>
> Say, where are you people *finding* your higher-quality English animés to watch, anyway? Are you renting it? Getting it on cable TV (which I don't have)??

Fansubbed stuff (meaning ordering/trading stuff via the internet) and renting the translated stuff from a very cool comic book shop (no longer around). No video store around me that I know of has what I'd consider a quality collection of tapes. I can't stand watching dubbed stuff, which it makes it all the worse (though it's really a problem with the quality of dubbing more than being opposed to dubbing in general, though I am).

>
> My province has a very long tradition of cartoon animation in French, and they are affectionately called les B.D. (for bandes dessineés). Like in Japan, they are treated as art and have a fanatical following -- as seen by the recent movie release of "Astérix et Obélix contre César" (which I'm still debating whether to write a film review of). I suspect that a lot of animé coming out of Japan is subtitled and dubbed into French before it gets into general N.American release. For example, it's only yesterday that I realised that the adventures of the aloof, austere, and intensely charismatic space-pirate "Le Capitaine Flamme" (classic animé, I'd guess) was called "Captain Harlock" in English. So if Princess Mononoke and better-quality animé is something we can grab from the import section at the video store, then great! Give me some serious good titles to look for.

Well, I don't know about the rights to Mononoke Hime internationally, but I know Disney via Miramax owns the North American rights which means that you're not likely to find a (legal) copy at a video store. I saw a fansubbed copy that was made before anyone owned the North American rights to it. It's common practice for fans to make tapes and sub them themselves if nobody owns the rights, and the legality of this is somewhat suspect; the general consensus is that so long as you stop distributing tapes once rights are secured nobody is going to care (and this is the model generally followed).

As for specific titles, you need to see the TV series "Neon Genesis Evangelion". It's fairly recent (within the last couple of years) and is one of the most popular series ever despite it's run time of one season (it's not uncommon in Japan for a series to exist for just one season and have a complete story arc; though this never rules out the possibility of OVAs or movies). The entire series run consists of 26 episodes. It was released in the U.S. by ADVFilms, and they offer both dubbed and subbed versions. It came out in a series of 13 tapes with two episodes each, so buying it is rather expensive (if you can find it to rent, do so). Two movies were also released both of which I believe exist only on fansub outside of Japan. The first one (Death and Rebirth) is essentially a retelling of the first 24 episodes of the series with some better quality animation and slight changes. The other movie (End of Eva) is the last two episodes, only almost completey different. You see, the series' ending was so off-the-wall that they changed it (EoE isn't much better though in terms of closure). As for the overall plot of the series, it's hard to describe really... It's some pretty heavy teen-angst stuff mixed with mech fighting and biblical allegory, and basically gets VERY philosophical at the end. It's very dark at times as well. Most people either love or hate it, so I'd reccomend seeing it.

Oy, that was long. Other titles: the entire "Legend of Escaflowne" series is also a popular one, and it's been released by Bandai under the AnimeVillage.com brand. Again a single-season TV run, it's more mech combat with a twist. Another good series to check out is "Kenshin" which contains so many movies and OVAs and whatnot that I'm going to leave it up to you to find out more about it. A lot of the rights were recently bought by I believe Sony but I don't know that it's been released internationally yet, though they may be harder to get fansubbed copies of certain things. "Kenshin" is a Samurai story set in the restoration period of Japanese history. I haven't seen too much of it myself, but what I have I like. It mixes seriousness with silliness and the right amount of historical flavor very well.

Older titles: Anything by Miyazaki, particularly "My Neighbor Totoro" which is a kids movie but very good. Also check out "Grave of the Fireflies" which is a very powerful movie and should really be seen by more people.

Okay, I'm sick of typing so I'm gonna stop now. Hope that's a nice list, but realize that it only scratches the surface. It's basically stuff that I've recently seen or been interested in, and also stuff that probably hasn't been seen by a lot of people (of course that stuff is good too, you need to watch "Akira" and "Ghost in the Shell" for your dose of classic hard-edged sci-fi stuff).

Stephen