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Exploring the Turnpike, Part 3
Once again, your intrepid explorer straps on his gear and heads out into the wilds of the World-Wide Web, in search of interesting but lonely sites, sites devoted to anime which have very few sites. The theme of this column turned out to be "content". Time after time after time, I hit upon sites that were lacking in design or appearance, but which I decided to include anyway, simply because they were a good source of information.Cyber Idol Mink
Boy, here's a good site to illustrate my point. Most of the content on Cyber Idol Mink: The Unofficial Website is on its incredibly long home page. Still, what the site author lacks in design savvy, she makes up in enthusiasm for this shojo manga, about a little girl transformed into an idol singer by technology from the future. Highlights of the site include a translated interview with the manga's author, Megumi Tachikawa, and two image galleries. Reading this, the artwork bugged me. I was certain I'd seen it before...Dancing Blade
Here's a neat idea: an interactive anime made specifically for a video game system. Through choices made by the viewer, the anime can have one of a number of different endings. The has the basic information for this anime, with one glaring omission. It doesn't explain which game console the anime plays on! (I checked with a friend, an expert in such matters, and confirmed my suspicions that it's the PlayStation.) The character and story pages tell you what you need to know, including the voice actors for each character and other roles each actor has performed. The site also offers an image gallery with twenty images, indexed by descriptions rather than thumbnails. I saved . Hey, sue me for being male...Danguard Ace
I've never been into giant robots all that much, unless you count Gundam. Still, I can understand the enthusiasm some have for the old shows. A site like makes understanding that much easier. The site has all the basic data for one such giant robot anime, with screen shots for most major characters, as well as screen shots of each of the robot's attacks, including an animated image for one of them. In the "sounds" section, you can hear some of those attacks being called (from the dubbed version), in addition to the opening and closing theme songs.Detective Conan
If I remember correctly, this is one of the flood of anime set to hit American television in the near future, on the Fox Family Channel, I believe. The is a good site to check out before tuning in. The site has a simple appearance, but it's easy to navigate, quick-loading, and has plenty of content. The character page has a brief description of the major characters and provides the Japanese spellings of their names. There are translations of the songs from the show, synopses of the movies, and a silly "You Know You're A Detective Conan Fan When..." essay in the "Goodies" section.Dirty Pair
Ah, Kei and Yuri. My first true love, anime-wise. I was introduced to the Dirty Pair in late 1990, and was inspired to write fan-fiction. The stories touched off a storm of online writing that continues to this day. I was more than a little disappointed with the crop of sites devoted to this anime, once covered by Ryan Matheusik in his guest column of April 1999. The best site I found was . I'll be honest. I don't want hurt the site author's feelings, but this is an ugly site. Big images, a haphazard collection of different fonts, type sizes, and colors, and a design that doesn't put navigation first make this site somewhat of a pain to visit. But I must include this site because of the content, which is wonderful. I've never seen such a thorough exploration of the Dirty Pair. All incarnations are explored, from the original novels, to the first TV series, to Dirty Pair Flash, and even the American comics. Each version of the Lovely Angels has its own section, essentially a detailed, illustrated essay about the work, most stretching over two pages. As if that wasn't enough, there are even more essays and data sections linked farther down on the site. Unfortunately, the site author chose to use clever names for each section, so you have to visit each one to find what you want. There are sections on CDs, models, an examination of how the Pair's appearance has changed over the years, a videotape and LD cover gallery, fan art-- Look, just go there and click on a bunch of stuff. It's worth it.One more site I felt was worth a mention is . This is another site that isn't much to look at, to tell the truth. No, the "winking Yuri" is not "worth the wait" for it to load, in my opinion. Click "enter" and get to the home page, a gallery of more Dirty Pair merchandise than you knew existed.
Dominion
Masamune Shirow's often silly saga of a tank-piloting police force has a few sites that should be noted. was one of the better, content-wise, though I really hated the design. It uses frames to shove everything into a cramped little box, forcing you to scroll and scroll as you read. But the writeups are good, especially on the tanks (though illustrations would have helped). Other sections include a picture gallery, a collection of sounds, fan-fiction, and themes for Win9X, WinAmp, and even ICQ.The is yet another plane-Jane site with some good content. The image gallery has 25 pictures, and there's a brief sketch and illustration for each of the major characters. Translated interviews with Shirow himself are also included.
Another Dominion site I wanted to mention was Franco's Dominion Page, which is a single page, part of a series on Shirow works. There's a brief essay on the series (worth a read), followed by character information which in some cases is word-for-word the same as the previous site. When it looks like someone may be ripping off someone else, and I don't know who's the ripper and who's the rippee, I feel it best to highlight both sights.
Doraemon
One of the longest-running anime series of all time, this is a show most US anime fans have heard of, but of which few have actually seen. For anyone who doesn't know, it's the story of a robot cat from the 21st century (which must have seemed a long way off in the 1960's) who travels back in time to help a young boy. has the basic essential information to get you started. The character page is the most notable offering on this site, but it's a decent one. The site also has an image gallery and wallpaper for your desktop. (Now if the site author would just get rid of that MIDI...) The was also interesting to browse. I'm not sure why the site author refers to the series as "Ding Dong", though. Either that's the English equivalent of "Doraemon", or that's the title where he watches it. The info pages were cute and explain why Doraemon has no ears. I'm not sure where they get the idea he's 129 meters tall, though. That would make him as big as a good-sized office building!Dragon Half
I found several interesting sites devoted this anime, the silly sword-and-sorcery saga of half-human, half-dragon Mink. Sadly, only one of them was of any use as a general info site. That would be , which has a good character page and nothing else, unless you count an image gallery of all broken links. The and together provide translations for all the manga, if I read them correctly. The Mappy the Mouse Homepage is a fun little site, devoted to a small rodent who comically enlarges to enormous size whenever the youngest member of the adventure party is threatened. And finally, is a curious romantic site which proposes a pairing of Princess Vina and the sorceror Dug and hypothesizes about a possible daughter, a girl with three eyes. Ooookay.Dragon Quest
Funny, I thought myself fairly knowledgeable about which anime had been broadcast on US TV. I hadn't seen it all, but I thought I could at least list the series. So I was surprised to read about Dragon Warrior (American title), an anime on American television in 1990, about a year before I officially joined the ranks of anime fandom. I'd never heard of it, despite the character designs being by Akira Toriyama, the creator of Dragonball and Doctor Slump. is a well-designed guide to this series. Info provided includes season summaries, a character guide, and a world map with points of importance noted. Other sections include a listing of the differences between the original and the dub, and a media section with videos of the opening sequences.Another good site is (formerly "Dragon Quest: Emblem of Roto"). This site covers not only the original series, but also the sequel series and multiple spin-off manga, which are different in many ways. Each series and manga gets its own section of the site, which details characters and offers plot summaries.
Finally, before I end this column, I'd like to list a few sites dealing with some interesting shojo manga:
Enough exploring for one month. Let's read the mail!
Last Exit Before Toll © 1997-2001 Ryan Mathews. All Rights Reserved.
Anime Web Turnpike © 1995-2001 Jay Fubler Harvey. All Rights Reserved.
Last Update: 5/29/00