What are your thoughts on ANIME's influence on D&D?

[D.Shaffer]

Some anime has chants for casting spells, other just shout the name. In my games, all magic is granted by Gods, whether it Arcane or Devine, they have to pray to their God as a verbal component.

Eh, most of the anime I've seen with 'Magic' tends to have chants, but there's indeed tons of the stuff out there.

No. At least not at any fencing event or Martial art class do. In fact, even every martial art I have took up to this point taught that Ki is adding force by using breathing. (Breathing in when throwing the attack, and breathing out when connecting) Shouting names becomes out of the question

By 'other traditions' I was talking more along the lines of other media/entertainment sources, not realistic fighting. I'll remphasise the bit about the shouting of the attack name being more for the audiences benefit. It's a dramatic effect to help the audience remember the attack as being something special and not meant to be seen as a realistic take on fighting. It's like complaining about how unrealistic wuxia movies are.

 

[WizarDru]

Come now - hack job is too polite. /except I liked the orcish whip song - I thought it was the ONLY redeeming quality of the movie./

Well, I'm with Buzz. I loved the Hobbit from the minute it showed up on TV. John Huston WAS the voice of Gandalf, to me, until Ian McKellen took his place. John Hurt WAS the voice of Aragorn, until Viggo Mortensen replaced him.

Bakshi's Lord of the Rings could have been a masterpiece...instead it's a wasted potential that starts so well and ends so poorly. I remember being irritated that Boromir was transformed from the proud captain of Gondor to a fricking Viking, for example. Clearly , some other folks agreed with me .

Of course, the Rankin-Bass production is really messy...but I don't think it was the problem of being a hack job so much as poor editing and too many script revisions. It was clearly made to finish the story...but it also tries to stand on its own (as a TV movie that couldn't assume the viewers had seen the other movie) and really suffers for it. And yes, Casey Kasem, Gah. But it has some real gems in it, too. They use a lot of Tolkien's watercolors for reference and it's visually quite pleasing in parts. They actually do some things (like Denethor's Palantir) that aren't seen elsewhere.

And they don't have....THIS:

or these guys:

 

[jdrakeh]

Honestly, aside from some scattered pieces of artwork, I think that such influence is negligible. I think it has been exaggerrated by people who have a driven need to find something to hate about D&D 3x.

 

[Aaron L]

Any new source of potential good ideas to include in my fantasy is a good thing. Any medium contains both good and bad ideas, and the more mediums and genres one chooses to draw from means a larger base of good ideas to pick and choose.

The trendy "that newfangled anime is all the same and a bunch of crap" line is really grating, as is the belief that it is only popular with newer, younger players.

[EDIT] it is also highly amusing that while people are turning up their noses at this "new, low quality" anime, the now "classic" pulp sword and sorcery stories were once also decried as low quality rubbish. It's all part of the endless cycle of "what I grew up with is superior to what is being made nowadays" and it gets tiresome.[/EDIT]

 

[Aaron L]

Now, I know people will argue that Pokemon and One Piece look completely different from Akira or Spirited Away, sure. However, it's not possible to deny that they all have more in common with each other than any one of them does with Bugs Bunny cartoons, Batman: The Animated Series, or Beauty and the Beast - and whatever you want to call that commonality, that's what I dislike. Trends in the drawing of figures and faces, shading, animation processes . . . it really rubs me the wrong way.
.

That's actually quite funny, seeing as how modern anime is directly descended from Bugs Bunny and the like, since after WWII Japan was flooded with American cartoons that inspired generations of children who grew up to produce the first anime (big eyes, small mouth? check out Bugs again the next time you get a chance and take a good look at his peepers), and Batman: TAS is widely regarded as having an anime aesthetic...

 

[mhacdebhandia]

The faces in Batman: The Animated Series don't have anything in common with Japanese cartoon aesthetics, though, which is the major thing - I will grant that the simple, stylized lines and the particular way in which colours and shading are used is influenced by anime.

As for Looney Tunes, well, if you can't see the difference between Warner Brothers' and Japanese cartoons . . . I'm not educated enough in artistic terminology to express it to you, but I think it's clear.

 

[ShinHakkaider]

The faces in Batman: The Animated Series don't have anything in common with Japanese cartoon aesthetics, though, which is the major thing - I will grant that the simple, stylized lines and the particular way in which colours and shading are used is influenced by anime.

As for Looney Tunes, well, if you can't see the difference between Warner Brothers' and Japanese cartoons . . . I'm not educated enough in artistic terminology to express it to you, but I think it's clear.

There are quite a few episodes of B:TAS that were animated by Tokyo Movie Shinsha (TMS) so they do have a bit of anime asthetic to them. Also there are a fair amount of anime out there where the characters look more western than eastern.

But in your favor the characters were not designed by TMS but by an american, Bruce Timm who was going for the look of the old Fleischer Superman Cartoons.


And as for anime being influenced by early american animation, the previous poster is correct whether you can see it or not. Early japanese animators were strongly influenced by warner bors animation in general and Disney in particular. I'd venture to say if you saw early anime like Kimba the white lion and early disney shorts and features and you couldnt see the similarities then, then I don't know what to tell you.

 

[buzz]

John Huston WAS the voice of Gandalf, to me, until Ian McKellen took his place.

QFMFT.

 

[Nail]

I prefere D&D's infulence on anime

Exactly.

 

[mmadsen]

Batman: TAS is widely regarded as having an anime aesthetic...

Huh? If anything, Batman: TAS reflects the style of the 1940s Fleischer Superman Cartoons -- and film noir -- but with even simpler, cleaner lines. The emphasis is on simple figures moving fluidly, not on detailed figures with many fine lines.