Ten Anime Films that Shaped my Fanhood :: Part 1

#10 :: Iria: Zeiram the Animation

Everyone’s journey into the big-eyed fanboy world of anime begins somewhere, and mine started in 7th grade at a Record Town. …on a dare.

There had always been precedence for me eventually falling in love with anime. Growing up I was always a huge fan of Secret of Mana and the Final Fantasy series, or maybe back even further when I’d always preferred the slightly more Asian-oriented Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles to GI Joe or Master of the Universe, but either way, the roots were there despite never really being at all aware of Japanese animation.

The moment where it all officially got underway, however, was in the hands of good old fashion peer pressure.

I spent most of my time hanging out with my best friends Rob and Eric, and we were at that age when you start to do sinister little kid stuff because you’re left on your own and, that’s what little newly teen-aged kids do. I was a bit of a goody two-shoes, though. I was already under heat for not shop-lifting gum and volunteering to be lookout while the guys checked out Playboys from under our other friend Peter’s older brother’s bed, so I was due to do something of note, lest I be the wuss of my social circle for all of my upcoming highschool years. …then my moment came.

"Oh dude!" Rob exclaimed in one of those sort of shouted whispers, "they have those crazy cartoon porn movies!" As you can expect, he was talking about the stores collection of about six anime tapes positioned slightly outside of the soft-core adult videos and the sports/special interest movies. And, for the most part, he was right. Record Town’s "anime" collection was four Hentai tapes (the only one of which I can remember is La Blu Girl), Fist of the North Star, and Iria volume 1. Of course, I had no idea what any of it was and as far as I knew, Rob was right and this was all just porn.

"Who would make cartoon porn movies?"

"I dunno, dude, I think it’s from China or something. You should totally get one!"

"Why would I want cartoon porn?"

"Dude, they don’t even have 18+ stickers on them. Look at the dude at the counter, he’s like 17, he won’t even pay attention, you should do it."

"No way, man, these are expensive."

"Whatever, you’re such a pussy sometimes, AJ."

My time had come. Well, okay realistically I wound up transferring schools in two years anyway and even had I not, nothing would have come from it because I could have just called out Rob for being kind of a perv, but when you’re in 7th grade and your entire life is just one extended episode of The Wonder Years, you eventually come around to the idea that you attempting to get adult-rated cartoons on a dare somehow will impact the rest of your social life.

I thumbed through the six VHS boxes for roughly a half hour, and eventually decided on the least offensive one (which still had a huge-breasted girl on the cover carrying a gun twice her size) and nervously wondered over to the counter with my heart pounding. Again, having been a goody-two shoes, and not usually getting in to any sort of trouble, I was half sure that this zitty 17-year-old store clerk was going to hit some button that locked the store and summoned the police to come take me away the second I put the box on the counter. He looked at the box. He looked at me. The exchange probably took three seconds but it seemed like hours. Like he was robot-scanning me with his eyes and coming up with a big red flashing “UNDER AGE. UNDER AGE" read out in his line of vision. I choked and was about to spit some excuse why I had the wrong tape, or didn’t realize if that one was not okay to buy, though to this day I have no idea what words were about to follow when I spat out:

"I…"

"That’ll be $31.79"


Success! My status as with the guys was cemented forever as Mark (who hadn’t been there that day and was also a bit of a nice kid) became our groups wuss and I had pulled off the grandest heist in the history of our little clique. Gum? That fits in a pocket. Someone’s brother’s playboys? No danger at all. What was he gonna do, tell his folks? Oh no. I fought the law and I won. A grand day for goody-two-shoes kids everywhere.

About a week later my mom left for a meeting of some sort and I popped in my video to see what exactly I’d gotten myself into. Now, keep in mind through all of this that I had no idea what “porn” actually was, and I’m willing to bet neither did my friends. My understanding of “adult material” was basically air-brushed models topless and I figured that somewhere there might have been photos with no pants on too. Had I wound up with La Blue Girl, I’d probably have screamed and threw the tape against a wall, as alien tentacle rape was a bit over my head.

It started and I remember the first thing I thought "it’s subtitled?! I have to fricking READ this?!" But my displeasure was brief as I quickly got into it. It was such an amazing soundtrack and the artwork was so dusty and cool. It was unlike anything I’d ever seen before, peppered with some mild violence and swearing. …the cartoons I’d seen never had blood. The story itself was fantastic (well, at least by the standards of a 12 year old) and when it ended I was upset to find that it was just a part one sort of deal (back in the glorious days of two-episodes per tape.)

I guess kids today grow up with an understanding of anime. Lots of more kid-oriented series are on cartoon network and anime is presented AS Japanese cartoons instead of what we grew up with which was, at best, just dressed up and re-dubbed as a mostly American product. To me, and at that time, though, Iria was something I’d never seen before and it was something I was quickly in love with. I even, being somewhat of an analog wiz-kid for my age, made audio tapes of Iria that I’d listen to on the bus and between classes.

To this day, I’ve never been able to fully explain what it was about the short series that, today, I don’t even think all that highly of, but I went from totally unaware of anime to a huge fan virtually over the course of an hour.

Now, I’d like to tell you that my anime origin story is a little more classy. Maybe I stumbled onto Saturday Anime on the Sci-Fi channel, or learned about it online (afterall, I think AOL was getting big around this point) but no, unfortunately, my story starts with a begrudging attempt to see boobs and look cooler to my friends.

But hey, it could be worse. I could have never gotten into it at all.