New Anime Block Starts Tonight Cartoon Network

Silverhammer writes "Just a reminder that the new five-hour Saturday night Toonami block starts tonight on Cartoon Network. It includes the american premieres of three of Bandai's new (or at least newly dubbed) anime series: Yu Yu Hakusho (11pm EDT), Pilot Candidate (12pm), and Gundam 0083 (12:30pm)." Also in the list is old favs Tenchi, Bebop, and Outlaw Star as well as the non-anime but still cool Justice League, which I've been enjoying, but is it just me, or are there only like 4 episodes that they just keep looping? I'll be Tivo'ing each of the new shows for a few weeks in hopes that they are good. I'm still first in line to vote for a Toonami channel.

Comments

reasons for anime?

[I Want GNU!]

I might get modded down for this, but could someone please clarify for me why anime is so popular? I mean, it's just a Japanese form of animation, and we have all kinds of great animation in the US, with shows like Family Guy and Futurama. Of course, I've seen some great anime-ish type video games like Jet Grind Radio for the Dreamcast, which uses this weird cel shading technique. I'm just genuinely curious as to why anime is so popular, I haven't seen much of it in the mainstream but among certain crowds it seems really popular.

Re:reasons for anime?

[Hott of the World]

"could someone please clarify for me why anime is so popular? I mean, it's just a Japanese form of animation, and we have all kinds of great animation in the US, with shows like Family Guy and Futurama. Of course, I've seen some great anime-ish type video games like Jet Grind Radio for the Dreamcast, which uses this weird cel shading technique. I'm just genuinely curious as to why anime is so popular, I haven't seen much of it in the mainstream but among certain crowds it seems really popular."

My reasons for liking anime:

1. The stuff I watch isn't censored, I get to see real drama in anime, while it seems to be targeted at a slightly more mature crowd. The simpsons and futurama are just as great, but they are mainly comedy driven, which is fine in itself.

2. Most american cartoons on saturday morning seem to be cookie-cutter rip-offs of the same crap thats been on the air for 20 years. Mostly good-guys with no flaws looking beautiful fighting ugly badguys that are robots or aliens so there's no problem with "destroying them". I guess this goes back at target audience and censorship.

3. Anime feels more Artistic (just an opinion, its probably commercialized to death over in japan) than the american stuff, it almost seem to enjoy creating the images they produce. I just don't get that feeling when watching any current cartoons or even tv shows.

Re:reasons for anime?

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, the anime that seems to be popular amonsgt Slashdot'ers normally tries
to tell a story. Something that is remarkably lacking in the American
episodic cartoon format.

I mean, I love The Simpsons - but certainly not for any ongoing plot
development.

Dub vs. Sub.

[alphaseven]

The dubbing of most anime is crud. For shows like CB, you get a great feel for the characters when you can hear the original voice acting, since much more thought goes into voice acting selection for the original as opposed to the dub.

I just thought of this: Why doesn't the cartoon network put the original Japanese audio on SAP. Then to follow the story you could just turn on captioning. Any reason this isn't implemented?

Re:But only in the States

[nomadic]

I'd really like to see HBO pick up these kinds of shows, and air them unedited with no commercial breaks. Hell, I think we're almost at the point where a premium anime/animation network could be self-supporting...

Re:But only in the States

[tb3]

Yeah, (sigh). I just moved back to Canada, after living in the States for three years. I'm still in CN withdrawl. YTV has Gundam Wing, Teletoon has zip.

On the bright side, Gundam 0083 is on DVD, Pilot Candidate reportedly sucks, and Yu Yu Hakusho is from Funimation (not Bandai), say no more.

And YTV ran all of Escaflowne, Teletoon ran all of Cyber 6, while Fox axed both of them real quick. It's not all bad here.

Anime vs Chuck Jones

[ashitaka]

Hmm..

Lots of posts here wondering what people see in anime, especially the more adult-oriented material.

Lots of posts in the Chuck Jones thread saying how much they loved and grew up on Chuck's features, even though many were aimed at adults.

What makes comedy animation so much more acceptable than dramatic animation?

Re:Anime vs Chuck Jones

[dangermouse]

What makes comedy animation so much more acceptable than dramatic animation?

Nothing, really. The problem is that most anime has juvenile plotlines, characters that are two-dimensional in more ways than one, and really weak scripting and dialogue.

This can be made an advantage in episodic comedy, but obviously just sucks for continuous drama.

And let's not get into the whole "good anime vs. Americanized crap anime" thing, alright? In my quest to find some anime I really like, I've watched most of your favorites, many in the original Japanese with subtitles (and yes, I recognize that subtitles and translations are suboptimal), and even the "good" ones (Cowboy Bebop, Neon Genesis Evangelion, Ninja Scroll, Record of Lodoss War, Mononoke Hime, etc.) are all the animated equivalents of the X-Men comic books in terms of depth. Not bad if your audience is teenaged boys, but anyone else is going to get real bored real fast.

(Actually, that's unfair. Mononoke was mildly interesting, if horrendously drawn out. And Cowboy Bebop is actually sort of cool, but I think that's mostly because of the random blues riffs.)