Why the hate for anime? (Y da hat 4 anime?)
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Trainz
Explorer
I don't hate the genre (anime), but I definitely despise the lazyness of the conception of many of them.
Good (that I saw): Akira, Mononoke, GitS.
Bad (that I saw): Escaflowne, Records of Lodoss War.
The two above, I watched ALL episodes because a friend lend them to me.
What I'm talking about is the frame per second flow. It is horrendous in many an anime. Just try it. For example, watch Escaflowne, and in a given scene, count the number of frames. Careful though: a static background with a slow moving (sliding) static foreground is really just two images drawn that are slowly being moved to create an illusion of movement.
While quite an efficient animation technique, Anime overuses it. In one instance, a 30 seconds sample had about only 8 drawn panels. That's INCLUDING the characters.
You draw a character's head with no mouth, then you draw an open mouth, then a closed mouth. Then you have the character give a 30 second dialogue by having the open mouth layer and closed mouth layer alternate, with the character's body being totally static. With background, that's about four images, two of which are very small.
I'm sorry, but I just can't condone such an "art" form. It's a lazy "dust in the eyes" inneficient medium. It frustrates me.
FYI, I have worked for one month as an "inker" for an animation (The old lady and the Pigeons). Got fed up and left, so you won't see my name in the credits. I inked about 100 layers, the total of which lasted about 15 seconds in the animation (we were 8 inkers, about as many drawers, and 3 background artists). To give you an idea...
Heh... I just went to check the clip in the link above, and the first time you see the cop, that's one of the sequences I inked ! I just also noticed that this movie won a lot of awards... maybe I should have stayed onboard dammit.
All that said, I'm curious about Cowboy Beebop (have the soundtrack, love it). Is the FPS flow bad ? If not, I'll watch it.
Another thing: the animation (live action) in Kill Bill 1 was astounding. I want to see more work by whoever did that (if it's as good), so any indication would be appreciated.
Good (that I saw): Akira, Mononoke, GitS.
Bad (that I saw): Escaflowne, Records of Lodoss War.
The two above, I watched ALL episodes because a friend lend them to me.
What I'm talking about is the frame per second flow. It is horrendous in many an anime. Just try it. For example, watch Escaflowne, and in a given scene, count the number of frames. Careful though: a static background with a slow moving (sliding) static foreground is really just two images drawn that are slowly being moved to create an illusion of movement.
While quite an efficient animation technique, Anime overuses it. In one instance, a 30 seconds sample had about only 8 drawn panels. That's INCLUDING the characters.
You draw a character's head with no mouth, then you draw an open mouth, then a closed mouth. Then you have the character give a 30 second dialogue by having the open mouth layer and closed mouth layer alternate, with the character's body being totally static. With background, that's about four images, two of which are very small.
I'm sorry, but I just can't condone such an "art" form. It's a lazy "dust in the eyes" inneficient medium. It frustrates me.
FYI, I have worked for one month as an "inker" for an animation (The old lady and the Pigeons). Got fed up and left, so you won't see my name in the credits. I inked about 100 layers, the total of which lasted about 15 seconds in the animation (we were 8 inkers, about as many drawers, and 3 background artists). To give you an idea...
Heh... I just went to check the clip in the link above, and the first time you see the cop, that's one of the sequences I inked ! I just also noticed that this movie won a lot of awards... maybe I should have stayed onboard dammit.
All that said, I'm curious about Cowboy Beebop (have the soundtrack, love it). Is the FPS flow bad ? If not, I'll watch it.
Another thing: the animation (live action) in Kill Bill 1 was astounding. I want to see more work by whoever did that (if it's as good), so any indication would be appreciated.
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Corinth
First Post
I take anime title-by-title, rejecting some and accepting some, as a rule. When I toss something aside, it's usually due to one or more of the following traits: sophomoric in presentation, sophomoric in content, out of my demographic, out of my interest, or an utterly incompetant execution.
This means that my personal anime collection is very small: Macross, Macross Plus, Bubblegum Crisis, Metropolis, Spirited Away, Princess Mononoke, Record of Lodoss War, Ghost in the Shell, Ninja Scroll, Gundam Wing, Mobile Suit Gundam: The 08th MS Team. Those are the titles that, so far, I like well enough that I bothered to buy copies instead of borrowing another's copy or watching it on TV. Cowboy Bebop will join that list soon enough.
There are other titles that I like--Rurouni Kenshin being one of them, as well as (despite that whiny Amuro) Mobile Suit Gundam--but most don't do it for me; I'm not, as a rule, into the titles that feature (or are little more than excuses for) sexual comedy. I dislike the long-running trend of teenaged protagonists with inexplicably high capabilities in whatever the important abilities are, and I dislike gratuitous stuff of any sort--anything that gets in the way of the central plot ought to be viciously and ruthlessly excised; this is why I like Law & Order--so even amongst those that I like I often have quibbles.
I treat anime like I would any other sort of film or television. I would advise you folks to do the same.
This means that my personal anime collection is very small: Macross, Macross Plus, Bubblegum Crisis, Metropolis, Spirited Away, Princess Mononoke, Record of Lodoss War, Ghost in the Shell, Ninja Scroll, Gundam Wing, Mobile Suit Gundam: The 08th MS Team. Those are the titles that, so far, I like well enough that I bothered to buy copies instead of borrowing another's copy or watching it on TV. Cowboy Bebop will join that list soon enough.
There are other titles that I like--Rurouni Kenshin being one of them, as well as (despite that whiny Amuro) Mobile Suit Gundam--but most don't do it for me; I'm not, as a rule, into the titles that feature (or are little more than excuses for) sexual comedy. I dislike the long-running trend of teenaged protagonists with inexplicably high capabilities in whatever the important abilities are, and I dislike gratuitous stuff of any sort--anything that gets in the way of the central plot ought to be viciously and ruthlessly excised; this is why I like Law & Order--so even amongst those that I like I often have quibbles.
I treat anime like I would any other sort of film or television. I would advise you folks to do the same.
WizarDru
Adventurer
Unless I'm mistaken, the animation was done by Studio Madhouse, who has been around for years. How good their work appears really depends on their budget.Trainz said:
It's also not entirely fair to expect the same quality of animation from a weekly animated show compared against a major feature film. Much of madhouse's work has been in films, such as Demon City Shinjuku or Ninja Scroll. Bebop was a big budget show, whereas a show like Escaflowne just didn't have that kind of money to toss around. The Escaflowne movie had much nicer animation, comparativley speaking.
Of course, I'm an old school anime fan, so I'm still more concerned with the story than the pretty pictures, especially when I remember how much crap animation was on when I was a kid, before it got farmed out to Asia on a regular basis. I mean, Filmation wasn't exactly cranking out the gems, for example. I still prefer the original Captain Harlock to the newer versions.
WizarDru said:
I didn't know what he meant by the live action animation (special effects?) done in Kill Bill (didn't see, I don't care much for Tarrantino)... but I believe the cel animation was done by Production IG.
http://www.productionig.com/English/96/~/Kill%20Bill/
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reapersaurus
Explorer
A couple things:
1) I'm surprised when younger Anime fans don't know about the classics.
How can they be 'into' the newer (mostly wretched) anime and never have heard of Ninja Scroll, Project A-Ko, Akira, etc?
It seems that most of the recommended titles in this thread are older titles.
I'm wondering if the newer anime is significantly worse quality than older ones?
2) I've been a fan of anime since before you could find it - late 80's.
Yet I don't consider myself a big fan anymore simply because most of the stories just don't cut it for me.
Anime stories are too commonly either baffling or just bad.
Almost universally they are not directed at my Western tastes (I don't blame them for that, it makes sense since they aren't Western).
However, what surprises me is how many Westerners say they looooove anime, when they obviously aren't knowledgable about the cultural references and Eastern plot/styles.
It's these kind of people that lead me to the dismissive observation that a LOT of American anime "fans" mainly like anime because it's different, and not mainstream. They THINK that if they like it a lot, than it will give them "cred".
This knee-jerk complimenting of Eastern entertainment really does piss me off.
1) I'm surprised when younger Anime fans don't know about the classics.
How can they be 'into' the newer (mostly wretched) anime and never have heard of Ninja Scroll, Project A-Ko, Akira, etc?
It seems that most of the recommended titles in this thread are older titles.
I'm wondering if the newer anime is significantly worse quality than older ones?
2) I've been a fan of anime since before you could find it - late 80's.
Yet I don't consider myself a big fan anymore simply because most of the stories just don't cut it for me.
Anime stories are too commonly either baffling or just bad.
Almost universally they are not directed at my Western tastes (I don't blame them for that, it makes sense since they aren't Western).
However, what surprises me is how many Westerners say they looooove anime, when they obviously aren't knowledgable about the cultural references and Eastern plot/styles.
It's these kind of people that lead me to the dismissive observation that a LOT of American anime "fans" mainly like anime because it's different, and not mainstream. They THINK that if they like it a lot, than it will give them "cred".
This knee-jerk complimenting of Eastern entertainment really does piss me off.
Hey, reaper,
I have a theory, and it's one I'd like to float by the anime-people -- but I really don't want it to sound like an attack on those people. I don't think of it as one, but it's kind of awkward to say properly.
Something you said struck a chord with me -- the people who say that they appreciate it but don't know enough about Eastern culture to actually do so.
So here's the theory: fire away.
Some people in the United States have an inherent mental somethingorother that just plain prevents them from getting some elements of the culture in which they were raised. One guy in my gaming group is like this. If he were a character, either Wis or Cha would be his dump stat. He's intelligent, he's even clever, and he is a very nice person, but on some level, he doesn't get human interaction here (and he's a native U.S. person). He says inappropriate things -- not rude, just not exactly in-line with the conversation. He doesn't pick up on social cues.
Because he doesn't really get American culture -- doesn't like much of its television, thinks most of U.S. movies are stupid because he doesn't appreciate the cultural area in which the movies are working -- he looks for entertainment that lacks the sensibilities of American culture. He's a big anime fan.
My theory is that, as someone with an inherent inability to interact in an American cultural context, he enjoys anime not because it has an emphasis on Eastern cultural values, but because it does not have an emphasis on Western cultural values. In other words, he likes it because, in his own mind, it's closer to what he is. He's missing all kinds of Eastern cultural stuff watching anime, just like he misses all kinds of American cultural stuff watching American television, but because it's foreign enough that he wasn't raised with an intellectual recognition of the cultural tropes, he doesn't, on some level, realize that he's missing as much -- he's just happy that the show isn't bothering with that stuff that American audiences insist on all the time, that stuff he doesn't really appreciate.
If it sounds horrendously awkward for me to say this, it is -- because in the little pre-marital personality test I had to take, I'm an off-the-charts empath. I soak in cultural and emotional stuff and get body-language pings all the time (as does my wife -- works well for us sometimes, is a pain other times). It's difficult for me to understand what it would be like to lack the "social sense" that this guy seems to lack, and I'm wondering if that lack of social sense is what causes him to gravitate to anime -- to get an entertainment source that isn't hitting him over the head with all the cultural stuff he's been raised to think he should understand, which has to be, for him, as frustrating as giving a color-blind guy a book where every third word is written in red on a green background.
I'm not trying to suggest that all anime fans are this way. Some folks obviously enjoy Eastern culture and really get a kick out of it. Other people like the art. But I'd be curious to hear if anyone sees an element of accuracy in anything I've said -- or at least tried to say.
And lemme say one more time -- I'm really not trying to say that this means that anime people are all maladjusted losers or anything. That's often the stereotype that non-anime-lovers fling at anime-lovers, and heck, we've all heard enough gamer-geek stereotypes to be tired of those. The guy in my gaming group is odd, and it's sometimes frustrating for me to have a conversation with him because of the verbal cues he misses (and the apparently inaccurate ones he sends out), but he's also a genuinely nice and decent guy.
I have a theory, and it's one I'd like to float by the anime-people -- but I really don't want it to sound like an attack on those people. I don't think of it as one, but it's kind of awkward to say properly.
Something you said struck a chord with me -- the people who say that they appreciate it but don't know enough about Eastern culture to actually do so.
So here's the theory: fire away.
Some people in the United States have an inherent mental somethingorother that just plain prevents them from getting some elements of the culture in which they were raised. One guy in my gaming group is like this. If he were a character, either Wis or Cha would be his dump stat. He's intelligent, he's even clever, and he is a very nice person, but on some level, he doesn't get human interaction here (and he's a native U.S. person). He says inappropriate things -- not rude, just not exactly in-line with the conversation. He doesn't pick up on social cues.
Because he doesn't really get American culture -- doesn't like much of its television, thinks most of U.S. movies are stupid because he doesn't appreciate the cultural area in which the movies are working -- he looks for entertainment that lacks the sensibilities of American culture. He's a big anime fan.
My theory is that, as someone with an inherent inability to interact in an American cultural context, he enjoys anime not because it has an emphasis on Eastern cultural values, but because it does not have an emphasis on Western cultural values. In other words, he likes it because, in his own mind, it's closer to what he is. He's missing all kinds of Eastern cultural stuff watching anime, just like he misses all kinds of American cultural stuff watching American television, but because it's foreign enough that he wasn't raised with an intellectual recognition of the cultural tropes, he doesn't, on some level, realize that he's missing as much -- he's just happy that the show isn't bothering with that stuff that American audiences insist on all the time, that stuff he doesn't really appreciate.
If it sounds horrendously awkward for me to say this, it is -- because in the little pre-marital personality test I had to take, I'm an off-the-charts empath. I soak in cultural and emotional stuff and get body-language pings all the time (as does my wife -- works well for us sometimes, is a pain other times). It's difficult for me to understand what it would be like to lack the "social sense" that this guy seems to lack, and I'm wondering if that lack of social sense is what causes him to gravitate to anime -- to get an entertainment source that isn't hitting him over the head with all the cultural stuff he's been raised to think he should understand, which has to be, for him, as frustrating as giving a color-blind guy a book where every third word is written in red on a green background.
I'm not trying to suggest that all anime fans are this way. Some folks obviously enjoy Eastern culture and really get a kick out of it. Other people like the art. But I'd be curious to hear if anyone sees an element of accuracy in anything I've said -- or at least tried to say.
And lemme say one more time -- I'm really not trying to say that this means that anime people are all maladjusted losers or anything. That's often the stereotype that non-anime-lovers fling at anime-lovers, and heck, we've all heard enough gamer-geek stereotypes to be tired of those. The guy in my gaming group is odd, and it's sometimes frustrating for me to have a conversation with him because of the verbal cues he misses (and the apparently inaccurate ones he sends out), but he's also a genuinely nice and decent guy.
WizarDru
Adventurer
Honestly, takyris, I'm not really following you. To carry the analogy, are you saying that D&D gamers enjoy D&D because they don't enjoy traditional board games? I'm sure there are some folks who might fit your pattern, but the same could be said for Star Trek.
In short, I think an American fan who doesn't get the references (and let's be honest, most non-Japanes fans had to LEARN them) may just be enjoying anime for it's tropes, stories and designs. Is it so hard to believe that some folks just enjoy watching giant robots pummel each other, with a little teen angst thrown in? Fist of the Northstar actually does have it's deep moments (honest), but sometimes you like to see someone get their ass kicked.
It's escapist entertainment, mostly. I enjoy Gungrave the same way the I enjoy the Sopranos...and I'm not too up on the mafia's cultural references either. I didn't know what some of the phrases Tony Soprano used meant untli they defined them or someone told me...why should anime be any different?
I get what you're saying, I just think your making a connection that simply isn't there.
In short, I think an American fan who doesn't get the references (and let's be honest, most non-Japanes fans had to LEARN them) may just be enjoying anime for it's tropes, stories and designs. Is it so hard to believe that some folks just enjoy watching giant robots pummel each other, with a little teen angst thrown in? Fist of the Northstar actually does have it's deep moments (honest), but sometimes you like to see someone get their ass kicked.
It's escapist entertainment, mostly. I enjoy Gungrave the same way the I enjoy the Sopranos...and I'm not too up on the mafia's cultural references either. I didn't know what some of the phrases Tony Soprano used meant untli they defined them or someone told me...why should anime be any different?
I get what you're saying, I just think your making a connection that simply isn't there.
Mog Elffoe
Explorer
reapersaurus said:
As far as the recommended titles on this list go I think it's more of a 'trickle-down' effect. The older stuff has been around longer and has naturally had more time to be seen by more people. There's plenty of new anime being released that's pretty good or even excellent (RahXephon, for example) but since it's so new it hasn't had a chance to get the same kind of saturation as the older stuff.
And as far as the newbies not having seen the 'classics'--well, they have to find out about these somehow, right? That's why threads like the 'Top Five Anime Picks' one get created. Folks want to find out what's good. That's the main reason I check out the 'What are you reading this month' threads--I want to find out what the quality stuff out there is.
