDs, in case you're like "Why was this lady (then teenager) so impressed with such silly offerings as Pokemon and Sailor Moon?"...  This was ALL we had, take it or leave it!)

Sooner or later, I discovered the anime group that had been so quietly hiding themselves until about 11th grade.  The only animes I had ever seen to that point were Sailor Moon, Pokemon, Dragon Ball Z, Gundam Wing (barely), Tenchi Muyo and Hamtaro.  Being too stupid to even realize I was being made fun of by otaku, I greedily devoured their information, and was blown away at all these shows I had never heard of that they were watching!  Not that I had any way to watch them myself, but that didn't stop me from listening.

Eventually the [bitchy] girl took pity on me (I think?) that I had only seen crappy Cartoon Network-ified anime, I passed me a maaaaany times copied tape that had several episodes of Sailor Moon (the season before Stars, I think???) that were in Japanese and I was utterly BLOWN AWAY by the content, the voices, the characters--EVERYTHING about it was completely unlike the Sailor Moon that I had known up until that point, and I was HOOKED.  Some how I acquired a copy of "Right Stuf"'s yearly anime catalog, and I was just so utterly stunned there could be so much awesomeness I didn't previously know existed!!!  Not that I could afford to buy any of it :/  But ever since then I considered myself amongst the Otaku masses.

Fast forward a couple of years--DVDs were the hottest new thing since, well, VHS tapes; I had a car, a job, a boyfriend, and disposable income. (Oh! Turn of the century, how I miss thee!)  Blockbuster had quite the decent little anime section (VHS only though), most of them were older and never put on DVD (Mermaid's Scar!!!-- anyone?!???)  We would rent 4 or 5 of them at a time, and watch them quickly and return them (this is why I don't remember them!!).  All in English mind you, I still didn't quite grasp that they were literally changing the stories when they dubbed them.

Subsequently, an FYE opened in a city not too far away that carried a large selection of anime DVDs, but the only problem was, back then, we had no way to preview anything before we bought it!    You literally had to spend $30 on a single dvd with NO guarantee whatsoever that it wasn't going to suck ass.  But I paid it.  Happily.  There are MANY anime I have from this time period that I don't even /remember/ watching.  I've jokingly told people that I've forgotten more anime than they've ever seen.

Any anime I had actually /heard/ of was enough of a recommendation for me to buy it.  I bought many Sailor Moon discs, Devil Hunter Yohko, Ranma ½, Neon Genesis Evangelion (ain't been right since), Record of Lodoss War, and plenty of single disc animes I couldn't even tell you the name of.  When my ex and I broke up, he kept a good bit of **MY** DVD collection (he claims to have paid for??  HA!  I still have the freaking cancelled checks, you damned liar!!), mostly notably of which that I'm still pissed about was my Neon Genesis Evangelion box set (which I got for the ASTOUNDINGLY LOW price of $100 [[It was supposed to be $200!!]]).  (I'm still bitter, can you tell??)  I'm more pissed I lost 1/4 of my anime collection than was with a cheating, ugly, pestilent scumbag for 5 precious years of my youth!!!  But, I digress.

At some point, when watching Ranma ½, we had to turn to volume down so low because my ex's roommate was a jerk (who knew years later I'd wind up married to said jerk?! haha, funny how these things work out!) and kept saying the TV was keeping him awake.  Since we could barely even hear the TV, I decided to turn on the captions, and it was at THAT moment, when I began watching Ranma in Japanese, that I when I truly realized the utter flaw of the dubbing process:  they [take your pick] don't/won't/can't cram the same content back into the character's mouths when they translate from Japanese to English.  Some things they change because the wording is just too awkward sounding in English, somethings they change because they think the dumb Americans won't be able to comprehend Japanese customs, some things they change because they want to make it more publicly marketable to mainstream America.  Whatever their reason may be, I f-ing hate dubs.

I didn't watch anime as much after that, I had a job, college (took Japanese, it was tough as hell!), a life, followed by other boyfriends, turning 21, going insane, calming down, getting married and having a child, cleaning a house, cooking, working, and too much cleaning (it never ends, so it gets listed twice) to even think about anime.  My anime collection along with all my old DVDs and VHSs were packed and stacked neatly inside of Sterilite storage containers, collecting dust in a closet at my parents house.

On my husband and I's 4th wedding anniversary, we took a trip to FYE out at the mall, the place I had so belovedly frequented in my youth, when I came across the object that would draw me back in to my long lost animeted world; it was like Harry Potter passing a Horcrux-- that is to say, it called to me...  It was a small, angry looking little yellow lion, and I grabbed him and I said "I will love him and squeeze him and pet him and I will call him... [quick tag check]... Kon".  I decided I had to see whatever anime this wonderful angry looking little creature came from, and bought Season 1 of Bleach, a season of which only cost $35, instead of the stagging $100+ seasons/box sets ran you in years past!  We watched one episode and we HOOKED.  We proceeded to buy and watch the first 3 seasons in the first WEEK, and when we ran out of purchasable box sets, we took to the internet and in 2 weeks had nearly caught up to the entire series, then became disenchanted (Bount?  Seriously?  We still haven't finished the ORIGINAL plot??  You watch[ed] Bleach, you know what I'm talking about.) with the never-ending, destroyed artwork-ness of it all.  Somewhere around the Bount arc is also where they went from beautiful animation to... whatever it is they're trying to pass it off as now, because it's sure as hell not artwork.  But again, I digress.

And thus Bleach became the catalyst for my anime re-education.  Now that it's so easy to watch so many different animes, in Japanese, from so many wonderful sources is fantastic!!  The internet, Crunchyroll, Netflix, yes, even you Hulu Minus, have truly opened the floodgates of anime.

I have started practicing my Japanese again; the best thing I learned from Japanese I in college was how to pronouce, write, and learn the Hiragana.  While I had a difficult time forming the letters in college, when I picked up my old workbooks, I was able to form the letters nearly perfectly with hardly any review...  Of course remembering which symbol is which sound is another story, but I did remember about the first half of the syllabary, which is not too shabby, in my opinion.  I am able to hear what they are saying clearly now, whereas it always just sounded like gobbledygook before.

This marks the end of our tour of "Animeted Milly's History of Anime", now have a pleasant day, and go watch some anime!!!  >.<