Flying trains, past and present

I wound up renting the recently-released "Galaxy Express" under the mistaken assumption that it was actually a re-release of the old-skool "Galaxy Railways 999" series that I could just barely remember seeing back in the day.

Of course, it's not. It's from the same "universe" in general (heck, where else are there going to be flying space trains?), and it's chock full of homage to that whole old-skool style, with far more modern (yet rather low-budget) touches. The character styles for instance: mostly rather modern, though with those old haircuts and fashions. Then they'll throw in a guy with those beady eyes high up on a squeezed forehead. But the way they did even that was kind of a modern, almost believable look. Interesting.

Otherwise, the nostalgia bits kind of wore thin after a while. So I dug around to see if the original was still around, and it seems that the license had run out, and one of the fansub groups has a bunch of episodes from it. I've snagged them, and caught the first one. Sure enough, I remembered it far better than I thought I would.

It's definitely dated. Hoo boy, is it. Seems primitive in comparison. But one thing it has over the modern re-telling is that great little "spark of life" that you so often get with old handmade classics like that. So I'm sure I'll enjoy refreshing my memory about it when I get a chance. But I probably won't continue with any more discs of the new version.

In other fansub news, I caught up with "Noein" up to 17. Right now I'm just not going to bother trying to explain or rationalize it, and just go with the flow and enjoy what there is. There was another raw-art battle scene like before, and that was quite neat.

Also quite neat was finding another episode of "Windy Tales" -- I had almost given up on that one for good, but Shi-Fa managed to get us another one. Yay! No new ground broken or anything, but it's still a neat story.

I've built up a backlog of "Mushishi" episodes; hopefully I'll get to them this weekend.