Anime-ventures pt. 2
Welcome to part 2 of my Anime Rewatch Journey! This time YuYu Hakusho Season II was the anchor as I paired that with Casshan: Robot Hunter (1993) and the Casshan (1973) Anime. There's still more Casshern to go, but I'll pair it with YuYu Season III later.
YuYu Hakusho - The Dark Tournament Arc
This arc technically starts at the end of Season I, takes place throughout all of Season II, and wraps up at the beginning of Season III. This is Peak YuYu, and part of why I love the show so much. It's what real fans mostly remember it for. The Dark Tournament is simply awesome and just varied enough between the semi-finals and finals that it never gets stale. I was working on this while going through my Casshan stuff. It ended up being a more even disc for disc pairing, roughly every 6 episodes. In between, however was a very different story!
Casshan: Robot Hunter - (1993 Movie)
In hindsight, I should've watched this after going through the original series. Regardless though, this was a bad ass, dystopian anime flick. No complaints, here! You could watch just this and get your complete fill of the overall gist of what Casshan is about. Narrations take you through certain spots and you can tell a lot of time is passing. Essentially, Humanity is enslaved by "The Black King" and eventually Casshan reveals himself again to save humanity. You can tell this is a sequel or a retelling to something, because the people already know of him. I enjoyed this as much as I did when I inherited it, in my 20s. It's a kick ass movie with robot fights and the big bad gets his in the end! I watched this on a random Sunday, breaking my pattern of watching after getting home from work.
Casshan: (1973 Anime)
Like I said before, I probably should've watched this first. This is the longer, very dated introduction to Casshan. I didn't realize how much Mega Man is inspired by it, which made me really happy. This really is Super Sentai, Power Ranger type stuff, so it was interesting to see this genre in its roots. It was also extremely jarring to pair this with YuYu's Dark Tournament. Sometimes I felt obligated and like I was going through the motions, but other times I was very surprised at how dark and insane this anime got. Tetsuya, the "Newly Built Man" beat the shit out of Andro Force left and right. Even though most of the enemies were cheesy, some of the events were insane! Braiking Boss (as he's properly called) affected so many towns, succeeded in killing a multitude of civilizations, houses and people were blown up through robot bombs and such... It was crazy! It was also nice to see that Casshan needed the help of Luna and his robot dog Flender, just as much as they needed him. The way Casshan bested Braiking Boss was also wild. It almost felt like within the last 3 episodes, the team was told to wrap it up, because the ending really did feel very abrupt. Still, it was very enjoyable for what it was. This was an anime I got in my late 20's and only managed to watch like 3 episodes of before I got busy and lost interest. So this was really practically a First Watch, and like I said, it was surprisingly very enjoyable.
Next time, I'll focus on YuYu Hakusho S.III, which is debatably my favorite arc and I'll pair it with Casshern Sins, which was actually the first anime adaptation I had seen of it. [I essentially went backwards] Depending on episode pacing and timing, I may cover other shows too, but either way, those were my June-July watches. There isn't too much comparison to how I felt in my 20s vs 40s. YuYu will always make me happy. Most of the Casshan stuff was still very new to me, so the reactions are essentially the same. Covering Sins again will be interesting though, because I recall being quite underwhelmed by it on the first watch and finding it very boring. I wonder if I'll feel the same about the Reboot this time around, now that I'm immersed in more of the lore.