* JIDAIGEKKI, Plus a Little Afterward. This category is an open format, with the only criterion being anime illustrating any Japanese historical settings up through the Tai-Sho Era (大正時代, ending in 1926.)
Oh? I don't believe this category has been mentioned previously.
I've offered a 'Japanese [SOMETHING]' for a number of times now, mostly in homage to anime's Japanese roots. But I also like to try to refresh the definitions or try a new twist here and there.
I also like to leave this category pretty unconstrained because it's a great way for novice editors to get on-board.
:3 I'm all for it though, especially if somebody could play with it with one of those "yeah, sure this is historical" series like Samurai Champloo Sengoku Basara (for those of you who aren't familiar, SB is the Warring Countries period if they had biker gangs and guns and people who could fight with 6 katanas at the same time).
You are EXACTLY right about this category - it's ONLY the SETTING that counts - but you can have time-travellers
visiting the setting, or unusual paranormal stuff thrown in, e.g.
Bakamatsu Kikansetsu Irohanihoheto, or unexplained modern eye-glasses in Samurai Champloo.
Sengoku Basara is definitely IN, and so is
Basilisk Koga Ninpo Cho.
You might even composite other characters from other shows into period settings!
By selecting 'up thru 大正時代' the category is a little wider and allows a number of shows playing around past the Meiji period. These include
Lime Iro Senkitan (and its sequel
L.I. Ryukitan) set in the Russo-Japanese war era, also a new show called
Taisho Yakkyu Musume and the
Sakura Wars franchise - and I'm sure there are more out there.
Note that
Zipang is late WW2 so it is in Sho-wa (昭和) and outside the scope of this category.
What also might get tricky is differentiating between medieval JAPAN vs other medieval Asian settings in FANTASY - 'cuz in 'realistic' shows you have half a chance:
Souten Kouro and its gender-bent second cousin
Koihime Musou are Chinese history,
Condor Hero is also squarely set in Chinese legend,
Shin Anguo Onshi is Korean animation and therefore NOT ANIME, while
Rurouni Kenshin, and
Hakkenden, and even
Inu Yasha are all IN - those are the easy calls.
The blurrier line will be
Seirei no Moribito which looks a lot like the more mountainous regions of central Asia BUT WAIT, Balsa and the gang wear somewhat Ainu-looking costumes, so there's a tenuous fantasy connection to Japan, and
Utawarerumono. Another undecided call would be
Juuni Kokki ('Twelve Kingdoms,') where the mythical world looks a heckuva lot like the karst topography of Guilin, China, and like
Moribito, the architecture looks more Chinese than Japanese in many places, and the streamers of colored prayer flags on cairns (ep 1) are seen in Tibet and Nepal.
Another HUGE and diverse source of material can come from shows generally set outside the time period and place, but in which characters DESCRIBE A PERIOD JAPANESE SETTING and the anime gives us a FLASHBACK glimpse into the period we're looking for, or it's time to visit Gramps out in
hillbilly yamabushi country or rural Japan, which can really LOOK like it's still 1910 in places (which is sometimes the butt of a joke.)
TONs of anime do that - look at Tenchi Muyo's grandfather's house. Also consider the 'sunset world' of
Jigoku Shoujo, or Japanese settings in which something traditional and unchanged SINCE 大正 still 'looks right' even though the events happen past the cutoff but there's no 'give-away' technology - one example might be miko combat scenes on temple grounds - as long as the camera doesn't tip up to reveal tons of modern houses surrounding the temple, or high-tension towers on the horizon. (The
Aquarian Age OVA has some scenes like that.)
AND **YES* I *DO* select for the panel a few judges who KNOW period Asian architecture costuming, Japan vs otherwise, plus others who besides an interest in anime and AMVs may know some geology or geography and some engineering history to boot. However they are generally unlikely to outright DQ a valiant AMV effort which - bottom line - is ENTERTAINING.
