The Golden Years of Anime

[Xelien]

Pah, I dont watch the majority out there now. I didn't watch the majority of anime in 90s or 00s. Why? Cause there a fucking lot, and a lot of it is shit or doesn't appeal to me. There is plenty of fanservice anime in any decade of anime. But I can say the exact same about normal TV shows. I only watch the things that appeal to me, that leaves out probably more that 80% or "normal" TV shows.

As of now, current anime I've finished are Steins;Gate, Puella Magi Madoka Magica, No. 6, Sakamichi no Apollon, and Mirai Nikki. So I see no golden age, it's just when anime first started to become popular to west.

Also the movie "The Wolf Children: Ame and Yuki" which came out last year was a really beautiful and poignant movie that deserves more attention.

 

[Entitled]

The problem with series nowadays is that they are increasingly pandering towards Otaku with expendable income to front their series. While in North America a DVD box set can go from anywhere between 40 to 70 bucks, over there they will spend insane amounts on half that amount of content. So in order to keep the Otakus happy, they pander. And pander. And pander.

In other words, the problem is that they stopped pandering to the American Nerd's tastes with genres of traditional High Fantasy and Cyberpunk and macho gunfighting action shows, and turned to their own native population's tastes.

 

[the doom cannon]

Ive watched something like 100 days of anime, and i have been keeping current with new seasons since about 4 years ago. I have to ask, were you able to watch this quantity of anime in the 90s? I really doubt it, and on top of that, only a select few anime were ever brought over from Japan, usually the good ones. Because of the internet and availability of anime to anyone anywhere, I think we perceive an oversaturation. From my perspective, we've been getting one or two really good series a year, and that is pretty good if you ask me. Go through all of the 90s and pick out one or two anime from each year that were pretty good or great.

 

[Owlslayer]

I do not think there are any Golden Years in anime, nor have they passed us by. Loads of great stuff can be found from different times. All very enjoyable. Sure, there's lots of not that great stuff out there as well. But still, I just watch what i enjoy. Then again, I'm not very old, and i haven't really watched anime that's older than myself (maybe just one or two, actually). So maybe there really was some sort of a Golden Age back then, but, well, not for me. And i doubt I'd call it so even if i watched the greatest of stuff from back there.So, yeah. That's my two cents, or something like that.

 

[PedroSteckecilo]

I wouldn't say there's ever been a "Golden Age," it all really comes down to whether or not current Anime Creators are making stuff to your preferences. Sometimes things are good, sometimes things are bad. I would generally say though the "best Anime time" in recent memory was back around 2008, just because the market was still booming and lots of different stuff was available. Now things have slowed down, though the internet is still a viable anime source even if the stuff you like isn't being officially translated/licensed.

 

[Simca]

It's cute how people think "older = better" but it often works in reverse.

In the Ghost in the Shell movie, the Major takes off her clothing and does battle completely naked -three times- in the first thirty minutes alone. All of the male characters remain fully clothed, of course. It just ruins the character. Even in the first season of the anime, the Major wears a ridiculously unrealistic (and sexy, of course) outfit.

However in the second season of the anime, things get much better as the writers and animators finally decided to clothe her. They even manage to fit her character into a few emotional scenes without having her break down and rely on somebody else, which is nearly unheard of for women in anime.

So yes, please: keep complaining that fanservice ruins today's anime while in the same breath praising Ghost in the Shell, which did a horrid job with clothing its female characters for the first half of its content and loved to have them repeatedly naked.

 

[Keiichi Morisato]

http://thatguywiththeglasses.com/bt/the-sage/anime-abandon/38742-anime-abandon-macross-plus-part-ii
For those of you who follow him, Bennett the Sage's webseries, Anime Abandon, has spent the last two episodes talking about the OVA Macross Plus, which he considers one of the greatest animated series of all time. Towards the end of the second video, he talks about how he fell out of Anime for around six years, because the oversaturation of the market and the higher emphasis on fanservice drove him away.

It got me wondering: are Anime's golden years behind us? Whenever I see the bi-weekly anime list threads pop up around here, the majority of the shows I could not identify. Sure, they might be good shows, but I never felt the same impact that the heavy hitters of the 90s provided. There is just something that goes beyond mere nostalgia with older titles that really sticks with me. I'm not sure if it is the visual styles clicking better with my retro sensibilities, or if the market during the 90s helped distill anime of the time to its best shows only, weeding out lesser titles. (I know, a lot of crap came out in the 90s too, but most of them get forgotten)

I mean, shonen series for example. There are hundreds of them out there. The three giants in the industry at the moment are Shonen series. But I don't feel the same way about them that I do Dragonball. I'm not sure why that is. I mean, Naruto started airing in Canada in 2005. I was 12 at the time, so I would have been in the primary target demographic for the show. But it never stuck with me the way DBZ did, which I watched when I was six.

Is the more open market for anime, with sites like Crunchyroll, allowing more series to dilute the art form? Thanks to the law of averages, more shows being streamed means more good shows arrive as a statistical fact. But while we are getting more good series, are they truly "great" series, or just decent? With an anime market that aggressively targets smaller and smaller niches in Japan to appeal to the money splurging otaku, and a western market that has never been larger devouring any new release they can grab, are we seeing a negative effect on the medium? I can hardly tell two highschool anime apart these days, while I can immediately tell the difference between two sci-fi series like Macross/Gundam, or Cowboy Bebop/Outlaw Star.

try watching/readin "The World God Only Knows", it's very good. the show is about a guy who the "God" of Dating Sims and Vis

I want to say that I am not trying to harp on modern anime here. Particularly with regards to films, I have found a bunch of really good things in modern stuff as well. (Sword of the Stranger is a fucking good movie)

What do you think? What would you consider the Golden years of Anime? This is not a lists thread, I am not looking for recommendations. Give me your opinions, not your list of stuff to watch.

EDIT
Allow me to reiterate: I do not want to see your goddamn lists. If you can't articulate your point without relying on a list saying "this is good stuff" without anything to back it up, just don't post until you have something useful to say.

try watching/reading "The World God Only Knows", it's very good. the show is about a guy who the "God" of Dating Sims and Visual Novels who is contracted by a "demon" to extract the loose souls of evil demons out of girls who are all based around various female archetypes found in VN/DS. the manga is smartly written and uses very little fan service (i've only ever seen a very few panty shots) this manga could have turned out to be a lot like Sora No Otoshimono great and interest plot and premise bogged down by the constant barrage of fan service as though the mangaka isn't confident that the story alone will keep the series going (though this may have something to do with the editors dictating his manga...)

also i hated most anime/manga back in the 90's, at lest shounen anime because the ALL had to have a Tournament arc, this shounen cliche was started by DB and DBZ, the forced arc even ruined 2 great series for me Yu Yu Hakusho (with the dark tournament arc) and HunterxHunter where every arc is a differernt tournament instead of actually adventuring like the plot summary suggests that it is going to do...

 

[Soviet Heavy]

The problem with series nowadays is that they are increasingly pandering towards Otaku with expendable income to front their series. While in North America a DVD box set can go from anywhere between 40 to 70 bucks, over there they will spend insane amounts on half that amount of content. So in order to keep the Otakus happy, they pander. And pander. And pander.

In other words, the problem is that they stopped pandering to the American Nerd's tastes with genres of traditional High Fantasy and Cyberpunk and macho gunfighting action shows, and turned to their own native population's tastes.

Erm, no. North America has *never* been their target audience. Ever. And to say that the Otaku represent Japan's tastes is just as ignorant. No, see, in Japan, the Otaku are social outcasts and introverts who obsess over one or more specific things. One of them being anime. When chasing the Otaku dollar (or yen), content creators need to continually focus and focus their shows to appeal to increasingly specific niche markets. It is one of the driving reasons why shows such as NGE or Haruhi Suzumiya are copied to oblivion. They made a shit ton of cash on the Otakus, and other studios see that and get dollar signs in their eyes.

The North American market isn't Japan's concern, it's an afterthought. They make most of their money by selling these extravagant box sets to Otaku for anywhere between 250 to 500 dollars a piece. That way they make up for the having such small consumer bases in their home country. If you can sell 2000 box sets for 500 dollars, you are making just as much money as you would selling 25000 box sets for 40 dollars, except that you don't need to pay for licensing, dub scripts, or english voice actors.

 

[Entitled]

Erm, no. North America has *never* been their target audience. Ever.

That is, never since the nineties. Untl then, there were multiple shows like Cowboy Bebop, or Trigun, that could only ever be profitable because of the american Anime Boom gave them a big enough periphery demographic in the west, and an incentive for creators to keep making more shows like that.

The North American market isn't Japan's concern, it's an afterthought. They make most of their money by selling these extravagant box sets to Otaku for anywhere between 250 to 500 dollars a piece.

Yes, they do. That's why you don't see any new Cowboy Bebop around any more.

And to say that the Otaku represent Japan's tastes is just as ignorant.

It would be ignorant, if anyone would say that.

Just because I said that Anime is more culturally aimed at japanese than it was 2-3 decades ago, doesn't mean that it "represents" mainstream Japanese culture.

For example, if I would say that Sonata Arctica is more culturally European in it's sounds than Hammerfall, that doesn't imply that mainstream European tastes are accurately represented by any kind of Power Metal at all, just that it's more directly following the European branch of it's own particular niche, compared to the other one.

The same thing with animation and anime.

No, see, in Japan, the Otaku are social outcasts and introverts who obsess over one or more specific things. One of them being anime.

My bullshit sense it's tingling.

Apparently, otaku are such social outcasts in Japan, that 25.5% of the current total Japanese population [http://anime.mmgn.com/Articles/Anime-and-Japans-Population-Crisis] refer to themselves as an "otaku". Including their former prime minister. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taro_Aso#Manga_fan] (on the account of reading a lot of manga). And that's why the Anime/manga/visual novel/light novel industry formally refers to itself as the "otaku industry", as if they would just admit that they are in the "obsessive fanboy industry".

The truth is, that "otaku" pretty much means "nerd". You can find sources from Japanese people shunning otakus, just as you could find western bullies and conservatives shunning nerd culture. But there are just as many people being proud of it, or neutrally using it to describe a set of stereotypical interests and behaviors.

The misconception that it's supposed to be a huge universal stigma, is base on a western backlash against weeaboos glorifying anime culture too much as if "otaku" would be a badge of honor, so their detractors ended up exaggerating the "true meaning" of the word in the other direction.

 

[Casual Shinji]

It's cute how people think "older = better" but it often works in reverse.

In the Ghost in the Shell movie, the Major takes off her clothing and does battle completely naked -three times- in the first thirty minutes alone. All of the male characters remain fully clothed, of course. It just ruins the character. Even in the first season of the anime, the Major wears a ridiculously unrealistic (and sexy, of course) outfit.

However in the second season of the anime, things get much better as the writers and animators finally decided to clothe her. They even manage to fit her character into a few emotional scenes without having her break down and rely on somebody else, which is nearly unheard of for women in anime.

So yes, please: keep complaining that fanservice ruins today's anime while in the same breath praising Ghost in the Shell, which did a horrid job with clothing its female characters for the first half of its content and loved to have them repeatedly naked.

The nudity in Ghost in the Shell (the movie) was never presented as tantalizing. Kusanagi has no shame of her nudity, because she doesn't regard herself as human. It was also in reference to mannequins.

The movie was basically objectifying her as a fake shell.

 

[Casual Shinji]

And pardon me for this, but the only thing Akira has of awesome is that perfect animation, the rest isn't that special.

Even if that were true, which it isn't, you say that like it's nothing.

Akira is the only anime (to my knowledge) that has lipsyncing, for Christ's sake. If there's one thing I'll critisize anime for it's that stubborness to not include that in every damn work, eventhough it results in much livelier characters.

 

[Baneat]

At least from the western perspective anime's getting better every year. High-speed internet, better resolutions, higher quality subs that usually come the same day. Nyaa.eu/Bakabt. Gen Urobuchi. No more kawaii uguu~ faces as even a budget show looks passable these days.

Anime on VHS was fucking shite.

 

[Simca]

It's cute how people think "older = better" but it often works in reverse.

In the Ghost in the Shell movie, the Major takes off her clothing and does battle completely naked -three times- in the first thirty minutes alone. All of the male characters remain fully clothed, of course. It just ruins the character. Even in the first season of the anime, the Major wears a ridiculously unrealistic (and sexy, of course) outfit.

However in the second season of the anime, things get much better as the writers and animators finally decided to clothe her. They even manage to fit her character into a few emotional scenes without having her break down and rely on somebody else, which is nearly unheard of for women in anime.

So yes, please: keep complaining that fanservice ruins today's anime while in the same breath praising Ghost in the Shell, which did a horrid job with clothing its female characters for the first half of its content and loved to have them repeatedly naked.

The nudity in Ghost in the Shell (the movie) was never presented as tantalizing. Kusanagi has no shame of her nudity, because she doesn't regard herself as human. It was also in reference to mannequins.

The movie was basically objectifying her as a fake shell.

At 5:35 (during the intro sequence), they zoom in her ass while naked. At 5:50, her nipples get the same treatment. The purpose of these shots is questionable at absolute best because the segments showing the overall transformation of her body or the zoom-in on her face at 6:00 are far more powerful.

As for the in-combat sequences where she strips, those are even weirder. It's like her primary motivation entering combat is "how can I get my clothes off fastest?" I think they were trying to have some concept where the best form of thermoptic camo only works without clothing, but it was done really badly, especially because she never takes off her boots.

And of course that explanation still doesn't account for the reason that only the Major strips in battle and no male characters do.

 

[Entitled]

And pardon me for this, but the only thing Akira has of awesome is that perfect animation, the rest isn't that special.

Even if that were true, which it isn't, you say that like it's nothing.

Akira is the only anime (to my knowledge) that has lipsyncing, for Christ's sake. If there's one thing I'll critisize anime for it's that stubborness to not include that in every damn work, eventhough it results in much livelier characters.

That's originating from a fundamental difference between western and eastern animation theory.

Here is a good summary of it from Peter Chung: http://www.pelleas.net/forum/viewtopic.php?p=1643#p1643

Basically, western artists are more concerned with the verisimilitude of setting up a believably immesive universe, while eastern artists are more likely to draw attention to how their work is composed from elements by the creator's art style. Part of this is that western animators put more effort into fluid motion and facial expressions, as if trying to pretend that it's a real actor (just think of how much of the animation industry jumped on the CGI board), while eastern artists are treating characters as puppets and focusing more on the composition of the scenery.

A fun excercise: compare other art forms between the east and the west: theatre, poetry, painting, gaming, etc, and see wheher the same logic applies.

 

[Worgen]

For a guy who spends his time reviewing some of the absolute crap that was released back in his so called 'Golden Age', Bennett comes off as a little confused.

The very concept of golden years in any form of media is ridiculous to me. The only reason people look back at say, the 70s or the 60s (or in this case, the 90s) and say they were a golden year for anything is because all the lame, forgettable stuff has died and is barely known by anyone. From about the year 2000 to now has been astonishingly good for anime and manga, and consistently astonishing too. Fullmetal Alchemist (the original and Brotherhood), Baccano! FLCL, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex, The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzimiya, Eva Rebuild, Paprika, The Girl Who Leapt Through Time, Eden of the East, Death Note, Black Lagoon, Gurren Laggenn, Rahxephon, When They Cry, Elfen Lied, Monster, Code Geass, Hellsing Ultimate, Requiem from the Darkness ... There's a massive list of great anime that's been made in the past ten or so years. Even stuff like Highschool of the Dead was unjustifiably good. If that was made in the 90s, it would be poorly animated, badly dubbed shit.

The 90s did have some classic shows, but things only become classics over time and with hindsight. For every Cowboy Bebop there were a hundred Angel Cop's. You can complain about how modern anime is filled with fanservice, but it's no worse than it was in these so called 'Golden Years'.

Eh, I don't know.

You look at some of the features from the 80's and 90's, like Akira, Neo Tokyo Labyrinth, Robot Carnival, Ghost in the Shell, and Memories, and you see a skill there that doesn't seem to be present in modern anime anymore. This is mostly due to masters like Katsuhiro Otomo and Koji Morimoto no longer being active in the industry anymore, and no new talent really taking their place.

There was a lot of weird crap back then, but that's kinda what made a lot of it so interesting. You never really knew what you were going to get.

I also feel that ever since anime went digital it's lost a lot of its visual texture and warmth. You look at shows and movies from the 80's and 90's, and you can really feel the penmanship in the animation and the brushstrokes of the backgrounds. Now it all just feel too clean and sterile. Perfect example are the new Berserk movies. Jesus Christ.

There's still good stuff scattered around here and there, but nothing that truly breaks out and shows us what the medium of animation is capable of. Back in the 80's anime really gave Disney a run for its money in terms of pure animation prowess.


Show me something modern that can stack up to this.

Ill see your robot carnival clip and raise you a Paprika trailer.

 

[Akyho]

2000 marked the point Anime changed for me.

80s anime is my preferred point however I cannot ignore how good 90s stuff was. Macross Plus being a top fave aswell. However I just dont like it for all the same reasons as you.

 

[Fallen-Angel Risen-Demon]

Ugh. Ugh. Ugh.

I hate the notion of a "Golden Age" because there is no such thing. People has said such things since, well, it's been possible. Every "Age" of anime has it's stinkers, there's a LOT of shit anime 90s (that Bennet himself covers) and a LOT of shit anime these days.

The same for Video Games. The same for TV Shows. The same for Books. It's the same story every time, hell saying this I'll probably be doing the same thing when I'm older. It's an never-ending cycle of bullshit.

 

[Casual Shinji]

At 5:35 (during the intro sequence), they zoom in her ass while naked. At 5:50, her nipples get the same treatment. The purpose of these shots is questionable at absolute best because the segments showing the overall transformation of her body or the zoom-in on her face at 6:00 are far more powerful.

As for the in-combat sequences where she strips, those are even weirder. It's like her primary motivation entering combat is "how can I get my clothes off fastest?" I think they were trying to have some concept where the best form of thermoptic camo only works without clothing, but it was done really badly, especially because she never takes off her boots.

The point is, the nudity was never there for the audience to go "Aww yeah, TITS". Quite the opposite I think. It is presented way too cold and sterile (damn that word) to be seen as fanservice. She's naked, yet she doesn't feel sexualized. I'd say the original manga was actually guilty of this rather than the movie; I only ever bought one issue of the series, but it features a full-on fembot menage troi. This was mainly why I bought it. ...I was 16, man.

Masamune Shirow sure does love his gleaming women.

That's originating from a fundamental difference between western and eastern animation theory.

Here is a good summary of it from Peter Chung: http://www.pelleas.net/forum/viewtopic.php?p=1643#p1643

Basically, western artists are more concerned with the verisimilitude of setting up a believably immesive universe, while eastern artists are more likely to draw attention to how their characters are composed from elements by the creator's art style. Past of this is that western animators put more effort into fluid motion and facial expressions, as if trying to pretend that it's a real actor (just think of how much of the industry jumped on the CGI board), while eastern artists are treating characters as puppets and focusing more on the composition of the scenery.

A fun excercise: compare other art forms between the east and the west: theatre, poetry, painting, gaming, etc, and see wheher the same logic applies.

But Akira showed you can do both. So do did many western cartoons, for that matter. This is likely why I love Katsuhiro Otomo's and Koji Morimoto's work so much, and put them even above Hayao Miyazaki in terms of raw animation talent.

The voices need to match anyway, so to produce the animation first but retrofitting the voices afterward is just being difficult for no reason whatsoever.

 

[Casual Shinji]

Ill see your robot carnival clip and raise you a Paprika trailer.

Yeah... And he's dead now.

Satoshi Kon was one of if not the only producer of anime whose work did not adhere to tropes even 0.1%. His movies had homeless people and *gasp* aids. When was the last time you heard a character mutter the word 'aids' in an anime.

And Miyazaki is getting too old to work too. Now I'm depressed.