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An Extensive History of Anime
Ninja Master Gara writes "While it is a bit dated, Right Stuf has a fascinating set of in depth history of anime in Japan and the west and follows the development of both cultures, including landmark series from the 60s, the 70s, the 80s and beyond, the origins of today's major anime release companies, and commentary on various aspects of the industry and culture. While it is labelled an 'Introduction to Anime', it serves as a much more interesting look back for long time anime fans. Right Stuf also has a great timeline of important releases."
2015: Hentai beamed straight into my mind :)
To make laws that man cannot, and will not obey, serves to bring all law into contempt.
--E.C. Stanton
When did the Tenticle Penis first appear?
1) Normal looking characters
2) Slightly pumpkinish characters
3) Quite pumpkinish characters
4) Very pumpkinish characters
5) Talking pumpkin heads
Isn't it just a cartoon? Ok, ok, it's not a 'toon in a traditional sense, but still...
This isn't nearly as interesting as some of the bargain's they've been running recently. One of their higher-ups is a regular visitor in the animeondvd.com chatroom and usually pops up with insane new bargains to drain all our wallets every week or two. They had an insanely good deal going on almost-used cd's awhile back, a pack of 6 soundtracks that simply had marred cases, nothing wrong with the discs themselves and they were selling them for next to nothing, they clear out lots of older shows too if you missed them the first time around. Always a good thing to check right stuf's bargain a couple times a week if you're an anime fan.
... just pass me a box of crayons.
that makes 11 worthless posts in another worthless /. story.
..is "Urotsukidoji: Legend of the Overfiend." First tentacle rape IIRC. Right?
,
faeryman
WTF is an 'almost-used' CD? It's one of those boolean things, like being pregnant, or so I have always thought.
To make laws that man cannot, and will not obey, serves to bring all law into contempt.
--E.C. Stanton
... can somebody let me know if it covers tentacle porn? I might brave the Slashdotting...
...then we will all be masters of the dreaded Danza slap
News for guys who can't get laid. Stuff that involves tentacle rape.
Cartoon network got me hooked on cowboy bebop.
Everybody I know think's it's absolutely amazing
and has gotten some, or at least stays up to watch
the show. What some people don't get about anime
is, it's a great way to put a great idea in front
of people for a lot less money than making a live
action dealio. You get that huge screen feel with
paper and ink. I saw a copy of the non-import
japanese version of the Cowboy Bebop movie go for
500 bucks on eBay a while ago.
The most important thing any republican needs to know.
Crappy Anime is crappy! News at Eleven!
Seriously, you might as well say "All Sci-Fi movies suck!" just because of the incredible crapitude of Battlefield Earth.
Animefu
476 AD
Sheesh, there must be some really touchy moderators around here. I thought it was genuinly funny.
To make laws that man cannot, and will not obey, serves to bring all law into contempt.
--E.C. Stanton
suck ten dicks you white bread chicken shit mother fuckin' honky ass gay guy.
Hmm... at first I read that as:
1. Watch anime
2. ???
3. Get laid!
In Soviet Rush, today's Tom Sawyer gets high on you.
The Japanese want to shove tenticles into it.
I like big butts and I cannot lie.
I love tentacle pr0n!
You just won $64,000
You leave Cartman's mom alone!
To make laws that man cannot, and will not obey, serves to bring all law into contempt.
--E.C. Stanton
"Hey baby, why don't you come over and watch some
bebop with me"
works a lot better than the old monteray jack
chicken quesadilla gambit taco bell seems to think
you should try based on their recent commercial.
The most important thing any republican needs to know.
The linked article, while informative (I didn't know Nadia was so popular, for example), is really just an infomercial for Right Stuf (an anime distributor).
So I'll offer a plug of my own. I like AnimeNation...they have a great news section and a Q&A column "Ask John."
and didn't Old Yeller get shot and didn't that Old Lion die. I know its hip to be condecsending and insult Disney, but at least make sense when you do it.
Regarding
"This, as Uncle Walt had taught us, was a medium for children, and children could not be trusted with an advanced concept such as death."
I do not normally respond to trolls, but in this case, I feel compelled to. That post is quite possibly the dumbest post I have ever seen. To anybody reading this -- I strongly encourage you not to bid on the above account -- please do not encourage the corruption of what slashdot represents by allowing people to buy and sell online handles.
To make laws that man cannot, and will not obey, serves to bring all law into contempt.
--E.C. Stanton
Sign in, and turn off the category in your filters. Problem solved.
It's sad that the people who aren't into anime always post in the anime threads about how they don't like anime; just filter it out guys.
My favorites of course are here. Make sure you watch the 100 Grand Movie, it's hillarious...
...as if 99% of what is posted as 'news' here isnt...
Manipulate the moderator system! Mod someone as "overrated" today.
Got Rice? (May not be safe for work.)
I expected in depth info on various series, not a glance at "anime, its great its is sold by so and so!"
Actually, the parent is pretty funny this time. Piss him off by modding him up.
I'd like to see anime biographies, myself. My life story should be told the way it should have gone down - with ninjas, giant robots and pink haired bisexual schoolgirls.
As the production costs for cartoons continue to go down, and as the aggragate disposable income of the human race continues to rise (assuming it isn't squandered in senseless war, of course) I think you'll see real expansion of the medium. I'd like to see more educational/historical work, along the lines of the Cartoon History of the Universe and it's ilk, in animated form.
I'm a firm believer that educational material should be "targeted" at adults. Nothing then stops children from watching it. This is why the Cartoon History of the Universe is good (was good when I was a kid,) and all this supposedly-history-teaching crap they show on TV recently has been such crap (Hysteria, I think it is called, is sub-dreadful.)
It's not an inherent limitation of the form. TV is plenty childish without extra effort put in to dumb it down.
The good and new comes from no quarter where it is looked for, and is always something different from what is expected.
with anime is there's too much of it =) I mean,
with 50++ NEW anime series a year, and a dozen new
movies and OVAs, who can either afford the time or
money to watch it all. Too bad, cause half of it is
usually better than most stuff on (american) cable
tv and hollywood.
why anime is so good? Well, for me, half the fun is
to admire the animation. Granted, anime is often
choppy and no that full of motion, but even simple
drawings can amaze me, in that I think it is fantastic
that we humans can draw that well. Other thing is that
if you watch something barely decent over a period of
8-9 hours, you'll end up loving it whether it's mediocre
or not, as it really grows on you in the end (also because
in anime, there's usually a storyline). Actually, anime
are often remarkable for their storyline, IMO, and that
only seems logical. Let's face it, there's often very little
ot none motion in a typical tv anime, so the only thing that's left is a good story and good characters. So I always like to say anime is a storytelling medium.
Other aspects of anime I like is the cultural difference. Japan is far less americanized than most modern countries I know of, and has an unique mixture of old and new that makes it all that more interesting. I also like the language.. don't understand much =D, but the language often sounds sort of poetic to me. And that's not only something I'm imagining I think, as I already speak 3 different languages fluently (although they're all indo-european languages, so what would I know =D).
Woo! Look at me! I can make sweeping generalizations and sterotypes! Let's see.. American movies all have terrible foul language in them, all video games teach kids that killing people is fun, all Arabs are mindless killers- hmm, did I miss anything?
Someone hit this guy over the head with a clue stick or at least mod him down, eh?
If the shoe fits....
How accurately does the last line describe most slashdot users?
Probably more than any of us would like to admit.
I help run a local Anime club and in the last few years I've noticed that a great deal of "fan-subbed" anime now appears online on P2P filesharing systems. Particularily Direct Connect. It's particularility good if you're the type that claims to have seen everything you can get locally. This type of anime is sub-titled by fans and released sometimes days after it's showing in Japan. I've watched whole series that didn't make it to the North American market for years. :)
I'd like to see someone present the anime timeline along with a timeseries depicting the number of beatings administered by high-school bullies.
for people wanting to check out anime:
Movies:
- jin roh (2000/2001-something)
For anyone looking for something dark and moody. The drawing
style is realistic (no oversized eyes/breasts here), and the animation quality is really brilliant (studio IG know their stuff). The storyline is a little hard to follow sometimes because of the many different factions involved each with their own motives, but in the end, it's all very poetic and well executed. Also watch out for the soundtrack, by Mizoguchi Hajime; especially the theme melody is one of the best I've ever heard in any movie.
- sen to chihiro no kamikakushi / spirited away (2002/2003)
watching this at a cinema is truly a fabulous experience as it's like being swept away by thousands and thousands of brilliantly drawn paintings.. the visual qualities, at a cinema, are extraordinarily beautiful. Hisaishi Jo provides a great score, as usual, and all in all this is another masterpiece from the legendary writer-director-drawer Miyazaki Hayao. Probably gonna win oscar, too.
I'm sure I'll get moderated into oblivion for this, but I'm new to anime. So just what is OVA? It's mentioned tons of times in the linked article, and I assume it's a acronym, but what for? Is it like a made for TV movie? Or a miniseries? Or am I totally off base?
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
I mean... For my part, I like anime, and I'm not a big fan of cartoons. But I know a lot of people who LOVE 'toons. So not only do I reject the notion that something that's popular must be good, but I don't think anime is really all that popular.
both on that there's too much of :p, and that anime is firstmost a storytelling medium, often with very unique characters and settings. As someone put it: "Animation is great not only because it can mirror our world in innumerous ways, from indiscernible from the reality around us to something completely abstruse, but also because it can unhindered go beyond." Very true. And since motion costs a lot and takes away from all the other aspects, it is cut down, and the focus is instead (more often than not) on providing good stories with great characters in a world not easily realizible in a live action setting.
Also, there's usually not that much of a "score" either in anime, as that too is costly.. usually they stick with bits of music here and there. so.. not too much motion or music, and still people watch it like it's a religion. As said, It IS because anime is a storytelling medium with some unique advantages both in character and world design. The score is usually a lot more vast in even a lowbudget hollywood movie, and in every live action piece there's 1000 times the fluidity in motion of a typical anime series.. BUT.. YOU show me some interesting characters/story/setting there besides lord of the rings. Sure, a few movies here and there have it, but none can compare to the whackiness the japanese can bring forth in this medium.
that was a great show. aphrodite and her "breast rockets"... bobo-bot..
http://cincyboys.blogspot.com/ Everything Cincinnati. Including the word 'Finnih'
After reading the article, I think we have to emphasize two important things that made anime much more popular in the 1990's.
:-)
The first is the rapid acceptance of the DVD format. Unlike previous home video playback formats, DVD's allow you to have multiple-language soundtracks and multiple language caption/subtitling tracks on a single disc. In one fell swoop, the entire debate of subtitled versus dubbed anime has been rendered moot.
The second is the success of Bandai Entertainment in bringing over a good number of anime titles created by Bandai Visual and Sunrise (Bandai I believe owns Sunrise) to the US market. This really opened the floodgates for lots of anime titles to finally be sold in US-legal editions.
Let me update this history of anime to talk a bit about some of the new trends in anime.
Forget about seeing nudity any more except for a few exceptions. The Japanese are getting closer and closer everyday to adopting the Puritain view on nudity, i.e. that it's bad and abnormal. However, fan service (underware shots, provocative poses) is still rampant, especially in anime targeted toward women (trying to get male viewers).
Along with the new censoring of nudity, there comes the censoring of violence. I recently watched a series called Noir, a action-spy type series, where people shot guns and got shot, but there was no blood. Anything "gruesome" was off camera and or only shown in the shadows. This make the anime feel very fake. However, the censoring of violence isn't as bad yet as it is for nudity. There are some great exceptions out there, like Cowboy Bebop, Naruto, and Hellsing.
One bad trend, particularily irritating to me, is the overuse of the cliché dweeb who can't handle women, yet is surrounded by them. He'll bleed from the nose, can't say anything with confudence, be in constant fear of reprisal, and perhaps in the end, if he's lucky, get a solitary kiss. This is Japan's version of the hopless moron who's married to a hot wife on US's sitcom TV. They all need to die.
However, all is not bad in anime land. When Slam Dunk came out back in the day, it started what I call the sports anime craze. Now there's anime about soccer (Whisle), boxing (Hajime no Ippo), tennis (The Prince of Tennis), and even the board game Go (Hikaru no Go). This type of anime is great for buidling up suspense, and it'll get you addicted like a crack addict. The art of creating cliff-hangers that make you foam at the mouth has been perfected by the Japanese.
Finally, the other great trend I'm noticing is anime adapted from literature rather from manga. Two anime of this type that I can think off the top of my head are Juuni Kokki and Crest of the Stars. You won't find any other anime that can compete with the plot and character development. Let's hope Japanese anime studios don't adopt Hollywoods attitudes towards book to movie production.
There is a great deal more to anime than the adult side. Watch Evangelion, His & Her Circumstances, Spirited Away...
I, for one, am glad that this was moderated as a troll while the parent remains unmoderated.
The moderation system: working hard for you.
Japanese cartoon
'Nuff said.
Seriously, they printed that history in their catalog... 1999? Something like that. Seriously. It has also been on their page for at LEAST the past two years. Why post it on Slashdot now?
being pregnant isn't boolean. there are many degrees of a woman being pregnant. first there's "being late," then there's "one of the five drug store tests taken said positive," and of course everyone's favourite: faking a pregnancy to encourage engagement.
oh the joys of the fairer sex.
The last question it asks is "so is it all over?"
And the answer it fails to provide is that that's
a definitive no, because it doesn't cover the last
decade! History has already shown it is far from
over.. anime survived the bad bad economy, and
is more popular than EVER.
Remember the timeline the article provides is
BEFORE the time of cowboy bebop (one of the
most popular anime series in the west ever). It's
before the time of record-breaking princess mononoke
(extreme commercial success).. and it's before the
time of spirited away (even more extreme commercial
success, and quite possible this year's winner for
the best animation oscar, which again would provide
the japanese anime industry another boost).
I just noticed all this when I finally read the
darn thing =p It mentions the impact of movies
such as naushika and akira.. well, it is far from
over, as princess mononoke and spirited away have
shown (bigger succeses than naushika and akira
even!!).
Oh yeah.. one of the last things it mentions is
that there is some good stuff on the horizon,
like escaflowne.. and indeed, escaflowne turned
out to turn out pretty big as well, although
cowboy bebop took the throne later on. Both
escaflowne and cowboy bebop also produced two
good movies.. and there were other good movies
as well, including but not limited to jin roh
and metropolis.
Furthermore, there are still lots of good series
coming out. Studio bones is worth a mentioning..
both witch hunter robin and wolfs rain might
turn out to be big hits (and rahxephon is doing
well). There's a really good new ghost in the shell
series running, done by IG. And a year ago we had
the brilliantly funny azumanga daioh, also sure to
be a huge hit. Actually, there seems to be at least
a dozen great new series each year, and that trend
is not failing any time soon I reckon.. (no I'm not
going to bother to mention all of them.. I'm looking
at lists of what has been out each of the previous
years, and there are LOTS of goodies to pick out).
so for anyone seriously thinking anime is dead..
far from it =) It's bigger than in a long time,
and even my sister and my neighbour has seen an anime
now!!!! (that warrants many exclamation marks=D)
of course, there are problems on the horizon as well..
like people downloading way too much licensed anime
from the net.
See this cartoon character?
The Japanese want to shove tenticles into it.
3. Somebody set up us the bomb
I was selected by Netflix to participate in a customer focus group. I'm going to their Los Gatos offices on monday. In return I'm getting two months of free service. Hopefully I'll be able to suggest some improvements in their service to anime fans, and I'll ask to speak with someone in management if I can't fit it into the format of the meeting.
.hack, etc doesn't show up in their search, even though obscure art films about eskimos and show up months in advance of release.
An obvious suggestion is that there are big gaps in their offerings to anime fans. They don't carry series like Crest of the Stars and FLCL or oldies like Otaku no Video. (I go to Nikaku Animart, the anime rental place in the San Jose Japantown neighborhood for stuff like that.)
Another obvious suggestion is that they aren't following new releases closely enough. Stuff like Banner of the Stars, Chobits,
I might be dreaming on this one but I'm going to try to discuss the lag time between releases in Japan and releases in the US with them. It seems silly to me that the Cowboy Bebop movie (movie not the series) was out in Japan several years ago but only recently came to the US. My suggestion is going to be that they deal directly with the Japanese companies themselves and not wait for the US distributors to license and dub the titles. AFAIK the majority of fans don't need the dubbing anyway and prefer subtitles. I'm wondering if they'd be interested in hearing that many Americans (yeah europeans, asians, and middle easterners too) are watching series like Chobits, Wolfs Rain, etc within days or weeks of airing in Japan, and with subtitles too. I may bring my chinese Hoshi no Koe dvd in as a prop. I don't think that one is out in the US yet, it wasn't last fall when I bought it. It looks to me like there is a tremendous demand for recent anime here that isn't being *commercially* fullfilled. =:)
I hope they don't laugh too hard when I suggest they do something about it.
Anyway, anybody have any other suggestions for Netflix on how to improve services to anime fans ?
Series you'd like to see, etc ?
Geez, don't take it so personally. It's not like he insulted your mother or dissed Perl or something. GET SOME PRIORITIES! :-)
...wearing a skin-tight topless leather jumpsuit, with cutaway buttocks and transparent crotch panel.
I might be dreaming on this one but I'm going to try to discuss the lag time between releases in Japan and releases in the US with them. It seems silly to me that the Cowboy Bebop movie (movie not the series) was out in Japan several years ago but only recently came to the US. My suggestion is going to be that they deal directly with the Japanese companies themselves and not wait for the US distributors to license and dub the titles. AFAIK the majority of fans don't need the dubbing anyway and prefer subtitles. I'm wondering if they'd be interested in hearing that many Americans (yeah europeans, asians, and middle easterners too) are watching series like Chobits, Wolfs Rain, etc within days or weeks of airing in Japan, and with subtitles too. I may bring my chinese Hoshi no Koe dvd in as a prop. I don't think that one is out in the US yet, it wasn't last fall when I bought it. It looks to me like there is a tremendous demand for recent anime here that isn't being *commercially* fullfilled. =:)
I hope they don't laugh too hard when I suggest they do something about it.
This is an unavoidable problem due to licensing agreements, production time tables, and market forces.
The Bebop movie quite possibly could have been over here a while ago, but fierce bidding likely held it up and in the end, Sony (who helped fund part of it) got it. Then it had to be translated, dubbed, and now it will be released in theaters.
Another problem with what you state is that yes, in fact, the FAR MAJORITY of anime fans in the US (whose market may be larger than that of Japan's in a few years) do watch and want stuff DUBBED. Therefore it is infeasable for Netflix to bypass the US companies, since they'd lose out on rentals to the majority of their audience with the lack of a dub.
The only reason many people are watching stuff like Chobits and Wolf's Rain so quickly is because fansubbers obey no laws and do what is essentially an illegal act (Copyright Violation) in the translation and distribution. The japanese companies simply chose not to prosecute (the US companies however, will).
As well, your chinese Hoshi no Koe is likely a bootleg, which was made with no compensation to the creator. Considering the guy worked on his own (that is, by himself for two years on a blue Apple G3 Tower) for the better part of two years to animate the entire damn thing, that's an insult. And ADV recently picked it up for a US release this year.
Make no mistake, releases of shows are coming sooner after their Japanese release these days than they were before, and there is a LOT more out there. They have to be careful though, the market is not gigantic like that of Hollywood's and it could easily be flooded.
As I have said elsewhere on forum, Toshihiro Hirano and Narumi Kakinoichi effectively created the tentacle rape back in the 1985 OAV "Fight! Iczer-1". In the first installment, the main character (Nagisa) gets attacked by an alien called a "Bedem" and a rather nasty, slimy tentacle is inserted into her mouth. Later that year, Hirano released another OAV, "Legend of Lyon Flare", which OPENS with some alien overlord tentacle-raping a woman, and then procedes to tear her in half, creating a lovely anime tradition which is fun for the whole family. And you can thank Hirano, and his sick wife Narumi, for all that.
Of course, certain things can be said. For one, Overfiend didn't come out until 1987, so it can't be considered the first "Tentacle Rape" anime. And it should be noted that Hirano and Kakinoichi pretty much abandoned tentacle rape by the late 80's, and at least you could say they were ahead of their time. (Later works by them, like Vampire Princess Miyu, Hades Project Zeorymer and Ryokunohara Labrynth were WAY ahead of their time.) Unfortunately, the rest of the anime world didn't seem to take their hint, and tentacle rapes and copious body fluids are still far too common in Anime.
Look. Anime is a medium for artwork, just like photography, live action movies, or liturature. It does not consist entirly of pornography (child, tentacle, or otherwise). By making such an assumption, you are losing out on a great deal of incredible work. Thats like refusing to read Shakespeare because of some bad pulp fiction you've run across.
Also, I'd like to add to the list of good animes to check out. In addition to Sen to Chiharo no Kamikakushi, and Jin Roh, please take a look at Haibane Renmei, or the ashen(or gray, depending on the translation)winged confederation. This 13 episode series takes a deep look into meaning of existance, and the consequences there of, through the eyes of a young "Haibane." Definately worth checking out.
I may bring my chinese Hoshi no Koe dvd in as a prop.
Fucktard.
They do jump over the important stuff to mention their favorites, don't they?
1990s: A whole lotta nothing going on. Uh huh. The obviously slept through 1992.
Could buy and sell Evangelion six times before corn flakes. It also deserves mention in the U.S. licensing portion of the article, since it was one of three shows that formed the basis for the current
success of anime in general.
Oh, and it did about ten figures in merchandising too.
LadyStar - Your Magical and Mysterious Adventure Awaits
Wow. That was a most impressive trolling campaign! Awesome! We should do this every Troll Tuesday just to piss off the editors. We need to find a good list of open proxies that we can use to post as much as possible. I imagine seeing 100+ of these posts in a single thread. God, that would be sweet.
I can forsee anime coverage only getting better here in the US from this day forward. Seriously, look at what the kids are watching today-- Pokemon, Digimon, Sakura Card Captors, Gundam, Yu-Gi-Oh and Dragonball Z. These kids are growing up with anime and like some cartoons stayed with us, their increased exposure to it is going to stay with them. They are going to demand more of it and the market will adjust to meet that demand (hopeflly). With that adjustment, you should see more and more stuff ported over here with (hopefully) less and less editing and hire budgets. It's like gaming. these cultures are slowly imbedding themselves into society and (hopefully) it won't be long before they are acceptable mainstram phenomenoms...
You need a FREE iPod Nano
The Tezuka estate should retroactively sue Disney. I'm sure there's room in the DMCA to fit something like that . . .
Fansubbed anime has never been easier to locate/download than it is right now through the usage of Bit Torrent (http://bitconjurer.org/BitTorrent/). http://anime.mircx.com/ hosts a mirror of all current releases which are readily available for download from the website. Naruto and Hikaru no Go are definetly worth checking out.
Stop bitching about new releases not arriving immediately in the US. Your anime is priced much *lower* than the original in Japan - even though most US releases require dub/sub, new packaging, etc.
For example, Ghost in the Shell (the movie, not the new series) still costs 7800 yen here in Japan - while Right Stuf has the same thing for $US25! Evangelion, too - not only is it dub/subbed, but some of the animation was redone to use English instead of Japanese, and yet the DVD box costs less than one-third of the Japanese original (which you can't even buy any more).
I'm surprised that I didn't see anything about Dragon Ball (DB|DBZ|DBGT) in the history of Anime part. I know it may not be considered to be that great and it may not have been the earliest anime but it certainly has bene crazily popular in America, Europe and Japan.
Is there a backlash amongst hardcore anime fans against the popularity of the Dragon Ball series?
However, DVD did make it MUCH more accessable. I own them all on DVD now, and there is just so much. The medium is a godsend for stuff like this. But to be fair, it was very very popular on VHS long before DVD was even out.
RING
I find the topic of the history of anime to be fascinating, and I want to learn more about it. Can anyone recommend a book that might cover this topic?
While it is a bit dated
What's slightly dated stuff doing making slashdot's main page?! I'm outraged; it's supposed to be VERY dated before you people post it!
ADV Films and Pioneer Animation have huge chunks of the new anime coming to the states also. I think ADV alone has something like 300 discs planned for release this year alone.
I believe it's missing a whole chapter on
Serial experiments Lain
Ghost in the shell: stand-alone complex
Hoshi no koe
and all those other cool shows I've been meaning to watch for months and haven't yet.
Anime, in a lull ? well, no longer !
I don't know why there's so many anime stories here on /.. Who watches anime anyways?!?! IT IS DISGUSTING TO LOOK AT!
I don't get Anime. I've seen loads of it, "trying" to get it, but I still don't.
I don't see the appeal. Ok, I would say almost all the stories are basically the same...not exactly the same...but the stories are all layered in similar ways. How many times do I have to see a futuristic city that's laden with crime and corruption and all looking like they've seen Blade Runner a million times? (Yes, I know Blade Runner itself was probably inspired by Anime...so what?).
Also, the non-sense of seeing ONLY subtitled Anime is pretty ridiculous also. I mean, it's ALL dubbed. It's animation. Don't tell me the non-sense of "but the Japanese voice actors are much better at this than the lame American actors they get to dub these". Ok...if you say so. I don't speak Japanese and wouldn't know if they were "acting" less stilted than the American ones.
I honestly believe that most people who claim they love Anime simply want to be portrayed as "different yet trendy".
I'm sure this is just me though. I just don't get it. But then again, I don't get a lot of things people claim are genius. Perhaps Anime is yet another of those "art forms" that has to be explained to people before they like it.
I don't get Bob Dylan either. This man who you can hardly understand and sounds like a homeless person after they drink about a gallon of ripple is a genius?
Or Picasso and EVERY modern art huckster of the 20th century. (I mean Pollock for Christ sake...that's not art...I mean, COME ON!).
Everyone knows this is crap yet everyone says that it's good because everyone says it's good.
Think for yourselves, stop being sheep. You shouldn't have to be told or taught to enjoy art.
Sorry, went off on a tangent there...
Actually, using big-name people for dubbing has done poorly, sometimes even worse. A person that has done "live" acting for many years is said to end up being flat because they aren't used to using only their voice for acting, so they get conniptions or fall flat. The actors/actresses that get screen time because of their looks can't get by so well.
Generally a dub from original language is going to be substandard to the original anyway. Try playing the French or Spanish track on a movie that was originally done in English. I've done it several times with many movies and they just aren't the same.
This article, despite bearing the date 'Feb 16, 2003,' is apparently old news. It mentions an "up and coming" series Vision of Escaflowne and how Disney may soon distribute Kiki's Delivery Service and My Neighbor Totoro. Er... these things happened years ago.
It's still a good history, don't get me wrong. But it's probably about three years out of date.
I dare anyone to compare anime to our classic Looney Toons.
Animation - Looney Toons
Themes - Looney Toons
Voice Actors - Looney Toons
Sounds (I can here them now) - Looney Toons
Music - Looney Toons
Looney Toons - 6
Anime - 0
Honestly, anime scares me.
But to each his own in this free world.
After Pokemon - When people knew what anime was and simply thought it was annoying as all get out.
Luckily, I held out my opinion until I saw Tenchi Muyo! and I've been a fan ever since.
I'm the guy with the unpopular opinion
With my netflix account I pay $20 US per month for unlimited rentals. I can usually get about 20 dvds due to the lag involved in mailing. If I can talk them into getting current stuff from Japan it will get even better !
If I'm able to get Netflix to consider making recent subtitled anime available to those who want it wouldn't that help the creators and hurt the bootleggers ?
Theres some thing i grabbed off kazaa because it said it was a lost bugs bunny ep, but it wasnt nearly bugs, and it was american hentai. Wtf.
Also, anything encoded at 240 by 180 is going to look like crap. Try a dvd.
Roland Piquepaille and slashd
subjuct says it all