Saturday Morning Anime Σ(￣◇￣*)！！！

Remember Saturday morning cartoons? Neither do I as sadly I was barely out of diapers when this wonderful phenomenon of children’s television was already becoming far too soon extinct from big network stations here locally（´∩｀*)。Still my older cousins speak of such a time when it was truly ritual to get up extra early and grab yourself a large bowl of the most sugary corn shaped goodness allowed by law, pour lots of milk over it and then proceed towards the family television set to begin what was to be a pretty extensive animated viewing experience =). Sorry I missed out on most of that only to lose the other half naturally as I was to be informed one fateful day by Mr. Digestion that I no longer will be needing any milk in my life no matter how “skim~my” it may be as I was newly crowned as lactose intolerant ・゜・(ノД`)・゜・。  ！！！～！

But anyway this Saturday morning’s anime isn’t actually intended for the young or for mornings for that matter, however it is indeed morning somewhere right now isn’t it?? (。ーωー。)笑！So on that factual albeit misguided note, that search I mentioned just yesterday where I was looking for some odds and ends of my Ribbon material to help complete their post, I did also become reunited with a couple of old anime VHS tapes. Maybe you’ve seen VHS tapes @ your local museum of ancient artifacts? =P Anyway the short story version of how I came to own these two anime tapes came about while I was working weekends at one of our then still in existence record stores (see exhibit A @ your same local museum of ancient artifacts =P…LOL ok they’re not that old!) during my latter teens or so and the store had just begun importing J-Pop new releases going strictly then by what was topping the Oricon charts initially and then older popular releases too were being stocked in abundance…..and on one particular weekend morning Mochida Maki’s album “Haru Natsu Aki Fuyu” which was then a few years released was playing on the store’s sound system when a co-worker of mine happened to mention that “this song Beads of Tears” is a theme song for an animated movie. She was known  as the anime girl back then and while I was instantly thrust into Mochida Maki fandom (her voice is yet one of the purest I’ve heard in the genre!!) I was likewise so wanting to check out this movie she had mentioned as I would totally trust her taste as we had similar likes in movies and t.v. show @ the time ^^. Isn’t it wonderful how music can turn you onto movies and vice versa… and it’s true for countless other genres and interests in how one can lead to another sometimes in even unlikely of ways =).

So here are those two old VHS tapes I dug out from storage this past Monday and I’m quite surprised to see that they’ve not made their way into the digital world just yet?? Or did I miss them somehow and they’re now out of print on DVD? In any case anime legend and icon of animated storytelling Takahashi Rumiko may be best known for her creations Ranma 1/2 and InuYasha however these two VHS gems are simply incredible!!

Mermaid Forest and Mermaid’s Scar are from her Mermaid Saga series of manga graphic novels, these turned into animated movies which date back to 1991 and 1993 respectfully and happily my tapes still work!! If you know anything about VHS then you surely know of their shelf life and their inevitable stages of deterioration even if not played =(. And so it took a little under two hours to transfer them both onto DVD from which I then encoded each to a WP friendly digital format and with an uploading time which took nearly five hours yesterday to complete due to an odd error which occurred during the initial attempt it’s now finally ready for viewing.

Now although “Mermaid Forest” is the older of the two and meant to be viewed first, I actually had the experience of seeing them out of order due to my naivety and just not knowing which came first xD back then and so in some freaky sort of way I just still to this day find that watching “Mermaid’s Scar” first of the two much more effective albeit “Mermaid Forest” surely explains the timeline of things going back much further in the main character’s history. And so call me foolish but I’m presenting the newer of the films first here…… maybe after you’ve seen both you may understand what I’m feeling in these two films and the order in which you view them or most likely you’ll just think me wackily odd which isn’t a new thing around here by any means…(^q^)!

Now I can’t say much if anything at all about this story as it’ll totally spoil these films for you if you’ve not seen them before so I’m going to fight my own tendencies and shut up here for once. Basically it’s based on the legend of Mermaid’s flesh and how it can immortalize humans…pure legend right? And oh the twists and horrific occurrences herein!!!! Again I must stress that these films are not meant for children! No no no they’re very mature anime films and they’re very haunting, violent even…. you may even say twisted!!! (/∇＼*)！But so so good! I promise! REALLY, ^^! And you won’t see those major plot twists coming!!

I won’t even place any  screen caps here as to not give away any spoilers or hints about these movies and you probably by now have realized that I’m a total cap~nympho♥ (*´∀｀*) ♪♪ 、and so my refraining from screen capping here says a lot on my nympho~behalf.

enjoy~….

~ “Mermaid’s Scar” (complete movie dubbed ver) ~

“Mermaid’s Scar” is roughly 45 minutes in length so it’s quite the easy watch as it isn’t very long and interestingly I’ve only seen this movie in an English dubbed version, mind you I so prefer the original Japanese language versions but I must say that the voice actors in this movie do a most wonderful job here giving each of the characters their aura and voice! =) And don’t forget to stay through the ending credits for Mochida Maki’s awesome song “Beads of Tears” …!!

I will post up the earlier film “Mermaid Forest” next Saturday “morning”…. tanoshimi ne ^^.