| I recall when the show first aired in 2002. My family had a cheap cable package that mysteriously had TechTV, but not Cartoon Network. I obviously missed out on the Toonami Midnight Run, but TechTV was enough to satisfy my geek needs. I was a senior in high school at the time, and due to after-school activities, I usually arrived home at 6PM. My one breif reprieve was dinner, and then I began my heavy load of schoolwork. I typically did the boring / tedious stuff first... Spanish, Geography, and typically 100 pages of required reading for a college-level English course. Later in the night I typically took a break to watch The ScreenSavers, and around 10PM, I started cracking on the hard stuff to keep my attention sharp. Physics and then Calculus. Calc was leisurely in description only. 5 problems a night, and... it wasn't even due for three days after being assigned. That being said... those 5 problems took a sheet of paper, each. If I worked hard enough I would finish just in time for the show to start. Red-eyed and sleep deprived, my head was assaulted by intense psychological thrillers, complex multi-verse worlds, and wild storylines that result. I doubt such an anime selection will ever be aired again outside Japan. When TechTV was fully assimilated into G4, and the show was taken off the air, I was hard pressed to find a replacement television show for my insomniac tendencies. X-Files was the closest, but it's no anime. The closest anime collection in recent years is something called "noitaminA". It's a Japanese anime block that aims for an audience other than young male otaku. It lacks the science and technology base of Anime Unleashed but the gender-neutral stories tend to be more thought-provoking than the popular gag / moe-blob shows of recent years. |
  it's thinking |
| I have Anime Unleashed to blame for getting me into anime. We had DirecTV so I watched DBZ, Sailor Moon, Rurouni Kenshin, Yu Yu Hakusho and the like on Toonami and eventually Adult Swim. But I was never really an Anime fan. I had never heard of or watched Tech TV prior to one day, I was on vacation with my Aunt's and Uncles and Cousins at a beach house in the Outer Banks North Carolina. Everyone had left except my family and we had to close up the next morning. So instead of being crammed into a bedroom on a futon with 3 other cousins, I got to sleep in one of the actual bedrooms with a TV. It was late, I don't know how late, but I was flipping through channels since I'm a night owl. I came across this anime show. I checked the clock and saw there was only 5 minutes to go. I watched it to the end. I waited to see what was on next, low and behold another Anime show. This time it was a new series, I somehow lucked out. They showed Eps 1 and 2 of Gatekeepers 21. I wanted more. But that was the end of it. When we got back home I instantly looked up the show and the channel and checked next time it aired. I then started recording on VHS all of Anime Unleashed. I picked up shows like Dual, Banner of the Stars, Boogiepop Phantom, Geneshaft, Last Exile, Silent Mobius, Gad Guard, Soultaker. I became engrossed in anime. I started watching the anime that was on Adult Swim, I looked for other channels that aired Anime (to not much luck). I started downloading episodes (since I was still a kid and didn't have an income). I became active in the Anime Unleashed message boards... and well, everything went from there. Anime would have been something that had faded away from my identity prior to that night, but instead it became one of my favorite pastimes. To this day I still hold Gatekeepers and Gatekeepers 21 very highly (Just look at my signature haha) regardless of any crappy reviews people give it. Somewhere around the time of Gad Guard and the second half of Last Exile, I either stopped watching Anime Unleashed or something happened that prevented me from watching it. Either way the influence it had on me has made a significant impact on who I am today. And I'm glad it turned out the way it has. Now if only there was another channel in America that showed anime regularly.... |