Ask John: What Are Some Non-CPM Buried Trash?
Question:
I almost feel like challenging Justin Sevakis to write Buried Treasure article not about a pathos anime and a Buried Trash not about a CPM title. He’s getting too predictable.
Answer:
Having already addressed the positive side of this question, it’s time for the negative end. Central Park Media deserves praise for bringing a great number of exceptional anime releases to America, including Grave of the Fireflies, Project A-ko, Lodoss War, Now & Then, Here & There, and Urusei Yatsura: Beautiful Dreamer. But CPM is also responsible for inflicting an inordinate number of terrible titles, including Crystal Triangle, Dog Soldier, Explorer Woman Ray, MD Geist, and Art of Fighting, on American viewers. But Central Park Media isn’t the only American distributor guilty of having foisted awful anime onto American consumers.
AD Vision has pumped out its fair share of stinkers, including the Samurai Shodown (Samurai Spirits) TV special, the Tekken OVA series, Power Dolls, Samurai Gun, Divergence Eve, Panzer Dragoon, and Suikoden Demon Century.
Bandai Entertainment may be blamed for distributing the Brain Powered television series.
Geneon dumped disposable waste including the Amazing Nurse Nanako OVA series, and the Cybuster, Daphne in the Brilliant Blue, and L/R: Licensed by Royalty TV series.
Manga Entertainment has managed the American distribution of less than stellar productions including Dark Myth, Mad Bull 34, Landlock, Sword for Truth, Tokko, Vampire Wars, and Psychic Wars. (Actually, upon reflection, Manga seems to be in close competition with CPM for the lead in distributing the most bad anime in America.)
Media Blasters takes credit for crap like Green Green, Gundress, Gunparade March, and the Kujibiki Unbalance television series.
From the early days of America’s anime industry, Streamline Pictures brought us the especially awful Lily C.A.T.
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Well, no distributor is perfect… and there’s certainly a wide enough net of fans for various titles to appeal to various viewer interests, but sure, some of those anime are terrible. But for some viewers, the line distinguishing a guilty pleasure and a just plain bad series is thinner, blurrier than for others…
I like CYBUSTER’s simplicity and revel in its characterization of a doubting adolescent. But I think DAPHNE IN THE BRILLIANT BLUE set a new standard for terrible character development and atrocious plotting; KUJIBIKI UNBALANCE is pretty much a waste of time; and think that just about any Japanese animated program based on a video game is garbage.
Most of those titles are so bad, they are good. And I liked Tokko and Green Green was a great laugh (when watching with subtitles that is. The dub was atrocious but that is what you get when you only have a hentai cast do a non hentai show)
Green Green originated as a series of adult PC games, so it’s not especially far removed from hentai anyway.