D&D General D&D vs. Anime

[Vaalingrade]

Big anime fan and D&D player.

You still can't get closer to a proper portrayal of a D&D group than Slayers.

Of course online you see a lot of these nerd rivalries where tabletop nerds can't accept there are other nerdy pursuits and hate on anime fans and videogames for some inadequately explained reason (as in it can be explained by their inadequacies). Check out all the RPG Horror stories that use the word 'weeaboo' and then the issue with the player has nothing to do with their fandom or the lame 'someone tried to copy their favorite character and it broke ~my immersion~' posts.

 

[Charlaquin]

Big anime fan and D&D player.

You still can't get closer to a proper portrayal of a D&D group than Slayers.

Sounds like you haven’t read Delicious in Dungeon.

Not a knock against Slayers, of course. Great show.

 

[Aldarc]

I'm 36. I watched my first episodes of Dragonball Z (which first aired in 1989) when I was like 8 (1992). Even as an elder millenial it was already kind of old when I got into anime in my teens. I came up mostly through the excellent short run of Berserk!, Escaflowne, Gundam, Naruto, Tenchi Muyo, and Bleach.

I'm also 36 and this is a pretty good cross-section of some of the anime I "grew up on," though I would put Naruto and Bleach outside of my scope and add Cowboy Bebop, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex, Robotech/Macross, Slayers, and Lodoss War among many others.

I generally prefer anime that aren't based on unending serial manga publications, but, instead, have a shorter, more focused structure (26 to 52 eps). I don't have the patience to watch stories that take forever to go nowhere with very little payoff. Often a number of my non-nostalgia favs tend to be based on light novels: e.g., Twelve Kingdoms, Spice & Wolf, Crest/Banner of the Stars, Moribito: Guardian of the Spirit, etc.

 

[PsyzhranV2]

Have you wondered anytime how would be D&D setting created by Japanese, Korean and Chinese publishers?

Sword World. That's your answer.

 

[LuisCarlos17f]

I was not thinking about Asian authors creating Western style fantasy, but based in their own cultures, for example something like Tensa Bansho Zero: Heaven and Earth Edition.

 

[overgeeked]

Not sure if this is a false-construct or if anything to it, but I seem to notice that I have my anime friends and I have my D&D friends. The guys/gals who are into anime seem to have a different preferred aesthetic than the ones who gravitate toward D&D.

If I were to characterize the two groups slightly more, there is one side that is drawn to the foreign, but in a brighter, more comic-esque sense, versus the other who is also seeking the fantastic, but in a grittier, almost realistic sense. They do not seem to overlap too often in my limited purview (e.g., the anime reader has shelves of anime books and maybe one D&D book, where as the D&D junkie has a shelves of said material and nary any anime to grace his/her shelves).

Curious if anyone else has seen this or more of a blending.

I haven't seen D&D described as realistic before, so that's new. I have heard it described as gritty...but not since the days of B/X and AD&D.

WFRP and Call of Cthulhu are far grittier and more "realistic" (in a faux verisimilitude kinda way).

D&D as a game system works more like anime than anything that could be described as gritty or realistic. Change the setting and the system sings for playing anime games, especially since WotC took over. Monk with a few levels of warlock or other spellcasting class and you have most Dragonball Z characters.

 

[Azzy]

I’ve only heard bad things about that one. Though I have heard the abridged series for it is quite good.

I thought the first season was great. It starts a bit slow, but develops well as it goes along. The second season is disappointing (like, as another said, reducing the strong female protaganist to a damsel and distress, as well as adding the imouto trope). The third season (Gun Gale Online) is very hit and miss—some really interesting ideas, but slooow. The fourth and fifth seasons (Alicization) is too dragged out, IMO, but interesting. So, really, it's a mixed bag—I'd recommend watching the first season if nothing else. For all the downsides, it still remains pretty popular (the fifth season wasn't too long ago).

 

[Azzy]

Often a number of my non-nostalgia favs tend to be based on light novels: e.g., Twelve Kingdoms, Spice & Wolf, Crest/Banner of the Stars, Moribito: Guardian of the Spirit, etc.

I loved Spice & Wolf.

Most of my favorites tend to be sci-fi—Gundam (original series—and much of the UC continuity), Macross (original series/Robotech—a lot of the sequels are really dodgy), Ghost in the Shell, VOTOMS, Dougram, Vifam, Space Battleship Yamato (especially the remakes), etc. My favorite remains Nausicaa of the Valley of Wind (which cemented me as fan of anime and manga), though the anime pales beside the manga.

 

[Vaalingrade]

I've actually run a player through a Spice & Wolf inspired game. Deep relationship drama driven by the player with the world as a backdrop of social, trading and chase encounters.

 

[Aldarc]

I loved Spice & Wolf.

A show clearly about a writer who learned about medieval European economics and wanted to write about it. A played a spice-trading merchant character inspired by Lawrence in a game of 7th Sea. My friend incidentally played a viking from the same country. It was a session or two before we realized that we basically created Han Solo and Chewbacca.

Macross (original series/Robotech—a lot of the sequels are really dodgy),

Macross/Robotech (Macross SDF-1 > Next Generation > Southern Cross) holds up surprisingly well for me. I think that's because as a kid you think you are watching a show about mechanized fighter planes that transform into mecha and fight giant aliens, but IN TRUTH you are really watching a romantic show about a love triangle. AND the main character is NOT the best fighter pilot. The main character choses the older career military woman OVER the young pop star. (Compare with one of the Macross sequels where the main character was the best pilot and chose both the older and younger pop star. /cringe).

My favorite remains Nausicaa of the Valley of Wind (which cemented me as fan of anime and manga), though the anime pales beside the manga.

Blessed be Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind manga. /prayer. The Nausicaa influence was one of the things that initially attracted me to Numenera. My favorite Ghibli film is Mononoke Hime, but the Nausicaa manga is possibly my favorite Miyzaki thing overall.

I highly recommend Twelve Kingdoms. It's a girl from Japan sent to a fantasy "China" story with lots of Byzantine bureaucratic terminology. The first 5 episodes are dodgy as the main character will seem insufferable at first, but I swear it gets FAR BETTER once you meet "the rat." Characters have legitimate character arcs!

Also, if you like sci-fi, I recommend Crest/Banner of the Stars, which is basically Elf Space Empire vs. Racist Humans. I have occasionally used seafaring elves who worship the "Court of the Stars" as a result of this series.