Wednesday is, going forward, vintage anime day. Why today? because I wanted to review something vintage and today is Wednesday, so let's give this blog some structure. For my first trick, Galaxy Express 999 (the series, not the movie that summarizes the series). Aside from being one of my all time favorites, and part of my early anime craze/fever/obsession/sandwich, this series is consistently heralded as one of the hallmarks of vintage anime, a true standard. The plot follows the adventures of a young ruffian's attempt to procure life-altering surgery.
"In a distant future, Tetsuro is a human boy who wants his body replaced with a robotic one. This is possible, but to do so he has to reach the Immortal Planet onboard the space train Galaxy Express 999. Maetel, a beautiful and mysterious blonde woman dressed in Russian style, joins him in the long journey through space. Every episode sees our heroes arriving in a new planet's space train station."
Anime News Network
http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/encyclopedia/anime.php?id=1361
A part of the infamous Leiji-verse (a collection of ovas, t.v. shows, etc that all occur in Leiji Matsumoto's brain-child contiguous universe), this show dazzles in several ways. The art is ahead of its time in style and detail, with innovations that mirror film in everything from lens flares to motion tracking, while simultaneously detailing an ethereal and surreally beautiful background for all of the events to play out on. Character design strikes an excellent balances here as well, with the soft lines and enlarged features of the era coupling with realistic movement and empathy inducing expressions of emotion in body movement and facial expression. Seeing such prototypically beautiful and yet relateably human characters move through a soft, inviting space of childhood dreams proves to be a visually stunning experience.
Character and thematic development is the other central element of this vintage badassery. On one hand, the characters possess a certain linearity in their goals and motivations. This is more of a strategic decision than laziness in construction, however, as the different motivations and overriding goals in each of the central characters serve as psychological profiles of different real and very intense human motivations. Also, the reactiveness of the characters to significant events throughout the series is presented in a manner that testifies to their authenticity as well as their emotion range; few series will make you feel so much for the characters victories and failures, their suffering and happiness.
This is an anime that requires you be in for the long haul, plot often circles around minor events and their emotional ramifications, but major crisis and action are present with sufficient frequency to maintain steady plot movement. Either as a historical piece, a visual festival, or an emotional ride-along, this anime will not fail to satisfy any but the most "modern animation driven" watcher.
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