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1st Episode Of Animatrix Released
Devistater writes "The official Matrix page has word of the first officially released widescreen Anime episode of the Animatrix for download (in quicktime format). This is the first of 4 free episodes that will be released on the web. A total of 9 episodes will be availible for purchase on DVD within the next few months. The feature-quality anime shorts range in length from 6 minutes to 16 minutes. There's a trailer availible if you want to get a taste for what they will be like."
Heh, the first QuickTime movie that MPlayer fails on me with :(
Starting playback...
mjpeg: JFIF header found (version: 1.1)
mjpeg: unsupported coding type (c2)
VDec: Codec did not set sh->disp_w and sh->disp_h, trying workaround.
Error while decoding frame!04 ct: -0.000 3/ 3 0% 0% 0.0% 0 0 0%
mjpeg: unsupported coding type (cf)0.000 5/ 5 0% 0% 0.0% 0 0 0%
mjpeg: unsupported coding type (cf)
etc...
... In the first film it they intimated that they didnt really know much history - they didnt even know the date. This seems to show quite a detailed history of what happened.
Its also quite sympathetic to the machines. If you are one of the last of a group which has almost been wiped out, you are unlikely to see your history from the point of view of those who did the wiping.
<fnord>OBEY</fnord>
The problem with The Matrix was its message: technology is inherently bad. The dialog places the blame of the whole Matrix world being due to "scientists messing with things they shouldn't" (paraphrased). Other movies, like the Terminator series, are just as bad. I don't get why such a blatantly anti-technology movie is so popular with the technology crowd, other than appreciation for the work that went into the special effects.
*Yawn* Of course anime is sexist and full of cheesecake, just as much as American shows do. the main difference is that the anime is far more likely to have sexually appealing underage girls.
As to anime as porn, replace every instance of anime in your previous statement with "movie." We have live action porn movies in this country, it uses a medium that is also used to convey works of art and random schlock. Just like anime. As a feminist should I avoid everything that might be tainted with non feminist ideals or should I just keep that in mind while I watch a damn goos show?.
If you want disturbing elements though, try reading up on the casual libking of sex and violence in Japanese culture. It gets very disturbing when you delve into it.
Feminism is the radical notion that women are people.
There is a certain substantive portion of the anime produced for which the above is entirely true. It certainly is not a troll. To the extent that japanese women view japanese pornography - which is vile stuff, substantially - this is spot on, and a great deal of anime is merely sexist. American women view slasher movies which might follow in a similar psychological vein; I'm not sure that "internalising oppression" is really what is happening - people have a certain fascination with the horiffic which I think draws women to watch horror movies, and may draw japanese women to watch japanese pornography, such of it as includes a great deal of rape or S&M or what have you. To say that women who view softcore pornography are necesarilly self-loathing is excessively prudish. More apologetics below.
However, and this has been true for a long time, it is not a recent devlopment, a great deal of anime is not sexist.
In a lot of anime the female characters are stylised representations with exagerated secondary sexual characteristics - this is often true in material which objectifies women in a sexist fashion, but sylised (cartoony) representations of people do NOT necesarilly objectify them. Any particular work must be viewed as a whole. Having been a teenage boy, I can say that my perception of women at that time was hyper-sexualised; this is pretty much universal among straight teenage boys.
Is adolescent male sexuality inherently sexist? I think that it is not.
Is it sexist for artists who were teenage boys to represent female characters in this way, particularly if the protagonist is an adolescent male, as is often the case? It is not. It's an accurate representation of an internal environment, which is what a cartoon is intended to do.
To the extent that this stylistic element is repeated in works by women, which are about 50% of what is produced - I will not speculate on the internal environment of adolescent girls, but I don't think this arises from self-loathing, I think that would be reflected in the female characters behavior rather than in how they are drawn.
Finally, in a sexist society (Japan) is it sexist to represent sexist interpersonal relationships in a work of fiction? I agree that it is good and laudible for a work of fiction to attempt to break down popular preconceptions and prejudices, but it is always okay for a work of fiction to reflect one's actual experiences.
The good and new comes from no quarter where it is looked for, and is always something different from what is expected.
As already mentioned, the Matrix was *definitely* influenced by anime (and martial arts movies). Story has many similarities to Lain (as mentioned) and also Ghost in the Shell. In fact, there's a website pointing out the similar scenes http://www.geocities.com/tacobelll/matrixgits/ Even the green text stuff was in the opening credits for the GiTS movie. Of course, that's not to say that the animes didn't get influenced by earlier sci-fi works and such, however, the Matrix bears a lot of sylistic similarity to anime, particularly GiTS and Lain (when she starts getting into the Wired, got wires clipped to herself as the interface...).
I've always thought people said that to justify their copyright violations.. well, now's your chance to prove me, and more importantly WB, wrong.