Gephyrophillia | Watch This Space #91

Originally Posted on 11/24/2003 by Jeff Harris

You look like you've just seen a ghost. It was probably just the old year just making its last steps, and what a strange year this has been.

From the nightly runs of Adult Swim that introduced Lupin III, Reign, Trigun, Blue Gender, and FLCL to the unshaven masses to the shift in power over at Turner Broadcasting which effects are only now being felt to the hell-freezing Giant Robot Week to the premieres of .hack//SIGN, Rurouni Kenshin, and Cyborg 009 on Toonami before 2/3 of those shows became Saturday exclusives (note to self: it's not SVES, it's Saturday) to the strange Kids WB-ification of the primetime lineup, eye-opening premieres of original action shorts like IGPX and Star Wars: Clone Wars and action-packed shows like Teen Titans and Duck Dodgers to the current, more teen-oriented Justice League (just seeing Doomsday animated made this season worth watching, much to Pudding Pants' chagrin), Cartoon Network has seen a lot of changes, both good and bad.

Like any other year, 2003 saw a lot of beginnings such as the arrival of The Anime Network and TechTV as viable outlets for your anime tastes as well as the growth of anime powerhouses like Action, Showtime NEXT, and The International Network and a lot of endings like CNX (which officially became the world's first Toonami channel), CNX (which became The X Bridge), and traditional 2D theatrical animation in Hollywood (apparently, the news of the failures of Final Fantasy, Dinosaur, Antz, Fantasia 2000, and Jimmy Neutron never reached the executives that only see the green the Pixar flicks and Shrek brought in), a place where they crowned an anime film (made by Miyazaki and believed in by Pixar) as Best Animated Picture.

Starting the first week of December (boo, hiss!), I'm going to look back at the year that increased anime showings on broadcast and cable began to have increased opposition from fans of American animation. A year that put a crescendo to the old-school movement (temporarily, of course, because the year of the Astro Boy [the very first anime megastar], which began this year, will finally hit stateside in 2004). A year that saw Marvel continue to make waves in animation and DC begin to reestablish its roots. A year that saw the animation world change for the better and for the worst.

2003: A Year in Review begins next week here at The X Bridge. And if you're nice, I have a few other surprises up my sleeves. Maybe. Some of my surprises might be outside of the site, so stay tuned.

One more thing. A big shout out and congrats to Jon "WB" Gray, artist behind Chip and Walter and Time Trouble over at Animated Diversions, who's about to become a heavyhitting artist over at Archie Comics, working on the popular Sonic The Hedgehog title next year. His work is going to be phenominal, but if you checked out his works before, you probably already knew that. Congrats, Dub!

*end transmission*

Jeff Harris,
The X Bridge Creator/Webmaster
November 24, 2003