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Anime Unleashed on TechTV
da3dAlus writes "Beginning December 30, the first series of a new anime block will start on TechTV's new "Anime Unleashed" program. As billed by TechTV, "Anime Unleashed focuses on the science-fiction elements of anime--titles that imagine what our near or far future will be like, investigate the relationship between humans and machines, dream of what alien civilizations could be like, and more." The block will premiere with single half-hour episodes airing Monday through Thursday at 1am EST, followed by a two-hour block of anime on Friday from 11pm to 2am EST. Some of the series slated to be shown include Crest of the Stars, Serial Experiment Lain, Dual! Parallel Trouble Adventure, Betterman, and Silent Mobius. Additionally, a contest is being held until the first of January 2003 by TechTV to create a new logo for the program."
"Serial Experiment Lain"
One of the strangest series I've ever seen... It doesn't seem like something American audiences would like at ALL (lots of slow, moody scenes, lots of 'wtf is going on') but I'm glad TechTV is brave enough to carry it =)
-Berj
"Anime Unleashed focuses on the science-fiction elements of anime--titles that imagine what our near or far future will be like, investigate the relationship between humans and machines, dream of what alien civilizations could be like, and more."
Doesn't that cover a large majority of all anime out there? =)
-Berj
TechTV keeps getting further and further away from it's roots. "Thunderbirds" and now anime? What's next? A TV movie? What's wrong with being the TV network about computers and technology?
"How perfectly Goddamn delightful it all is, to be sure" Charles Crumb
I'm glad to see we're having an animeated discussion.
and Friday, at 2 AM EST is the Hentai hour. Featuring the best bondage, tenticles and perversion japan has to offer. ...please?
Now if only they will play the episodes in order, and make sure the dubs dont suck. Nothing like Shenmue's dub to bring an import title to life :D
All your base are belong to us!
Man blir trött av att gå och göra ingenting.
two-hour block of anime on Friday from 11pm to 2am EST
so that's 11pm cst to 2am est?
-- Nate
I bet Tech TV Canada will stick to it's usual shit of running crappy Canadian shows and Screensavers re-runs.
We don't even get Max Headroom up here, which is fucking stupid given I think Max Headroom was ostensibly a Canadian production...
I'm assuming that it's all English dubbed anime, bad, very bad.
Get in here YouFailIt guy! Save us from this scourge right away!
it's good they're bringing anime to the masses that want to watch it for the artistic and entertainment vaule.
One thing that really really really gets up my nose is the uneducated trolls (to put it nicely) that whine about how Japanese Anime is nothing more than tentacle rape and hentai with gracious panty shots and fanservice inbetween.
Now for each example you'd be giving me of such things, I could come up with at least 20 or more mainstream anime that contains none of that.
It's better than the unoriginal crap that disney puts out. It's also done for entertainment with a twist on artistic value, not just an excuse to churn out merchandise.
Be you Admins? nay, we are but lusers!
Editor Emeritus and Senior Writer, TeleRead.org
Additionally, a contest is being held until the first of January 2003 by TechTV to create a new logo for the program."
Slashdot needs one of these too. What *IS* that disembodied head thing supposed to be anyway?
By contrast, the Hello Kittly-loving, schoolgirl-obssessed, infantilized Japanese pop culture machine gives us comic books and cartoons, conisiting of rape scenes, panty shots, giant robot fights, and "nekomimi", along with the occasional destruction of a city. Puerile entertainment that hardly bears mentioning in comparion to real works of science fiction. When the Japanese cartooning industry produces its own "I, Robot", its own "Ringworld", its own "Demon With A Glass Hand and other stories", then I will be impressed. Until then, this whole anime business is just a bunch of sexed up, gory "Transformers" episodes.
Sorry to sound like flamebait, but this is a matter I feel strongly about.
...Leo Laporte tentacle rape, and John C. Dworak in schoolgirl outfit
I'd pay money to watch that.
Mod up! Hilariously funny!
Now even the science has demolished your ideal aryan Jesus image, eh?
I'm fond of animations, but the amount of anime out there is IMPOSSIBLE to keep track of. A question tho, how does one differentiate between conventional animation and anime? Are all japanese animations anime?? (and i aint talkin abt huntai)
I loved stuff like Robotech, Force Five features , but then I liked stuff like the Transformers too. Stuff like Dragon Ball Z didn't grab my attention. I haven't heard of these animes which TechTV is plannin to screen...
|/________
|\A|ALYS|
But someone , please, can explain me the end of "Akira" ? 6 years later and still dont get it ...
------- The last Sig. got fired.
Serial Experiment Lain is one of the best productions of any sort that I've seen in a long time. I actually have not seen the entire series yet, but I think it is a fantastic example of cutting edge animation, and so far not a single tentacle rape scene! Tivo has been sporadically grabbing Lain episodes for me for awhile now, I might have to look into getting Tech TV just for that.
I also have come to enjoy Cowby Bebop. It's an odd mixture of sci-fi anime, westerns and late 50's jazz beat. There's a lot more to anime than what I had assumed at first. There's a lot of potential in this artistic medium that is only now surfacing in The States.
So you will be watching, right?
despite billyuns of dollars of J.'s hardearned being speNT on billonlyUS ?pr? canpains to
wake up J., the "smoking gun" is poiNTdead at you. our "domestic terroists"/felons are @leased as dangerous to US as our published 'enemIEs'.
WHOaRE the REAL .commIEs?
stay tuned for more from capitollist vdo, 0perating from the basemeNT of an abandoned k-mart, somewhere in the kode blew zone. mod US up robbIE, you know IT's a little smelly DOWn here.
At the time this happened, I was 21 and had just graduated college. I went back to my hometown for a break over the summer, and I started hanging out at my best friend Jake's trailer, where he still lived with his mother. I know it's cliche', but she worked nights as a cashier in a convenience store. Anyway, I would stay over there a lot, along with my younger sister Anne who was dating Jake at the time, and there would be other people around.
To try to make a very long story shorter, my sister and Jake became obsessed with an old Ouija board that they found. They played with it all the time. The rest of us would watch and laugh, but Jake and Anne were really into it. I should tell you before I go any further that we were all in our early twenties and late teens, and naturally there was some drinking going on occasionally, but... I graduated with honors in music composition, Anne is now a professional theatre performer, and Jake is the youngest Mayor in the state of Louisiana. What I'm saying is, we weren't ignorant rednecks.
Eventually Anne could work the Ouija board all by herself. She carried on conversations with what she said was the spirit of a little boy who had died in the area. One night a few of us were watching her. The planchette was really cruising around the board, when it suddenly kept repeating, "STOP. DARKNESS. STOP. DARKNESS." Over and over. Things began to change after that.
The trailer started to feel different at night. When Anne played with the board, it was now using a different name, one with a lot of consonants in it. I still remember the name, but I haven't said it since then and I'm not going to repeat it here. She was convinced that she was in contact with something sinister, and she stopped using the board.
All of us had experiences after that. The first one that I remember is that Jake and I were watching TV late one night and the closet by the front door clicked open. We kind of looked at each other and laughed, and Jake got up and closed the door. A few minutes later it came open again. We both looked into the closet to see if something was preventing the door from shutting properly, but we didn't see anything. After the door opened again that night, we gave up.
Not long after that, Jake started wanting me to stay over every night. He didn't want to be alone, and it's amusing to think I could have helped him; Jake is 6-3 and 220, and I'm 6-0 and weigh about 170. I started staying, and things kept happening.
There was a constant heaviness in the air. I began to be really afraid to pass by his sister Brandi's room. Brandi was about 8 at the time. She was a Downs Syndrome child. She stayed at her grandmother's at night so she was never there. I had never even really noticed her room before, but suddenly I was afraid of it. The bad thing was that you had to pass by her room to go down the hall to the bathroom. At first I would sort of run past her door, and every hair on my neck would stand up. I'm not sure how long this went on before I gave up and started going outside to use the bathroom. There was no way in hell I was going down that hall by myself.
One night Jake, Anne, and I were in the living room. I was sitting on the couch with my back against the wall to Brandi's room. There was a long mirror on the wall behind me. We were just talking when Jake and Anne turned white. They were staring behind me. I said, "What's wrong?" They said, "Did you hear that?" I had heard nothing at all, but it was obvious that they were really really scared, so we all went outside to talk. They told me that something had pounded the wall behind me so hard that the mirror shook. This had happened 3 or 4 times, and they said it was LOUD. By the looks on their faces, I was absolutely convinced that they believed they were telling me the truth.
The last night I stayed there, Jake went to pick up Anne from her job, and I was at the trailer alone. I'll admit I was very nervous, and I honestly can't remember why I didn't go with him. I was watching Saturday Night Live on TV, and I had to use the bathroom. I went outside, needless to say. When I came back in things felt very very very bad. The TV was on a different channel, which was nothing unusual, because the channels would change all the time. But I just felt like I had to get out. I sat out on the porch and smoked and waited for them to get back. When we all walked in, Anne turned back around and said, "I'm not staying here tonight." We took her home, and Jake practically begged me to go back with him, which I did. That night was the worst for me. We went straight to sleep, or tried to anyway. I slept on a mat beside Jake's bed when I was over there, and I remember lying there for hours listening to footsteps moving up and down the hall outside the bedroom door. I have never wished for sleep so badly in my life. But I just couldn't sleep with all the noise and the weird feelings. Finally I felt myself getting sick. I got up and stumbled outside and vomited. I told Jake we were leaving, and he agreed. I never stayed there again.
I went back only once more. I was supposed to meet Jake and Anne and some other friends there. I was the first one there. As I reached the porch, I was overwhelmed, and I couldn't go in. I didn't even want to stay in the yard anymore. I got in my car and left. BAD VIBES. I found out later that that was a really bad night for Jake and Anne. Things had gotten very active, and something had revealed itself to Anne in the mirror.
In closing, a couple of points:
1. Anne and Jake had much worse experiences than I did. I've only related the things that happened while I was present. They still don't talk about it.
2. Neither Jake's mom nor his sister Brandi ever noticed anything odd was going on, as far as I know.
3. Jake's grandmother, a very religious woman, eventually toured the trailer saying prayers and speaking in tongues. Jake said everything stopped after that.
4. Jake built his house on the same spot where the trailer was. I've been back a few times, and felt nothing unusual.
broken home syndrome. Has anyone else noticed that EVERY disney movie the central character comes from a broken home? I haven't found one that doesn't. Even the latest offering, Treasure Planet, is another broken home. Family values my ass!
liked japan type animation, except speed racer. oh and Ultra man, but that wasn't really a cartoon. I was a little kid, You are grown men. I think?
Sheesh!
Just when you thought TechTV couldn't get any gayer.
Check out my ghey articles and linux pseudo-contributions!!
Can I please ask what the big draw of Anime is? I mean the actual animation isn't terribly great (I think the OLD Transformers cartoons were drawn better), and from the little I've watched, the story lines aren't terribly great either. Is it just me that doesn't get it?
I'm not a prophet or a stone-age man,
I'm just a mortal with potential of a super man.
so if this is all to get more viewers/keep the viewers happy, why put it on in the early am? if they r in need of money, why don't they just put on those late night informercials...having insomnia and being up to watch stuff like that, some are actually quite amusing, i would watch this sooner than some of the shows they will be airing...now if someone could make flavored potato chips that don't leave ur fingers with half the flavoring...
I may not be *the* most avid Anime-fan out there (but I do live in Japan so maybe that should raise the credibility somewhat?), but it really does not seem to me that anime discusses much about aliens / civilizations and our relationships with them.
I mean, I think the genre can be categorized into a few (rough) parts, but non of them are really the "explore new land meet new people" sort of (startrek like, I suppose) way.
I mean, the only ones I can think of on top of my head that goes near the subject is:
1) Robotech (actually a soap opera and you know it)
2) Nadesico (which is anime talking about anime - but the aliens turned out to be human (oops did I spoil this?) who are all anime freaks)
3) pokemon / and the like (but that's no alien civilization now, right?)
4) sex-starved monsters (won't get into this)
What I am trying to say is that anime to me, at least, seem to use "aliens and their civilizations" more often as a background story than as a focus. Besides most of the "alien (read: forign / non-human biological)" stuff is usually mystical (magical powers, etc) rather than factual.
but there are a lot of human's relationship with technology / machines. Ghost in the Shell, Zoujin-Z, Lain, just to name a few "on the mark" ones.
just my 2 yen.
My life in the land of the rising sun.
Once again, a great idea goes bad by giving it a terrible timeslot.
Some of us actually DO have to sleep.
"Before humanity, the stars shone throughout the heavens. After humanity [has gone], the stars will continue to shine"
Seeing as SciFi has decided to become the "schlock horror flick of the week" channel, someone has to pick up the slack. It's good to see TechTV doing something other than running the same half hour show (e.g. Extended Play) 3-4 times per day.
Besides, how many techs are into anime? How many "regular" people are into anime? So TechTV is catering to a significant segment of their audience, while other stations would be catering to the fringes to try the same thing.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
Well, Bush has stepped all over the UN, so I suppose it's true that the United Nations will be nothing more than an ineffective money sink. Good riddance to them, a group who did nothing but threaten the rights of sovereign nations.
Anyhoo, what are future will be like? Anime?
Please. We have about as much chance of offspring living through 'Lain' as we do of Angels suddenly coming down from heaven and causing the Third Impact.
Hosers.
Have you tuned it in lately? An awful lot of crime fiction there now.
The market for such specialized channels simply doesn't exist, even on cable, in a manner that allows them to keep the bills payed. Sad, but true.
I'd rather they tried to save their collective butts by showing cartoons than 4 hour commercials for the Thighmaster.
KFG
In his uncontrolled evolution, he became another universe.
There is only so much Cream Lemon, Dna2, Urotsukidoji and Rapeman that even a juvenile sex addict can handle...
Gee...I only submitted this story Thanksgiving weekend. Way to go slashdot, only a friggin month late!
I guess I really do have to blow someone to get a story posted.
MTV used to show music? It got so bad that they had to launch M2 (now called MTV2) in order to show music again.
VH1's tagline was always "Music First",pretty soon they're going to have to launch VH2...
The truth doesn't care what I think.
...in many stores! What sells? SEX! Especially when it's pimply-faced otaku who can't buy real porn... one day at Tower Records I saw a kid getting the Legend of the Overfiend laserdisc box set, being purchased by his mom, who had absolutely no clue what it was (other than being a "cartoon"!)
Retailers stock tentacle rape and panty shots because real anime doesn't sell to the masses, unfortuantely.
Where's the Ghibli library? Oh yeah, Disney is sitting on that cause their own stuff sucks and they don't want everyone else realizing that.
If you think Pop up windows on the internet are bad now, watch a bit of the Martian Successor Nadesko. It features pop up video windows for communication that can pop up any where. In the future advertisers could use them to advertise.
Concidering the lastest lows the advertisers have stepped to (kick throughs), Pop up ads 'in your face' any where could come true if they stoop low enough in the future.
Nero-burning ROM for Linux!
ZZZZzzzzzzzzzz................
I thought I was reading Slashdot, not TV Guide.
I appreciate your enthusiasm, but you still did not acquire the first post. Get the hell out of my office!
I figure the extra $25 dollars they want for it is worth me buying DVD's instead.
-- dieman - Scott Dier
Now if they'd pick up .hack...that would rock. Plenty of room for the kind of synergies they love there, especially when you consider that Sony is putting out a translated .hack MMRPG this coming year. Extended Play, anyone? .hack on The Screensavers' LAN Party (powered by NVidia)? It would be a suit's dream.
I'd also like to see Excel Saga there, but I doubt it would fit the TechTV format. Actually I can't think of a cable channel off-hand where it would fit. Comedy Central? Too wild for them. Sundance? IFC? Maybe there, but I've never seen Anime on either. Oh well.
"But you've already got a DVD. It lasts forever....In the digital world, we don't need back-ups..."
-- Jack Valenti
I see alot of whys ... why not? .. sorry to say but japan IS a leader in technology ... why not have something interesting and has a story line? ... Anime is a not just a bunch of perverted scenes in fact I know of many series that do not have any of these sort of things
It's a good thing someone is finally getting their act together and doing that, it needs to be done. What I worry about is them not getting the story right, or in cases like Serial Experiment Lain and Ghost in a Shell, where the answers are meant to be decyphered and interprited by the audience, they might put their own ideas and just ruin it.
I can now add TechTV to my parental blocking if this is the type of garbage they're going to be pimping in the future.
Does anybody actually know what Serial Experiments Lain is about? Including the creators of the anime?
Evangelion gives fanservice? More like a donkey punch followed by a boot to the head. Sure, there's implied nudity (like when we meet Asuka), but it's always followed by something depressing or violent. Not a lot of fun.
Now, if you want anime without excessive, or even any fan-service, it does exist:
and if you think they don't churn out the merchandise, you'd be wise to check out sites that do japanese imports.
Sturgeons law: 90% of anything is crap. Yes, there's a great big pile of stuff that's utter garbage. There's also a smaller pile of stuff (like Seraphim Call) that's got a marginal audience. There's also a lot of really good stuff. About half of the stuff I like comes from Gainax.
"We returned the General to El Salvador, or maybe Guatemala, it's difficult to tell from 10,000 feet"
11pm-2am? Isn't that three hours?
No TiVo and no caffeine make me something something...
It's start's off promising with all the intrigue but the end turns out to be just another stupid EVA son/daughter-of-god story where the protagonist is all powerful and uses their power to fix the world into a happy place. So lame. So weak. So sappy.
The ending is really bad. >:(
Japanese Christianity is just plain wierd if not retarded.
It's anime for those of us who liked anime when it was still underground. ;o)
"cute anthropomorphic animals"
"ninjas vs. vampires"
"chicks with guns" (my personal fave)
I don't think that this will go far. I remeber when space channel opened they started showing the best anime. Like Venus War and etc. But after the while they run out of classic and start to play some crup. After about 2 months they stopped. Same will happend here.
A whole season of The Simpsons (22 episodes) is $40. The complete Cowboy Bebop (26 episodes) is $100. Escaflowne (or the first season of Farscape for that matter) is $150. Okay, you win--I won't watch your goddamn show.
Obviously, any anime/sci-fi fan is freakishly addicted and will buy a DVD at any cost. No need to price our shows low enough to be attractive to the casual buyer. We have no faith in our product. Suck them dry, dammit!
c-hack.com |
So refreshing to see stereotypes in the wild - nerds not aware of girls or sports ^^
Kanon (the date-sim) has three versions - 2 on dreamcast and one on PC. First was hentai version on DC. Later on non-hentai versions of it were released on PC and on DC again. Apparently people occasionally like the plot in an H-game better than the H ^^
I think maybe I'll wait for "Learn Anime in 21 Days".
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
I was kind of put off by the way Lain was drawn in the first few episodes, but I kind of grew to like it. It wasn't an anime like Noir where the art jumps out at you and shouts PRETTY! but then I didn't think it was ugly, either. There's something about the way the characters are drawn that just feels a little off if you aren't expecting it, perhaps. What was it about the art that you didn't like?
The other thing about Lain, as one of my friends put it, is that "it tends to do something to people's brains that rhymes with sucks but starts with an F." Lain really plays with your mind... and it's entirely legal, too. =^_^=
Tech TV has more ads than yahoo .... and anti-linux "tech and linux goes together microsoft and tech (NOT!!!!) just another call-ourselves-geek because geeks are COOL!!!!
...really care???
Nobody's going to see this probably because they posted their little article while I was away from my computer, but I submitted this story and had it rejected on 11-20 (to news) and 12-1 (to anime) and got it rejected both times, so I posted it to my journal
"I got into an elevator at work and this man followed in after me... I
pushed '1' and he just stood there... I said 'Hi, where you going?' He
said, 'Phoenix.' So I pushed Phoenix. A few seconds later the doors
opened, two tumbleweeds blew in... we were in downtown Phoenix. I looked
at him and said 'You know, you're the kind of guy I want to hang around
with.' We got into his car and drove out to his shack in the desert.
Then the phone rang. He said 'You get it.' I picked it up and said
'Hello?'... the other side said 'Is this Steven Wright?'... I said 'Yes...'
The guy said 'Hi, I'm Mr. Jones, the student loan director from your bank...
It seems you have missed your last 17 payments, and the university you
attended said that they received none of the $17,000 we loaned you... we
would just like to know what happened to the money?' I said, 'Mr. Jones,
I'll give it to you straight. I gave all of the money to my friend Slick,
and with it he built a nuclear weapon... and I would appreciate it if you never
called me again."
-- Steven Wright
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