Anime: Daicon III & IV Opening Animation

This is going to be a short one... Not because I can't write a lot and in depth about the 10~ish minutes of this anime's runtime but because I don't want to keep you here reading my opinion. Instead you should be watching/re-watching Daicon III & IV.

Explanation of the score:

Art & Animation: 10 - Ok... I'm a sucker for oldschool hand-drawn animation... Especially when it is as fluid as what we have here. The amount of care and love put in this project just oozes out each and every frame and it shows even through the horrible VHS quality you would have to endure when watching Daicon III & IV.
Sound: 10 - The songs, the reverb effects, that 70s/80s sound effects and music filled with as much references as the storyboard and characters are just astonishing. It all adds to an atmosphere that just cradles you and brings you to a place of nostalgia... Even if you were born in the 00's. It's that good! Again... VHS recordings don't do much justice but it's not hard to see that there was a lot of effort there too.
Story: 6 - Now this is a bit tricky. Not much of a story really. If this wasn't Daicon III & IV I would probably give it a lot less all things considered. But it still manages to have one. It still inspires your imagination. To think and dream of the girl - captain of her white radish ship!
Character: 6 - Love the references, love all the familiar faces, but you can't really have things like character development in such a short feature. Still. The characters portrayed have their soul and you can feel it.
Value and Enjoyment: 10 - Much like the rest of the scores... These are subjective! To me... Every time I watch this it brings me a warm fuzzy feeling. It brings me to a place I've never been because it was before my time and in a far far away land and that is why I hold this one so dear.

Just on the border of your waking mind,
There lies another time.
Where darkness and light are one,
And as you tread the halls of sanity.
You feel so glad to be unable to go beyond.
I have a message from another time...


Those words, the intro of Electric Light Orchestra's "Twilight" song, marks the beginning of the most ambiguous, impressive and well-known fan animated project to date.

Daicon IV is a four minute long short that was made by a few college friends as opening for the Daicon Science Fiction Convention. A few amateurs who dreamed of becoming animators and leave their mark uppon the industry and what do you know, those youngsters by the names Anno Hideaki, Akai Takami, Yamaga Hiroyuki, Higuchi Shinji, Okada Toshio, Sadamoto Yoshiyuki, Takeda Yasuhiro, Maeda Mahiro and Itano Ichirou made it, not only did they leave a mark, they have made a major impact on it.

The short, albeit only four minutes long is unbelievably full of contemporary pop culture references; every second is chock full of characters and objects from the most known films and comics around that time.

One of its most outstanding traits and something it is especially valuable for is of course the animation.

The small team did not only rely on all previously known techniques here, they even introduced new ones, such as Itano's Circus. The whole clip sets an amazing standard, not only for amateur projects but as an animation project, easily showcasing a level that holds up each and every ounce of its awesomeness 26 years later.

And despite it being a four minute clip full of action and animation, without a single breather in between, it is anything but simply an animation demo reel produced as intro for the convention. The clip has also a major meaning behind.

The heroine of the short, a young lady scantily clad in a bunnygirl costume, finds herself fighting against Gundams, Robots, Aliens, Monsters, engaging in a lightsaber duel against Darth Vader and many more pop heroes and villains, surfing on the Stormbringer, from Michael Moorcock's novel series, through the history of film, comics and animation. As the Yamato, the VFs from Macross, Harlock's Arcadia, the White Base and many others engage in a giant battle; the earth is being destroyed by a giant explosion, eradicating civilisation leaving only sakura petals and wasteland behind. In the end a giant laserblast by the Daicon spaceship turns the earth back into a green planet where everybody can live in peace.

In a society still bound by the happenings of the WWII the theme of destruction and regeneration as well as nationality shines through this short, particularly hitting a spot with the viewers. The clip also shows that it's not the past that is important but the future, very fitting into the SF theme behind. And the power that makes it everything possible is the power of otaku.

The short is obviously geared towards SF nerds, yet it is something that everyone should have seen, as it marks one of the most important moments of anime history.

It was the Daicon shorts that made the Gainax studio a possibility. A studio which has extremely influenced the Japanese animation history throughout the past 25 years. A studio which nurtured some of the finest talents in the industry and created many controversies. A studio that has made the last anime that was watched by everybody as well as the film which officially established anime as an art form.