Disdain for new fantasy

[Hussar]

I think a lot of posts are somewhat ignoring the OP's point though.

That you or I don't like anime isn't the point. Not liking something is perfectly fine. However, why do people insist on tossing the baby out with the bathwater? Just because I don't like anime doesn't mean that I cannot draw any ideas from anime. Anime is a huge genre, encompassing a wide range of different styles and whatnot. Heck, there's sports anime like Slam Dunk without any magic or swords or anything like that. It is anime, but, it shares pretty much nothing with say, Pokemon, other than perhaps an artistic aesthetic.

OTOH, I cannot be the only person who has seen an anime and thought, wow, there's a cool monster.

Why is it that something that is inspired by anime cannot be judged separate from its inspiration? Not liking a concept is fine. Not liking anime is fine. But, not liking a concept because it's inspired by anime seems a bit strange.

 

[Nifft]

I want to create my own battlecry for 4e. "It's too blickish!" Sounds great, means nothing, makes me feel better when I yell it!

Hey! You get that blick the hell off my lawn! (mumble: darn kids)

MWND*, -- N

*) That there's a new word. It's a conflation of PWND and "mowed". It means "removed from my lawn with violent efficacy".

 

[Ankh-Morpork Guard]

Here's the thing...anime is not a genre. Again, its a medium with countless genres.

So, you can discuss the art style and whether you like it or not and that's all well and good. If you don't like that, that's fine. But the thing is, that's not really the point here...the point is OTHER things being taken from anime to make D&D 'anime'...which doesn't make sense, because anime is a, again, not a genre of its own.

You can talk about not liking the style all you want, but there are very, very few things specific that make something 'anime' beyond that. Themes, stories, etc are pretty much the same kind of things we find in Western media even if its told from a slighty different angle.

So D&D can't become an 'anime' game. Its not possible because that doesn't make sense. D&D is not an art style. It cannot be 'anime' anymore than it can be 'Impressionist' or 'Baroque'.

 

[KarinsDad]

I can't follow you argument, other than it being a retread of "I hate anime" with no meaningful explanation of what it is about anime that you hate, or why it does not belong in D&D.

As it stands, you comment is not constructive to a discussion, since it can be interpeted in a nearly infinte number of ways, an thus says nothing for certain.

It was totally constructive. It was an opinion, not an argument. As an opinion, it is fine. I was not trying to argue anything, hence, your interpretation of it as an argument made no sense to you.

What specifically is it that you don't want, and why?

I mean, I really like anime (I probably spend more money on anime than D&D), and watch a wide variety of it, but I certainly agree with the idea that there are things in anime which don't fit in D&D. Saiyans, Super Robots, magical girls, geeky high-school boys who are surrounded by a harem of alien women, etc... These things are completely outside the genre D&D describes, and have no place in D&D. I don't think I have ever seen someone argue that they do.

There are also other things seen in anime that would be very interesting when brought into D&D. For example, I would love to see a good version of the Hanju race from the fantasy anime The Twelve Kingdoms in D&D. While I would not argue it should be core, I like the idea of running an Escaflowne-style giant robot campaign set in Eberron. There are many fantastic settings and places that would be interesting in D&D. There are all kinds of magical systems, wierd races, monsters, and variations of Eastern Mythology and culture that can add new ideas and flavors to D&D.

Finally, there are a lot of interesting characters and character types in anime that would make great PCs, NPCs, or BBEGs in D&D.

As a whole, saying that anime does not belong in D&D seems empty to me, since it denies the incredible variety of things in anime that could inspire players and designers to make something new and fun.

For you.

Not necessarily for myself and some others.

My concept of DND genre is Roman/Barbarian through Medieval Europe flavored with magic thrown in. Hand held weapons, armor, castles, wands, rings of power, etc. Not gunpowder. Not Asian. Not Aliens.

A lot of Anime draws heavily from sources that are not relevant to the more traditional DND genre. Hence, most of it does not belong. IMO.

I even find Eberron to be too modern for DND. Androids, trains, planes, etc. Not much difference between a warforged and an anime robot when it comes down to it. But, WotC is trying to enlarge its genre into other areas and still follow the core rules somewhat.

Sure, there are probably good ideas that come out of anime that could be incorporated into DND, but I suspect that it would be hard to separate the wheat from the chaff.

As an example, although Wuxia is not really my cup of tea, I went with some friends to see Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon when it came out. As we left the theater, one of my friends said: "I didn't know they filmed that on the moon.". The flying around stuff was so heavy in that movie that it went beyond his suspension of disbelief, even considering that it was an Asian martial arts film. That happens a lot in action films these days, even American ones.

Ditto for many elements of Anime for me in DND. Some of the ideas are ok, but many are not (as you yourself pointed out).

Fighter types that can punch through a stone wall or worse yet, punch the top off a mountain is super heroes to me, not DND. It does not belong in DND shy of real high level magic.

JMO. Not neccessarily yours.

If the DND Fighter types start jumping from one end of a room to the other and bounce off the ceiling in 4E, I'll probably puke and not buy it. Some non-magical abilities are too fantastical and supernatural for feats or talents in DND. Again, IMO.

 

[ShadowX]

Does anyone play D&D past level 8 on these boards because I fail to see how you can decry some of the wonky stuff in anime and not see the parallels in high-level D&D.

When I saw FF7: Advent Children while I overall found it mediocre, I could not help but think that the battle scenes were exactly how I imagined high level D&D combat. Well how I imagine it without things like Full Attacks and AoOs. As someone said, with spellcasters flexing the very order of the universe how can you relegate melee combatants to realistic capabilities? So in my mind, a lot of anime is really just high-level D&D, as is much mythology. Finally, some of the stuff in anime is actually pretty cool. I don't think you would have seen a Bo9S without the upsurge in anime popularity.

 

[AllisterH]

re: Alucard (er, that's Dracula spelled backwards....Kind of appropriate given the subject matter)

re: Guts (You do know he's based on a real person and said person was the guy who "originated" the term, "He can kiss my ass")

re: Source matter
I like some of the source matter in some of the anime and videogames currently ion popular culture. I like the fact that Slayers seems to understand D&D better than most D&D writers (if the travelling companion is making reality twitch casually, the other people in his group better be pulling off their own amazing feats)

As an aside, this is conversely why I liked Conan d20. Conan d20 understood that the current D&D magic system was never suited for a Conan style world and toned it WAY DOWN.

 

[Lonely Tylenol]

I cannot honestly say that all anime is the same.

I can say that all anime I have seen contains elements I strongly dislike. It's something about a combination of the pacing the characterization that I just really can't get into. And yes, that includes Lodoss Wars, as well as Vampire Hunter D, Ninja Scroll, Princess Mononoke[/i], and half a dozen others.

I am not exaggerating when I say I have never watched an anime I truly liked. There are some I've liked more than others, but none that I'd watch a second time.

Does that mean they're bad? No, not at all. It's purely a taste thing.

But it does mean that when people say "Anime isn't a genre," I have to quirk an eyebrow, because--in my own experience, at least--it does have enough traits in common across the board to qualify as one.

I notice that all the titles you mention are essentially action flicks. Perhaps if you watched anime that wasn't all the same genre, you wouldn't think that it comprised a genre.

 

[Mouseferatu]

I notice that all the titles you mention are essentially action flicks. Perhaps if you watched anime that wasn't all the same genre, you wouldn't think that it comprised a genre.

Well, those are just the ones I remember. You could add the first few episodes of Cowboy Bepop to the list, as well as... Um...

I still can't remember. But there were a few others.

 

[Fifth Element]

MWND*, -- N

*) That there's a new word. It's a conflation of PWND and "mowed". It means "removed from my lawn with violent efficacy".

Dude, don't you get tired of winning threads all the time?

 

[Lonely Tylenol]

Well, those are just the ones I remember. You could add the first few episodes of Cowboy Bepop to the list, as well as... Um...

I still can't remember. But there were a few others.

Well, Cowboy Bebob is essentially an action flick too. It borrows a bit more from cop and spy movies, but it's about bounty hunters in space, so it's inescapably going to be a series of set-ups for cool action sequences on- and off-planet.

Now, given, action flicks are where you're going to get material that is really relevant to a discussion about D&D, since it's an action game. And since anime is Asian, it's going to draw from Asian movie conventions rather than American movie conventions. It'll look like Asian cop films, Asian crime films, Asian fantasy films, Asian sci-fi films, Asian historical warfare films, etc. I can see how someone might not really get into the conventions of a foreign cinematic traditon. However, saying that D&D is "too anime" because it borrows from these Asian themes a little, is essentially the same as saying that The Magnificent Seven is too anime, because it was a remake of Kurosawa's The Seven Samurai. You can borrow from another culture's fictional conventions without having to start thinking of your own fiction as a mash-up of cultures.