This is the second part of my dive into some of the anime that I watched during my adolescence in the wee hours of analogue satellite stations. The first part concerned the ultraviolent Genocyber.
When I began my project to relive my formative anime experience, I was looking for a series that had a very specific scene. The only reason I can remember it vividly was not the anime itself but more what happened around it. Suffice to say, Dangaioh was not the series I was looking for, and despite my memory assuring me I had watched it, very little jogged my memory (this could be to do with Manga Entertainment only released two out of three episodes). Much of that familiar feeling though can be attributed to how trend setting Dangaioh was for its time period, something that mecha design and sci-fi series in general would mimic and cherry pick from in the years to come.
Back before I can coherently remember I watched a lot of the anime that made it on to British television. The mid nineties was before DVDs were widely available and the internet was squeezed through telephone lines. I was clueless but took what I could get which at the time was Manga Entertainment's (UK) catalogue of the time. Beyond the obvious Akira and Ghost in the Shell, this consisted mostly of late eighties and early nineties OVAs. Still aeons away from mainstream television, analogue satellite was the only way to watch them. The Sci-Fi channel was just starting out so it was late night on Bravo the majority of these were shown, and it was blind luck if I managed to know they were on prior to airing.
Genocyber was not the first one I saw and certainly not the most memorable, but individual scenes stuck in my head, mostly thanks to my then very squeamish nature. In the interests of exploring both my and anime's past, I decided to rewatch a lot of the shows which, subconsciously at least, formed the foundations for my current viewing preferences.
