Honestly, you make a fair point. I assume you're referring to the works of Satoshi Kon, Isao Takahata, and Chiaki Konaka. They have made some rather powerful, avante garde films and series. I should clarify, when I was talking about anime, I wasn't really talking about them. I was criticizing things like Gurren Lagann, Kill La Kill, and Naruto. Basically, "shonen."
Gurren Lagann and KlK isn't really shonen but yeah Naruto is plagued by fiillers and lots of shonen tropes. It's fine but kind of an entry-level show. The other two are more about I guess the over the top spectacle than the story or character development as well. You watch those to see huge robots throwing galaxies like they're shuriken, not for the char development.
Kill La Kill is good show. It's on a whole another caliber when comparing the shounen genre. Especially most of today's shounen
KLK & Gurren Lagaan have character development. More so the former, but both they both do. I 'd say KLK is the better due to the characters and better ending. GL had sh#tty ending, that makes the series not worth watching again.
Gurren Lagann came to me at a time I was at my lowest, and inspired me with characters who never gave up on themselves or others, with words I'll never forget, and a message that is one of the few things that keeps me intact on the inside. Is the show kinda silly? Yup. Is it fanservicey? Oh yeah. Does it have some filler? It does. Is it over the top levels of batshit stupid? Oh, hell yeah. But is it powerful, with a strong message behind it? 100%.
Oof, that's a tough one for me to accept, though! As far as the ending thing goes. The characters is a different story.
So, not that different from Western games then. Because games' primary audience are the young.
If you want, you can pm me about KLK & GL. We have talked about this before on V1. Where on the forum, I don't remember, but it's most likely somewhere on the off topic section.
I didn't say they don't have char growth. I said they're not ABOUT it as much as they're about the epic action scenes. And yeah I did say they're not shonen level with their char growth as well.
Been there, done that. Didn't fix the problems I actually had with the ending of the show. Thanks for trying to lift my spirits.
I don't feel that expecting a genre to change when moving from 2D to 3D is setting my expectations way too high. JRPGs are sorta akin to like 90% of shooters still being twin stick shooters. I'm not saying twin stick shooters have no place but the vast majority of the genre still being them wouldn't be a good thing and the shooter genre would be far less popular than it currently is. And I literally just bought Hong Kong Massacre as it was on sale last week.
Cage does put in role-playing as seen here. It isn't about story quality (that's subjective), it's about why do JRPGs have the same fixed story as say a Batman game has. There's nothing inherently wrong with that but don't call it an RPG if the story and characters are completely set-in-stone. If the most important part of a JRPG is storytelling then why is the majority of my time spent in the game walking 5 steps and being thrown into a battle screen when I'm trying to get to the next story point? What's the narrative or thematic reason why the vast majority of JRPGs held on to random battles? They are not as mechanically rich as many Western counterparts, where's the systemic game elements at? Why isn't there a JRPG that uses 1st or 3rd-person shooting for example? There's reasons why the genre isn't as popular as other genres. There's a reason why Kickstarted games sell better than an RPG published by Square (that isn't a HUGE franchise).
I literally have the Platinum trophy for Resonance of Fate.
Anime isn't a medium. If it's a manga, it's in the comic book medium. If it's a TV show, it's in the TV show medium. If it's a movie, it's in the movie medium.
Ahem: The Last of Us is literally just post-apocalypse Lone Wolf and Cub. A Japanese series. One that started as a manga. It has so many imitators over the decades you could just throw a dart and find one. Downplaying a culture's storytelling methods and mediums is not okay. Ever
Cool, you're a fan of Resonance of Fate.
The chief influence on The Last of Us was The Road, a post apocalyptic novel about a father travelling across the country with his child. It's a respected part of the western canon.
Anime is a medium in the sense of it having unique anime-specific genres of it. Whereas shonen is not just anime, it's a GENRE of anime. If you wish to make the distinction of anime itself being a genre, then it also having genres doesn't make sense. So when someone is using terms like shonen, the functional way of comprehending anime is as though it's a medium.
The 86 year old country man born in the 1930s was chiefly influenced by a japanese comic book that came out when he was in his 40s? And Mad max too? I'm gonna need some sources there chief.
I don't think it was directly influenced as much as there being a zeitgeist they both tapped into. Kinda like how the lion king accidentally was ripping off plot points from kimba the white lion which was made in the 50s in Japan without the creators actually even knowing that anime existed.
Well, in the case of The Road, I don't think there's any connection at all. Lone Wolf didn't invent the idea of an old person and a young person walking down the road.
I repeat: dismissal of any medium or genre, especially ones associated with other countries and cultures, is not okay. And saying "Oh, but I like -insert creator everyone knows here-" is not somehow proof of not being problematic.
I'm providing reasons for why JRPGs aren't as popular as other genres because apparently they had to be saved and were saved or whatever. There's quite a few genre conventions that quite a lot of people don't like including random battles and grinding. Aiddon said the genre is about storytelling yet those 2 things literally keep you from the story. If the game isn't entertaining to play, why should anyone play it when you can just watch the story on Youtube? Gameplay has to grow and evolve as doing the same thing over and over again always has diminishing returns. This video perfectly encapsulates why the Divinity series has done so much better than the Pillars series; Pillars only tried to recreate Baldur's Gate while Divinity improved upon it. The JRPG genre intentionally stays the same a lot of the time.
Anime is not a medium (just look up the definition of anime or medium). Anime has all the genres of anything else. Ghost in the Shell is sci-fi for example. Excel Saga is a parody. We have several other things that go straight to DVD/Blu-ray from DC animated movies to Stephen Seagal movies. We have shows that release on a website like Dr. Horrible or Reb vs Blue. There's plenty of comics that aren't superhero comics. I could probably say the typical Japanese comic is shonen (I could be wrong but it seems pretty damn popular). How is shonen literally only a genre that anime does? How is Kamen Rider or Power Rangers not a shonen? How is Teen Titans or Ninja Turtles not a shonen?
