A Holiday Gift for HG101 Patreons! The Guide to Retro Anime preview

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays from HG101! For this year, I thought it would be a nice present to give a glimpse into something I've been working on and off for over the past three years or so -  The Hardcore Gaming 101 Guide to Retro Anime! This title is, I suppose, fairly inaccurate, because this is a book about anime and not a book about games. Please allow me to explain.

No media is created in a vacuum, and video games are no different. Look at the numerous games inspired by American action movies like Aliens, Predator, Rambo, Star Wars, Top Gun, and many, many others. Somewhat lesser known is the impact made by manga and anime from the era. The DNA of Dr. Slump is all over Nintendo games, particularly Super Mario Bros. The influence of Dragon Ball is incalculable. The Warriors is widely cited as the root of Double Dragon and much of the beat-em-up genre, but equally as important is Fist of the North Star. Watching shows like Mobile Suit Gundam and Super Dimension Fortress Macross is practically mandatory of shoot-em-up fans.

Much of this lack of cultural knowledge is because so few of these shows were localized into English during their prime, if they were even translated at all. Macross came out in North America in bowdlerized (but still watchable) form as Robotech, while the original Mobile Suit Gundam didn’t show up over two decades after its 1979 Japanese debut. Dragon Ball Z eventually shot to immense popularity in the late 1990s thanks to Toonami, but its earlier story arcs tend to be skipped over since they concentrate more on wacky adventure than over-the-top fighting. And while the Dr. Slump manga has been fully translated, the TV anime series has never been released in English at all. Our friends in Europe and Latin America may actually have a better understanding of some of these since  certain Japanese anime was more popular there than it was in North America - witness the incredible impact of Saint Seiya among Spanish speakers, compared to the near-complete indifference of the English audience.

The goal of this book series, much like HG101 in general, is to fill in these cultural gaps. The write-ups take the same approach as the website and books, with a particular emphasis on the history and influence of a given anime. Basically, if you’re a millennial like me whose taste was largely informed by 80s and 90s video games, you’ll probably also like much of the anime from this era, too. Plus, 20th century anime remains popular for its retro aesthetic, so we’ve been sure to include many screenshots as well.

This project is roughly planned to consist of two books, consisting of roughly 300-400 pages each - the first volume focusing on 1970s and 80s anime (with a smattering of shows from earlier decades) and the second focusing on the 1990s. This preview consists almost entirely of coverage from the 1980s. There’s been no coherent order in which I’ve approached the write-ups beyond whatever I was interested in at the time, so this preview has a mish-mash of mecha/sci-fi, fantasy, magical girl, comedy, and other genres. There’s plenty of essential titles that are missing, of course. Also, I apologize for the state of the manuscript, which is still messy and clearly unfinished in spots. Everything presented here should be considered provisional, even the layouts.

Anyway, enjoy for now, and please let me know your feelings on projects like these, since they are outside the traditional HG101 wheelhouse! This currently does not have a publisher, since we normally work with video game books, and it’s too large to go through Amazon’s self-publishing services, so we ‘ll probably be looking at other avenues to fund and distribute it. But I'm also working on a few other projects and probably will be busy until at least summer 2025, so this is a long way off!