Man this thread makes me feel old. Or maybe just more cultured. I dunno
Anyway, depends how you define it... either:
Mysterious Cities of Gold (japanese-french production, some shared genetic code with Studio Ghibli but ostensibly concocted and distributed by DiC)
(And on that note... inspector gadget? His ride is SO a Trueno Sprinter when in Car mode, and the van doesn't look all that american either)
Transformers (...and get into a huge debate over whether it was actually japanese or american)
Honourable mention for Laputa - a movie, but I did see it on it's one and only pre-DVBT UK airing in '88 or so.
More definitely, Battle Angel Alita. At approx age 12-13. Wrote in to a competition in like the first copy I ever bought of a Manga magazine... and won. However they sent the wrong tape. I supposedly won: All-Cultural Catgirl Nuku Nuku, lighthearted soft-science cheesecakey dramedy. I received: a retitled Gunnm, a hard-sci-fi gothic horror of a thing, like a bloodier, robotic reimagining of Laputa.
And only the first three episodes of it. 15+ years later I still haven't got to see the end, as I couldn't afford the tape at the time... oh and I was like 5-6 years too young to actually buy it. Nuku Nuku was PG. Alita was an 18.
And I also just realised I've seen pretty much none of the other incredibly interesting titles that were featured on its trailers, except for Wind of Amnesia that came up on Sci-Fi channel one time. I will have to dig it out and hit Amazon / teh torrentz and rectify this. For some reason I still find a lot of the older titles more interesting-looking that most of that what's released today (it takes something truly wild like Summer Wars to grab my attention now).
Then my bro started collecting The Guyver, which was
at least as nasty, but had ratings between PG and 15, including the freshly minted 12 (... and he was 11), so I & mum had to buy it for him. Censors just didn't know quite what to do with this stuff so went down a pre-prepared check-list. Someone in the background is holding something that might be nunchucks? 18. People losing limbs and having holes blasted through their torsos with laserbeams? Er... we don't have an entry for that. And no-one's shirt got ripped off THIS time, but there was some swearing, so that's a 12. Nnngh.
So it has, literally, all been UPhill from there. Even DBZ is arguably better quality
chinangel said:
No one mentioned sailor moon!
You think ANYONE's going to own up to that? I went out of my way to avoid it when it was on CN. Not because I thought it would suck... just in case someone walked in.
Though to this day I'm curious as to whether they left the "naked transformation" scenes in.
Kiju: I had a momentary, embarrassingly feminine fanboy SQUEEEE incident when I saw your avatar...
...then realised it was from Pokémon, not Nausicaä. Like the opposite of the mistake someone else made on seeing my plush dashboard mascot (it's symbolic AND practical - bushy tails make good windscreen demisters). Son, I am disappoint.
