I hope the Ranma 1/2 remake encourages people to go back and watch the anime classics, including myself

There's a whole lot of anime that came out before 2010, you know.

For a long time, anime was this pretty inaccessible thing for Western audiences, outside of what was shown on Toonami in places like the US and UK, or those sneaky not-very-legal typically expletive-laden fan-subs, there wasn't really a good way to watch it. Big names like Dragon Ball, Naruto, One Piece, Bleach, Sailor Moon have long been popular over here, but it's only really over the past 10 years or so when anime has actually been something you can easily find outside of Japan.

Particularly in the last five years, more and more streaming services are after a piece of the pie that Crunchyroll has dominated, with platforms like Netflix even acquiring the rights to anime that will also be on the aforementioned anime streaming site. Now you don't have to watch just Goku duke it out for the millionth time, you can check out, uh, VTuber Legend: How I Went Viral after Forgetting to Turn Off My Stream, on the very same day it airs in Japan.

It's honestly great, with this season treating us to a simulcast release of Mappa's remake of the classic gender-bending series Ranma ½ on Netflix. Sure, there's conversations to be had if an already good series needs a remake at all, I'm not going to comment on that right now (a thought for another day, maybe), but the first episode is already a lot of fun. It quickly gets into the hijinks you'd expect from a series where the main character turns into a girl anytime they're splashed with cold water, and the martial arts focused action sequences have a wonderful, classic flow to them that feel like a refreshing break from the over-the-top stuff (that's still very good to be clear) you generally see these days.

Most of all, while watching the first episode, I couldn't help but think, "man, I should really watch more of the classics." That's the one difficult thing about the streaming era, is that even with all this anime now available to us, there's much more of a focus on what's new rather than what your tastes might actually be. As a result most conversations you get on sites like Twitter (ugh, I mean X, I guess) are about anime from the past few years, with no real opportunity to talk about the oldies. And really, I hope people that do check out Ranma ½ maybe take a second and think, "hey this is really good, maybe I should check out more older anime."

I admit that, because of the aforementioned hindrances this isn't going to be the easiest thing to do legally speaking, but there is so much fun to be had in older works. For starters, the original Ranma 1/2 has some great sequences that aren't as flashy as modern standards, but you can't help but fall in love with them. 2022 obviously saw the release of the incredibly popular Gundam: The Witch from Mercury, and if you were a fan of that you really should watch the very first iteration of the show - it's a classic for a reason. Hell, if you've ever laughed at a "you're already dead" meme you owe it to yourself to see where it came from (Fist of the North Star).

The thing is, I haven't watched all of these either, so this is as much of a plea to myself as it is to anyone reading this. I could go on and on about older anime you and I should watch (Dirty Pair, Bubblegum Crisis, Galaxy Express 999, seriously, there's so much out there), but I think it's also fun to discover some of that for yourself. Go onto some niche forum - not the sketchy looking ones - find a list of "classics you must watch before you die", and just go ham. Just don't become one of those "oh yeah, I'm into older anime, newer stuff just doesn't do it for me" types, they're annoying.