Awake

I'm not really sure what to say about this. But here goes...

Like other opening animations to cons in the '80s, the AWAKE videos definitely contain a level of exuberance and fondness for the geek culture of the time that's very apparent while watching. These were fanmade shorts after all, so one gets the sense these people truly dig all the things they're throwing at you. Sure the result is an incomprehensible mess of ideas, but it's kind of what you should probably expect from these things. It's no surprise that it's loaded with general sci-fi themes (predominantly mecha), and maybe even the parade of little ... girls cosplaying as various kaiju shouldn't be too unexpected. Then it very quickly spirals into lolicon territory and doesn't look back.

I'm not going to dwell on that, but suffice to say, it's quite peculiar, and adds another layer to the general "WTF" nature of the whole thing. That withstanding, it is an interesting time capsule of '80s otaku culture. Plenty of allusions of popular characters abound, and the revised part 2 (which contains some additional animation) has a new song added to it that makes for an interesting viewing experience. It's decently enough animated, and the mechanical and character designs are nice all things considered really. And like others of it's ilk, the unchecked DIY lunacy of these videos do make for some pretty fun viewing. Even if a bit uncomfortable here. In the end, it's certainly nothing essential, but still an interesting slice of anime history. Plus it could be worse. Oh yes, it could be so much worse.