the anime & Japan blog

Ladies and gen­tle­men, I have some­thing to announce. When I came to my senses not long ago, I found myself deep in a heap of cogs, springs and screws, and the air was hot and wet from all the steam around. And I loved it. I have finally found some­thing to answer on music genre pref­er­ences ques­tions, same goes for anime and films. I love Steam­punk, and this intim­ate hoot­ing affec­tion has no plans of going away too eas­ily. Where­with I am thor­oughly happy.

Steam­punk is an inter­me­dial genre that can be viewed as the oppos­ite of cyber­punk. While cyber­punk revolves around the electricity-driven future, steam­punk is the essence of false hopes in the 18^th and 19^th cen­tur­ies, when the people believed the power of steam and ima­gined all kinds of machines powered by it. You could say it’s the sci-fi of those ages, and the cult of the loud and hot machines is weak nowadays, yet it lives through, and maybe it will occupy wider masses some­when again.

My first ever steam­punk exper­i­ence was Miyazaki’s Laputa, shortafter one of my favour­ites, Steam­boy, and of course Howl’s Mov­ing Castle. But they didn’t get me ‘into’ the genre. What did it was music. Begin­ning with the self-proclaimed world emperor Dr. Steel, then the nar­rat­or­ish Clock­work Dolls, fast fad­ing into the fab­ulous Clock­work Quar­tet, fol­lowed by the Ver­nian Pro­cess. Out of these I would like to point your atten­tion to the Clock­work Quar­tet, which is a rel­at­ively new band that needs atten­tion and sup­port, and whilst it is the case for every god­damn band on the Earth’s sur­face and under, this one totally deserves it.

I am cur­rently com­pil­ing a list of all steam­punk anime, through which I will go to become one of the so rare steam­punk con­nois­seurs in the ani­sphere. My help in the com­pil­ing are for­ums, chats, friends and acquaint­ances and of course data­bases (which often have the desired tag miss­ing). It seems like there are only a hand­ful of anime series and films inspired by steam­punk, but that just makes it easier for me to watch them all. Since the inform­a­tion sources are uncon­firmed, I can­not put the list up yet. But I plan on doing so right after I fin­ish my steamy mara­thon and grow out of the puns I seem to not stop intending.