First, a question.
What would you consider the definitive anime titles of 1981, 1986, 1991, and 1996?

As usual, I'm working up my schedule for the Classic Anime Festival event at Project A-Kon, the ~15 000 attendance Dallas anime convention. This is a program I run out of my (extensive but by no means exhaustive) anime LD collection. And since this is the 30th anniversary of Project A-Ko, & 35th of Urusei Yatsura, I thought this year I'd go with an anniversary theme.

Secondly, if you have a copy of Project A-KO #4: Final (US release) which you'd be willing to lend or sell, I'd love to hear from you.

Wow, 35th anniversary already? Haven't really thought about it, but it is actually that old now. Since the Urusei Yatsura anime came out in 1981, I'd say it is worth putting on the definitive list. It was after all one of the more popular anime shows in Japan during that time period. From what I understand, it has also been influential for other anime afterwards.

Would love to get my hands on the US release of Urusei Yatsura on LD to complement my laserdisc collection. Already got most japanese releases.

This convention does sound fun. Would be interesting to attend once.

While UY was huuuuuuuge and its effects are still being felt today I wouldn't give it 1981. My logic is that it was a very long TV show based on a super popular manga and in most situations like that the first year of it being on TV doesn't really mean much to its fans because it's just repeating stories you were reading years before. The actual UY TV show hitting TV, that event itself, was not so seismic. When you favorite manga becomes an anime it's honestly kinda boring for the most part.

I would argue for the first Mobile Suit Gundam movie. The reason being that Gundam was a show that was cancelled because of bad ratings but resurrected and made stronger than ever by the will of its creator, a very engaged fan press, and pure fan force. The first chance they had to vote with their dollars was the first Gundam movie in 1981. They did so, the movie was a huge sucess, and the fortunes of Gundam were reversed, seamingly forever. This movie (and the other two in the trilogy) are considered classics and even non-otaku know them on site.

1986 candidates:

Laputa - the first Ghibli movie, it's success is the reason we got all the others. It's failure would have mean a much different anime scene in subsequent years.

Project A-ko - one of the more grandiose things to come out of the OVA boom, it boomed it's way to theatrical size. It's also the best example of a change that was happening at the time, mainly that certain shows originally meant to be H and sold in small quantities were giving way to more mainstream tastes, budgets, and success. A-ko is essentially a PG rated high budget 90 minute Cream Lemon OVA. By making these changes A-ko became the most famous thing to come out of that project.

Transformers The Movie - This is my personal favorite. Is it a seriously flawed toy comercial? Yep. However, it also so much more than that. The animation sometimes flownders but also sometimes soars, particularly the scenes that were originally made for the pilot film like the opening. I can honestly say that in the last 30 years I've never gone into a theater with higher expections and I've never had them exceeded so greatly. This thing delivered everything I possibly thought it could and more. A guy from Monty Python, a guy from Repo Man, the dude that directed Citizen Kane, the dude from Unsolved Mysteries, Spoc, and every nerdy 80s kid's favorite recording artist at the time, Weird Al. The mecha designs are from greats such as Shinji Aramaki and Shouji Kawamori (the best ever, btw) and likely so many tallented uncredited contributions we'll never sort them out. The main guy dies. The war ends. The thing is massively awesome and it doesn't get the respect it deserves from non-Transformers fans, IMHO.

1991 - Otaku no Video. It's actually kind of not a really amazing year for debuts. This and Gundam 0083 are about it for amazing stuff, unless I'm forgetting somthing. Gundam F91 was also out this year but while the hype dominated the magazines I think most people felt a bit underwhelmed by that movie.

1996: Kenji's Spring (aka: Spring and Chaos). Not only is this an amazing movie but it was a pretty lame year otherwise for new shows.

Would Transformers: The Movie be acceptable for 1986?

For '81 . . . I was going to say Arcadia of my Youth, but I'm off by a year.

Tenchi Muyo In Love came out in '96. Since TM was pretty popular back then, that might be worth noting (can't believe they're still trying to milk that franchise to this day though!!)

It might also be worth mentioning that the voice actress Mizutani Yuuko who "voiced" Mihoshi in Tenchi Muyo among MANY others recently died of breast cancer, aged 51.
http://anidb.net/perl-bin/animedb.pl?show=creator&creatorid=1870 A list of her work, she did some good stuff.

If I had a copy, I'd definitely show it, but I'm afraid it's one of those I've never encountered.

Well, this isn't going to please anybody, but :

Friday 8 AM — Noon
(1981) Urusei Yatsura / TV episodes 1, 21, "Spring Special", 22, 36
(1971) Lupin III / The Fuma Conspiracy

Saturday 8 AM — 1 PM
(1986) Maison Ikkoku / TV episodes 1—3
(1996) Escaflowne / TV episodes 1—3
(1991) Silent Möbius + Silent Möbius 2

Sunday 8—11 AM
(1986) Project A-Ko + Project A-Ko 2 "Plot of the Daitokuji Financial Group" + Project A-Ko 3 "Cinderella Rhapsody"

Sounds fun - hope people enjoy it!

Sounds fun indeed. Wish I could be there! Good luck, publius!

Well, it's that time of year again.
This year, I have 14 hours to play with : 7—9 PM Thursday as part of the FANS Conference, which I have decided to give the theme "suddenly transported to another world", because A-Kon is in Fort Worth this year ; noon to 6 PM Friday & Saturday as part of regular video programming, which I have quite arbitrarily decided to do as a "Kimagure Orange Retrospective", in honour of one of the numerous notable anime of 1987.
Thursday night will be a panel event with commentators, which I hope will turn somewhat "Mystery Science Theatre", & I picked the first episodes of Magic Knight Rayearth & Escaflowne, & that odd one-shot Elementalors.
For the Friday & Saturday selections, I want to choose 24 from the 48 TV & 8 OVA episodes (at 25 minutes each), which should leave time for the movie. So I'm asking for your opinions about which episodes to include & which to omit.

Sign of Zeta has my respect in this thread.

I hate Escaflowne. Kawamori's turn to the dark side that continues today.

Hope your program goes down well this year Publius. I wish I lived in America.

was MEGAZONE 23 anywhere as influential as it's fans have long insisted it was?

i've seen/own the first two, -the early/mid-2000's U.S. ADV DVD releases- and thought the first part flawed but O.K.
and the second just a plain old flawed disappointment. never did get around to tracking down the final part, but, as i've commonly heard, it sounds as if it is hardly worth the effort to obtain.

any options on any of this?