A theory on the current Animation Ghetto.

[ShogunGino]

Would you consider Panty and Stocking to be the anime version of the simpsons, family guy, etc.? It has the crude humor and lots of sex jokes, but it also has amazing animation and a style reminiscent of american cartoons.

Actually, Gainax was inspired to do that anime after looking at Drawn Together, and how much vile content was actually aired on American TV. Personally, I find Drawn Together to be probably the most hit and miss show I've ever seen. Half the time, the humor is well-timed and outrageous. The other half, it either goes too far over the line, or goes for the obvious cheap laugh.

I thought Panty and Stocking had a better hit rate per joke per episode. I was surprised at how much I enjoyed it. I look forward to Funimation's release of it here.

I've also heard rumors that Gainax even had Gendy Tartakovsky come in as part of the creative team, but I'm not sure that actually happened. Anyway, the art looks more like Craig McKracken than Gendy.

 

[Lovely Mixture]

Good to see that Madhouse is getting some recognition here, I consider them severely underrated.

Would you consider Panty and Stocking to be the anime version of the simpsons, family guy, etc.? It has the crude humor and lots of sex jokes, but it also has amazing animation and a style reminiscent of american cartoons.

I'm under the impression that PSG is Gainax's experiment at emulating American cartoons in both animation and humor, and they succeeded almost too well so to speak (mind you, I don't hold anything against the show for this).

 

[Alterego-X]

Gone are the days of Akira and Ghost in the Shell. Now it's all cheaply animated, teenage-pandering fluff.

Actually, I don't think that anime is becoming less mature.
First of all, it's not exactly true that Anime was ever outside the ghetto. They also have their own dismissive attitudes about animation in the mainstream.

It's just more similar to the american comic book ghetto: Instead of saying that mature animation should not exist at all, they allow it to exist, but like Marvel and DC comics, they are limiting it to the "obsessive nerds living in their parents' basements" types instead of a mainstream population of millions, with only a few exceptions.

Even a decade ago, the "otaku" stereotype already existed, the only reason why some classic anime look exceptionally mature to us, is because at the time, the industry happened to be going through a "let's make everything look like an american action movie, with lots of guns, stubbled badasses, and hot seductive women" phase, that resonated with westerners as very mainstream, even though for them, that was just a fad, a deviation from default Japanese interests.

Modern anime rarely has gun violence, and it has more immature looking character designs, and cuteness, but cuteness is pretty mainstream in Japan, even with adults and with males, the fact that modern anime looks that way isn't actually a sign that it's now made for kids, it's made for the same target audience as it used to be.

 

[Casual Shinji]

Gone are the days of Akira and Ghost in the Shell. Now it's all cheaply animated, teenage-pandering fluff.

Actually, I don't think that anime is becoming less mature.
First of all, it's not exactly true that Anime was ever outside the ghetto. They also have their own dismissive attitudes about animation in the mainstream.

It's just more similar to the american comic book ghetto: Instead of saying that mature animation should not exist at all, they allow it to exist, but like Marvel and DC comics, they are limiting it to the "obsessive nerds living in their parents' basements" types instead of a mainstream population of millions, with only a few exceptions.

Even a decade ago, the "otaku" stereotype already existed, the only reason why some classic anime look exceptionally mature to us, is because at the time, the industry happened to be going through a "let's make everything look like an american action movie, with lots of guns, stubbled badasses, and hot seductive women" phase, that resonated with westerners as very mainstream, even though for them, that was just a fad, a deviation from default Japanese interests.

Modern anime rarely has gun violence, and it has more immature looking character designs, and cuteness, but cuteness is pretty mainstream in Japan, even with adults and with males, the fact that modern anime looks that way isn't actually a sign that it's now made for kids, it's made for the same target audience as it used to be.

Teenage-pandering fluff anime has been present throughout the 80's and 90's, with Dragon Ball and Sailor Moon, but now that's all anime seems to be.

And I wouldn't call Akira and Ghost in the Shell anime that's marketed towards the American action movie lovers, far from it. The Street Fighter 2 anime, sure, but not these two films. Next you're going to tell me that Robot Carnaval, Neo Tokyo Labyrinth, and Memories were part of the "let's make everything look like an American action movie" phase, too.

These movies were made with one idea in mind; Let's make some groundbreaking animated splendour. And this mentality seems to fucking vanished from Japan.

 

[Alterego-X]

Teenage-pandering fluff anime has been present throughout the 80's and 90's, with Dragon Ball and Sailor Moon, but now that's all anime seems to be.

That can be disproved just by looking at the surrently running Spring 2012 TV season. There are barely any mainstream shonen and shoujo cartoons, it's full of late night otaku-anime, aimed at adults, and in terms of profitability, entirely reliant on selling ridiculously expensive disks for collectors.

Sakamichi No Apollon, Nazo no Kanojo X, Acchi Kocchi, Jormungand, are all based on Josei or Seinen manga. And these are just the ones from the top of my head that are manga adaptations, so we can OFFICIALLY state that they are aimed at adults. As I said, a bunch of others are also aimed at them, as it can be inferred from their business model.

Sure, some of these are comical, or lighthearted, but this has nothing to do with maturity. It's just a different trend. You would be resorting to stereotypes if you say that only grimdark badassery is mature.

And what does "animated splendour" even mean? If you are talking about visual quality, we have Studio SHAFT's abstract surrealism, or KyoAni's gorgeous backround sceneries.

 

[The_Waspman]

The secret to good CGI is a good animation director and/or visual effects designer. People like Randy Cook (Lord of the Rings) and John Dykstra (Spider-Man 2).

I never bothered watching The Thing prequel, but if you've seen Slither you'll see it's possible to make a grisly, gorey creature film using CGI. You just need to know when to use it and when not. A lot of CGI in movies today feels stagnant and lacks a... "smell", if you know what I mean.

The other thing about CGI is that we as an audience have grown completely accustomed to it now. It doesn't dazzle us anymore like it used to in the days of Jurassic Park. And for me, an effective special effect is one that keeps me guessing "How did they do that?"

The thing with...well, The Thing, is that the best of the best worked on that movie. Even then, the effects had to be handled with enough care so that they didn't become static and hokey. There are two scenes in particular when I think the lost that: a crane shot of the Thing-dog fully bloated in which near the end of the shot, it stopped really moving well, and in an instant, it looked more to me like it had cheap animatronics in it. The other is when the one guy in the chair goes Thing because his blood is burned and he gobbles down another guy. The flopping dummy they used for the guy being eating completely destroyed that scene, for me.

I grew up in the 90's and was exposed to 2D, stop-motion, practical effects, and the advent of widespread CGI, so I guess I became sorta desensitized to the idea of effects. Absolutely no effects are what I would consider "convincing". I always know its an effect, but I never let it get in the way of enjoying the movie unless I find the effects to be poorly executed.

For me, its all about how the effects interact with the actors and environments. If the world I'm watching isn't convinced that the effects are there, then neither am I. Interaction is what I think is the key. Ex: The fight between Sinbad and the Harryhausen skeleton in the first Sinbad movie(I believe) is so well rehearsed that the actor knew how to fight an invisible opponent. With the stop-motion added later, I think the fight is wonderful(though I thought the music sucked). Then we get to Jason and the Argonauts and its celebrated multi-skeleton fight...I honestly think half the live actors really phoned it in. Half of them lack the intensity and focus when it comes to sword fighting and the animation far upstages them. I was not convinced that several of those people were fighting reanimated skeletons.

I guess all I'm saying is that any effects have be just as well crafted as the other. CG or not. I, for one, am used to CG. But clearly, others aren't.

Getting a little off topic here, I know, but I agree that there are practical elements to the '82 thing that don't work well (the dummy thrashing scene being a prime example). I do beleive that CGi is very good for certain things. Inanimate objects for example. It is very good at producing cars, space ships, things like that, unfortunately, these are the things that are just as easily produced practically. Where CGI fails to stand up (in the vast majority of cases anyway) is producing flesh and blood creautres. There is just something about the movement, the way the flash/hair/whatever moves that just fails to convince.

As an example, as terrible as the film was, the first of Michael Bay's Transformers movies did a very good job at making the robots in the film at least feel real. And yet it boggles my mind that it lost the visual effects oscar to the vastly inferior The Golden Compass with the terrible cgi talking animals, none of which looked real in the slightest.

Visual Effects for me is one of those thankless jobs to work in, much like editing. The degree of success of your work is based entirely upon how little people notice it. As a digital artist, if the audience doesn't notice your work, then it is a success. Likewise with editing, if you draw so much attention to it (as a lot fo films do nowadays) then you've failed. This is one of the (many many) issues I have with Sucker Punch

Back On Topic, I'm not entirely against CG animation. For one thing, despite its flaws (mainly with the script) I thought Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within was a great technical accomplishment. Maybe because it was entirely CGI, but it is one of the few CG films I've seen where elements at least looked live action (maybe not so much with the facial animation, but thats always going to be a problem, isn't it?). Similarly, I also quite enjoyed the cg version of Appleseed (again though, not because of the godawful script) and probably to a greater extent Vexille. Maybe because they (like most video games now) used motion capture, so while it may not be on the actual screen, there is an element of live action in there.

 

[uneek]

There's finally a topic I'm interested in, and I don't know how to respond.

 

[Marik2]

And action cartoons are aimed almost exclusively at children. Anime is the only action market that dares to aim at adults. Part of the reason why I like FMA and FMA Brotherhood so much is that they remind me of Saturday Morning Cartoons I used to watch as a kid (fuckin' Jackie Chan Adventures all up in your shit, boy), except it deals with themes and motifs definitely not for kids. And you know what? Kids today love FMA and FMA Brotherhood because they're exactly like their SMC's except they're not cheesy and stupid.

OH HELL YEAH

Fucking loved that cartoon, I really need to get back finishing the last season

 

[uneek]

I am confused, sir. Can you help me elaborate how does the ghetto correlate with the idea that Western animations are for kids? I understand the gist of the article, but I don't see the connection with the ghetto.

It's a figure of speech. If something is in the "x Ghetto" it's... well, not doing so well.

You see, a ghetto is where they place oppressed people to live among themselves separate from the rest of the world. That's kind of where animation is. A "ghetto" where only kids and there families can enjoy them and not just regular adults. The ghetto analogy works because just like there are those who come from the ghetto and become smart, successful people without making that much difference to his situation, there have been few animated works that have gained respect for their capability to be mature.

 

[SilverBullets000]

This thread is awesome.
A lot of people have said this already, but we're slowly getting out of the ghetto ourselves. While stuff like American Dad and South Park are just comedies that pander to lower denominators (not lowest, per say. South Park actually talks about heavy stuff sometimes), they do actually help push the idea that cartoons aren't just for children.
Meanwhile, things like MLP and Adventure Time shows that even children's programing can be enjoyed by adults too.
Shows like Young Justice and Avatar show that action cartoons can have over-arching plots without being confusing for new members (same for Spectacular Spiderman...too bad they cancelled that). They also have great quality put into them as well.
So, really, the only thing we're lacking is adult programs that are like Young Justice and Avatar. If we get something like that, with good quality, then we'll pretty much have come full circle.

 

[SachielOne]

You have to remember that entertainment is a business. While you can make a smart, intelligent, animated show, that show is probably not going to sell a whole lot of merchandise beyond the DVD collections. If you take that same animation team and make some crappy (yet popular) kids show, on the other hand, you can make a fortune by licensing out the rights to make action figures, clothing, and other products. From a money standpoint, it's unfortunately kind of a no-brainer.

 

[LilithSlave]

Remember the 90s, "anime is animation, but for adults! Don't call it a cartoon! It's got action, blood, guts, and cursing... adult things!" in it. Ah, being a teenager in the 90s.

Despite the fact that anime like Trigun that were used as an example of this were designed primarily for a Western audience. Meanwhile, all the anime otaku nowadays, me included, are fawning over anime like Nichijou. Or basically, Slice of Life comedy anime which are like a Japanese counterpart to adult comedies 90s kids decried about adult Western animation. Only cuter and more Japanese.

Admittedly, too much of the animation in the West that is aimed at adults, is comedy. It's kind of like how too many Western video games star macho dudes who shoot things up. It was a pretty nice idea to have this raunchy social commentary show with purposely ugly characters a while back. But that was over a decade ago. The Simpson's wore it dry as far as I'm concerned. Now that we've got all these Simpsons clones like South Park, Family Guy, American Dad, and so forth, it's a really, really old card that I think needs a break. Though that's not just an adult thing, I also agree with the mentality that animation, and American animation in particular, needs more animation with drama, if just to go along with comedy.

I like slice of life comedies with Japan because they're cute, and because I'm used to seeing drama and action in anime and want a break. And just want to laugh. With Western animation, I'm sick of all the comedy. There's well done comedy, in my opinion, like Adventure Time and The Mighty B!. But some drama would definitely be refreshing.

Oh, yes, ironically, I like the kids comedy coming out of the West rather than the adult comedy. I never liked The Simpsons, and things like Family Guy rather annoy me, too. I did like the Oblongs, though. I'm such a hipster, lol.