Crying Freeman
You may all know of this oldie, but the fact remains that the final couple of episodes of this OVA series contains one of the most awesome art ever. I don't think I've ever seen anime with such a great art style. Besides, it's all about Triads, Yakuza and crooked cops, so there's virtually no one you can call a good guy in this. Never mind the gay ass nakedness involving Freeman, there's a fair share of female nakedness to balance it out. I'm purposefully keeping out the more hardcore pics to keep in line with the terms of the forum, but watch this: The OVA series is pretty much universally de-*test*-('")ed by the anime fan community, because it's boring, it has unlikable characters and they possess more than 4 facial features. Every one is more than 25 years old, which makes them all old farts. I'm glad I'm not part of that community. Then again, I've survived puberty unscathed and also lost my virginity to a human female. Which makes me unlikable too. It does have an exploitative, V-cinema quality about it, but that's exactly what I dig. Then again, I'm also a fan of Takashi Ishii's Kuro no Tenshi Vol.2 (Black Angel. Vol.1 was a little on the crappy side, but beautifully shot all the same), and I barely get anything written on the net about the subject. Is it possible that the best is not yet to come but already came long ago? Heh... "already came".

I watched some of the Anime and I enjoyed it. The deaths our a bit too realistic for my taste I prefer my deaths to be more drawn out and extravagant. I really liked the scene where freeman fought the hot muscular black chick in the nude, he seduced her after he realized he had lost. I always enjoy Manga more then anime I think I'm going to pick up some of these if I have the chance.

I've got the first volume of the manga only. But I think Kazuo Koike got better in Sanctuary. I just got a bit nostalgic about this particular anime version, and how anime industry was right before the bubble burst. Evangelion, the other immediate side of the coin for example, besides being Hideaki Anno trying to impress his high-school crush, is also a symptom of Japan's post economic recession.

I've always wanted to see crying freeman, but I never bothered with it because of how pornographic the covers looked. (I was only a kid at the time, so I couldn't just walk up to the cash register like it was nothing.) So I usually went with Devil Hunter Yohko. Yohko still made people look at you all fucked up when you try to rent it, but at least the covers weren't all (artistic) porno looking or anything like Freeman was. Hot damn, that art is beautiful. That's the type of shit that deserves to be hung on my wall. Where did you get the pics anyway? I have a hard ass time looking for anything about crying Freeman & sanctuary. Yup, Kitano. I could never understand the anime community myself. They actually hate the dopeness known as Golgo 13, simply because it looks too realistic for them to get into. (As if all anime were required to look like poorly drawn astro boy wannabes.) That and Golgo 13 actually has a story that makes sense. (Which is another big no no in the anime community. It's a requirement for all anime to strive to be more pretentious than Evangelion.) I wish anime still looked like this. This is actually art. You can tell that the artists followed a strict code of rules in order to structure their pictures. (Most anime these days comes off as looking like some 5 yr. old drew some sketches during a boring sunday afternoon.)

The pics were taken by myself. Ah, I knew you'd dig it. I could post a couple more, especially, as I said, from the last two episodes, 5 and 6. Those are the ones where the art is extraordinary. There is a lot of sex, and most of it gratuitous, well, borderline hentai. And the violence is also up there. But with art like this it could be about poisonous cihuahua races (wait...), I'd still buy it. Golgo 13 has, I think, a better story than this. But yeah, Golgo 13 is pretty much on the same league. I think the original mangas, in both the case of Crying Freeman and Golgo 13 are called "Gekiga", which are adult-oriented manga, or at least, more serious and dramatic. If you consider the medium age (mental or otherwise) of the majority of the western anime fan community, the rejection is not that of a surprise. To me, this is bliss. Heh, incidentaly, in that Wikipedia article, both Kazuo Koike and Ryoichi Ikegami (Crying Freeman) and Takao Saito (Golgo13) are mentioned. This is from the wikipedia article. For now, what I found, but I'm sure there are better places to look up: Gekiga (劇画) is Japanese for "dramatic pictures." The term was coined by Yoshihiro Tatsumi and adopted by other more serious Japanese cartoonists who did not want their trade to be known as manga or "irresponsible pictures." It's akin to Will Eisner who started calling his comics "graphic novels" as opposed to "comic books" for the same reason. Tatsumi began publishing "gekiga" in 1957. Gekiga was vastly different from most manga at the time, which were aimed at children. These "dramatic pictures" emerged not from the mainstream manga publications in Tokyo headed by Osamu Tezuka but from the lending libraries based out of Osaka. The lending library industry tolerated more experimental and offensive works to be published than the mainstream "Tezuka camp" during this time period. By the late 1960s and early 1970s the children who grew up reading manga wanted something aimed at older audiences and gekiga provided for that niche. In addition this particular generation came to be known as the manga generation and read manga as a form of rebellion (which was similar to the role rock and roll played for hippies in the United States). Manga reading was particularly common in the 1960s among anti-U.S.-Japan Security Treaty and Labor oriented student pro-*test*-('") groups at this time. These youth became known in Japan as being the "manga generation." Because of the growing popularity of these originally underground comics, even Osamu Tezuka began to display the influence of gekiga cartoonists in works such as Hi no Tori (Phoenix), produced in the early 1970s, and especially in Adolf, produced in the early 1980s. Adolf has heavy influences from Tatsumi's artwork, with more realistic styling and darker settings than most of Tezuka’s work. In turn Tatsumi was influenced by Tezuka though storytelling techniques. Not only was the storytelling in gekiga more serious but also the style was more realistic. Gekiga constitutes the work of first generation of Japanese alternative cartoonists. Some authors use this original definition to produce works that only contained shock factor. As a result of Tezuka adopting gekiga styles and storytelling, there was an acceptance of a wide diversity of experimental stories into the mainstream comic market commonly referred to critics as being the Golden Age of Manga. This started in the 1970s and continued into the 1980s. In 1977, writer Kazuo Koike founded the Gekiga Sonjuku educational program, which emphasized maturity and strong characterization in manga. As mainstream shōnen magazines became increasingly more commercialized, gekiga's influence began to fade. More recently the most mainstream shōnen publications have lost a lot of gekiga influence and these kinds of works are now found in slightly more underground publications (usually seinen magazines). In addition other artistic movements have emerged in alternative manga like the emergence of the avant-garde magazine Garo around the time of gekiga's acceptance into the mainstream manga market and the much later Nouvelle Manga movement. These movements have superseded gekiga as alternative comics in Japan. A few Examples of Mangaka who Draw in Gekiga Style * Yoshihiro Tatsumi * Ryoichi Ikegami * Hirohiko Araki * Kazuo Koike * Goseki Kojima * Kazuo Umezu * Tetsuo Hara * Takao Saito (of Golgo 13 fame) * Hiroshi Hirata * Sanpei Shirato

Kitano can you upload the 5 and 6 OVA itself on some site like sendspace, if you can capture it drectly that is.Or you can post the some sex scenes on youtube, just make sure it has no genitals, otherwise they will delete it. damn i didnt know it had such good nude art. The faces looked stupid , and they still look bad in some pics, it turned me off back then to pick this up, but after these naked pics, i am in mood...lol. How good are frames and smoothness in animation? Coz golgo queenbee had really bad movement of characters, where the original golgo 13 had smooth , movement where needed.

Never got a chance to see Crying Freeman despite collecting as much anime from the 80's as I can. It really was the best era in terms of anime being entertainment for adults. There are some recent shows that try to achieve this like Speed Grapher, that have adult themes, but the overall style still feels too "new". Parasite Dolls from 2002 is one some of you might enjoy. It's a spin-off of the old Bubblegum Crisis and A.D. Police. Very reminiscent of the 80's style. http://link.brightcove.com/services/link/bcpid1272266570/bclid1304952757/bctid1320139309

I had parasite dolls downloaded but there were no subs in english so ideleted it.

As a huge fan of seinen and whatnot, this interests me. I love old anime, even though most people don't care for it.

Two old school animes that I still appreciate, even though they are almost all about the violence is Violence Jack, and Mad Bull. Both of these use that same style of art and animation that has long dissapeared.

Grabbed it form almost dead torrent, well i really liked sensless sex scenes, almost every episode had 2 of them , but last one was best. anime story and other things are toaaly crap, animation is nice, but faces bother. The quality of last OVA was better than others. They should have added same level of erotic sexscenes in golgo too, the fucks in golgo were not exploitative like freeman.