It was with a mix of anticipation and dread that I sat down to watch 'Manga!', BBC2's documentary on Friday January 7th: the former, because it could be the first non-salacious acknowledgement by the mass media of anime, but the latter due to a distinctly unpromising preview in 'Time Out' and, well, going by the title, it sounded more like a puff piece for M*nga Video. Overall, however, expectations were not high...
...which made it a very pleasant surprise. Half an hour later, the program finished and Perran Road opinion was generally highly favourable. Given it was only a half an hour program, it had covered all the major bases, talked to a lot of interesting people including Byuichi Terasawa, Hayao Miyazaki and Katushiro Otomo, and almost entirely avoided the hysterical angle so often taken previously by the media.
From the fan viewpoint, there wasn't very much new to learn, though all scraps that drop from the mouths of the anime masters are eagerly awaited! [Terasawa's new computer-drawn comic looks VERY nice, doesn't it?] More fun was to be had playing spot-the-fan, especially during the footage shot at Cont-anime-ted (those with freeze frames can spot yours truly for about a quarter of a second, slouched down low in the second row of a panel audience). But it was nice to see them establish early on the difference between 'manga' and 'anime', and although the word 'tentacles' also made an early appearance, clips from 'Overfiend' were notable by their absence.
The fans they spoke too were mostly literate and seemed intelligent, with the exception of one drooling imbecile who said he liked the violence (The secret is to bang the rocks together, guys!). There were some omissions; most notably it would have been nice to see some more examples of the breadth of anime - it was almost all Manga or Miyazaki - but these are inevitable in a program of this length. One embarrassing gaff did appear, however, when they carefully displayed a copy of the original 'Akira' manga, and then proceeded to flick through it back to front!
Overall, however, it was very praiseworthy, and will hopefully have done a lot to defuse and discredit the more sensationalist angles - though going by the aforementioned 'Time Out' preview, there's still some way to go...
The Saturday night screening of `Akira' was also eagerly anticipated; the documentary had shown clips from it in no less than three different versions: pan-and-scanned, standard letterboxed, and letterboxed with subtitles beneath. Which version would the BBC show? And the answer was, luckily, the last - in many ways this was SUPERIOR to the video subtitled version, with it's ghostly white text. However, the introduction screwed up by describing it as 'manga' several times, and for no reason at all, the end credits were cut off after the first frame.
While it was a shame for the copybook to be blotted in such a pointless manner, I think the BBC deserve a pat on the back for the way in which the two programs were handled. Roll on the next anime weekend!