http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Girl_Who_Leapt_Through_Time_(2006_film)notsosavagemessiah said:
Everything You Know about Anime Is Wrong
- Thread starter FireAza
- Start date
I have found that I have seem to outgrow my fascination with anime, now that I am older i think most anime is crap, the only animes I still like anymore is fullmetal alchemist and ghost in the shell. after a while you start to realize that alot of anime really is all the same.
People ought to stop using the word altogether, unless they're speaking Japanese.Hitman Dread said:
アニメ is animation. If one wants to specify that one is talking about Japanese animation, it's easy enough to just say it's Japanese animation.
I'm working on it, personally. Old habits die hard, though.
Sturgeon's Law applies to everything. Just like movies or cartoons or TV shows or whatever, 90% of everything is s**t. the other 10% is worth dying for. For every Green-green we have Full Metal Alchemist, for every Highschool of the Dead we get a Full Metal Panic or Monster. Everything has its gems and turds is what im getting at heresnowplow said:
You just need to educate the ignorant "haters" to the good stuff, and if they still dont like it; whatever, ill just keep enjoying my anime while the watch CSI or football or whatever it is non-anime fans watch...*EDIT* I know people like HSOTD but I just get too wierded out with fanservice in a zombie Apocalypse anime. It just isn't intigrated in a way that makes sense. At least as far as im concerned */edit*
correct me if i'm wrong, but isn't the idea of archetypes to flesh out a story without exposition? I guess it could be argued that they are over-used in anime, but as often as not they are used specifically to subvert them with character development; something people forget exists when it comes to criticism. Creative use of cliche and genre tropes is the life-blood of creativity in a medium. Without these tropes familiarity and perspective are lost, but endlessly re-using them in the same way restricts a genre and leads to stagnation. To make somthing new and interesting, look at the implications of the tropes and pick them apart. For instance;look at the Madoka Magica anime, the sole purpose of that is the brutally deconstruct Magical Girl anime like Sailor-moon. To be blunt, love and friendship usually the most powerful tools and motivators in Magical Girl anime, will only get you killed or emotionally broken in Madoka. Anime is like written works in a way, the best ones are the series that twist those archetypes into something recognizable but out of place. Barring that, those series that make you forget about the archetypes are also a joy to watch.notsosavagemessiah said:
As for your commentary on Otaku, while you are correct about its connotations in Japan; language evolves right? In the west, Otaku has just become a term to describe anime fans. Most western Otaku know the Japanese connotation ,but, in America at least, its has become as meaningless as the terms 'nerd' or 'gamer' Here, its a neutral term; the language evolved. It is true that the term 'nerd' once held a negative connotation in America, now it just has no bite, it's even become a title held with some pride by those who claim it, just like 'Otaku'. therefore, the Japanese connotation holds no weight.
I for one do feel that anime is something special and unique amongst other genre's. I wont deny it its flaws, but its still a wonderful thing I love regardless; and isn't the point of being a true fan? To know and love it, flaws and all?
I have pretty much spelled it out for you already, it's that the ignorant can force you to stop what you enjoy. If you still don't get it then I'm sorry I cant make it much simpler than that.rob_simple said:
So if you still don't understand(not agree just understand) my explanation I will assume your ignoring my point while trying to force yours and will stop replying. If I have been arguing with you I apologize, I had thought you simply didn't understand what I was getting at but could, not could but wouldn't.
The man makes a good point. After all, if all it took to eliminate prejudice is a well-reasoned argument Dr. MLK might still be among us, and LGBTs would be getting married all across the US.SmashLovesTitanQuest said:I apologize, its obvious you spent quite some time writing this and enjoy anime quite a bit, and I have no problem with that. My first reply was unnecessarily scathing. So sorry, and allow me to clarify.FireAza said:Y'all didn't read the whole thing did ya? The last half was anything but a love letter and in my opinion, objective. Honestly, this is the kinda crap from the internet that I was talking about.SmashLovesTitanQuest said:
You might have a point about "8 of the 13 images you posted picture little kids" if they were depicted in a sexual way (in the case of the first image, she's wearing that to prevent static charge. Static charge = bad for computers. Yes, the person walking in on her is surprised) Japan does have a thing for youth, so yeah, many characters in anime are young. Also, I suspect you've gotten confused as to which characters are actually kids, and which are just drawn with childish proportions. In that case, there's four of those.
As to convincing, well, considering that in the entire history of the world, the number of times someone has convinced someone else to do a complete 180 on their beliefs has happened exactly ZERO times, I wasn't expecting much
What im saying is, this text isnt going to convince anyone he is wrong about anime (if he has certain prejudices against it). Really, it seems like you are preaching to the wrong choir. You seem intent on disproving some of the anime myths, for instance "Every anime features little kids". Now, I know thats not true, and I hardly watch any, but posting 8 images that feature little kids (or adults with childish proportions, same thing really) isnt doing much to prove a point.
So the question remains; why bother posting this? I guess you had fun writing it, so I wont hate. But you get my point. Thats why I would say this is more of a love letter to anime than anything else.
OP might be forgetting how human brains work. They won't fully process anything that doesn't stand out, and offensive things are what stand out most of all. So when people think about anime they probably are less likely to think about charming and cool stuff like My Neighbor Totoro and Gasaraki, and more likely to think about stuff like Strike Witches, where all the main characters are elementary-to-middle-school-aged girls who never wear pants...
Yeah. Kind of hard to overlook.
[Edit] Oh, and I almost forgot about Hentai. In spite of the fact that Hentai =/= Anime, the art styles are basically the same, and a lot of recent Anime releases are adaptations of Hentai games (see Fate Stay-Night). Given Hentai's (well-deserved) reputation, it's probably a big part of the reason Anime gets such a bad rap.
HOLY FUCK LOOK AT THAT WALL OF TEXT!!!!!!
i dont even read cracked articles that long!
can i get a TL;DR version of this?
i dont even read cracked articles that long!
can i get a TL;DR version of this?
As I've said before, just because a show has child characters, doesn't mean it's pedo material. The Simpsons has child main characters, does that mean The Simpsons is intended as pedo-bait? So do a lot of Disney movies, are Disney movies intended to be beat-off material? No, in all three cases, this idea is just stupid.SmashLovesTitanQuest said:
As I've said a million times, that's not the correct interpretation you're suppose to come away with. When I said "anime is a medium" I was implying... Oh screw it, I'm going to edit my OP.Hitman Dread said:
You'd prefer I wrote a shorter, numbered list version full of dick jokes?Jegsimmons said:
Don't worry, I've made it easy to read with lots of paragraphs, interesting language and broken the whole thing up with pictures, I've had other posters say this made it easier to read and it held their attention.Ah, good point, this probably comes from my love of the obscure and unique, which means I talk about things that may be difficult to access unless you know how. Not to worry, there's a number of ways to watch anime, outside of home video and TV, and they're legal to boot! CrunchyRoll [http://www.crunchyroll.com/], Funimation's YouTube channel [http://www.youtube.com/user/funimation?blend=1&ob=4] and, if you're based in Australia, Madman Entertainment [http://www.madman.com.au/videos/home] all have streaming anime available for viewing.Bhaalspawn said:
*EDIT* Edited my OP.
@Bhaalspawn
Going have to disagree with you on point#2. You say not knowing it's native language keeps it from showing emotion? Sure if you're totally deaf. Really you can't tell when someone is happy, sad or POed from hearing them in another language? Because presuming the voice actors aren't total crap or specifically playing a emotionless role it's very easy to tell how a person is feeling based on the tone of their voice. Obviously you need to read the subtitles to know why they feel that way but there's no way you shouldn't be able to get emotion from something just because it's in a foreign language.
As for the snack/drink thing that's not a very strong point, a minor inconvenience at best. Of course you can listen to something while it's playing in english/french/latin and in another room, but I'm sure you would enjoy it a hell of it lot more if you were right there watching it. And given the option why wouldn't you pause something until you were done with something as minor as getting a snack/drink. Finally since we covered emotion already why wouldn't you pause something when action's going on? I mean do you REALLY want to experience the action by ear when you can just pause it for a minute and then experience it fully?
You don't want to watch something that's in a language you don't understand, that's perfectly fine. Everyone has their things they don't like. But that doesn't mean it's a bad thing, I mean how many people watch foreign films every year and end up loving it? Just saying you should judge something specifically on the quality of it's work, not it's language. Who knows you might be missing out something great. Or it could be total crap, but you'll never know with a "outright refuse" mentality.
Going have to disagree with you on point#2. You say not knowing it's native language keeps it from showing emotion? Sure if you're totally deaf. Really you can't tell when someone is happy, sad or POed from hearing them in another language? Because presuming the voice actors aren't total crap or specifically playing a emotionless role it's very easy to tell how a person is feeling based on the tone of their voice. Obviously you need to read the subtitles to know why they feel that way but there's no way you shouldn't be able to get emotion from something just because it's in a foreign language.
As for the snack/drink thing that's not a very strong point, a minor inconvenience at best. Of course you can listen to something while it's playing in english/french/latin and in another room, but I'm sure you would enjoy it a hell of it lot more if you were right there watching it. And given the option why wouldn't you pause something until you were done with something as minor as getting a snack/drink. Finally since we covered emotion already why wouldn't you pause something when action's going on? I mean do you REALLY want to experience the action by ear when you can just pause it for a minute and then experience it fully?
You don't want to watch something that's in a language you don't understand, that's perfectly fine. Everyone has their things they don't like. But that doesn't mean it's a bad thing, I mean how many people watch foreign films every year and end up loving it? Just saying you should judge something specifically on the quality of it's work, not it's language. Who knows you might be missing out something great. Or it could be total crap, but you'll never know with a "outright refuse" mentality.
Well, if you believe the conpiracy theorists, Disney movies are full of evil and naughty messages.FireAza said:
Speaking of Disney and conspiracy theories, there's been a fair share of those related to Disney stealing from anime.
The classic one is that Disney stole the premise of The Lion King from Osamu Tezuka's Kimba The White Lion, which I first read about in Fredrick Schodt's Dreamland Japan. Schodt was a Tezuka junkie, so I'm not sure how unbiased his opinion was, but he made a convincing argument.
The other one I had was that Disney's Atlantis: The Lost Empire was a knockoff of Gainax's Nadia: The Secret of Blue Water. I can speak with a bit more authority on this one. Since Nadia is one of my favorite anime series of all time (I think it may be the best thing Hideaki Anno ever worked on. And yes, that includes Evangelion), I was interested in whether this theory had any legs.
Here are the similarites I found between the two:
-Both have a geeky, glasses wearing protagonist.
-Both take place in roughly the same time period.
-Both involve the lost city of Atlantis.
-Both have members of Atlantis' royal family as major characters, with the princess having the largest role.
-Both feature a powerful blue crystal that is the key to Atlantis' power.
And that's basically it. Kinda disappointing really.
I'm not sure I completely agree with what the OP said, but what I like about about anime is the variety. They will make just about anything if there is an audience for it, a lot of it "taboo" by both Japanese and American society standards. And that is something I hope the anime industry will never lose. Fuck the censors and "moral guardians", if you don't like it don't watch it.
As for western animation, I agree it's stuck in "ghettos", specially the "adult comedy" and "kids show" genre. You can tell the animators and writers on some shows "skirt the law" and try to get away with as much as they can because I suppose they are just plain bored with doing kids shows. An example would be Batman:The Animated Series, a lot of the plot lines probably would not be understandable by kids and are actually fairly dark. But as long as kids watch the show and buy the toys, and adults don't complain, the producers don't care. But nevertheless it hamstrings the writers a fair bit, for instance in Batman they can't show anyone getting killed which is why the Jokers has all those funny toys as they can't give him a real gun and have him shoot someone in the head!
In anime, the writers get much much more leeway, but at the cost of having a really limited budget and limited airing only late in the night.
As for western animation, I agree it's stuck in "ghettos", specially the "adult comedy" and "kids show" genre. You can tell the animators and writers on some shows "skirt the law" and try to get away with as much as they can because I suppose they are just plain bored with doing kids shows. An example would be Batman:The Animated Series, a lot of the plot lines probably would not be understandable by kids and are actually fairly dark. But as long as kids watch the show and buy the toys, and adults don't complain, the producers don't care. But nevertheless it hamstrings the writers a fair bit, for instance in Batman they can't show anyone getting killed which is why the Jokers has all those funny toys as they can't give him a real gun and have him shoot someone in the head!
In anime, the writers get much much more leeway, but at the cost of having a really limited budget and limited airing only late in the night.
It just takes practice really. When you get good at it, you barely notice the subtitles are there because you're sorta reading them out the corner of your eye, you're in no way focusing entirely on the bottom two inches of the screen. And if you watch enough stuff in Japanese, you'll pick up on common phrases, and won't need to rely on the subtitles to understand as much. Which makes things really interesting when you watch a subtitled movie in a language you're totally unfamiliar withBhaalspawn said:
But then again, I've been a speed reader my whole life, so that probably makes reading subtitles a lot easier. Also, it's at this point I'm annoyed that no one has put the "subtitles!? *flees in terror*" scene from Daria on YouTube
Kyoto Animation called, they don't take kindly to your words one bit. Also, they think you're a jerk and you smell funny.Bhaalspawn said:
As I pointed out in my OP, Japanese animation studios normally don't have the budget for high FPS animation (unlike most American animation studios who are bankrolled by multi-million dollar corporations like 20th Century Fox, most anime are produced out-of-pocket). But if you want quality anime, go watch a theatrical feature to see an example of anime with a big budget.
It was?Bhaalspawn said:
I'm a little surprised by that, since when CardCaptor Sakura became CardCaptors, Nelvana decided to show the episodes completely out of order making a tangled mess of the plot.