Print

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

[RedKing]

It seems like recently though, pretty much everything anime I've seen depicted anywhere is: This. Can't be un-seen.

Meh, that's not just anime. Look at anything Rob Liefeld ever shit out. Not only do most of his characters look alike, but they're all anatomically IMPOSSIBLE.

[breadbocks]

(most)Anime really just bores me. Especially the ones with REALLY poor animating. You know, still scene with mouth randomly moving to represent talking, that kind of bad.

To be fair (I'm not much of an anime fan either.) animating takes a massive amount of time. If you don't reuse anything it can take a single guy (Note: Most teams have different people for backgrounds and stuff) around a year to frame by frame, no reusing clips, make a full 30 minute show. If you lip synch something to one bit of dialogue, that means it can't be reused in another.

[Aqizzar]

I've been looking for a place to post this link.  It's actually from a year ago, but very fitting to the topic.  Y'know who doesn't like anime?  Sato Dai, the guy who wrote the scripts for Cowboy Bebop, Wolf's Rain, Ghost in the Shell, and basically the posterboy for anime Adult Swim would air.  And he's kinda ticked off about it.

Anyway, I thought that would be appropriate food for thought, because I've basically never seen an anime that I even kind of enjoyed besides the stuff he's worked, not that he can take all the credit.  I demand good fluid animation, which is kind of the antithesis of the anime process just by design.  I respect the design, don't get me wrong - long holds over static scenes and repeated animation are a great way to run a business, but I just don't like the look.  Likewise, I need stories and dialogue I can relate to, and whatever that might mean in the target audience across the ocean, it's hard to find anime with good enough localization for me to invest in the characters and story.

[Vector]

My god, all that stuff was just him?

That puts a lot of things into perspective.  Thank you.  Also thank you for the fascinating article.

[scriver]

That Dai-Dude have made two of the only four animes I've liked (in a non-ironic way); Samurai Champloo and Ergo Proxy (fucking loved Ergo Proxy. The Swedish subtitle translation sucked really bad, but I fell for it anyway ). Seems like an intelligent dude, too, even though I'm a bit too tired to remember anything of what I just read.
Gotta catch that Cowboy Bebop sometime, man.

Anyway. Just want to lend my voice to the crowd. Anime has good and bad stuff, like everything else. Most of it will be bad. A lot of it will be really bad. Same as with every other media.
And this is from somebody who isn't into Anime (or cartoons in general for that matter) at all.

[Aqizzar]

Anyway. Just want to lend my voice to the crowd. Anime has good and bad stuff, like everything else. Most of it will be bad. A lot of it will be really bad. Same as with every other media.
And this is from somebody who isn't into Anime (or cartoons in general for that matter) at all.

See, I think it's a cop to just say "hey, there's crappy anime like all media" and just leave it at that.  The essence of anime is low production values, that's how it began and that's how its industry has always thought about it.  The high-quality productions are the exception to the rule, and it does say a lot that Dai wrote scripts for almost all of those exceptions.  That's what he's complaining about, that the industry is increasingly focused on a mass-production, low-investment strategy of taking whatever series scored big last season, mix around a few character templates and easy scripts, and have a Chinese studio crank out five seasons worth of episodes in six months and call it a day.

[Svarte Troner]

There's just something shallow about it. I guess I just don't get it. I did try to read this one anime about vikings (which is pretty interesting to me to begin with), but then one guy looked like he was from Naruto or something and I was completely turned off...

Um. Wow.

This might be a bit biased coming from someone who likes anime, but

Damn, talk about close-minded.

Calling an entire form of media shallow?

Saying you dropped a series because a guy "looked like he was from Naruto or something"?

Not even sure what to say..

I'm not saying it's all shallow, I would never generalize like that for anything. Sorry if I came off like that, which I did.

And the naruto thing bothered me because it was an anime about vikings... I expect longboats and runic script and stuff not headbands and spiky hair..

[scriver]

Anyway. Just want to lend my voice to the crowd. Anime has good and bad stuff, like everything else. Most of it will be bad. A lot of it will be really bad. Same as with every other media.
And this is from somebody who isn't into Anime (or cartoons in general for that matter) at all.

See, I think it's a cop to just say "hey, there's crappy anime like all media" and just leave it at that.  The essence of anime is low production values, that's how it began and that's how its industry has always thought about it.  The high-quality productions are the exception to the rule, and it does say a lot that Dai wrote scripts for almost all of those exceptions.  That's what he's complaining about, that the industry is increasingly focused on a mass-production, low-investment strategy of taking whatever series scored big last season, mix around a few character templates and easy scripts, and have a Chinese studio crank out five seasons worth of episodes in six months and call it a day.

Yeah, I guess. But it's not like anime is alone in that aspect either. It's always about finding the golden grains. I wish every tv-series could be The Wire, but instead we get 97% CSI-level "entertainment". I wish every fantasy book could be a 1200 page masterpiece like Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrel, but instead we get Eragon. And so on.

[Darkmere]

Ah, I read the Sato Dai article, and I can sympathize. Also had no idea he was involved with all those projects. This might bear investigation. Re: the overseas animation studio, there was an interesting segment of commentary one one of the Venture Brothers DVD's about them having to do the same thing. Apparently they do the storyboard drafts and most of the character animation (if memory serves), then send the background work off to a Korean studio. Sometimes what they get back is a bizarre change in art styles, or a miscommunication gets them a huge animation boost to 3D for half an episode. Amusing since I don't have to deal with it, but working through that every day would be maddening.

[Willfor]

Wolf's Rain is actually my favorite anime, but I never knew the dude who wrote its script had written so many other high-quality ones. I'll have to look into his other works sometime.

[Vector]

Lest you think it's only the Japanese, the sequel to Disney's Hunchback of Notre Dame also had all the art done in Korea.  There was a rather significant backlash from the viewers.

Wolf's Rain is actually my favorite anime, but I never knew the dude who wrote its script had written so many other high-quality ones. I'll have to look into his other works sometime.

What, you too?!

*brotacular fistbump*

[Aqizzar]

I might have liked Wolf's Rain if I had any idea what it was about.  As was, I enjoyed it almost entirely for the old drunk guy.  Anime needs more characters like him, and Sato Dai seems to agree with me.

[Vector]

I might have liked Wolf's Rain if I had any idea what it was about.

I basically taught a class in high school about What Wolf's Rain Was About (along with a couple of other animoo).

I also happen to own the entire damned series on DVD.

I can see that I need to do a Let's Watch with pauses for analysis in the near future.

[scriver]

I do think so.

[Sensei]

He seems to be making a sustained attack on kuuki-kei and sekai-kei stories, or stories where personal problems are equated with problems of the entire world, without the intervention of society or the state.

Throughout the article it seems like this guy sums up everything I ever hated about anime. Plus, I liked Cowboy bebop and Geass. I'll have to put his works on the Things I Need To Watch List.