April 1989 was also perhaps the beginning of an Era in Anime.

I spent some of June making interesting observations about times when two or more vitally important Anime debuted very close to each other.  Those posts usually have the year or years in question in the title.  All of those posts were about examples where at least one of the Anime in question was in some way related to the Magical Girl genre, since I was celebrating MahouShouJune.  Today however I can talk about an example that isn't directly or mainly Magical Girl relevant.

Kor Reviews just released his video about the Spring 1989 Anime season, in collaboration with two other AniTubers.  I won't here be talking about every Anime mentioned in that video, they also talk about a number of interesting forgotten gems that I suggest you watch the video for.

What I didn't know before watching this was that both Dragonball Z and Ranma 1/2 started in the same season.  That's two Iconic genre defining shows.  DBZ wasn't even the start of it's franchise technically, but it definitely has become what people mainly care about when it comes to Dragonball, in the West at least.

I have some nostalgic memories of watching DBZ on Toonami back in the day, but Shonen in general I'm not very into.  Ranma is something I should check out eventually.

Meanwhile the premiere of Lupin II: Bye Bye Lady Liberty was the beginning of a new era for that important Anime franchise, the era of it being being kept alive by annual TV specials.  For awhile most of what I'd seen of the franchise were a handful of the 90s specials that got dubbed in the 2000s, it's cool that Lupin has returned to getting TV Anime and interesting theatrical films, but I feel this era of Lupin shouldn't be forgotten, they kept the spirit of Red Jacket alive but with continually more modern Animation and plots.

Bye Bye Lady Liberty also has an English Dub but different from most other Dubs, it was dubbed by the same cast as one of the Dubs of Mystery of Mamo, specifically the UK produced Dub, and like it was made in 96 so one of the earliest English Language exposures of the franchise.  I watched it recently and found it pretty fun, I recommend it.

So I don't have a lot to say about these examples, but they're interesting.  And knowing what super important Anime started this season makes the more obscure stuff most of that Video is devoted to even more interesting.

Update: As I just learned this was only a few months into the Heisei Period of official Japanese History, same era that ended in April of this year.  So like 90-99% of Anime that Millennials care about is Heisei Anime.