Such a good film!
Charlie Kaufman’s scripts do seem to be divisive in their appeal, though.
I clearly recollect seeing Adaptation with my partner, and us both laughing hysterically, and then at some point realising we were the only people laughing. The theatre was somewhat sparsely populated, but not that empty.
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind is absolutely wonderful.
I see he has a bunch of films I’ve not seen… I really must remedy that!
Resumed watching Pursuit of Jade. The first C-Drama I’ve tried.
A week or so ago we finally caught up to the current season of One Piece.
The Egghead ark was… very fast-paced and had some incredible things going on.
I think I will need to read the remaining Manga chapters because my partner keeps stumbling over spoilers from the manga on a computer game website he reads… who are apparently big fans of the anime + manga.
Anyway right now we are watching Season 2 of the Netflix One Piece show. Oops. After that … who knows… we have a huge backlog because of my insistence on catching up 
I checked it with Mick Dundee, and he agreed that it’s a knife.
I watched a video where they talk about these so-called “hidden gems” anime and then listed things like Visions of Escaflowne, Witch Hunter Robin, and Yu Yu Hakusho. DAFUQ. I used to watch these when I was a kid. On the TV.
OMG I’m so mad right now.
Mad about what?
(Fwiw, I haven’t even heard of them)
They’re classics. It would be akin to claiming Sailor Moon is an “undiscovered gem,” or that fans of Bleach should try to find the little-known Dragonball Z.
It’s not that everyone has seen them. It’s the idea that they are somehow below the level of default knowledge in the medium of anime. Not everyone has seen Star Wars, but to claim that “Rogue One” is a “hidden gem” is somewhat absurd (even if you aren’t aware of it yourself).
I do know Sailor Moon and Dragonball Z though, so it seems inaccurate to put them together.
(Sure, I understand I shouldn’t be extrapolating from personal experience, but I have little else to go on, and I do know a lot of anime.)
I think it’s very difficult to pin down what “default knowledge in the medium of anime” might be, with huge variation by region or age.
Kind of surprised you haven’t heard of Yu Yu Hakusho, it is a well-known shounen series from the early to mid 90’s. I bet a bunch of Americans know it because it was one of the shows that appeared on Toonami/Adult Swim. Witch Hunter Robin was also on Adult Swim. Don’t know about European access to Adult Swim, but wouldn’t be surprised if it or something similar was over there, too. Anime was pretty limited over here back in those days, so we watched what we could.
I saw the movie adaptation of Escaflowne in theaters back in the early 00’s, but never saw the series itself.
If I’m not mistaken, there was no equivalent in the UK. I think Channel 4 was showing late-night adult-oriented violent anime in the 90s, but anime targeting kids probably wasn’t a thing. The first anime I ever saw was probably Akira, on video, because midnight TV watching wasn’t something I did.
(I wouldn’t be surprised if this regional difference is irrelevant to the specifics of LLV’s annoyance though: I would guess that it was an American video made for Americans, and equated “hidden gems” with “anything made before 20-somethings were born”, in which case yeah, I get the annoyance, given the context of American TV.)
I remember the late night channel 4 anime! I only saw one or two but they definitely had Cyber city Oedo 808 (in a weird UK version apparently) and I think Legend of the Four Kings (was that the dragons?)
It led directly to me renting some on VHS (Fist of the North Star, Overfiend, look I didn’t know, alright) and buying wide-screen VHS Akira etc.
I’m planning on a Cyber city Oedo 808 rewatch this year for Nostalgia precisely because of that Channel 4 run!
By all means, be mad, but it’s more like a recalibration of what you know versus what a younger generation knows.
For example, USB sticks. I discovered that students at Imperial College London thought when a friend gave them a USB stick to use that it was some kind of vape.
Go figure. The past is a foreign country, and if you live long enough you will find out one is detached from what is the current zeitgeist.
To that end, there is also a bit of nomenclature dissonance. “Undiscovered gem” implies a show that never found its audience, had a short run, and/or had limited distribution. This is different than a popular, well received show that is just old–a “classic,” if you will.
