I'm not so good at sorting thru and putting down my own opinions here, but I think The Notenki Memoirs by Yasuhiro Takeda is a good book to read, for insight: He was a founding member of Gainax and grew up in the era under discussion. Here's an excerpt:
"When I was a kid, I don’t think I was quite the geek I am now.As far back as I can remember, television was always a part of home life. The same goes for comic magazines like Shonen Magazine and Shonen Sunday, which made their debut in this world long before I did. Since much of the anime and manga of my formative years leaned toward sci-fi themes and settings, that genre became (and remains) my favorite. I was drawn in by the strange and powerful lure of futuristic stories—the future seemed so sublime, and filled me with longing. For a kid in those days, this kind of thinking was par the course. But there were plenty of fun things to do besides watching TV and reading comics, and I certainly didn’t spend my entire childhood wrapped up in anime and manga.In fact, there was really only one difference between other kids of that era and myself—I liked reading novels. I’ve already forgotten what sparked that interest, but it was in the fourth grade or so when I became an avid reader. While other kids were running around the schoolyard, I was running back and forth to the library. (I don’t think it was a time when you bought the books you liked—if you wanted to read one, you just went to the library.) I was hooked on sci-fi and mystery. Of course, the stories I read were adapted for gradeschoolers, and I simply devoured them. To name a few, there were titles like Lupin and Sherlock Holmes, and authors like Arthur C. Clarke3 and Robert A. Heinlein4—sci-fi novelists from the mid-’60s, whose works were considered required reading. That’s not to say I didn’t read other works. I explored almost every aisle of the library… with the result that I became a library assistant by the time I was in the fifth grade, simply because I could stay there for hours on end. All I ever wanted was just a little more time to read. Looking back on it now, my only regret is that I never sought out anyone to share in my little world."
Interesting to note that he namedrops Robert Heinlein as 'required reading', so maybe the Heyuri guy isn't so far off as he seems. But I'd have to read the whole book to really get it.
You can find it here:
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