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I remember when I originally found Kimagure Orange Road. I was barely 17 years old and decided that I wanted to go to Anime Expo 95. The young anime fan that I was, I had decided to contact the information line. I spoke to guy that I don't even KNOW who was for nearly an hour about Anime, and everything in general. I found out who some of the "Guest of Honors" were, and at the con was going to be Akemi Takeda - Character designer for Kimagure Orange Road, among other popular series. I decided that I would find out as much as I could about this series, so I had rented the OVAS from my local Hollywood Video. Little did I know that this would be the spawn of the first series that truly touched my heart and introduced me to Matsumoto Izumi's world of characters. The premise starts when Kasuga Kyosuke, at 15 years old, moves to a new city to start a new life. He is part of a family of ESPers, and moving became something he had to do when his family secret got out to the town. When he moved south of Tokyo, his life entered a new era. This is where the story started. |
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Kimagure Orange Road had an average television run of 48 episodes, 8 OVAs, 2 movies and a pilot episode. The manga was produced by JUMP Comics (Publishers of Dragon Ball, Rurouni Kenshin, DNA^2, Video Girl Ai, etc...) and had a moderate run of under 20 of the books, with three novels. The 2nd movie was based loosely off of the first novel and was released recently in Dubbed and Subbed format by ADVision. AnimEigo apparently did eventually get the rights to the televison series and sold off the LD preorders. I hear rumors that the TV series also is being released slowly but surely on VHS. There was also a batch of CDs called 'Kimagure Orange Station' and 'Original Kimagure Orange Road' which were radio dramas done by the voice actors of the animated series (As apposed to a separate cast, which has been done for some series before an animated series had been released. Fushigi Yuugi has somer ather rare drama CDs lurking about). |
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 The
entire series is about the trials and tribulations of Kyosuke's adolensce.
It begins early on in High School, moving to a new town at the age of 15
and ends when he gets accepted at College. The series mainly focuses
on the torrid love triangle of Kyosuke, Madoka and Hikaru. Despite
Hikaru laying claim on Kyosuke early on, Madoka was the first person he
met when he had moved to the city. At the mid-point to the 99 1/2
staircase near the Green Castle Apartments, Kyosuke caught Madoka's runaway
red hat. This was the begining. I get this strong feel of 1980's
nostalgia just watching it, despite the fact that I watched it originally
in the mid-1990's. In fact, 1986 doesn't seem like that long ago
when it was 1995. It just seems like a REALLY long time
ago when it's the year 2000. 9 years isn't half as bad as 14.
This would make Kyosuke and the crew now in either their late 20's or early
30's. Well, Kazuya's pretty young, so maybe he'd be in his early
20's. Luckily for us time can just stand still in the wonderful
world of Anime and Manga, so we too can have "Another Yesterday" o/~ |
| With Shin KOR (as it's called) being the newest thing, I've got a few pictures from the novels and the movie on that page. I also have created a shrine to the one of the best characters ever created for the KOR universe, Kasuga Akane. It is a tribute to that kick ass cousin of Kyosuke's. |
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