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Interview With Tenchi Co-Creator Hayashi Hiroki
paranormalized sent us this link to Animenewsnetwork.com's
Interview with Hayashi Hiroki. He talks a lot about his work on
El Hazard,
Black Heaven,
and of course,
Tenchi Muyo, which are coincidentally enough, three of my
favorite series. Interesting points about
Ryoko's
relationship to 'I Dream of Jeanie,' and why he tends to make shows
about a young boy surrounded by hot girls (and why he strayed so far
from that to make Black Heaven)."
And on a totally unrelated note, why hasn't anyone introduced Taco to Key the Metal Idol? I'm wondering why this little gem has never goten the publicity it deserves. How good is it? I would say it's the best android/robot-related work since Bladerunner, and certainly the best android-related anime. And yes, I am including Ghost in the Shell and Bubblegum Crisis in that comparison.
It has some elements of fantasy, (What are Key's mysterious powers and how are they related to the feelings of those around her?) and of sci-fi,(what are the Sipes,(short answer: military-grade humanoid robots),and what is their nature? and what is Ajo Heavy Industries doing with them on the streets of Tokyo?) blended together to form a great series with mysteries abounding.(what is the relationship between Key and these sipes?)
The pacing is excellent, the storytelling incredible, and it looks like it won't disappoint with its last episodes, unlike Evangelion. I've watched up to Episode 14 so far, (13 30 min eps, 14 & 15 are 90 min each), and as soon as I'm done here I'll go watch the last one. Sigh. Will this piece of anime ever get the attention it deserves? Listen, just watch the opening sequence, nothing more. If the haunting style and brief glimpses of story elements don't draw you in, then you can leave without ever watching any of it again, and I won't ever bother you again, Ok?
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IANASRP- I am not a self-referential phrase
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IANASRP- I am not a self-referential phrase
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email: proprietary becomes free, org to com
So you're saying Scooby-Doo doesn't reflect a subset of American culture?
Perhaps it's not a complete reflection of the society in which it was produced but, after watching enough cartoons, a reasonably observant person would get the gist of what cutural values appeal to the audience from that particular country.
I thought the interview was rather informative. I always wondered why the Tenchi plot line was so broken. Demand and big business pushed over creativity. Obviously capitalism even affects anime. Nevertheless, Tenchi is still an excellent anime.
I like anime. I like comic books. I like wine sometimes. Same with beer. You know what I have found about liking something? You start off by pretty much loving everything you can get your hands on of it, but then after a while you start to develop a more discerning taste. For instance, when I started reading comics a few years ago, I read anything and everything I had money to buy. I ended up collecting a few series that I now recall in hindsight as pretty much being utter mainstream crap. Now my taste in comic books is a bit more honed and I tend to pick up less mainstream series and more collected series on non superhero stuff such as Sin City, Bone, Transmetropolitan, and so on. As my grasp of comics as a whole broaden, my tastes in comics slowly became more acute, so that I focus on what I love, and ignore what I feel may be crap. Anime is the same way. I have been watching various anime for a few years now, and my idea of what I like and look fore has narrowed down. I still watch the crap from time to time, because here in North America we are limited to what has been imported and translated generally. Since I am guessing most of us don't have a firm grasp of Japanese (baka!?!), it can be hard to get around this. But I still manage to find more stuff I like then stuff I dislike. I guess that is why I like anime so much and didn't just give up and look for something else... Now with wine and beer, I like pretty much anything I can get my hands on (especially after I have already had a few, but that is another story). My taste for these two alcoholic beverages is fairly new, so I am unable to discern between what is just alright and what is really, really good. My father knows much more about wines and talks about zinfandel and bordeaux and all I can ask in response are simple things such as whether the wine is white or red, dry or sweet, and if I am feeling especially intellectual, what year it was bottled in. My point is when you first get into liking any art form or cultural genre or beverage, if you enjoy what you see or imbibe, you enjoy pretty much anything you see or imbibe. As you are exposed to more and varied of the sub forms and such, you begin to develop a taste of your own, and start to decide what you want more of and what you will avoid like the plague. Anime may be an old idea to some by now, but many of us are just getting our first sip. I mean first taste. I mean first view of the animation style from the culture that actually developed it.
Does my bum look big in this?
After growing up in a Disney world, where animation was full of evil witches, lions, and mermaids, I frankly shat my pants when my first experience with anime was with Neon Genesis Evangelion. Here we have a main character who is emotionaly unstable, has the world on his shoulders, and is confronted with female sexuality at an early age (like we all do). To boot, this was all done with a theme and story based off the bible. This mind-f**k of a series left me questioning my own reality. I wasn't the same afterwards ...
It is this change of pace, this shift from the mundane to the excentric and psychotic that makes anime appealing. I, however, am not deluded to such an extent to say that all anime is good. The Japanese have their own set of problems, just like American animation.
To sum it all up, anime is different, variety is good.
I'd also like to add that I'm enjoying indirectly learning about the Japanese culture through anime. I don't think that it's a coincidence that the few phrases that I know are:
(forgive my to-English-bastardizing of Japanese)
gomeno sai (I'm sorry)
ariagato (Thank you)
Perhaps respect is very important to the Japanese?
Being A long time fan of anime and other forms of Japanese media, as well as a resident of Japan, I have to caution you about pulling cultural hints from anime. I grew up as a member of an anime club (anyone ever hear of animania?) and became its vice president. I constantly watched the exodus of members to go on buying runs to Japan to pick up the new and latest stuff, each one coming back unexplainably depressed. I went myself to study and live. I had the same experience as I assume the people in my club did. I found that the Japan that people live in is not reflected in anyway by anime (outside of the crazy drunken old men :p ). Imagine my depression when I set out to find a world I 'knew' so much about only to realize that it didn't exist. After several months trying to grapple with this sense of loss I finally threw off the shackles of my assumptions and had a good time, continuing my education to get a masters in modern Japanese literature and now working an IT job in Yokohama. Through my further education and life experiences I began to realize that anime is actually more an escapist form of media rather than a reflection of Japanese culture. After all when you need to pay $1800 a month for thirty-five years to buy a small apartment in outer Tokyo, you can imagine the kid of social stress put on young and old members of society alike. In an effort to release some of this pent up desperation (I assume) that the script writers and artist project there emotions on the the celluloid. ...
Anyway the point of this soapbox speech is to express to you the fact that it is DANGEROUS to study Japan through anime (though it's good for language aquisition). Support anime and by all means keep watching and enjoying it, but if you want to learn about Japan, please go see it for yourself.
Northwest runs special deals every year or so offering round trips to tokyo for about $500 and during regular seasons the Japanese airline ANA is generally cheaper and has much better service (like a lcd display in the back of economy seats with on-demand movies and SNES games! COOL SHIT!)
This post was enhanced by BEER technology! 'Karaoke' is Japanese for drunken loser. -Craig Kilborne
Dear flamers, Why dont you all focus on the content instead of the subject? if you dont like anime, then just skip the topic. I dont see you sending mail to a newspaper just because they posted an article about a topic you weren't interested in. the most common flame is: is it news for nerds? is it stuff that matters? yes , for me it is news yes , for me it is stuff that matters. am I not a reader of slashdot? I dont read all articles either, but I know some people are interested in the articles I skip, I can understand that, so why can't you? Grow up please.
Serial Experiments Lain Key The Metal Idol Record Of Lodoss War (unless the little bit of action in the series actually counts as "containing martial arts") Tenchi Muyo (I picked up Tenchi Forever on a whim, and really liked it. I'm watching Tenchi Forever now) My all time favorite "Debunk the 'Anime has no story' myth" movie is Grave of the Fireflies. I consider this one of the 3 or 5 best FILMS I've ever watched. If anyone can honestly watch this film and, afterwards, say Anime sucks, I'll be suprised.
He says he liked "Shooting Star Manager", with the main character Ouji, who played music when he was young, but turned out as a middle-aged salaryman whose biggest problem is finding a seat on public transportation. Apparently it's a sadly profound statement about real life, and now I'm tempted to read it (even if there's no English translation, I'm learning to read Japanese).
Google's not much help here. Can anybody come up with the correct name of this manga?
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Key The Metal Idol
Serial Experiments Lain
Tenchi Muyo (I picked up Tenchi Forever on a whim, and really liked it. I'm watching Tenchi Forever now)
Record Of Lodoss War (unless the little bit of action in the series actually counts as "containing martial arts")
My all time favorite "Debunk the 'Anime has no story' myth" movie is Grave of the Fireflies. I consider this one of the 3 or 5 best FILMS I've ever watched. If anyone can honestly watch this film and, afterwards, say Anime sucks, I'll be suprised.
Yay for the HTML format being default. -sigh-
I won't comment on Key, since I never watched any. But if you found Eva's ending disappointing, have you seen End of Evangelion? It's basically a 2-hour-long replacement for the much-maligned 2 final episodes.
I think it's the best part of the series. Asuka's final battle has to be seen to be believed. Heart-wrenching violence and tragedy against a backdrop of soothing classical music. Incredibly powerful emotional effect. It left me in a state of shock. If you're an Eva fan, you're really missing out if you haven't seen the film.
No... You just didn't watch it the right way.
You need to see all the episodes to even begin to put it all together. Now, watch them all AGAIN. NOW you may understand it. Heh.
It's THAT type of series.
The reason I choose Grave of the Fireflies isn't to show cause and effect. I didn't like it for that, either. Kid, live with the aunt (or whatever, forget her exact role) and get a job. Apologize.
:)
Anyway, the reason I picked that one is because it's easily understood. Sure, I could make someone sit through all 8 or 9 hours of Evangelion, then show them End. Or I could make them sit through all the layers of Lain, then make them do it again so they can even begin to understand it. Or I can say "Here's a good example of the GOOD stuff, the stuff with a story, and doesn't dedicate 6 episodes to a couple of guys standing around, grunting at eachother with their arms in the air" (see DBZ's Freeza "series", which could have been done in 3 episodes).
It's a quick teaser to the heavier stuff. That, and I prefer my anime on DVDs, and the entire Eva series isn't available yet. I'd take DivX rips if available, though
Much love-comedy anime is really IDoJ mixed in with Three's Company. The original IDoJ show was Urusei Yatsura, a decade or so before Tenchi Muyo. Lum and Ryoko both pop in on the male lead without warning, but unlike Lum and Jeannie, Ryoko has street smarts and isn't clueless about life in 20th century Earth.
Other series of this genre are Ah My Goddess and Mamotte Shugogetten. MS has aspects of all the other series (IDoJ, UY, TM, AMG), with the female lead Shaolin being at least as clueless about the 20th Century as Jeannie. And she has a magical widget that she (and a couple of dozen sidekicks) can live in, though it's much more compact (and not as vulnerable) as Jeannie's bottle. I'm up to manga book #11 in the series so far and hoping to find more.
#naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }
What anime do you like that isn't martial arts, giant robots or H-anime?
Love Hina. Hasn't been released here yet, though =(.
Anyways, get the fansubs. Get them now. Make sure you have the entire night to watch it, because you won't want to stop.
-- Dr. Eldarion --
This is simply untrue. I'll be the first to admit that there is some true quality anime out there. Akira happens to be a first-rate sci-fi action movie. But the idea that simply because something happens to use the same tropes over and over does not necessarily mean that it's good. Face it, amine is simply a sub-sub-medium. Not a genre, even. It's part of animation which is part of motion pictures which is part of visual art. (Okay, maybe I'm stretching it a little, but you get my point.)
I do happen to be a comic book freak. I truly enjoy the (sub-sub-)medium. I think that it provides many interesting storytelling techniques. However, there is an assload of utter and complete shit out there. And you know what? It's probably the same percentage of crap as in any other medium. Including Anime.
Honestly, if Slashdot readers want to continue reading about anime stuff, I am hardly the one to tell them that they shouldn't. I just find it hard to believe that there are that many nominally forward-thinking individuals that can continue to be scammed into believing that it's all good. There's nothing that's all good. It almost makes me want to believe that people are fooling themselves into thinking that way because they've invested so much of their lives in it that they can't let go now. Not that that's much better a reason.
Anyway, I suppose that this is not the correct forum for this, but I keep seeing all the unadulterated gushing coming from this forum, and I felt that I had to put a different spin on it. Or something.
Rant over. Sorry.
Fuck 'im up, Tim! His views are invalid! -Pirate Corp$
http://www.anipike.com/series5.html
And an undetermined amount of words: .*rc is
The ultimate geek anime. Give it time and it will blow your mind. You gotta get through the first episodes to be enlightened.
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$HOME is where the
$HOME is where the
-- silver_p
Who better than the production company to wrangle in interviews with the creators and designers for shows. What more they provide a bunch of them in English! Very nifty IMHO.