Ask me about anime!

Cafe Society
41

I like the subtitled versions, because that lets me view a title at super-speed. If I scan foward, there’s no sound, but the subtitles can still be read.

In reference to the Simpsons, one time the Simpsons clan visited an animation fair and Bart was watching an anime.
Princess Tempura (a mermaid with a metal fan for a shrimp tail) was battling a Wolf Robot. The Wolf Robot ensnared Princess Tempura with a spider web, but Tempura got out by cutting it with her tail.

Lisa walked by and asked “Why is a wolf shooting spider webs? This stuff makes no sense.” (or something to that effect)

42

JessEnigma - Oh, shit. That’s really narrowing it down. No girly, little-kid, or baptist-incompatible material cuts a whole lot of stuff.
I’m thinking…
I hate coming back to Trigun, but that’s the first series that popped into my head. Not girly, not little-kid-oriented, not southern-baptist-incompatible, and appeals pretty much equally to guys and girls. However, it’s sorta violent, and it’s also inspired by and (somewhat) modeled after old American TV shows, it may not be the most appropriate thing to show at an international club meeting that’s focused on Japanese culture.
Oh yeah, Cagliostro would be fun too. I know plenty of girls who enjoyed it a lot.
A lot of people don’t like this one, but there’s a movie called Galaxy Express 999 that may be watchable. I taped my copy off of the sci-fi channel, and I don’t know how widely it was released. I do know that the movie and its sequel were just re-released with uncut material, so it may not be the innocent movie I remember watching.
How would Japanese demons go over with your audience? If this would be OK, I’d reccommend showing Inu-Yasha. It’s set in Japan’s Middle Ages and is full of folklore and mythology. The anime is set to be released sometime in the near future; if you can’t get it in time, consider buying some of the manga and passing it around at your meeting.

Good luck.

KKBattousai - Okay, point taken. Although I’d still wait for a popular series to be professionally released than take a chance on a fansub.

I couldn’t wait for Nausicaa to be released by Disney, so I bought a fansub of it. Her name was Sandra. Her father wasn’t dying; he was just “sick.” Much of the dialogue was changed outright. Events happened that were never explained. And that’s what finally convinced me that fansubs were crappy.

Fenris - Ouch. Okay, I guess I buy the subtitled version of My Youth in Arcadia then.

Otaku - Literally, “house”(??). A term meaning “obsessive fan.” In Japan, it’s considered an insult, meaning that an otaku has no life outside of their favorite fandom (think Comic Book Guy from the Simpsons.) In America it was adopted by legions of anime fans who just thought it meant “big fan,” and used it as somewhat of a compliment. The real meaning of “otaku” found its way across the pond, and tiny shitblizzards ensued. :slight_smile:

43

KKBattousai, has anyone tried to answer your Ranma trivia question just yet? If not then I’ll try my hand. Akane first attempted to cook curry for Ranma and Genma during the Bakusai-tenketsu story arc.

Okay, on the subtitle vs. dub debate. I’ve got to side with the subtitle crowd. I’ve run into tolerable dubs before, but by and large, when I want emotion in my anime, I watch the subtitled stuff.

Oh, about Castle of Cagliostro. Yes, it’s old, but that doesn’t mean it can’t be found. I just wandered into my local comic shop about two months back and saw a subbed edition of it right off.

One last thing. About fansubs, I personnally don’t mind fansubs in the least, and if I’m looking to pick up a whole series quickly and cheaply, they are a good option. Just go with a good fan-subbing group. Karen Duffy(of FY fame) was a good example of what I mean.

44

Yup, 'twas curry. :slight_smile:

And, yeah, I miss Duffy and Tomodachi Anime. They’re the group that, as mentioned, did FY (as well as Marmalade Boy among others) and single-handedly got me interested in the world of fansubs.

Speaking of fansubs, is Initial D as good as everybody says it is?

45

Ah, I forgot about Princess Mononoke. That was a kick ass movie, IMO.

I dunno. The animation often impresses me. Ghost in the Shell was ruined, IMO, by the necessity of fast voice-overs. I have a remarkably low setting for “suspension of disbelief” but sheesh: slow down, man! I would have loved that flick much more if the damn voicing was better, because the story was fun and the action sequences were impressive.

I dunno. I guess I just can’t get excited about good animation any more than I can get excited about good acting. If a movie is good, its good.

Sorry if I sound condescending or mean here, I know my last post was a little put-offish. :frowning:

46

Well, I just want to say that the only anime I have ever really enjoyed was Robotech (yes, the Americanized version that meled together two completly unrelated cartoons), Voltron (aw yeah!), and a couple others.

I personally want to know why shows like Ranma 1/2, Dragonball Z, and Pokemon are popular. I just find them too stupid to be funny or entertaining. That, and the plot lines for every episode is exactly the same.

Typical D-Z ep.:
Bad dude shows up
kicks everyone’ ass
one guy gets super-tough and kills bad guy

Typical -mon ep:
New pokemon found
Ash tries to get it, fails
Team rocket shows up
Team rocket gets but kicked by the new pokemon
Ash gets the new pokemon
Wow. Real creative writers an those seres, huh?

(just my opinion, I don’t mean to offend any fans of these shows.)

47

Ah, no kidding. I was sitting there, making a list of anything I’d ever seen or wanted to see. Cowboy Bebop was out like I said. Tokyo Babylon was out due to gay references. (Along with that goes the rest of CLAMP, though I really like their work) Sailor Moon and DBZ were out because everybody’s seen those and frankly, both make me cringe. I was also considering Escaflowne, which is a favorite of mine, but I think it’s just a bit too girly. Rurouni Kenshin is extremely violent. Fushigi Yuugi was too girly also.

I suppose I could have steered away from the mainstream stuff, but if it’s too out there, you cannot get your hands on it here.

But thank you for the suggestions. There’s no meeting time set yet (have to work out all of the school complications and everything), so I was just looking for some titles to give to my classmate. Inu-Yasha was something I was looking at before, so maybe I could get it for myself. :slight_smile:
jessica

48

I’m probably not the best guy to ask about Initial D, as I didn’t much care for it(maybe I’m the looking for, who knows). Anyhow, here is as unbiased an opinion as I can give you. The show has its faults, among them being low budget animation, little or no plot, and a striking similarity to low-quality kung-fu movies. BUT, if you like driving, street racing, or just making a car go really fast, you’ll get a kick out of it. By the way, I am the exception to the rule. I only know one other guy at my local anime club who is really turned off by it. Everyone else can’t seem to get enough.

49

On Disney VS anime: I don’t hate Disney (I caught the last half of The Emperor’s New Groove a few days ago on TV, and thought it was great), but I like anime in general more. The older Disney stuff, while it was a lot smoother than anime, used flat colors for their characters, while anime was using 2+ shades on everything, playing with dramatic lighting and such. So (and I haven’t made any cels myself, so I’m going purely on logic here), if you cut out the extra shading, you could afford the time/effort to make the animation smoother because you’d be doing less work on each image (and not have to wait as long for paint to dry on each cel and all). This doesn’t really apply now because most everyone does shading (woo!) and a lot of it is all done on the computer anyway, heh…

Anyway, my point is that I figure maybe part of the Disney VS anime animosity comes from the “well Disney is better because it’s smoother” thing a lot of anime fans hear which sort of completely disregards all the cool lighting and “cinematic” (like older Disney stuff was basically always a side-view…I read somewhere (I believe it was part of an animation thing, notes that the Disney animators use) where a quick story was told about an animator who asked how to draw Mickey Mouse from a top view, and Walt just said “Why would you?”) stuff anime puts into play.

Subs/Dubs/Fansubs: Dubs are getting better these days I think, but if I can choose between a sub and dub, I’ll still usually go with sub. Japanese voices sound cooler to me, heh…The tough guys sound tough and the cute characters sound cute. I love fansubs (good ones), because they sometimes throw in extra stuff or exaggerate without screwing things up. I saw a fansub of the Street Fighter movie about a year and a half before it came out in North America and it was great. Ken/Ryu shouting out attacks would shout “Moving fire sphere!!” and “Rising dragon fist!!” which I found funny. DeeJay also swore insanely, motherf-er was every second word out of his mouth and all the parents in the room (it was at a convention thing) had big wide saucer eyes and quickly tried to cover their kids’ eyes. Fansubs tends to be fun that way, heh…

And Excel Saga rocks…heh…just had to say that…

  • Tsugumo (“Anime isn’t just robots, ninjas, demons, and cute girls. It’s robots, ninjas and demons that ARE cute girls.”)
50

Jess, one series that may appeal to your club would be Tenchi Muyo. It has a fair amount of traditional Japanese iconography (mostly hot springs and shinto stuff, but, hey, it’s something, right?), action, and comedy that should appeal to both genders without offending anybody (I think).

Another show that you may want to consider is Kimagure Orange Road. It’s lightly dated - 80s hair, 80s style jpop - but not too bad, considering. Synopses can be found online, I’m sure, but in a nutshell it’s the trials and tribulations of Kasuga Kyosuke, who is caught in a rather complicated, but amusing, love triangle. Oh, and he has psychic powers (telekinesis and teleportation). It’s pretty much fluff compared to some things out there today, but it’s still watchable, IMHO.

And, um, I’ll try and think of more stuff later on. Good luck.

51

**

Well let’s keep in mind that the older Disney stuff was done in the 20’s and 30’s. Snow White came out in 1937 so I don’t expect it to be as advanced as things that came out in the 50’s and 60’s. So far as I know Japan didn’t have a thriving animation market in the 1930’s so we’ll have to look to later dates to make comparisons. Unless I’m mistaken and someone out there knows about the animation market in Japan during the 20’s and 30’s.

**

I don’t know. It seems to me that Disney used shading in Snow White, Bambi, an Fantasia. Maybe I’m just confused over what shading means as I can claim no expertise in animation. I think the original Fantasia (1940) was of higher quality then Vampire Hunter D (1985). Granted that just a personal opinion.

**

Well again older stuff from Disney was the 20’s and 30’s. If you can show me any examples of anime from the 50’s that are the equal of Peter Pan then I’d probably be more inclined to agree with you. Certainly shows like Speed Racer, Kimba, Voltron, Robotech, and Starblazers were not as well animated as Peter Pan.
Marc

52

Tenchi Muyo? No. Too much sex for such an audience.

And to the poster whose name I can’t remember and am too lazy to look for:

I have no idea why Pokemon and its clones are so popular. Probably just because they’re cute and kids like them and the damned toys sell like hotcakes.

Dragonball Z is supposed to be a whole different series… when the episodes aren’t 16 minutes long due to frantic editing to sanitize the show for young American audiences. I’m not saying it’s good, just that it’s very different from what we’re seeing on TV.

53

Yeah, you’re right. I’m foggy on the dates of what was released when for Disney, but I was thinking more of the TV shows than the movies. Like the Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, etc. cartoons I watched as a kid, but they could be from 1930 and have been replayed for 60 years, heh. Comparing Peter Pan (a full blown movie production) with like, Speed Racer (a cheap TV series) isn’t really a fair comparison, you know? In comparing movies, you’d have to compare like, Ghost in the Shell or Akira with something done by Disney around the same time (101 Dalmations? I’m not sure how old GitS/Akira are). Most of the listed shows (Speed Racer, Kimba, Voltron, Robotech, and Starblazers) are (I haven’t seen Kimba or Starblazers, so I don’t know for sure about those) TV series. :slight_smile:

The half-hour shows (possibly even stuff as new as Tail Spin and Darkwing Duck, it’s been a few years since I’ve seen them so I could be wrong, and ignore all this if I am, heh) all used flat colors (like a beak is orange…whereas in anime you’d have orange, a dark orange for shadows, and a highlight as well). Once Batman: The Animated Series came out with actual shading, everyone seemed to pick it up from there (Gargoyles is the one that stands out most in my mind as helping start the big wave of “hey, let’s start shading”).

Again, I’m fairly foggy on the dates of all this, heh…Bugs Bunny and the other Warner Brothers shows used flat shading as well (quickly found a site that sells cels, and found a 1984 cel of Bugs/Fudd that use flat shading). They moved smoother than anime, but the time put into each cel was probably significantly less.

Now people are moving into airbrush shaded cartoons…bleh, I hope that doesn’t catch on too much. I can’t stand it, heh. I don’t have anything against flat shading, because the smoothness of the movement is a nice trade-off (it it was choppy like anime AND flat shaded, I’d be irritated…like Hammerman, heheh), but smoothness isn’t everything. :slight_smile:

  • Tsugumo (I think I’m using “flat shading” and “flat coloring” interchangably here, heh…I don’t know the real terms for it so I’m winging it)
54

I’d just like to chime in saying that comparing animation quality between movies and TV series is unfair. Movies have a far larger budget to play with when compared to actual screen time.

Pokemon is popular because of the target audience. It’s aimed at little kids. The characters and storylines are appealing to them, the colors are nice and bright, etc. Just because there are programs aimed at adults doesn’t mean all programs are.

On DBZ and Ranma. DBZ was never high art. The show was always dumb, in the original and the dub. Its appealing to young boys who watch that sort of thing. If ever I need a fix of random violence, a DBZ movie usually does the trick. Ranma 1/2 doesn’t take a brain surgeon to grasp either, but a little silliness every once in a while never killed anyone. Rumiko Takahashi is quite good at creating lovable characters, and Ranma demonstrates that well.

55

**

We probably watched the same Disney cartoons. A lot of those were made on the 30’s, 40’s, and maybe a few in the 50’s.

**

Well I did also compared Fantasia (1940) to Vampire Hunter D (1985) so it isn’t like I’m being completely unfair. If you know of any anime movies that came out in the 50’s I’d be interested in hearing about them.

**
101 Dalmations came out in 1961, Akira came out in 1987, and Ghost in the Shell came out in 1995. Now I’ll grant you that Akira and Ghost in the Shell were better animated then 101 Dalmations. They should be considering they’re made at least 26 years after 101 came out. Now if you want to look at recent movies Ghost in the Shell and Princess Mononoke did not equal the quality of animation found in Beauty and the Beasts, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, or even that new Atlantis one.

**

And yet Batman and Gargoyles looked better then any regular series anime I’ve ever seen. It even looks better then some of the OAVs like Neon Genesis Evangelion. Not only do they have that cool shading but the animation is more fluid. Of course I think those are all drawn by Koreans.

Marc

56

There was sex in Tenchi Muyo? :confused:

Sure there was a lot of lusting after Tenchi, but I don’t even there being gratuitous boobage…

57

[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by MGibson *
We probably watched the same Disney cartoons. A lot of those were made on the 30’s, 40’s, and maybe a few in the 50’s.

I did some hunting around and you’re right, heh…A better comparison would have been Beauty and the Beast and Ghost in the Shell (both released in 1991) or BatB and Akira (1988), and I think the smoothness of the animation is on the same general level in both (though I haven’t seen Akira/GitS in a while, I remember the facial expressions and such in Akira being every bit as smooth).

**

I’m not even sure if it existed in the 50s, heh…The general history says Disney inspired anime, so it would of course come later (and the first bit would be pretty crude). :slight_smile:

**

True, I’ll agree with that…BUT, look at the character designs. Comparing a drawing of Batman (totally simplified, with the only real “detail” being the bat symbol on his chest) with one of the mecha from Evangelion and then saying “well Batman moves smoother” is sort of the same as the flat-shading thing. Yeah, he moves smoother, but he also takes like 1/5th the time to draw because he’s got no details.

I mean, take Aladdin…he’s got a one color vest, one color pants, and a hat sometimes. Then take, say, one of the hardsuits from the original Bubblegum Crisis (just watched it the other day, so it’s fresh in my head, heh). BGC is nowhere near as smooth flowing, but the character designs are WAY more complex. That has to account for SOMETHING…If I take an hour and draw a generic yellow smiley face bouncing across the screen in, and you draw a smiley face wearing giant transforming armor carrying a huge detailed set of weapons, etc., there’s no way you could do as many frames in the same amount of time. :slight_smile:

Anyway, I’m not saying Disney bites or anything…it’s just that when “smoother equals better” is the general motto of a lot of people who hate anime, it’s totally disregarding all the other work that goes into anime that makes it appealing.

  • Tsugumo
58

Loaded question (in that I know much on the subject, so it’s really just a test):

What do you know about the history of fan-created projects, like parodies and music videos?

59

[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by Tsugumo *
**

This will be my last post in this forum on this subject. Not because you haven’t made good points and we’ve certainly kept it civil despite any disagreements we might have. I’m just concerned about coming off as someone who hates anime and I don’t really want to stray any farther from the OP then I already have. Uh, sorry Mr. Op for hijacking your thread. I will say this though, I am a fan of animation whether it comes from the United States or some other country.

**

I’ve got the first DVD for Neon Genesis Evangelion and I can’t honestly say that I’m impressed with the detail found on the mecha. In particular the bad guys reminded me a lot of Voltron’s old enemies but that’s another story. I do think it is something of a cop out to say that it takes 1/5th the time to draw Batman then it does the mecha. Especially since Batman was just a regular series and NGE was suppose to be an OAV. It seems to me that an OAV ought to have higher standards then a regular series.

Smoothness is a factor as is how the characters are drawn. But then I’ll take the way Batman is drawn in a still shot over the vast majority of anime series out there. On the other hand Batman has about 50 years of refinement vs. the average cartoon so maybe I’m not being fair.

Marc

And just so you don’t think I’m being completely unfair. Check out one of the 1st season Batman episodes vs. some of the later ones. The animation of Batman actaully improved dramatically over the years.

60

And I’d rather have a still frame from Evangelion hanging on my wall than the Mona Lisa. :slight_smile: I guess at the end of the day it all comes down to personal taste, heh…

(and just so this isn’t a super short post):

Didn’t even know they existed until a recent convention where a bunch of them were shown. I liked a lot of them, and looked around on the net to find there’s what appears to be a fairly large “community” devoted to them. Quite cool. :slight_smile:

  • Tsugumo