[OT] Of anime & cats

[Kesh]

I must admit that I never did understand this cultural obsession with anime... Some of it is quite good from what I have seen, at least back when teletoon used to air anime movies late at night, but I've seen the racks of anime titles at my local geek shop, more precicely I've seen the prices of said titles and I have to ask, why would you cheerfully shell out 60, or 70 or even more to see a movie? They may be amuseing but they arn't that good. Hell I even waited for Princess Mononuke to come out in the cheep theaters before I saw it.

It's a genre of it's own. Just like someone may say, "I like horror films" or "I like a good romantic flick", some people really like anime. And then you can get into sub-genres, such as horror-anime, fantasy-anime and *gasp* erotic-anime.

Also, it's just plain different from most American fare. There's cultural difference that sometimes shows through (and which gets mangled on American TV) that adds an exotic feel to otherwise common themes, such as romantic anime or comedies. Plus, it's more common to have mature themes in anime than it is in American cartoons, which adds a broad group of films to your possibilities.

If you're just wondering why anyone would bother with animation, rather than live-action, I suggest you pick up Perfect Blue. Give me a ring if you still think some of the things done in that film would look remotely plausible with live actors, even though they seem perfectly natural in this film. There are some things that just look better in anime, or seem more believable because you can draw better effects than most CGI places can at the moment.

 

[Tsyr]

What Kesh said, and here in the United States, Anime isn't quite that expensive. The only thing that's gonna cost you 60+ dollars are "sets"... entire seasons of an anime, for example. Individual discs are 14-30 dollars, depending on assorted factors.

Yes, Hellsing _is_ really cool

re: Fansubs - Fansubs are, as the name inplies anime subtitled by fans. This is normaly recorded off japanese TV, or copied from janapese-release tapes or discs, then subtitled by fans of that anime in America who want to spread it around. It's sorta a "grey" area legaly, but police have never seemed to care... Fansub sales go on in the open floor at Anime cons, some of which have police patroling for saftey, and big Fansub distro websites are never bothered, so I guess it's "legal enough". They don't cost much... That's part of the reason I think they get away with it... the rule is that you charge production costs, and that's it (Cost of tape, label, case, shipping, possibly a little mark up for time and degredation of the original tape, etc), but don't try to make a profit. As well, most fansub distros stop selling a series once it has been released in America.

These are the two "main" distros I use online-

http://www.chibichibi.org/shoujo-exchange/index.html
http://www.animemetropolis.com/kodocha/main.html

As well, a new trend, the socalled "digisubs", are gaining in popularity. They are just normal fansubs, but in DivX format and downloadable/tradable/etc. Morpheus or WinMX are both good places to find them, as well as some IRC channels, and fumeianime.com has some series to download, if you are patient.

There are a few series which I don't even think are OUT on tape fansubs, but are out on digisubs... Hellsing and Magical Nyan-Nyan Taruto, for example.