Wednesday, November 1, 2006

   Happy Anime Memories---Being Brought up on Anime
So, when I was little there was this movie that my sister and I LOVED SO MUCH. We watched it, like, every day, and drove our mom crazy with the annoying songs... Well, annoying to her, anyway. I love those songs. They're loaded with sentimental value for me! :D

Anyway, the movie was "Thumbelina", but not the popular version that everyone knows about. I don't know how my parents got their hands on this movie, but I'm so glad they did. It's probably the reason that my sister and I are anime fans today (although I'm a WAY bigger fan than my sister is).

The movie is about a little girl named Maaya, who is very disobedient and a bit of a brat. So her single mother goes to this witch and asks her what to do. The witch tells her to read this book called Thumbelina to her, and when she's done Maaya will be a well behaved little girl. But while the mother is reading Thumbelina to her daughter, the mother falls asleep, and Maaya, curious about what's going to happen next, picks up the book to read it. Before she knows it, she's been shrunk down to the size of a thumb herself, and (after being kidnapped by some frogs) she finds herself in the land of her mother's dreams. The rest of the movie follows her adventures there and her attempt to get back home to her mother.

This movie is *~enchanting~*. :D It may be fairly primitive quality-wise (in terms of animation and music), but, as a toddler, I REALLY didn't care about that. All I know is that it's the cutest movie I've ever seen. SO great for kids. It has a good moral and everything's so colourful and happy and bright. Tee hee, good times.

As a child I absolutely LOVED this movie, but it wasn't until much later that I realized that Thumbelina is actually Anime. When I watch it now, the anime-themes are quite obvious to me. First of all, the main character has a Japanese name--Maaya. Then there's also the "village witch" and also a "frog witch", which is actually very characteristic of anime. And last but not least the animation is so OBVIOUSLY anime-style. When I started considering that my favourite childhood movie might be Anime, I couldn't really find proof, but I just couldn't beleive that it WASN'T anime. It was just so animeish. And when I actually watched the credits for the first time, I got my proof. It's dubbed from the Japanese version. It seems as if I've discovered the origin of my anime obession. After being essentially "brought up" on that movie, I soon found myself drawn towards other Anime, such as Sailor Moon, Pokemon and Digimon.

So, that's my long-winded explanation of my Anime history. So many good memories... Man I just had a moment...
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