A poorly organized, not very original rant about anime

[Verfall]

Also one of my favorite animes, with a catchy song too boot!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IQSWEz8uvco

[BentonGrey]

Ughhhh........man, my soul hurts....anyroad, Spud, I feel the same way about most of what you said, except that I wouldn't be nearly so generous.  What bothers me just about more than anything else, and in such a profound way that there is no real logical explination for it, are the anime troupes that so many of them have.  You know, big mouths, giant 'sweat drop' when worried, distorted figures to emphasis emotions.....basically the DBZ influence (seen prominently in that bastion of wasted potential that is Teen Titans).  I think what bothers me is that it's just ridiculous.  If you're trying to tell a serious story, that stuff detracts from it...if you're not...well...it still bugs the tar out of me.

Anyroad, let what I've said be tempered by my adding my voice to the chorous singing Cowboy Beebop's praises.  It has the occasional off episode, but in general, it was fantastic.  I am actually rather surprised to hear all of you approve so strongly of Samuari Champloo.  It had a strong first episode, and it went downhill DRASTICALLY from there....I mean, TALK about wasted potential! 

I also was weirded out by Akira, there were some cool parts, the animation was pretty great, but for the most part it wasn't a story worth telling...and the ending made me want to smash my head through the screen.

The Japanese are a VERY strange people...

I have seen an episode of a show called....Lodoss War, or something like that, it was pretty cool, and if you like traditional fantasy, you might like that.  However, I haven't seen all of it, so I can't speak for how it continues from there.

I don't know, I suppose I feel the same way Spud does, many anime's have interesting stories, the occasional good action, cool characters....but somehow, despite all of that, they still make terrible shows.  I remember watching Robotech back in the day...at least, I think that's what it was, and REALLY wanting to like it, because it was such a cool premise, but being generally disappointed with it despite that.

Ohh, and just for the heck of it, Nartuo makes my soul hurt.

[Glitch Girl]

I admit, Anime isn't for everyone, but try not to judge it by all the mass market imports.

Though I do hafta ask.....am I the only one who liked Eureka 7?

I'm following it.  It's far from my favorite anime (the two leads tend to occasionally get on my nerves, a little too much whining), but despite that, I have been enjoying the story and the world and even the art style.

Gotta agree with most of the series listed here already.  The team that did Bebop tends to do stuff that's moving away from the "big eyes small mouth" style like Witch Hunter Robin and Wolf's Rain and Samurai Champloo. Trigun and Full Metal Alchemist.. both were very enjoyable series (though I prefer both in the original Japanese) with some great payoffs storyline wise. Big O... I loved the first season, the second season though was very rocky and the plot was all over the place and even the animation went down a notch.   And Excel Saga... you have to hear it in the original Japanese to truly appreciate the motor mouth on Excel (supposedly the English voice actress damaged her throat trying to keep up)  That series makes fun of everything from typical anime cliches to Chuck Norris movies.  Not the least bit deep, but very funny none the less.  (Speaking of animes that make fun of stuff, "Shinesmen" is another great goofy one, and I actually have to recommend the dub on this one, surprisingly good)


"Castle of Cagliostro" holds a special place in my heart since I saw it after a group of us snuck into a classroom in the Englishg building in the dead of night just so we could use a VCR (long story, but it did add to the whole "Lupin-esque" factor)  and it was also the first anime I bought (the second being the first Sol Bianca movie) 

My friend has a theory that that bombs we dropped on Japan, their radiation has cuased their general weirdness.  He may not be that far off.

[GhostMachine]

Stephen Spielberg has stated a few times that "Castle of Cagliostro" is one of his favorite movies!

I like Samurai Champloo, but I have to agree with Benton; it did go downhill after the first episode. Still a good series, though.

Legend of The Overfiend, which thanoson mentioned, is hentai. (ie, anime porn) I've never seen it, and after all the things I've read about it, I never will.

Supernatural Beast City, aka Wicked City, is also technically hentai, but nowhere near as bad as Overfiend, and actually has a decent plot. They apparently made a live action version of it in Hong Kong.

I tend to avoid anything that's hentai and anything that has Sherry Lynn doing the voice of a main character in the dubbed version. Mainly because she's done the same exact voice in everything I've heard her in (including video games; she was MOMO in Xenosaga I (and was fortunately replaced in the other two games) and Pepita in Star Ocean 3), and I'm sick of hearing it. I love her as Sasami in Tenchi Muyo, however. (I've heard she can do other voices; I've just never heard them, other than the voice of one of the Tachikomas in Ghost in the Shell:Standalone Complex)


Forgot to mention another voice actor I really like: Scott McNeil. He's done voices in mainstream cartoons as well as anime.

I have a really cool Mp3 of a promo he did for some anime website or podcast or something where he does about 10 different voices in a minute. Haven't listened to it for a while, but he does Wolverine (from X-Men Evolution), Rattrap and Dinobot (from Transformers Beast Wars - he was also Silverbolt and Waspinator!), Piccolo and a few others. He's probably best known for doing Duo Maxwell in Gundam Wing and Koga in Inuyasha, but he was also Hohenheim in Fullmetal Alchemist.

[BatWing]

yeah that voise actor scott mcneil is one of the coolest voice actor yet

[House Quake]

I'll pretty much add whats been said... anime isn't for every one... and because of the diverse range of whats been made over the years.. it's really unfair to make 'blanket statements' about a lot of it.  Most would say its best to watch sub-titled versions... but ehhh... I prefer 'good' voice acted dubs!  But thats just me.

Some of my favs that i would recommend are
SERIES:
Hellsing
Full Metal Panic
Cowboy Bebop
Big O
Blue Seed
Guyver

FEATURES:
Vampire Hunter D 1 &2
Fist of the Northstar
Wicked City
Ninja Scroll
Ghost in the Shell
Crying Freeman

And a couple of really old school classics:
Star Blazers
Speed Racer

[the_ultimate_evil]

i must admit i have a real detest for anime, mainly because of what it did to art and comics, growing up everyone was so into anime and drawing in the style where as i was still reading stuff like spider-man, batman etc wondering what the hell the appeal was.

i really hate anime fan art and the prazie it gets even when its not well done, now in contrats when it is drawn well it can be extremley good, but it just seemed to be bloody every where.  i dont know maybe its me but there something extremley distrubing about drawing a woman in her 20s dressed and acting a small child

i have watched and enjoyed 2 animes in my enitre life and i know that soon as i say it the lynch mob will be at door, and i enjoyed these cause i they came from other interests.

street fighter the animated movie and the street fighter V series

[Volsung]

Evil,It proves that you should give japanimation a chance.

You musn't generalise.They target different kind of public.
Japanimation is just a media like movies or book.

'20Th century boys' or 'Monster' from Naoki Urasawa, recently adapted in anime got no link with stupid or gore series.

[UnfluffyBunny]

ok, here's a quick photo highlight of my brothers collection....

first thing you're greeted by as you go in the door
[spoiler]

(the cabinet on the right is also full, and there's more in a position my camera couldnt reach)
[/spoiler]
next would be the bookshelf but the pics didnt come out very good....
a small section of floor:
[spoiler]

manga magazines, some manga books, and some torn packaging from a delivery that arrived typically.. this morning
[/spoiler]

the actual viewing area:
[spoiler]

mainly books and some vhs
[/spoiler]

this is actually just a highlight, I didnt wanna flog the thread down with pics @_@ there's so much more it's not even funny, (you may have noticed there's a large area behind the tv and such)

so as a final pic, the walls (my panoram-fu is weak, ignore the obvious breaks :P )
[spoiler]

[/spoiler]

[Jakew]

Thats very cool ... must be hell on his love life, though.

I feel faintly guilty when someone sees my Family Guy DVDs lying around.

[Zippo]

Thats very cool ... must be hell on his love life, though.

I feel faintly guilty when someone sees my Family Guy DVDs lying around.

My girlfriend thinks my anime/manga collection is sexy.  :P

[zuludelta]

I'm not so much a fan of anime as I am someone who grew up with a lot of it on TV... growing up in the Philippines during the 1980s and early 1990s, shows like Voltes V, Daimos, Yu Yu Hakusho, among others were pretty much part of the TV milieu, so I'm missing out on some of the apparent misgivings people have that are allegedly unique to anime as a genre.

To me, bad anime (like most of the imported mass market stuff shown in North America) suffers from the same faults as bad animation from any other country or region: derivative and unimaginative character designs, plodding plots, horrible dialogue. I find it a little strange that some people could so easily dismiss "anime" out of hand, as if all animation from a particular area are bereft of any diversity in style and theme. I think what's turning a lot of people off of foreign animation and comics (not just the Japanese/Asian stuff but those coming out of Europe as well) is that too often, viewers and readers make blanket assessments over exposure to a limited sample of the material. Usually, the stuff that makes it across the Pacific (and the Atlantic) is the material that is most easily marketed, so it should be no surprise that they're fairly unsophisticated, lowest common denominator type fluff.

   

[Bujin]

I was an anime hater, until my younger son Jake (age 12) made me sit & watch Full Metal Alchemist.  Great story, with humor, heart, and a neat plot.  I highly recommend it!

[lugaru]

I'm not so much a fan of anime as I am someone who grew up with a lot of it on TV... growing up in the Philippines during the 1980s and early 1990s,    

Same here. In Mexico lots of channels simply showed whatever show was the cheapest, and it was cheaper to buy cartoons from Japan than from the US. I grew up with some really out there stuff, most of which I have never heard of again. I actually went to the movie theater to watch Mazinger and Saint Seya movies, that's how big they where back home. Also we had Candy Candy, Capitan Centella (Gekko Kamen), Macross, Battle of the Planets (G force)...

For recent stuff I've enjoyed a lot of what I've seen on adult swim like FLCL, Samurai Champloo, Cowboy Bebbop, etc. There's good anime out there, but there is a LOT of really derivative junk too. And I really cant stand "combat" anime, you know... 20 episodes to watch some generic "ryu" style hero who is the best fighter for some reason fight the same guy. 

[zuludelta]

Also we had Candy Candy, Capitan Centella (Gekko Kamen), Macross, Battle of the Planets (G force)...

Oh boy, I remember Candy Candy. I never really watched it but it sort of stands out in my head because it was one of the first anime shows I saw that was distinctly geared towards a female audience (prior to that, all I'd seen was either battle or giant robot anime). I also remember quite a number of anime shows based on literary properties... I remember watching "A Dog of Flanders" (based on the 19th century novel of the same name by Maria Lousie De La Ramee), "The Trapp Family Singers" (based on the 1949 book by Maria Von Trapp and definitely inspired by The Sound of Music), and "Cedie, Ang Munting Prinsipe (a.k.a. "Little Prince Cedie"... based on the 19th century serial novel Little Lord Fauntleroy). I think they were all made by the same studio, but I can't really be sure.

[BatWing]

the first animes i ever saw was dragona ball z and sailor moon

[GhostMachine]

One thing that confuses people is Gatchaman. The original series has been released under several different dubs, each with a name change amongst other things: Battle of the Planets, G Force, and Eagle Riders. Battle of the Planets sucks, because they took out just about all the violence and added that lame robot character in place of those scenes. I believe BOTP even changed which character was really an android!

For anyone who follows the various Dragonball animes but not the manga, GT is NOT canon; Toriyama did not create GT and afaik didn't actually have anything to do with it. The end of DBZ is the actual end of the series.

Anyone who wants to get into anime without committing to any series or watching kiddy stuff, I recommend the following movies, because they're stand alone - no series to go along with them:

1. Robot Carnival (older movie made up of several short stories by different creators)
2. Roujin-Z (I'm not even going to try and explain it, but its a great movie)
3. Vampire Hunter D
4. Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust (sequel made long after the original)
5. Wicked City, aka Supernatural Beast City (note: NOT for kids! You can pretty much let them watch the others I've recommended (the Vampire Hunter D movies do have some gore, but not extreme amounts of it, so those are iffy - I'd let a teen watch, but not a little kid), but this one is a no-no)

Akira is highly overrated, so I'd say skip it for your introduction to the genre; It did have groundbreaking animation for its time, but that's about it. Grave of the Fireflies is supposed to be pretty good, but I've never actually seen it.

Robot Carnival is a definite must see, though. Like someone else said, its sort of a Japanese version of Heavy Metal, but not quite.....

[detourne_me]

grave of the fireflies
spirited away
princess mononoke
metropolis
and the one i can never quite remember,  its mid-80's about a girl with a cool glider and these giant tomato bug insects

thats the list of best anime.  hands-down
oh and the animatrix short film about the ghost house.

[Toxic_J]

grave of the fireflies
spirited away
princess mononoke
metropolis
and the one i can never quite remember,  its mid-80's about a girl with a cool glider and these giant tomato bug insects

thats the list of best anime.  hands-down
oh and the animatrix short film about the ghost house.

I think you mean 'Kaze no tani no Nausicaa' (Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind) which is a great movie indeed. I agree with those others you mentioned except for Metropolis, that one didn't get to me. Overall I like anime, mostly depending on what kind of mood I'm in. I've seen alot of anime over the years and the few I can remember that were nice are:

Gungrave
Gun X Sword
Black Lagoon (definitely one of the coolest I've seen)
Full Metal Alchemist
Trigun

And one that I can't stand but which seems to have a big supporter group: The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya... I mean seriously...

[GhostMachine]

And one that I can't stand but which seems to have a big supporter group: The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya... I mean seriously...

Well, get prepared to deal with people talking about it a lot more, because Haruhi is coming out dubbed this month or next, with Wendee Lee doing the voice of the title character and Crispin Freeman doing the voice of Kyon.

I haven't seen it yet, myself.

[GrizzlyBearTalon]

I vaguely remember some random movie I caught on Sci Fi Channel when they would show an anime movie every Saturday, they didn't do it very long though (of course nothing on that channel much lasts long really) maybe six months to a year total I believe.

It had some guy in a white power ranger esque suit battling cyborgs n such. Not sure if I would enjoy it now but I thought it was very cool back then.

I also remember something called Demon City Shinjuko or something, pretty sure that one sucked though.

[Glitch Girl]

I vaguely remember some random movie I caught on Sci Fi Channel when they would show an anime movie every Saturday, they didn't do it very long though (of course nothing on that channel much lasts long really) maybe six months to a year total I believe.

It had some guy in a white power ranger esque suit battling cyborgs n such. Not sure if I would enjoy it now but I thought it was very cool back then.

Casshan Robot Hunter.

It was an old anime that got a modern treatment, which is the one you saw.  There's also a live action move though I haven't seen it (though I think I went to the website at somepoint)

[EDIT] The live action movie is "Casshern" and is the actual title of the series.  "Casshan" seems to be a mistranslation according to what I just read, but it's Wikkipedia, so take that as you will.

Sci-Fi had a very mixed bag of stuff.  Some was good (Iria was probably my favorite of that run) and some was just poor ("Fatal Fury" - you can believe a movie about fighting can be dull)  That was also where I saw "Roujin-Z ". GhostMachine's right, it's hard to describe, but it was pretty cool.  The robot nurse (not what you're thinking, trust me) and the senior squad... that was pretty fun.

BTW: I have a copy of Robot Carnival on Video (need to transfer to DVD) Love that one.  The Steam-powered giant mecha was a riot, Frankengears was cool animation and a bit of dark humor at the end, and Nightmare... man I loved Nightmare.  :D

[detourne_me]

RE: Toxic J.
Yess! thank you!
i always remember it has something to do with wind or wings and people think im talking about wings of hommenaise.
but yeah Nausicaa of the valley of the winds is one of the animations that had a profound effect on me as a kid.

[BatWing]

grave of the fireflies
spirited away
princess mononoke
metropolis
and the one i can never quite remember,  its mid-80's about a girl with a cool glider and these giant tomato bug insects

thats the list of best anime.  hands-down
oh and the animatrix short film about the ghost house.

i've seen grave of fireflies its pretty sad, spirited away is cool, and princess monoke is good also.
nenver heard of metropolis

[BentonGrey]

Metropolis....you thought METROPOLIS was good?  Nay, best?  Good heavens man....I...I just don't know what to say.....

[BatWing]

who are u replying to detourne?

[BentonGrey]

Yes Raijin, sorry for the confusion, I was just...so stunned...

[BatWing]

why is metropolis really that bad?

[BentonGrey]

Well...I mean, obviously DM found something to like, but my friend and I who watched it found it utterly terrible.

[GhostMachine]

I've seen the live action version of Casshern. The Sci-Fi Channel actually aired it once. It was quite good, but not as good as the anime.