 | "KOR" by Konstantin
(2006-06-06) |
Last night I finished the
Kimagure Orange Road manga. It's scary to think that it took me almost a decade to read through the 18 volumes, starting off with the first 5 tankoubons which I bought in 1997 at a Japanese bookstore in London (you know you're a sad fanboy when you seek out Japanese bookstores while on vacation to countries other than Japan). I even had to resort to fan translation scripts because I couldn't read a word of Japanese at the time, and scanlations were frowned upon in the fan community back then. I managed to get my hands on most of the other volumes through a combination of New York book stores and anime conventions, but the final one, vol. 18, has managed to elude me until last summer's trip to Japan, where I finally tracked it down at a used book store.
The reason I went through all this trouble to track down an out-of print 80's shounen manga was the fact that the Kimagure Orange Road anime to which it gave rise was the show that got me into anime in the first place. Sure, there were a few poorly dubbed movies on the Sci-Fi Channel and ABPEA on the Usenet that have whetted my appetite, but what really pushed me over the edge from curiosity to the full blown raging fanboydom of the past decade was a stack of n-th generation Arctic fansubs of Kimagure Orange Road that Akira lent me first semester of my freshman year at CMU. I remember devouring them in the course of a week, and having finished wanting more, more, more! This of course, led me down the road of fanfic, fan mailing lists, and manga, and the rest, as they say, is history.
Looking back on it, it's hard to say whether there was any single factor that made the show stand out for me as much as it did, so it's probably a combination of things. The story is a classic love triangle, with indecisive bumbler Kasuga Kyosuke pursuing the mysterious and gorgeous school delinquent Ayukawa Madoka, who in turn does her best to conceal her feelings because her best friend, the cute and bubbly Hiyama Hikaru has proclaimed Kyosuke to be her darling. Of course, Kyosuke also happens to be a member of a family of espers (who are desperately trying to hide their powers from those around them so as to avoid having to move for the n-th time), and Ayukawa is one of the most stupendous badasses in anime history (even if she does fight with guitar picks). What makes it all work is Matsumoto Izumi's excellent character development, Studio Pierrot's beautiful (for the time) animation, and the strong feeling of schooltime (and 80's) nostalgia that permeates the show. There's just the right mix of comedy, romance, and action to make it the perfect shounen romantic comedy. Over the course of the 48 episodes (and 8 OAVs) one really grows fond of the characters, which makes the first movie's brutally realistic resolution of the triangle have all that much more impact (at Vermillion, the KOR movie was proclaimed to be one of the Three Most Depressing Movies in Anime, along with Grave of the Fireflies and Windaria).
It's funny to think that before Naruto, before Evangelion, before even Dragon Ball Z hitting the States, some of the biggest debates in the English-speaking anime fan community centered on the relative merits of KOR and Maison Ikkoku (a fine show that I also first saw on n-th generation Arctic subs and now happily own on DVD, but come on, Kyoko doesn't hold a candle to Ayukawa ^^), which goes to show just how popular KOR got among the early fans. Nowadays it seems to have been largely forgotten by all but the most old-school fanboys. Heh, a lot of the current generation probably don't even remember the 80's enough to have nostalgia for them. Still, for any newer anime fans interested in checking out one of the legendary old shows, I definitely recommend paying AnimEigo a visit, or failing that, at least asking your anime club librarian whether they've forgotten to get rid of the old Arctic tapes.
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