Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Deathworks]

Hi!

The Architect: While you are correct to point out that over-simplification does no good, a few lines later, you do the same thing by making a qualitative statement about social standards and moral standards. While you might be able to set up an argument for comparing social standards and get to some quality results (which may actually be quite surprising to you), I don't see any valid way to compare moral standards as morals themselves are a cultural concept. You can't seriously claim that Christian morality is better than Japanese morality (I would rather refrain from calling it Shintoistic as that is a rather complicated issue).

Personally, I find your post rather inflammatory with that blunt claim of inferiority, which is in my eyes not unlike the claim of general inferiority of Western animation and comics - a strong over-simplification.

About Relations between American and Japanese Animation: I have to admit that I am a bit reluctant to embrace the term "adopt" in this context. You see, both when Japan created anime inspired by American animation, as well as when American animation took over certain aspects of the Japanese anime, a lot of aspects were changed. It was not a simple carbon copy, which is why I am worried that "adopt" may be misleading. For an example of real carbon copying, look at German television copies of American action series formats, where both the design and the content are basically unchanged.

In this context, allow me to stress something that was mentioned before by others: Anime have not just recently entered the Western world, but have been around for decades. And it is quite interesting that they actually dominated certain niches that remained untouched by American and European animation until very recently. What I am thinking of are the classics of children and youth literature once we go beyond myths and fairytales. Be it "Heidi" or "Anne of Green Gables" or any of many other classics, you will find that the popularly accepted versions of them are indeed productions by Japanese studios and they have nearly no competition from the US or Europe until the 90s. While there is a large overlap for instance with action series, there are these aspects where we do have differences.

Or take the basic concept of shoujo manga where a love plot is the central plot that drives the narration and leads it to a conclusion. As far as I know, such a concept was not a major aspect of American animation in the days when Tom and Jerry, Popeye, Mickey Mouse, and Thor saw their height. Sure, love interests did appear in things like Mickey Mouse, but they usually only had a supplimentary role and were often kept extremely simple. With the central role given to them in shoujo manga, they got about fifty percent of the main stream of Japanese manga...

Deathworks

P.S.: Sinistar: I just looked at the last volume of GALS! and it does end with a confession of love and a marriage, thus being true to the central shoujo manga nature in the end :) :) :)

But yes, as I said before, there are strong variations and even negations of the central idea.

[Aqizzar]

"All Dogs Go To Heaven" was frighteningly bizarre without actually being any good.

Don Bluth... what a case.  I feel the need to repost this exchange, mostly because it took me a while to find it (the thread was apparently deleted):

Jesus Christ, you can find relevant responses in deleted threads.  Your mastery of quotation can link to posts that no longer exist.  Footkerchief has become a legendary archivist.  Hail Footkerchief.

I respect the career of Don Bluth, and all his proteges and legacy in the animation industry, but the fact remains that taking an obscure novel about an undead gangster and turning it into a talking-animal kids movie, and throwing in lots of off-kilter and unnecessary musicals and visual montages, is just a bad way to make a cartoon.

[smigenboger]

Yeah that's pretty intense. You must have a pretty good memory to be able to not only dredge something up from the dead, but to do that without a search allocation.

[Askot Bokbondeler]

Jesus Christ, you can find relevant responses in deleted threads.  Your mastery of quotation can link to posts that no longer exist.  Footkerchief has become a legendary archivist.  Hail Footkerchief.

seriously, dude, Footkerchief must blink IRL

[Footkerchief]

Yeah that's pretty intense. You must have a pretty good memory to be able to not only dredge something up from the dead, but to do that without a search allocation.

I only found it cause I remembered having posted about Don Bluth and didn't want to repeat myself, and it was driving me nuts that the forum search came up blank.  Google knows all.

taking an obscure novel about an undead gangster and turning it into a talking-animal kids movie

Wait, there was source material?  What novel's that?

[The Architect]

You revealed your process and still failed to be unimpressive.

[KaelGotDwarves]

On another site I frequent, search was jokingly referred to as doing a "durbs" because the one commonly known as Durbs would answer any question set forward not immediately answered by anyone else, often linking multiple answers from various sources.

Eventually, he was so proficient at this and his ability renown, that the forum was changed so that the search function had a tiny "durbs" button next to it.

Footkerchief has that function on this site.

[Aqizzar]

taking an obscure novel about an undead gangster and turning it into a talking-animal kids movie

Wait, there was source material?  What novel's that?

I could swear I read somewhere that at least part of the concept, of a Depression-era conman "with a heart of gold" who gets a second chance at life tied to a pocket watch was actually taken from an old novel, but neither Wikipedia or IMDB have any mention of such an influence.  I know I didn't dream it up, but either I'm remembering something very wrong, or I got it from a very unfounded source.  Move along folks, nothing to see here.

I never realized that the main character was voiced by Burt Reynolds though.  Maybe I should watch it again, I haven't seen it in eons.

[KaelGotDwarves]

My Google-Fu:
Here is creators Don Bluth and Gary Goldman thoughts on the movie.

Quote:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

8. My favorite movie of yours has to be All Dogs Go To Heaven. What exactly inspired you to make a dog movie with Burt Reynolds? Why New Orleans?

Answer: I introduced the title to Gary and John back in 1987. I had remembered that when I was a kid, a teacher of mine showed us a book called, “All Dogs Go To Heaven” thought it was a great title, but didn’t remember the story. When I researched the title, it turned out to just be an anthology of dogs in general, and not a story. So, we constructed a story, several before we got it right. One of the writers had selected New Orleans as the location. We thought that that location sounded interesting. No one had done an animated film that took place in New Orleans.
Now, Burt Reynolds - back in 1983, when we were making the video games, Burt’s agent called us and wanted to meet. We went to Malibu where he was shooting “The Man Who Loved Women”. He explained that he love The Secret of NIMH and what we did with Dom DeLuise’s character Jeremy. And, that he wanted us to make a film with him, where he is a junkyard dog and is a jerk, and about halfway thru the film his “friends” would hold up a mirror to show him what a jerk he is and he would have to work thru the rest of the film to do things to redeem himself. We called the project Canine Mysteries. It didn’t go anywhere.
In 1987 when we all agreed on the idea of All Dogs Go to Heaven, we contacted Burt to see if he wanted to be the voice of the lead character, Charlie. He said yes.

[Sinistar]

P.S.: Sinistar: I just looked at the last volume of GALS! and it does end with a confession of love and a marriage, thus being true to the central shoujo manga nature in the end

N-noooooo, I only read upt o volume 3! Curse you!
(joke of course, since you did not tell exactly who confesses to who and I believe a lot of stuff happens between vol3 and vol10, so this is not such a big spoiler.  )

And also - Footkerchief is starting to scare me a bit...

[ein]

Footkerchief is the living embodiment of a search engine.
You should know this by know.

[quinnr]

*Everyone* I know who's into anime is messed up in the head. The subculture draws them in, and then they attract other likewise messed up people into it. Japanese stuff gives them an excuse to go around and enact on the kinky things they're into. I haven't met one person who isn't like this, and is into anime.

And *everyone* I know who plays Dwarf Fortress is insane.
Aren't we all?

[Deathworks]

Hi!

Ooops, I am sorry, Sinistar. I hadn't expected that you had not finished reading it.
Well, Fujii Mihona does like to use strong female characters, and she is one of the few who actually do present lesbians in any major way in her works in the Ribbon Mascot Comics of the 90s (I am talking about other works by her now).

*Everyone* I know who's into anime is messed up in the head. The subculture draws them in, and then they attract other likewise messed up people into it. Japanese stuff gives them an excuse to go around and enact on the kinky things they're into. I haven't met one person who isn't like this, and is into anime.

And *everyone* I know who plays Dwarf Fortress is insane.
Aren't we all?

A good point. And I had missed this a bit earlier.
How do people "enact" things? I mean, I read manga, I watch anime, I play Japanese video games, and I try to draw a little bit, but I don't run around trying to re-enact anything I have seen there. Could you elaborate on that, Smigenboger?

Deathworks

[smigenboger]

*Disclaimer*
*This is all anecdotal evidence, and probably doesn't apply to all areas*

Perhaps it's only my local area. When I was in high school, the anime crowd was a subdivision of the mentally abnormal crowd. I'm sure it didn't start out that way, but once enough of the 'less than functional' people got in, it became a gateway for all the schizophrenics, fetishists, manic-depressed, and otherwise mentally/socially unstable kids. Perhaps they were just too open with their tolerance, but it quickly became overrun with the larpers, the furries, the wiccans, the jailhouse bisexuals, and the generally socially inept. I'm sure there could be some good in the genre, but all of this combined into one massive shit storm. Basically everyone would get together and watch the weirdest stuff, and not weird in a good way. These people didn't really surface until the high school age, but many of these people were treated like shit during what I've seen at elementary and middle school, so it's understandable why they would ban together and create this weird subculture.
For a silly example outside of school, a friend gave me a foot in the door for a job at a kennel. On my first day, I met a co-worker with disgustingly dyed purple-ish red hair. During the first conversation, I said I was new and if she knew ____. She said she didn't like him, because he doesn't like Final Fantasy. Later, she said her therapist suggested she work with animals, and the animals help keep her sane. She also sings and talks to them like they are people. She's a pretty good example of the kind of anime people that are around here.
About an hour and a half away from where I lived, I had a friend named Chibi, who was a devout anime girl, and talked about how her friends love to get together to binge on anime series and heroin. Actually, she was a pretty interesting person, after you get used to the illicit drugs and her bright blue hair.

One time I was slightly coerced into going to an anime convention in DC with a couple of friends (she said it was for video games, oh the lies). The people in their 20's seemed to be a lot more calm and composed, but the under 20 crowd displayed huge amounts of fucked-uppery.

I won't say they're unfriendly people, most of them get way too absorbed into anime, and become some strange deviant monstrosity. Obviously, my experiences with them are very, very biased.

[MrWiggles]

Perhaps it's only my local area. When I was in high school, the anime crowd was a subdivision of the mentally abnormal crowd. I'm sure it didn't start out that way, but once enough of the 'less than functional' people got in, it became a gateway for all the schizophrenics, fetishists, manic-depressed, and otherwise mentally/socially unstable kids. Perhaps they were just too open with their tolerance, but it quickly became overrun with the larpers, the furries, the wiccans, the jailhouse bisexuals, and the generally socially inept.

There is a lot wrong here. Just form a tolerance perspective. Let alone smigenboger ability to diagnose by eye serve mental considtions that arent easily diagnosable while in high school. Then he sortas cuts down swaths of poeple into one inaccruate hasty over generation of fucked up proportions.

For a silly example outside of school, a friend gave me a foot in the door for a job at a kennel. On my first day, I met a co-worker with disgustingly dyed purple-ish red hair. During the first conversation, I said I was new and if she knew ____. She said she didn't like him, because he doesn't like Final Fantasy.

I've met persons like this. Again, its not unique to anime.

Later, she said her therapist suggested she work with animals, and they help keep her sane. She also sings and talks to them like they are people. She's a pretty good example of the kind of anime people that are around here.

I also fail to see how this is dependent on Anime.

About an hour and a half away from where I lived, I had a friend named Chibi, who was a devout anime girl, and talked about how her friends love to get together to binge on anime series and heroin. Actually, she was a pretty interesting person, after you get used to the illicit drugs and her bright blue hair.

One time I was slightly coerced into going to an anime convention in DC with a couple of friends (she said it was for video games, oh the lies). The people in their 20's seemed to be a lot more calm and composed, but the under 20 crowd displayed huge amount of fucked-uppery.

I won't say they're unfriendly people, most of them get way too absorbed into anime, and become some strange deviant monstrosity. Obviously, my experiences with them are very, very biased.

The last line we see a contradiction from the premise in presented in opening paragraph on they were already generally socially inept  'less than functional' and found anime. You just seem to be a socially conservative persons when it comes to proclivities that stray from your acceptance level.