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My Neighbor Totoro and Ebert
peter_gzowski writes "Well known film critic and closet otaku, Roger Ebert, has a bi-weekly segment on his website where he reminisces about the greatest films of all time (in his opinion, anyway). The most recent installment covers My Neighbor Totoro. This is the second anime to make the list, joining Grave of the Fireflies. For those unfamiliar, Totoro is a film by anime master Hayao Miyazaki, the man behind Princess Mononoke, amoung many other great films (Castle of Cagliostro being my favorite)."
Always pleased to see anime get more mainsream cred. And Miyazaki always deserves it.
Alot of people are going to think that you are starting a flamewar. Some people get way too fanatical about anime. Being someone who likes *some* anime, I can find a few problems with your conclusions.
In order to cast vague generalizations, you must meet some criteria. Namely, that you have watched every single anime ever made. As this is unrealistic (and a waste of time) I'm going to prove by counterexample.
Another thing to keep in mind; just like in North America, some shows just suck. Will people still make the effort to bring sucky shows from Japan to North America? Yes. In fact, several animation translation firms have made alot of money doing this. *cough*animego*cough* *cough*disney*cough* *cough*vizvideo*cough*
Reductio ad absurdum:
1) Bad stories
My Neighbour Totoro doesn't even have a story. Or conflict. In fact, it's aimed at people about 6 years old, and is just a strange sequence of random events.
2) Bad animation, jerkiness with poor color composition
This is not true of all anime. For example, Cowboy Bebop had some of the nicest artwork and detail I've seen in years. Macross Plus is also up there.
3) Bad translations of
If you're watching it with english dialog, yeah. If you're willing to read subtitles, the translation quality will typically increase several times.
4) Bad dialogue
Some things simply can't be translated from Japanese to English. Having studied the language formally for a year, I can sometimes see when the English translation just doesn't cut it. Also, if the anime is geared at 10-year-olds, odds are it will sound lame in any language.
5) A bunch of people OBSESSED with this shit to a sickening point.
I hear that! I'm so sick to death of people whining about how much money they don't have because they *MUST* go to convention Y and spend $5,000,000 on trinkets. Let's get some perspective here.
And for all those posts in this thread that start with "Wai! Wai!"... YOU ARE NOT JAPANESE! STOP FOOLING YOURSELF. SAYING STUPID THINGS DOES NOT MAKE YOU JAPANESE. YOU WILL NEVER BE JAPANESE.
"Nobody should enjoy WATCHING something that much, you should save your fanaticism for creating things."
Agreed. In the last week, I've watched about half an hour of TV. In the past year, I don't think I've topped 24 hours. It's amazing how much more I can accomplish when I'm not tied to the idiot box.
I await the flames.
Beware TPB
So... Little girls showing thier underpants is unusual? I reckon you don't have any daughters then. ;)
Seriously, I don't think it was meant as any kind of a turn-on, just as cute realism.
"Reactionaries must be deprived of the right to voice their opinions; only the people have that right." - Mao