Slashdot Mirror
Want Anime Network on Your Cable System?
ccnull writes "The Anime Network has launched a "tell your cable company to carry this station!" campaign on its web site. Just enter your ZIP code at the top of the site's home page (it looks like a banner ad) and you'll be that much closer to Samurai X 24/7. In case you hadn't heard, the network launched in late 2002." No support via DirecTV. I filled out the form already- I crave this channel.
I would have rather Turner had spun off all of their anime and "edgey" shows into a Toonami network. It could have been a nice mix of stuff like the Adult Swim line up with hardcore anime shows mixed in. Anime is good, if taken in moderation.
I'm not going to argue that anime doesn't have a geek fanbase, but your reasoning is logically flawed.
what you are saying is:
Anime fanbase is largely geek
Therefore, most geeks like anime.
That's not necessarily true.
See this example.
The people who work at my desk are largely geeks.
Therefore, most geeks work at my desk.
See the flaw.
copied from http://gamesandpolitics.tripod.com/animfan.html
Fandom: The Barbarians at the Gate
or
Yes, I still like Ranma 1/2
"People who play tennis are just fine and dandy... and people who watch animation are no good? Why?"--- an otaku's lament, Otaku No Video
It is an unfortunate fact about fandom, whether it be gaming fandom, anime fandom, or Linux fandom that it goes through stages:
1. Stage One: A small group of people discover something that they like and think is fun and interesting. They form clubs based on it, talk to each other about references from it and generally enjoy themselves. Often, they will be persecuted by people who don't get it, "You're into that?!? How can you be into that?!?!" they'll sneer as they pass you in the street, at school or at work. This is also the evangelism phase, you try to convince people to become involved in the thing you are into. "The more the merrier" is what you think at this stage. In some ways, this is the best stage of fandom. There is a lot you have to do by yourself and normally a dearth of commercial support, but it is exciting.
2. Stage Two: Some charismatic people become interested in what you like, unfortunately, leading the people who were sneering at you to think, "Oh! He's into that? Oh, maybe I misjudged it then..." (You'll see why this is unfortunate soon enough.) More support becomes available, so you don't have to do everything yourself. Instead of third generation fan-subs, for instance, commercial tapes become available. Maybe not the ones you want, but still, maybe good in their own way.
3. Stage Three: This is the transitional phase, your hobby becomes well known enough that the mainstream media picks up on it, usually portraying it as a weird and evil sub-culture. Of course, this causes it to appeal to bored mainstreamers who want to appear cool by taking on the establishment (until they grow up to become corporate lawyers and/or investment bankers, natch.) These are the people who start showing up at your AD&D club meetings and when you suggest a game of Call of Cthuhlu for a change, mock you. They don't mock you because they know anything about CoC , but because "the name sounds goofy, man." You start feeling resentful as they try feeding your sixth level magic user to a gelatinous cube, and in my case you stop attending group meetings.
4. Stage Four: Congressmen start talking about the evils of the whatever-it-is that you like, of course making it more cool among mainstreamers . Although the thing you like is more readily available now from a variety of commercial sources, it has been rendered palatable for the mainstreamers . All the rough edges are sanded off, and you get accosted by people who don't know that you used to be really into the thing who try to tell you how cool their bland, pallid version of the thing you used to love is. The barbarians are at the gate! People are overunning your hobby with the same predjudices they had back when it wasn't cool. They accost you at conventions and say, "You are into that!?! How could you be into that?!? This new is so much cooler than that. I wouldn't be caught dead being into that." Note: As always, you are not trying to force your tastes on anyone. In fact, because the quality of people you are meeting has declined so much, you try to identify the bad ones and just "smile and nod" as they pass you by. You are just trying to "live and let live," but the mainstreamers only want to appear rebellious, even though by their very nature they are conformists. Because of this, they will seek you out and try to force conformity on you, basically forcing you to hide your interests within a hobby from them the same way you used to hide your interest in the hobby from them.
5. Stage Five: Everyone is into your hobby now... but it's become so palatable and mainstream that it isn't recognizable as the thing you used to love. You've since moved on to
Traitors!!!! all of you so called geeks who diss anime should be ashamed, and screw sports! yes this is a rant, it's my rant damnit! I would pay oodles for this channel and wtf is wrong with taco posting something he thinks is cool? somewhere you people lost the fact he is the founder of this site... i'm so sick of all of your complaints so what if they post dupes? can't you guys forgive a simple mistake... Going back to the topic this is "News for NERDS!!" if you want sports go to espn, this is a place for the things that we nerds value most, like hot anime chicks that don't wear many clothes and far off worlds that we can only dream about... *puts on his flame shield* and i love you kenshin!! :X :X
I have several theme movie channels (Westerns, Mystery, Love Stories, Action, True Stories) and they are generally not as good as expected. Why? Because they can't get the rights to all "good" movies (since they are in high demand and thus expensive). Mystery shows The Avengers on weekdays but other than that is about two Columbo movies away from being Lifetime. I saw Predator on Action... quickly followed by The Fast and the Furious.
Everyone seems to think "Yeah a channel that was purely __________ would rock! I'd so watch it all the time!" Sorry but it wouldn't be Akira followed by Princess Mononoke. More likely "What the hell is this?" then "God... this really sucks." Unless someone feels like throwing millions of dollars into a moneypit, I fear this will disappoint.
The only pure channel I could see enjoying would be a kung-fu movie channel. Why? Because the unintentional comedy runs high in those films. The cheaper/worse the movie usually the more people like it. Of course there is a fine artistry to The Five Deadly Venoms and Shaolin Master Killer but anybody can enjoy the endless kick-to-the-genitals jokes and bad dubbing.
What is music when you despise all sound?
Oh, but I forgot. People would rather bitch and moan than take some initiative.
Jeez, if people don't like anime, they don't have to watch it. There are, what, more than a hundred channels on cable now? And over 500 on satellite? I'm sure there's something your parent poster can find that will make him happy.
"People should be allowed to keep midgets as pets."
- Gov. Jesse Ventura
I have no interest in watching a fat, stupid, Marilyn-wannabe parade around whining, wasting away her dead sugardaddy's money...but you don't see me bitchin' about getting E!, now do you? I hate rap/hip-hop/most of the crap on MTV. The Home Channel bores me to death. Travel channel- eh. The ABC/Disney "family" channels make me want to puke within 5 seconds of accidentally switching to them. Don't get me started about the tractor pulls and Shooter's World on OLN.
That's why smart people invented a feature that lets you delete/add channels from your TV's set of channels it scans through when you hit up/down.
That's also why you pay specificially for some channels(gasp! What a concept!) If you don't want the Anime channel, then don't bubmit your zip code, don't effin' buy it...and if it comes with the standard package(highly unlikely), deprogram it from your TV...kay?
Please help metamoderate.
You see the difference is that in Japan anime and manga are popular almost universally. In Japan it is a (very) frequent and acceptable occurrence for middle-aged businessmen to be reading manga on the train to work. Those guys actually make up over half of the manga sales in the country.
Some have speculated that their popularity comes from the fact that the harsh Japanese education system completely ruins books as a source of entertainment, so other forms have taken their place.
There is a difference in culture, and just because in the US all of the animation is garbage (as opposed to Japan where only most of it is) doesn't mean that other culture is wrong.
Speaking as a happily married man (2 years now) this is flamebait if I ever heard it. Guys- if some dark corner of your mind tells you you need to change your hobbies to meet women because gaming, computers, reading, or anime (or other similar pursuits) are too "dorky"... kick its ass back to the Gap from whence it came. Here at IU, the anime clubs are all about 75% women to 25% men. Elsewhere there are numerous gaggles of gamer girlz. One LARP I'm in is about 65% female to 35% male. So don't worry. There's nothing wrong with you, or your hobbies. Just keep looking. Oh, and while you're at it, can you burn me some VCDs? I still can't find the rest of GITS SAC. ^_-
Trolling-putting a rubber c0ck down your pants and cutting it off with a chainsaw: noisy and it makes you look d1ckless
On a related subject, good children's programming actually works on two levels. There is a surface layer which appeals to the children, and there is a deeper level which serves to entertain the parents. The best examples of this are the 1960's Batman series (kids love the superheroes, parents laugh), Rugrats (kids identify with the Rugrats, parents get to identify with and laugh at the older people), and Spongebob Squarepants (which works on many levels).
Galium Arsenide is the material of the future, and always will be.
Typical slashdot. Just make up some facts to support your case. I read that 0.01% of manga sales are to people over the age of 17.
You have a point about Slashdot, but you are wrong. An essay on manga, that states "One Manga magazine typically sells 5 million to 6 million copies every week." There are also over 200 popular manga issues. Don't believe me? Go to a Seven Eleven or Circle K in Japan. All under the magazine rack is just stacks of manga. "How can the Japanese achieve such high sales, because the young to the middle-aged, male and female often purchase Manga magazines."
It's actually well known for people to read manga, and you will see it a lot. 0.01% of one manga sales may be to people over the age of 17. Just like I don't think any people without children watch An Pan Man.
The typical manga issue is about $4 in Japan (I think about 500 yen) and is freaking thick. It's usually rough art, with little detail just to tell the story.
I know too much about manga.. and I don't even read it. Although I did get a porn magazine for a friend that had an utterly bizarre mini-manga story in it... one that I really wish I never had read...
Dacels Jewelers can't be trusted.
I'm sorry, but as must as I respect educational channels on television, a 24 hour mathematics channel seems to be devoid of almost any entertainment value. Solving differential equations has nowhere near the entertainment value of say, a series on African wildlife. Your remark on childish TV comics is justified with a great amount of anime. I can't say Dragonball Z or Yu-Yu Hakusho is much more than an excuse for violence. But like in most cases, generalizations can often be proven wrong and proves for a weak argument. Take Rurouni Kenshin on Cartoon Network. Before watching the show I had no idea what the Meiji era was, or what Japan was like in the 1800's. I came out of watching the show with a good deal of knowledge about the Tokugawa and Meiji eras of Japan. Then there are animes like Graveyard of the Fireflies, or many of the films by Miyazaki. These are anything but "childish TV comics", and have a maturity that many stateside films lack. Also, i doubt that watching anime cripples one's ability to read in any way. It is my experience that a good deal of anime fans read on a regular basis, though I'll admit many of them read science-fiction or philosophy for the most part. On the other hand, among those I know that rarely read for recreation, almost all of them never watch or have even heard of anime. I'd have to say I would enjoy a 24-hour anime channel much more than the vast amount of crap on television right now.
Go to one in america, the magazine rack will be all stacked with "Teen Beat" or "WWE Magazine" or "Heavy Metal Weekly" and other adolescent drivel. Your point from some essay written by some anime fan means nothing.
The original guy was saying that manga sales are common amongst adults. In Japan. He was right. You've obviously never been on a commuter train at 5 o'clock leaving Tokyo.
A full grown Japanese man may be reading manga on the subway. He gets the same reaction as a businessman reading a "Spiderman" comic, Japanese society is just more polite when it comes to pointing and laughing.
Uh, no. You're just being a retard.
Don't kid yourself. Japanese cartoons are still cartoons in every sense.
Just like Heavy Metal isn't a kids cartoon, Japanese cartoons are sometimes made for adults.
The shows that air here seem adult. But they are written for children. We have a different definition of adult, we consider Cowboy Bebop adult because they're shooting guns and killing people. That's acceptible for a childrens show in Japan.
The ages are about the same. Did you forget GI Joe? Little kids watch drivel like An Pan Man. Pre-teen watch the romantic shows, or Kenshin style shows. The teenagers watch the equivalents to South Park, Beavis and Butthead and stuff like that. Then there are adult stories, which are plenty acceptable to watch and read, because almost everybody in Japan does it.
It's like reading a freaking book, not Spider-Man.
Dacels Jewelers can't be trusted.
Of all the topics on Slashdot, anime seems to get the worst rap. The most common diss is that it's a "crappy cartoon". This is as unreasonable as saying "Windows is a stable OS"
Anime is more than just a crappy cartoon. You want a crappy cartoon, watch the disney channel sometime in the afternoon. Yes, some anime is bad, in fact, a lot of it is. Come to think of it, there are lots of crappy TV shows (reality tv anyone?) and crappy movies (fast and furious anyone?). With any genre, there comes the good and the bad.
One of the best anime review sites on the web If you take a look at rankings of most anime shown on american tv (cartoon network, most notably), you will notice that MOST of them are only in the 50 - 80 % range. The anime shown during the "adult swim" of cartoon network have a much higher average. I'll bet most of you anime dissers are judging the whole of a genre based on the anime with the lowest averages **cough**Dragonball Z**cough**.
It'd be like me saying that all sci-fi movies are as bad as "This Island Earth".(Neglecting the fact that it is SO bad that it's funny)
Broaden your spectrum, all ye naysayers. Either that, or stop posting under the anime topics. You're ruining it for those of us with an appreciation for the art.
(And I would request the channel, but I'm stuck on DirecTV)
(Yes, I would rather have subs. But dubs will do till they realize that I'd pay more for subs)
Just a guess, but I'd bet most of them prefer the romantic soap-operatic stuff (eg: another post mentions Maison Ikkoku) rather than the giant transforming space robots and sailor suited magical teens attacked by tentacle-things.
I'm male, but personally I can't stand most anime fans because they're just in it for the multifaceted over-the-topness that many animes feature. I used to go to a club movie day, watch the Gunsmith Cats and go home...
The fault of the stigmatation of animation as kids stuff lays not so much with Disney, as with childrens programming on TV. Animation was much cheaper then any alternatives. That is why Saturday morning TV has historicly been dominated by crude animation. Everyone in the US has grown up with this shit. Disney is also constrained by the radical Christian Right, who watch them like a beat cop watching a begger, looking for any excuse to rail them out of town. Remember the furor over "The Lion King", "Aladin", and "Pochihontis", not to mention Disneys ownership of Touchstone. Disney does in fact do a good job of producing bi-level films. I realy enjoyed "Lilo and Stich". As far as Anime, I think even the kid stuff is more mature in some regards then what would be done in the US. A very good example of this is "The Return of Mewtoo". I am not to sure why this is so. It might be due to the unimaginative marketing droids that have been responsible for most kids programming in the US. Fortunatly this has changed with no going back. Disneys "Gargoyls" had some fairly deep stories and some well developed characters. The Cartoon Network has done wonders. I am addicted to "Samarai Jack" even though it is episodic. But there is still a lot of crap like "G.I.Joe" and "The Justice League" (the later has some hope). Even the monster of the week Anime like "Dragonball Z", "Yu Yu Hakisho", and "Yu Gi Oh" have better character development then these. BTW, there has been a measurable amount of Animation targeting adults in the US. For example, "Wizards", "Fritz the Cat", "Lord of the Rings", all from Ralph Bakshi, in addition to the "Heavy Metal" movies.