Everything You Know about Anime Is Wrong

[Android2137]

...You mention unique design and yet... No Mononoke? (I'm not talking about Princess Mononoke. I'm talking about a series where the main character is a mysterious medicine peddler.)

 

[Laser Priest]

What I know about anime: There are a whole two pieces of Anime I could bear to sit the entire way through.

Noting that I have sat the whole way through only two pieces of anime, this is most definitely correct and not wrong.

But hey, Anime is just like any other medium of entertainment. It has it's fair share of masterpieces and a lot of utter shit. Unfortunately, I've mostly been exposed to the piss-poor anime.

 

[Owyn_Merrilin]

Sorry, dude. You haven't brought up anything I haven't heard dozens of times in the past ten years about why anime is so unique and diverse and deserves everyone's admiration and respect. Only maybe one of those images you posted in the thread doesn't look absolutely retarded and artistically ugly to me. I honestly doubt I'm the target audience for any of that stuff. The aesthetics and storytelling styles are so far from what appeals to me, I just have no interest in watching it. Cartoons in general and Japanese entertainment just aren't a big part enough of my life (or part at all) for this to matter at all.

To be fair, it was aimed as much at Weaboos who need to learn that no, anime really isn't as special as they think it is(and by the way, Otaku is a dirty word), as it is at the average person who doesn't know much about anime.

 

[Soviet Heavy]

MEGA SNIP

Quite a nice read you have there. I also would have mentioned that Osamu Tezuka based a lot of his Astro Boy design off of Pinnochio and early Disney designs. You did mention the eyes, but it goes beyond that. Large head, big eyes, small mouth, even the noses were similar.

You did well to not antagonize people, and for that I applaud you.

I like anime visual styles, for being vibrant, and well detailed. However, I feel that it is the system that the industry has pretty much set in stone keeping the Japanese from truly moving forward.

When Japanese companies get hired to animate Western shows, the stuff they turn out is great. I'm talking about Batman: The Animated Series here. With a budget and less time constraints, they really pushed out something incredible. Which is why I feel its a shame that the industry forces them to cut corners off of their home products. A show needs to air weekly, or else it is seen as a failure. That leads to animation cuts, padding, filler, and poor editing. Especially common in long running series.

Also, you might have seen this before, depending on where you live, but check out Cybersix. Argentinian comic adapted into a cartoon by Canada, animated by Japan. Damn cool, like a cybernetic female Zorro.

 

[rob_simple]

Would you please drop the whole 'Japanese Animation' thing and just call them cartoons.

As someone who watches anime the same way I do everything else (i.e. without caring what other people think about it) threads like this warrant a heavy dose of 'This is why we can't have nice things.'

Why do you really care what 'ignorant' people think about your hobby?

Because those ignorant people have something called a vote, and votes make laws...

Yeah...That's great and all but, surprising as it may seem, politics seldom take into account whether or not you think Naruto is good.

 

[Axolotl]

By the way, 8 of the 13 images you posted picture little kids. Way to go.

Cartoons can't have kids in them?

wthamireading.jpg

EDIT: dont get me wrong, I'm not a fan of anime or manga either

Wait, I thought anime is not cartoon? Isnt that what the OP is arguing?

And yeah, a lot of western cartoons feature kids, but they are marketed to kids. With anime... Not so much. Lots of kids (or adults with childish proportion, as the OP put it) in animes aimed at men. Huh.

There's lots of kids in Live Action TV aimed at adults in the west, are you saying there shouldn't be or what exactly?

 

[Gilhelmi]

snip

Ok, I just got too know. What did Hanna-Barbara do in the 1960s?

Other then that. An excellent article. My only negative experience was with when a Captain in the US Army saw me close my Laptop when watching 'FMP:Second Raid' guess which seine. hint naked sisters.. I closed it because I do not like to watch naked women. I know that the context was to demonstrate the relationship the two sisters had where they do everything as one, but no. No one believed me. Not even my Chaplain (I am a Chaplains Assistant and a devout Christian), If I told lies often, then I could understand if no one believed me, but I do not lie that often. I wont lie and saw I never have watched porn, But I resist the temptation as best I can, Even closing the laptop during this part of the show. now I digress.

Anyway excellent article.

FLT

 

[FalloutJack]

Actually, to me it's "Everything that EVERYONE ELSE knows about anime is wrong.". I do not ascribe to or perpetuate ridiculous rants or statements about anime in seriousness at all...except to know what I like about it and declare that it is fun to watch.

 

[Irridium]

Seriously, has there even been a single good dub since Cowboy Bebop? There's a lot of well dubbed stuff from the 80's and 90's, but you can tell the voice actors are just looking for a paycheck in most of the recent series. Zeta< Gundam is a good example of that, actually. If the dub were any good at all, I'd watch it just because it's in 5.1 and the original track is in mono, but the voices are so horrendously bad it's not worth it -- which is sad, because Mobile Suit Gundam actually had a very good dub.[/footnote].

If I could chip in, quite a few have some pretty decent dubs. Or at least dubs that aren't TOO terrible. From the anime I've seen, Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood, Soul Eater, Ghost in the Shell, Durarara, and Dragon Ball Z are the first ones that come to mind that have rather decent dubs. Or at least dubs that aren't full-on terrible.

For the Gundam series it was hit or miss for me, depending on the series. Then again I was rather young when I watched most of it so quality of voices at the time kind of took a backseat to watching giant robots beat the crap out of each other. So my memory might be a bit skewed. Should probably re-watch 'em...

Oh, also Fooly Cooly. I'd say the dub job on that was just as good as the dub job on Cowboy Bebop. I felt that the voice actors fit the characters perfectly.

Also, you win points for having seen 0080. That show embodies one of my favorite things about Gundam: it's a story about two sides going to war, with each side having a pretty good reason to believe they're in the right. There's good and bad people on both sides, and it's rare that one side or the other is truly evil.

I watched 0080 recently. Easily my favorite for the reasons you mentioned. Just felt like saying that. Loved it.

 

[Axolotl]

By the way, 8 of the 13 images you posted picture little kids. Way to go.

Cartoons can't have kids in them?

wthamireading.jpg

EDIT: dont get me wrong, I'm not a fan of anime or manga either

Wait, I thought anime is not cartoon? Isnt that what the OP is arguing?

And yeah, a lot of western cartoons feature kids, but they are marketed to kids. With anime... Not so much. Lots of kids (or adults with childish proportion, as the OP put it) in animes aimed at men. Huh.

There's lots of kids in Live Action TV aimed at adults in the west, are you saying there shouldn't be or what exactly?

Name one Live Action TV series aimed at adults starring a child or an adult with extremely childish proportions in the main character role. Go.

HBO's Rome, granted he ages up towards then end of the second season but he's a kid throughout most of it. They also did Game of Thrones which I haven't seen but if it's anything like the books the main characters will be mainly kids.

 

[Chemical Alia]

That's not the point at all.
The point of the OP was to get a person to give it a shot before deciding he/she doesn't like it instead of bashing something he/she has absolutely no clue about.

If you don't like anime, that's fine, as long as you gave it a shot. Hating something without actually experiencing it is beyond retarded though.
You don't judge books based on their covers.
You don't judge someone based on their skin color or appearance.
You don't judge an anime based on a few internet pictures.

All these things are judged by their content. Sometimes, or oftentimes (90% of everything is crud), the content is lacking or disagreeable, whether it be a book, movie, person, or a cartoon from Japan.

I would rate the importance of judging anime seriously below below books and people. It's just entertainment, and largely entertainment meant for kids in some other country. There's always someone out there who will tell you, "oh, you just didn't see the RIGHT anime," or "you haven't met your quota of seeing enough anime to have a valid opinion on the subject".

I'm an artist, and I care a lot about the subject. I hear people all the time saying about how they dislike Renaissance paintings, or modern art, and I'm sure as hell they never so much as stepped inside an art history 101 class or went to a museum. And it doesn't bother me, because art is not as important or impactful to those people's daily lives as it is to mine. If they decide someday that they want to learn more about it and have a better foundation for expressing their opinions, that's their choice. I don't feel the need to educate them in the mean time.

 

[Owyn_Merrilin]

By the way, 8 of the 13 images you posted picture little kids. Way to go.

Cartoons can't have kids in them?

wthamireading.jpg

EDIT: dont get me wrong, I'm not a fan of anime or manga either

Wait, I thought anime is not cartoon? Isnt that what the OP is arguing?

And yeah, a lot of western cartoons feature kids, but they are marketed to kids. With anime... Not so much. Lots of kids (or adults with childish proportion, as the OP put it) in animes aimed at men. Huh.

There's lots of kids in Live Action TV aimed at adults in the west, are you saying there shouldn't be or what exactly?

Name one Live Action TV series aimed at adults starring a child or an adult with extremely childish proportions in the main character role. Go.

I'll give you three: Malcolm in the Middle, Modern Family, and The Brady Bunch. Granted, the last two were more ensemble casts, but the kids are as much main characters as anyone else.

 

[Zydrate]

I'm a fan of anime and this article still cleared up a couple of my misconceptions.
Specifically, I often referred to Anime as a Genre. Sorry about that! D:

In related news, I actually don't like most Anime because most of it is, indeed, very much the same to me. Death Note is still on my top lists because of its originality. It's 'mainstream' for a reason; Because it's good.

I swear, if I see another giant robot...

 

[Evill_Bob]

I don't like anime, not because there isn't any good ones but because they don't always make it to the USA. For me they have always been a medium. Pokemon for me was on the same level as Transformers, Cowboy Bebop is one of those classics you list alongside Hang 'Em High, and Bobobo-bo Bo-bobo is in the same bid as Monty Python's Fly Circus filed under "shut your brain down, you won't need it for this kind of fun". What we get here in the USA is not only following a strict guidelines that predict if they will be profitable or not but are often 10 years old before they get here, IF they get here.

 

[ccggenius12]

So stand to the side over there, my fellow otaku...
Also, the word "otaku" has a LOT of negative connotations in Japan, so you really shouldn't identify yourself with it.

Mixed messages much?
Also, not only did you list The Boondocks as not a comedy, you made no mention of the fact that the writer started it as a comic strip. Its popularity as a comic is what allowed it to be made as a cartoon.

 

[kasperbbs]

Uh.. What? I don't know anything about anime? Well i know what i need to know, there are some good shows, then there is some ecchi crap and tentacle porn, i know what is what. As for Western animated shows vs Anime, i personally prefer anime, theres much more to choose from and its not only aimed for children, but its a hassle to sort though all the crap.