Minna Agechau

October 17, 2021 7:51 AM

The Unreleased Anime That Almost Changed History (CW: Discussion of sex in media)

hazel is the YouTube channel of hazel, who does longish dives into manga, anime, and their history. haze666 is her side channel, which carries things like the Patron Q&A For "The Unreleased Anime That Almost Changed History and Looking Through The Minna Agechau Promo Magazine (and some others).

posted by ChurchHatesTucker (9 comments total)

What an odd coincidence, I just recently discovered Hazel's videos. Her stuff is great! I particularly love the big OAV video. This one was good too. I like how she does serious literary analysis but is also just a super-enthused fan of anime and loves the form no matter what strange directions it goes. She's really funny too, I don't laugh when I watch Beyond Ghibli but HazeI gets me every time. Also I like that she seems to concentrate (admittedly I've only watched a handful of her videos) on less mainstream titles. If you came up in the fandom in the late 90s/early 00s like I did, renting tapes, you'll probably enjoy Hazel's videos a lot.
posted by signsofrain at 8:29 AM on October 17, 2021 [1 favorite]

i love anime and watch almost nothing but. about the only semi-reliable joy in my life is getting lost in a brilliantly-written SoL comedy.

i gave it this a shot but bounced off some of the "funny" meme slang used in the main linked video. then i checked out her Azumanga Dioah video since it was fairly short and AzD is like one of the best shows ever, and right in the middle of explaining a point the video cuts to a "thanks to patreon supporters" and it's just like, come on.

i hope others can enjoy it and i appreciate the post but this is all too YouTube Very Online metacommentary for me to get into the work. 💖
posted by glonous keming at 11:00 AM on October 17, 2021 [2 favorites]

If you came up in the fandom in the late 90s/early 00s like I did, renting tapes, you'll probably enjoy Hazel's videos a lot.

All the more impressive since she wasn't even born for the early part of that.
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 12:46 PM on October 17, 2021

For those of you who are curious to see the video, here you go! NSFW, obviously.
posted by Quasimike at 5:30 PM on October 17, 2021 [1 favorite]

This is good information, and nothing against the creator, but it makes me long for the day when I could just read all of this in a blog post instead of going through a 50 minute heavily scripted YouTube video. I could have gotten the information in just a few minutes, but with a video I don't even get the name of the work until the two minute mark.
posted by JHarris at 2:28 AM on October 18, 2021 [9 favorites]

Hazel's videos are so good. I'm not even that deep into anime or manga, but she lays everything out so clearly. Her video on the Serial Experiments Lain Playstation game takes a turn into exploring early interactive art/fiction, from around 19:30, which is just wonderful. My life is better for knowing that Uncle Buddy's Phantom Funhouse exists in the world.
posted by Glier's Goetta at 4:58 AM on October 18, 2021

For those who'd prefer to read than to watch the full video, Youtube transcripts can be viewed by clicking the three dots to the right of the "save to playlist" button, then choosing "open transcript".
posted by Lexica at 11:47 AM on October 18, 2021 [5 favorites]

For those of you who don't have the time or energy to watch the video, the short version is Minna Agechau is notorious for stirring up controversy just as a new wave of American anime distributors were getting started in the early 90s. A lot of the notoriety is overblown, but Sony did pull it from distribution just before it was to come out. Hazel's theory is this was due to distributor U.S. Manga Corps aggressively promoting it during AnimeCon '91 to local news sources, one of whom passed it along to Focus on the Family in an effort to stir controversy. The show itself is raunchy but fairly unremarkable compared to a lot of contemporary shows. Also the infamous pack-in panties were just a paper insert and the only reason they were included at all was because the import was a rush job that just reused the exact same packaging as the Japanese release, which included the insert.
posted by Mr.Encyclopedia at 5:55 PM on October 18, 2021 [2 favorites]

i checked out her Azumanga Dioah video ... and right in the middle of explaining a point the video cuts to a "thanks to patreon supporters" and it's just like, come on.

I just rewatched that one. I think you missed the connection b/t her jump cut and the similar one in AMD she had just mentioned.

The one quirk of her style that eludes me is when she occasionally doubles the vocals on a specific word.
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 3:59 PM on October 20, 2021