I never really hear a lot of talk about anime and manga on this website. That I can remember, at least.
I want to know what you guys think of japanese animation and comics, if you've ever watched or read any and what kind interests you.
Posted by Outdoor Miner on :
That covers a lot of ground.
I like a lot of it, and about the only things I won't try anymore are the real hardcore titles like LA Blue Girl or Legend of the Overfiend.
Posted by Sarcasm Kid on :
What was the first one you ever saw?
Posted by Outdoor Miner on :
Star Blazers, but I didn't know it was "anime".
The first series I saw once I knew a little more about anime was 3X3 Eyes. It made me a fan.
How about yourself?
Posted by Sarcasm Kid on :
Speed Racer and Voltron, and then Sailor Moon when it first aired on Toonami. Needless to say I'm a big Sailor Moon fan.
Posted by Outdoor Miner on :
Speed Racer ran about the same time as Star Blazers in my neck of the woods. They were both pretty intense shows compared to most of the kiddie fare at the time.
When Sailor Moon came over, it ran at some ridiculously early hour. No way was it ever going to reach an audience that way.
Posted by Sarcasm Kid on :
I only watched Speed Racer and Voltron because the only channels I "knew" back then was Cartoon Network and Nickelodeon, and at the time those two played it was either them or Are You Afraid of the Dark?, which, me being very little, scared me.
I've seen both the dub and the original Japanese version of Sailor Moon, and I've bought most of the manga. They never dubbed the final season, Sailor Stars, because three of the new heroines, the Sailor Starlights, masqueraded as men. They literally were teenage boys when they didn't transform. In the manga they just dressed like boys to hide their identities.
There was two villains on that show who were both homosexual males in the original anime. Zoisite of the Dark Kingdom during the first season, and FishEye of the Amazon Trio, part of the Dead Moon Circus in season four. Zoisite was in an open relationship with another villain, Kunzite, and FishEye would usually target men and dress like a woman (He really could pass for one). In the dubbed version, the two were both turned into women because they were effeminate.
There was one episode, however, where FishEye was able to pass off as a cross-dressing male when his target was a fashion designer (who might have been gay himself, it was never stated). There was a scene where he ripped off his shirt to reveal his male chest. In the dub, they cut that scene out, but on the uncut videos and DVDs they kept it, only "she" claimed she wasn't like other "women".
Posted by Sarcasm Kid on :
Of course, all of the anime that I like that I can think of right now would be...
Sailor Moon, Revolutionary Girl Utena, Gundam Wing, Tenchi Muyo, Tenchi Universe, Tenchi in Tokyo, Miyuki-Chan in Wonderland, Bubblegum Crisis, Urusei Yatsura, Maison Ikkoku, Ranma 1/2, Blue Seed, Devil Hunter Yohko, Kimagure Orange Road, Fullmetal Alchemist, Sukeban Deka, G Gundam, the BlackJack OVA, Dirty Pair, Golden Boy
Posted by profh0011 on :
Cartoons from Japan! My first...
8TH MAN
We got our first-ever COLOR tv with UHF channels on Valentine's Day, 1966. Imagine, doubling the number of channels, and suddenly, SOME of the shows were in color. At 5 PM, Philly's Channel 17 was running this cool show that was both intense AND funny (often at the same time), about a private eye who'd been MURDERED, and his memories transferred into a ROBOT body. He could also change his appearance (via hologram? I was never sure of the technique) and could masquerade as his former human self. The only people who knew his secret were Police Chief Fumblethumbs (you can tell by that name the show had a sense of humor) and his creator, Professor Genius.
The show VANISHED from the airwaves around here when B&W shows fell out of favor around 1970... a real tragedy. 2 decades later, I got ahold of about 10 episodes via my video store, and was stunned that it was EVERY BIT AS GOOD as I remembered it! That combo of film noir intensity and slapstick comedy side-by-side really made a great balance.
What I still don't get is the opening and closing credits, done in a completely different animation style than the rest of the show! I guess some US studio must have done them. It tends to be jarring, and sometimes I just wanna fast-forward over them to get to the stories.
Posted by Sarcasm Kid on :
I think my dad remembers Gigantor and Astro Boy. I once recorded an episode of Gigantor on the DVR for him one Christmas. But he never watched it.
Posted by Kid Charlemagne on :
I've only watched a few anime so far, but my favorites are: Lucky Star, Azumanga Daioh, K-On, Karin, Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya, Strawberry Panic.
Also the original OVA version of Today In Class 5-2. I haven't seen the later version yet.
Posted by Sarcasm Kid on :
I've seen a couple of episodes of Lucky Star, about the beginning of the first episode of Azumanga Daioh, but that's it.
I forgot to list Project A-Ko and Gun Smith Cats.
Posted by Kid Charlemagne on :
I forgot Love Hina.
Posted by Sarcasm Kid on :
I borrowed the first volume of that from the library but never read it.
Posted by Blacula on :
I used to really like the Astro Boy, Speed Racer and Kimba the White Lion cartoons when I was young.
Haven't gotten into much anime since I've gotten older but I did think the few episodes I saw of Neon Genesis Evangelion were really impressive and have it on my To Do List to watch that whole series in order one day.
Movies-wise, I think the only one I've seen is Spirited Away and though I did like it, I wouldn't say I'm in a rush to see many more.
I never read the comics.
Posted by Sarcasm Kid on :
The manga can sometimes differ drastically from the anime.
In Sailor Moon, in order to catch up to the manga, they created an entire filler arc which dominated the first half of the second season. And the fifth season lacked most of the source material from the comic.
Revolutionary Girl Utena, the anime, was much more metaphysical and surreal than the manga. It was like it was written by Grant Morrison at certain times.
Bubblegum Crisis didn't have a manga.
Posted by Ramble Damsel on :
The original Gundam trilogy of movies is excellent. I've seen some of the subsequent incarnations of Gundam, and while they've gotten more technically sophisticated, I don't think any of them are as inspired as the original.
Posted by Sarcasm Kid on :
Which ones were those.
Posted by Ramble Damsel on :
quote:Originally posted by profh0011: Cartoons from Japan! My first...
8TH MAN
The show VANISHED from the airwaves around here when B&W shows fell out of favor around 1970... a real tragedy.
It might not have helped nationally that he recharged his body by smoking "nuclear isotope cigarettes", but I wonder if those parts made it to the states.
There was a sequel animated miniseries some years called 8 Man After, featuring a new hero. It kept the intensity but lost the humor. Well, the intentional humor.
Posted by Sarcasm Kid on :
"Nuclear isotope cigarettes"? I love Japan.
Posted by Candle on :
I don't know the difference between anime and manga. I remember Speed Racer but I didn't really watch it very much. Were the Hurculoids or Thundar or Thunder Cats Japanese? I watched the Hurculoids(sp) as a kid and my boys watched the other two and I watched with them.
I watched Pokemon, Yugio and Battle something Z with my older grandkids. I played Pokemon with the boy and just gave all of my original Nintendo 64 and yellow, red, blue, gold, silver and crystal to my 4 little grand daughters (about killed me). Yugio was big with Dorian, too. I watche Sailor Moon with one of my older Gran girl, Dorian's sister.
On my own, I've seen and/or read Akira, Nausicaa (love), Princess Mononoki(sp), Crying Freeman, Tank Girl, Dirty Pair, Battle Angel and a number of shows on Toonami.
What's the show with the monkish kids who all fight each other? I know there's a number of them but this was very teenish.
Anyway, my latest favorite has been Avatar, the Last Air Bender. That, Nausicaa and Pokemon are probably my 3 favorites.
[ September 09, 2010, 01:31 AM: Message edited by: Candle ]
Posted by Sarcasm Kid on :
Anime's the cartoons. Manga is the comic.
No, I believe the Herculoids, Thundar, and Thunder Cats are American. I remember the Herculoids from Cartoon Network when I was little.
I still have Pokemon Blue, I also had a guide but I don't remember where it is. I think I lost it, which sucks because I tried replaying it a couple of years ago and made a mistake.
My brother loves the Miyazaki movies, although the only two he owns are Spirited Away and Howl's Moving Castle (he even has the book). We used to have Little Nemo in Slumberland and Kiki's Delivery Service on tape but we gave them away.
I think you mean Xiaolin Showdown, but that was an American cartoon as well.
Posted by Outdoor Miner on :
quote:Originally posted by Sarcasm Kid: My brother loves the Miyazaki movies,
So do I.
Even lesser Miyazaki (like, sadly, the recent Ponyo)is well worth looking into.
Posted by Sarcasm Kid on :
I saw some of Nausicaa on TV, but not all of it, but I did see all of Castle of Cagliostro (did I spell it right?).
Posted by Outdoor Miner on :
You did spell it right.
That movie is so much fun I can't believe they didn't hand Miyazaki the Lupin 111 franchise.
Posted by Sarcasm Kid on :
I saw some of the Lupin episodes that they showed on Adult Swim.
Posted by profh0011 on :
THE HERCULOIDS (think "Johnny Weismuller Tarzan in space") was created by Alex Toth for Hanna-Barbera, just like SPACE GHOST (think "Batman in space") the year before.
THUNDARR THE BARBARIAN (think "Kamandi all grown up", heh) was created by Steve Gerber, Alex Toth, and Jack Kirby for Ruby-Spears, a studio comprised of animators who'd left Hanna-Barbera and were trying to do something better. In this case, Toth designed the 3 main characters, but Jack Kirby designed EVERYTHING ELSE. The entire show looks, feels, read and even SOUNDS like a Kirby comic (heh). It feels more to me like a Kirby comic than ANY cartoons that were ever based on Kirby comics. Maybe because he was actually working on the show.
Posted by Arachne on :
What, no Gatchaman fans? I loved it as Battle of the Planets as a kid, even though they butchered it. (Seriously. They didn't even translated it. They chopped out the violent scenes then made up a story to go with the rest of the animation and added in the most annoying robot ever to try and explain what didn't make sense.)
Posted by Sarcasm Kid on :
I never saw that, but I did see Voltron.
Posted by Sarcasm Kid on :
So, which anime had the best "Monsters of the Day"? I think Sailor Moon. What do you guys think?
Posted by Outdoor Miner on :
For the monsters, I prefer the tokusatsu stuff like Ultraman and Kamen Rider.
Some of the anime shows do OK, though. What I've seen from Bleach and D. Gray-Man looks impressive.
Posted by Sarcasm Kid on :
I absolutely love one of the opening themes for D. Gray-Man, but Bleach... did you know the artist for the comic is so lazy as to drawing backgrounds that he gave all the characters the ability to fly so they can fight in the sky?
Posted by Sarcasm Kid on :
Well, I chose the monsters in Sailor Moon because they're are different varieties of them. Youma, Cardians, Droids, Daimons, Lemures, and Phages.
Posted by Outdoor Miner on :
quote:Originally posted by Sarcasm Kid: I absolutely love one of the opening themes for D. Gray-Man, but Bleach... did you know the artist for the comic is so lazy as to drawing backgrounds that he gave all the characters the ability to fly so they can fight in the sky?
That's kinda clever, actually.
Certainly doesn't seem to have hurt the series' popularity.
Posted by Sarcasm Kid on :
I know, still, it's the same reason I fell out of Pokemon and Yu-Gi-Oh, it repeats. The main characters have to fight people to gain the "ultimate" battle move, and then they do it again and again and again...
Posted by Outdoor Miner on :
quote:Originally posted by Sarcasm Kid: I know, still, it's the same reason I fell out of Pokemon and Yu-Gi-Oh, it repeats. The main characters have to fight people to gain the "ultimate" battle move, and then they do it again and again and again...
Oh yeah.
Nobody hits the repeat button like Japan. If the story isn't reset so the characters have to essentially start over again, you get something like the Super Sentai franchise which reboots the same basic formula every year.
It can still be fun, though, when done well.
Posted by Sarcasm Kid on :
At least with Sailor Moon and Revolutionary Girl Utena they had the good sense to END it.
Sure, Sailor Moon might have been repetitive, but each season explored and fully explained the history behind her abilities, her past and her ultimate future as the strongest Sailor Senshi, and the brightest light of the universe, whereas Bleach and Pokemon just keeps adding more and more, it never stops.
In Revolutionary Girl Utena, there was only ONE power, and while at the end it didn't recreate the Earth or destroy the major villain, it did something much more important.
Posted by Sarcasm Kid on :
Although with most of Rumiko Takahashi's works, they do go on for a while, but she does keep it interesting, especially the music.
One Pound Gospel and Mermaid Saga were both shorter than most of her works... One Pound Gospel went on hiatus for at least ten years.
Maison Ikkoku, while long, was appropriate for it's length as real time actually passed.
Posted by Arachne on :
I didn't think to mention this earlier but the site crunchyroll.com offers free, legal streaming of a bunch of anime, including Skip Beat which is my favourite manga. The stuff there isn't super popular, but it covers a lot of genres and has some old classics like Captain Harlock and Black Jack, that I'm going to get around to watching one of these days.
Posted by Sarcasm Kid on :
quote:Originally posted by Sarcasm Kid: I think you mean Xiaolin Showdown, but that was an American cartoon as well.
No, that's a kiddy version. The one I'm thinking of is real people illustrated, sort of. I'll think of it, someday. The title is the main boy's name, a blonde with a white tie around his head.
Has anyone mentioned one of the original series to come from Japan, the one with the space submarine and all of the fighter pilots and the older, gray bearded captain? It was on for quite awhile and very popular.
The thing about Pokemon is that it just doesn't repeat, he goes to a different region, with mostly different people and mostly new pokemon. This year's have been fairly inventive, with new types of pokemon contests and some actual growth in the main characters, Brock, anyway. Yugio grew up, too and has a very dark and involved story.
The Z story I mentioned was DragonBall Z. Dorian loved that show. I still have a couple of his action figures for that show, from McDonalds, I think.
Outdoor Miner - thanks for all of that wonderful info!
Posted by Sarcasm Kid on :
Hmm... a space submarine... something similar comes to mind. Nadia: The Mystery of Blue Water.
The original Yu-Gi-Oh wasn't about the card game. The style was that each episode had this incredibly cruel or mean person doing something to Yugi and his friends. The Millennium Puzzle he wore would bring out Dark Yugi in order to teach that person a lesson with a "shadow game", and usually the person would try to cheat but still lose. Example:
This beautiful but mean teacher with a habit of enforcing strict and stupid rules. Dark Yugi and herself had to play a game of putting a broken mirror back together, but they had to wear blindfolds and gloves. The teacher takes off her blindfold and puts the mirror together. Her punishment: Her beautiful face crumbles like a puzzle and reveals what she looks like on the inside, a withered old hag. From that point, she has to put on heavy amounts of make-up to look like her old self, and any time she tries to act mean or cruel, her face will crack.
Posted by ActorLad on :
I'm surprised I didn't seen this thread earlier as I'm a huge fan of various manga/anime series.
>Has anyone mentioned one of the original series to come from Japan, the one with the space submarine and all of the fighter pilots and the older, gray bearded captain? It was on for quite awhile and very popular.
Candle your probably thinking of Star Blazers, which was based on the series Space Battleship Yamato, one of Leiji Matsumoto's most famous works.
As for the repetitiveness of various manga and anime it's hardly as if american comics and animation (as well as other countries) aren't guilty of that quite often themselves. We as LOSH fans should especially be keenly aware of that fact.
Posted by profh0011 on :
The 2nd Japanese cartoon I ever saw, I ran across the SAME day as my first... ASTRO BOY. Once again, I tuned in in mid-episode, but it caught my attention and grabbed me and wouldn't let go. For years, I used to watch it over and over. Unlike 8TH MAN, I did manage to see the very 1st episode once... only once. (Until about 3 years ago, when I tuned it in about a 1/3rd of the way in, and couldn't believe someone was running it, it hadn't been seen in Philly since 1970 at the latest.)
A scientist's young son is killed in a car crash. In a fit of madness, he gets all his colleagues to help him on a new project... building the most advanced ROBOT ever created, and making it in the IMAGE of his DEAD son. At first he's overjoyed, it's like his son is alive again! But the man's INSANITY tragically shows thru when he becomes annoyed-- then enraged-- by the fact that his "son" is NOT GROWING. He's created this WONDERFUL being-- a robot who actually thinks and HAS FEELINGS like a real person-- but because he's "not real"-- he eventually can't stand the sight of him, and (GASP!) sells him to a CIRCUS. I dunno about you, but this strikes me somehow as even more tragic than the origin of 8TH MAN. (I'm actually getting EMOTIONAL just typing this.)
Well, ASTRO BOY is saved from a life of slavery by the kindly Professor Elephant (he's got a big schnozz, you see...), who manages to get the boy away from his "owner" and ADOPTS him and treats him as if he were his own son... but in a much more healthy way than the boy's creator ever did.
And, because this "boy" has all these "super-powers" (he can fly, he's super-strong, etc.), well, naturally, becoming a super-hero just comes natural.
I LOVED this show when I was a kid... but strangely, when I started to grow up, it began to make me feel uncomfortable, something 8TH MAN never did. Looking back, I think there were 2 reasons for this. First, it was about a BOY, and teenagers don't want a young boy as their hero. Second, there was so much real, genuine HUMAN EMOTION in so many episodes of this show, and in my own life, things became increasingly restricted, more and more, and the show began to represent what I DIDN'T have. (A healthy home life.)
Decades later, watching the few episodes I was able to on Cartoon Network (Saturday nights, 1:57 AM-- that's right, they started it EARLY every week, the idiots), I was able to appreciate the show all over again. The mix of adventure, human emotions and outright SLAPSTICK COMEDY was a joy to behold.
I've seen an episode or two of a later version of this show... sadly, it wasn't 1/10th as good or as inspired as the original.
1966 was a real banner year for me...
Posted by Outdoor Miner on :
quote:Originally posted by Candle:
quote:Originally posted by Sarcasm Kid: I think you mean Xiaolin Showdown, but that was an American cartoon as well.
No, that's a kiddy version. The one I'm thinking of is real people illustrated, sort of. I'll think of it, someday. The title is the main boy's name, a blonde with a white tie around his head.
Naruto, perhaps?
Posted by Candle on :
YES!
Now, what was the name of the spacesubmarine show? SUPER famous classic!
Posted by profh0011 on :
In the old days (the 60's & 70's), new shows tended to arrive, even on the local stations that ran syndicated reruns, twice a year-- September, and January (more or less). September '66 was an absolute EXPLOSION of wonderful shows from all fronts, and that included the local stations running imports.
Philly's Channel 48 got ahold of 3 shows, presumably all with a small number of episodes, that they decided to run in rotation during the SAME time slot-- 6 PM. It went like this:
Monday -- GIGANTOR Tuesday -- KIMBA, THE WHITE LION Wednesday -- STINGRAY Thursday -- KIMBA, THE WHITE LION Friday -- GIGANTOR
Strange but true!
GIGANTOR, I learned many years later, was the very 1st "giant robot" ever from Japan. It had a fun theme song, nasty but cartoony villains, and, apparently, LOADS of "violence"-- so much that GIGANTOR soon became one of the chief targets of anti-violence censor groups who, having already managed to tone down Prime Time, now set their sights on "children's television".
I don't recall if I ever saw the 1st episode of GIGANTOR. I know it was about an inventor who builds a giant robot, a young boy, Jim Sparks, who CONTROLS it with a small, hand-held remote unit, and a uniformed police character slightly less idiotic than the one on 8TH MAN. If memory serves, the villains tended to have two recurring goals-- conquering the world, and trying to get their hands on GIGANTOR, so they could use HIM to conquer the world. This formula would later be repeated on the live-action show, JOHNNY SOKKO AND HIS FLYING ROBOT.
GIGANTOR never stuck in my head as much as the earlier B&W cartoons, although it did inspire me to give my own comic-book character-- a young boy-- HIS own giant robot. I guess at age 7, I must have thought, didn't every kid hero have one? (Hanna-Barbera's FRANKENSTEIN JR. debuted on CBS the SAME week GIGANTOR turned up on Channel 48. What a month that was.)
Many years later, I managed to rent a tape of the show, and sat down with my best friend to watch it for the first time in decades. I can't really say if it aged well or not... suffice to say, it wasn't that well-written, but that may explain why the episodes didn't stick in my mind the way 8TH MAN or ASTRO BOY had.
[ September 13, 2010, 05:34 PM: Message edited by: profh0011 ]
Posted by Outdoor Miner on :
quote:Originally posted by Candle: YES!
Now, what was the name of the spacesubmarine show? SUPER famous classic!
I think Actor Lad got it when he mentioned Star Blazers.
Speaking of which, there's a live action version set to be released in Japan in December.
Posted by Sarcasm Kid on :
I've never been one for live-action adaptions of cartoons to be honest. They tend to make the campy stuff even campier.
Posted by Outdoor Miner on :
quote:Originally posted by Sarcasm Kid: I've never been one for live-action adaptions of cartoons to be honest. They tend to make the campy stuff even campier.
I know what you mean. I can't stand the recent Transformers films. But the kid in me wants the Star Blazers film to rock.
Posted by Sarcasm Kid on :
And I hope it does for you.
Posted by profh0011 on :
Some shows last; others run briefly and disappear forever. Who can say why?
There were 4 B&W Japanese cartoon shows that ran in Philly back in 1966. I don't remember which station had it, or even exactly when it started or how long it lasted, but the 4th was called PRINCE PLANET. This may be one of the most obscure Japanese cartoons that actually ran in America.
Sadly, I don't recall much about the show. What I do recall (if memory serves) was that that, like ASTRO BOY, it starred a young boy hero (not a robot this time!), an alien from another planet, who could fly, and wore a medalion that gave him great powers. I'd be really curious to see this again, to find out more of what it was about, and see if it was any good or not. (Oddly enough, my brother did one comic of his own inspired by this show, only in his version, he turned the hero into a robot-- like ASTRO BOY.)
Posted by Sarcasm Kid on :
"Some shows last; others run briefly and disappear forever. Who can say why?"
Because the markets can't spin a line of cheap toys off it?
"Because the markets can't spin a line of cheap toys off it?"
That's NOT what I'm talking about. I'm referring to the way some shows run in syndication ENDLESSLY, while others have short runs and disappear forever. In Philly, I'm pretty sure PRINCE PLANET ran once-- EVER. Ditto for JOHNNY SOKKO AND HIS FLYING ROBOT. There were 25 episodes of that show, Channel 17 ran each one ONCE. After that, it disappeared. I mean, that's ridiculous! ULTRA MAN hads several runs in Philly, and during the 70's, ran for 8 YEARS without ever taking a break. Ditto for the 1967-70 SPIDER-MAN cartoons. I don't care how much I like something, when I was a kid, I would always wanna see SOMETHING ELSE. The thing used to be, they'd run all the episodes of a show twice, then put something else on. If the show was popular enough, 6 months or a year (or two) later, it might come back, and get another 2 runs.
I'm guessing doing it the other way makes it simpler for brain-dead programmers who can't be bothered to actually do the work they're hired for. (He said, sarcastically.)
Posted by Candle on :
quote:Originally posted by Outdoor Miner:
quote:Originally posted by Candle: YES!
Now, what was the name of the spacesubmarine show? SUPER famous classic!
I think Actor Lad got it when he mentioned Star Blazers.
Speaking of which, there's a live action version set to be released in Japan in December.
I must have missed his comment, I'm sorry.
Star Blazers is sooo totallly right! I really liked that show! Maybe, more than my kids.
I know I'm afraid to see the live action 'Avatar - the Last Air Bender'! I don't know how they'll compress all of those lovely episodes into 2 hours. sigh
Star Blazers might work, though. That series didn't have as much going on between each event, so to speak. That I remember, anyway. Avatar was SO rich.
The Japanese live action stuff tends to be really dorky. I remember a comment from one of the producers/directors/etc. of Jurassic Park who said that when they showed the show to a sample audience in Japan that when the first dinosaur appeared the entire audience's mouths dropped and not a sound was heard for the rest of the picture.
They got kind of, what, lazy? traditional? with their live action stuff with Godzilla success, I think.
My older grandkids love Power Rangers, though.
[ September 15, 2010, 11:33 AM: Message edited by: Candle ]
Posted by Sarcasm Kid on :
Ooh. I didn't mean to come off as rude.
Usually, the cartoons that are re-aired over and over are the ones that have a bunch of merchandise spun off them. There must be at least a billion different Pokemon and Yu-Gi-Oh cards by now.
And toys, DVDs, VHS, CDs, video games, computer games, art books, clothes, cups, plates, health items, bumper stickers, accessories...
If my logic is flawed I'm willing to admit it.
Posted by ActorLad on :
For me when it comes to live-action adaptations it really depends on the material, for instance I very much enjoyed Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon.
Candle you'll likely be disappointed the the live-action version of The Last Airbender but it's planned as a trilogy of films.
As for syndication issues there a ton of factors that go into that like the intended audience, how much of a success it was, how long it ran, if the series is getting an update somehow, etc. Some series are just created to be longer or shorter then others. From what I understand (although I could be wrong) when series are aired in Japan they don't generally show reruns. That's why so many popular series such as Naruto, Bleach, One Piece, etc often have "filler arcs" also sometimes to let the series keep going while the manga version may be on a hiatus, finishing other arcs and various other factors.
Proth0011 if you really want to see Prince Planet again the whole series appears to be available to view on Hulu here:
You know, I've never seen the live action version of Sailor Moon. I was turned off by seeing what the actresses look like in costume.
Posted by Candle on :
I think another factor in reruns is if the shows are timeless enough to interest the next age group that comes along. My older grand kids, who are 17 and 18+ liked pokemon and now my younger set, 2, 4, 6, 8 are loving them.
The American Disney films are a lot like that.
Posted by Sarcasm Kid on :
In the newest episode of the new MAD cartoon show, they did this parody of Grey's Anatomy called
"Grey's In Anime".
The patient basically hallucinates that the doctors are anime characters, including parodies of Yu-Gi-Oh, Pokemon, and DBZ.
Posted by ActorLad on :
If your a fan of either the manga and/or anime of Sailor Moon I suggest giving the live-action version a chance. It's cheesy at times but it has a lot of heart put into it.
Posted by Sarcasm Kid on :
The manga does as well. It's one of my biggest inspirations in terms of the themes of hope and forgiveness.
Posted by ActorLad on :
Speaking of good series, have you ever read/watched YuYu Hakusho? It's by Yoshihiro Togashi who's married to Naoko Takeuchi, creator of Sailor Moon.
Posted by Sarcasm Kid on :
I've seen some episodes and listen to the opening and ending songs, but I didn't become a diehard fan.
Posted by ActorLad on :
It's one of my favorite supernatural based series.
Posted by Outdoor Miner on :
I'll second Actor Lad's support of YuYu Hakusho. Probably my favorite "fighting" anime.
Posted by Sarcasm Kid on :
Well if there's one another anime I'll hype over than SM, it's Revolutionary Girl Utena. Metaphysical, bizarre, and beautiful.
I've seen some of that series, it's interesting enough.
Posted by Emily Sivana on :
I want to thank Fanfic Lady for bringing this thread to my attention. It has been a strange year so far for manga and anime. Tokyopop closes it's North American branch (though it was predictable by longterm company followers) which leaves alot of titles in lingo. On the other hand series such as Hetalia are extremely popular.
Hetalia is my current obsession.
Posted by Sarcasm Kid on :
God I forgot I started this thread.
Posted by Emily Sivana on :
I am excited because FUNimation has released the trailer on YouTube for "Hetalia Paint It, White!" I really like the dub's accents and the effort this company puts into the series.
Posted by profh0011 on :
I'm watching STAR BLAZERS again. Man, what an emotional show this is!
Going thru it about one episode per day, to get the full impact of each one. Just got to the destruction of Telasart today. Really powerful message in this one, as Trelayna tells Prince Zordar that if he were really powerful, he'd help others, not ENSLAVE them.
Tomorrow will be the very 1st episode I happened across back in November 1979, which totally blew my mind. I came up with my own titles for each episode decades back, and that one I named "A GATHERING OF ARMADAS".
Posted by Emily Sivana on :
I discovered Kochikame yesterday. It's really funny and I can totally relate to their lives.
Posted by Triplicate Kid on :
Now that I've been watching for a while, I suppose I should say something.
Most manga readers watched anime first. I'm the other way. I've only been watching for less than a year.
Recently finished:
Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha - I'm the perfect target audience. Cardcaptor Sakura gained a secondary adult male fanbase. I was one of them, but wanted a series with more feeling of actual danger. Nanoha is tailored perfectly for that. It starts out almost parodying Sakura but quickly sets its own path, cutting through some of the Magical Girl conventions and pumping up the action. I like the first two seasons, though it's by no means perfect. The tech-magic isn't cool; it's annoying. It would be cool if they let this be a Clarke's 3rd Law universe, either by saying all magic is science or by saying they're indistinguishable. They continue to insist there's a difference while the magic feels ever more like science and is also continuously demonstrated to be magic. StrikerS (Season 3) abruptly goes downhill. This is no longer even pretending to be a Magical Girl show, and it loses what's appealing about that. It's just a sci-fi superhero show with bad worldbuilding.
Kaleido Star - Japanese girl comes to SoCal to perform in a pseudo- Cirque du Soleil. I have nothing against genuine shojo; I think I prefer a good shojo to a good shonen. Yes, it's often painfully unconvincing how this series depicts showbiz. It still has something good that shines through. If the defining characteristic of shojo is romance and of shonen is trying to be the best at something, this is shonen. The stunts and action, like martial arts in so many shows, do push into the impossible and into outright mystic powers. (You're probably better off watching it knowing that from the start; I wasn't really expecting that and didn't like it.) And Naegino Sora is major crush material for this guy who always favors the nice girl.
Currently on:
Dai Mahou Touge (Magical Witch Punie-chan; I recall hearing Panzer Princess as an alternate title, and it's just as appropriate) - Just about to finish. Nutty, but I wish I could find a Japanese comedy that was both funny and made some sense. As with Nanoha, the problem is that it claims to be a Magical Girl show (in this case, a parody) but isn't.
Gankutsuou: The Count of Monte Cristo - Isn't this the same studio that did Romeo X Juliet and Samurai Seven? (Haven't seen those.) It could be described as "Dumas's classic in space", but that would lead you to imagine something totally different from what it is. I'm not sure I like it.
Revolutionary Girl Utena - Just started. I've been consciously avoiding spoilers even since before I ever expected to watch it. I knew it was slashy, but the first episode looks like a full-on yuri show. (Not that I have anything against that...) Ugh, old shojo art. (It's a bit odd that manga/anime fandom refers to 1990s series as "old".)
Posted by Emily Sivana on :
I was a huge fan of Cardcaptors/Cardcaptor Sakura. I belonged to at least three websites dedicated to CLAMP (the company that made it). Sadly, none of their other series appealed to me as much as Cardcaptor Sakura did.
Posted by dedman on :
I'm not a big fan of anime/manga. There are influences from it in my own work, but I've never really followed it in any way. Akira and Ghost in the Machine are really the only two movies I can think of off the top of my head that I've watched.
Posted by Suddenly Seymour on :
Ooh, you've been watching some good ones, TK.
I'm a big fan of "KaleidoStar." Since you like it, I'd recommend tracking down "Angelic Layer." "Gankutsuo" is very cool. I loved the look of it, and I thought it had a strong story throughout. "Uetna" -- wow, that's just a major mind-blower. It was a little too weird for me, but I know a lot of people loved it, which is why it's finally getting a major re-release.
Posted by Triplicate Kid on :
After finishing Utena, I decided I don't like genuine surrealism. Morrisonian wackiness, yes, most of the time. Utena looks dreamlike by the end, things changing if you take your eye off them.
I got thinking about something broader. Why is otaku culture so recentist?
Western fan culture appears to have been largely codified by Star Trek. Nostalgia plays some significant part in it. What's really strange is that both Japanese fan culture and Western otaku are more recentist than other Western fans. It makes sense why Western otaku focus on modern series. Anime and manga imports only really exploded around 10 years ago. This begs the question of why mostly recent (at the time) series were translated. They were all new to English speakers... And it's not just a case of fans not getting what they want. Even fan translations focus on recent works; the majority of pre-1990s material appears to be untranslated. If there's a show that Kaleido Star would make me want to see, it's Hikari no Densetsu. Why in the name of *%#&)@&) can't there be an English version? Speaking of that, I've noticed something. There were many more anime imports to continental Europe in the 70s and 80s than there were to English-speaking countries. Most of them still haven't seen English release. It's not just the quantity that's interesting, though. Many were shoujo series at a time when English-language anime seems to have been shounen action and science fiction. On the subject of shoujo, why did Sailor Moon manage an (anecdotally at least) significant boys' audience in its English release? Don't know about the original Japanese. I sort of get how a girls' show can get a secondary adult male audience - see my previous comment about Sakura and the reason for Nanoha's faux-shoujo existence. Incidentally, I notice that I'm much more interested in shoujo than in the younger-targeted shounen series. Anyway, though I didn't see Sailor Moon - or any other 90s anime when it was new - I can't see myself rejecting anything because it was aimed at girls. It was a dislike of the animation style that applied just as much to shounen series that kept me away then.
[ October 30, 2011, 10:16 AM: Message edited by: Triplicate Kid ]
Posted by Invisible Brainiac on :
Samurai X is still my favorite. Heard a remake's in progress; that would rock.
Almost everyone I know who watches anime or reads manga has high praise for that series. Even my grandma likes it.
TK - not an expert on anime by any means, so I can't really make any highly intelligent conjectures about that. But have there been major changes in anime over the decades? You pose an interesting question that I'd love to see more answers on.
Posted by Triplicate Kid on :
(I was repeatedly expanding the last post - tend to do that with long posts on message boards, to avoid timeouts or errors. Sometimes messes things up if someone's actually reading as you're writing. So I'll continue my planned post here...)
But I assumed something being aimed at girls would be more a turnoff for other audiences than it seems to be in anime.
quote:Not to put too fine a point on it, but any show with a shelf life older than a couple of years just doesn't stand a chance anymore at turning a profit. ... But the sea change in how anime is consumed, marketed, and purchased has COMPLETELY tossed aside any logistical chance for Ninku and its forgotten 90's ilk to capture the eyes of any potential Western licensee
I suppose I'm enough out of step with otaku culture to not understand this. I know at least some of it is about the art. This isn't so much a concern for me, but I can see how that's due to my specific history. I got into anime from manga, and into manga after Western comics. Though they're more similar in animation quality, Western comics have manga beat on art and production values, always have. That is, I didn't get into manga for the art. Regarding what I said at first about Utena - I don't mind the art. At least on the female characters. Interestingly, that calls to mind Tenchi Muyo, where the art's alright for the male characters, but I don't like the look of the girls - and that's a harem comedy. The art was one of the things turning me off it, but what made me quit was how lame the comedy was. And regarding animation quality, maybe something else affecting my perception is that prior to 2010, I hadn't regularly watched any conventionally animated TV series since... 1997?
Most of the series I've seen are relatively recent, but it kind of has to be that way, doesn't it? Come to think of it, most pre-1990 anime I've heard of don't sound very interesting. I can't remember everything I see mentioned to make a statistical analysis. I get the impression that most older series I know of are aimed rather young. Also, some genres I like weren't well developed then.
[ October 30, 2011, 10:43 AM: Message edited by: Triplicate Kid ]
Posted by Emily Sivana on :
I have to admit being surprised at the amount of '90s/'00s anime merchandise I encountered in Chicago's Chinatown. There were Cardcaptor Sakura pencil cases on sale, Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicles posters, and even Sailor Moon notebooks.
Someone once said, and it may have been TV tropes, that anime aimed towards boys will always be more readily picked up by Western companies than anime aimed towards girls. There are certain behaviors and cultural norms acceptable in Japan which would be considered unacceptable in the United States.
I know it probably does not count as anime, but Sanrio has done extraordinarily well at maintaining it's brand for over twenty years.
Posted by Triplicate Kid on :
Talking to a non-anime-watching friend, I got this suggestion for recentism. Fans want to be able to discuss the shows they're watching with other fans who are simultaneously watching. Thus the emphasis on watching shows in the first run, something I can't care about. No, that's wrong. I care about *not* doing that because I no longer have the memory or attention span to watch a whole TV series at the rate it's produced.
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