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Hey, Answerman! Identity Theft

The sad part is that those who accuse Hollywood of plagiarizing Anime never seem to often stop to think that maybe great minds just think alike coincidentally when it comes to working with story genres, and that copyright law doesn't dictate who owns genres and general concepts while determining who owns franchises. Plus, they need to think about the possibilty that most Hollywood films accused of plagiarizing Anime are by those who perhaps never read a Manga or watched an Anime in their lives.

If you ask me, those making these accusations are likely to be nothing but a bunch of ignorant Otaku who refuse to accept that there are Hollywood filmmakers just as creative and talented as those in Japan, whether it's animated movie making or live-action filmmaking.

After all, you're not a true Kenichi Sonoda villain unless you lose a limb and then replace it with a firearm.

Keichitsu0305 wrote:

Americans being portrayed badly in anime? :rolls eyes: Please! How about Asians, Africans, Blacks, (some) Europeans, Non-Christan, Non-Blue eyed, non-Blonde haired, non-Heterosexual, anti-Democracy, and basically everyone who isn't "American enough" being portrayed in US pop culture right now?

What, you mean the Water Tribe wasn't full of pale white people?

I always thought the Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex series made Americans look like dicks. I know the CIA has done some shady things in the past, but spoiler[I don't think the USA would fire a nuke at a friendly country like they almost do at the end of 2nd gig. That's just ridiculous.] Also renaming the USA the "American Empire" certainly suggests that we're trying to take over the world.

The sad part is that those who accuse Hollywood of plagiarizing Anime never seem to often stop to think that maybe great minds just think alike coincidentally when it comes to working with story genres, and that copyright law doesn't dictate who owns genres and general concepts while determining who owns franchises.

Plus, they need to think about the possibilty that most Hollywood films accused of plagiarizing Anime are by those who perhaps never read a Manga or watched an Anime in their lives.

ignorant Otaku who refuse to accept that there are Hollywood filmmakers just as creative and talented as those in Japan,

It'd be unrealistic to ask people to check every aspect of their work and make sure none of it had been done in a similar fashion by someone else.

On the subject of idea-stealing, I bet there's still a number of folks who think Joss Whedon ripped off Outlaw Star with Firefly, just because of the scene with River in the case.

Speaking as an avowed Angel Cop enthusiast, it's always been my take that the stupendously nationalistic / anti-American / anti-Semitic content of the script were less to do with Ichiro Itano and more to do with his longtime collaborator Shou Aikawa, whose works often tend to include something completely crazy on that level. He's pretty much been given a retroactive pass for this stuff due to having worked on this relatively little-known series called *ahem* Fullmetal Alchemist, but I firmly believe Ichiro Itano's interests lie primarily in motorcycles, jet planes, guns, missile swarms, and bloodshed. This was still not enough to make me watch through all of Blassreiter...yet.

It's interesting that Gunsmith Cats is generally praised while Mad Bull is near-universally panned, since the reason cited was the level of visual accuracy in depicting Chicago even though the characters and events were positively outlandish. Yet the same is true for Mad Bull with regards to its visual depiction of New York City. The fascinating thing about the works of Kazuo Koike is that the artists he collaborates with all have a knack for putting in heavy-duty research from a visual standpoint. Mad Bull looks like 1980s New York, Offered's depiction of the inside hallways of MIT is 100% spot-on, and the worlds of Lone Wolf and Cub/Samurai Executioner/Path of the Assassin look exactly like how you'd expect feudal Japan to. It's the events that unfold which shatter the illusion. The real streets of NYC are not routinely terrorized by Chinese tanks, Count Dracula, wheelchair-bound cyborg Latino drug dealers, or the Predator (thus forcing the NYPD to fight back using the power loader from Aliens). You can't buy canned coffee from a vending machine, and they certainly can't double as grenades no matter what elderly diabetics do to them.

And it's not that Gunsmith Cats isn't just about as insane on the plot and violence/dismemberment metrics. After all, you're not a true Kenichi Sonoda villain unless you lose a limb and then replace it with a firearm. Yet somehow, my love for Gunsmith Cats and Kenichi Sonoda in general has greatly diminished over the years, as the release of the Omnibus editions managed to switch on a light bulb in my head. Suddenly, it became more apparent that while Kenichi Sonoda digs cars, guns, and robots...what he's MAINLY into is naked underage girls. Hmm, maybe THAT'S why Gunsmith Cats gets all the kudos despite being very similar to Mad Bull 34...

Rakkan wrote:

What's it like to be so much of a fan boy that you delude yourself into thinking Mad Bull and GSC are similar in any fashion beyond being gun heavy action series' set in America?

It's pretty awesome, actually. Tell me, what's it like providing no argument to the contrary besides "no it isn't"? Because as Michael Palin so famously said, that isn't an argument. It's just contradiction.

Listen: both are targeted to the same seinen demographic. Both draw their primary influences from American action movies and television shows of the 1970s and 1980s. Both are quite high up there on on the violence and sexuality scale. Both feature very detailed depictions of locations and firearms while simultaneously being incredibly unrealistic. If you've only ever seen the respective anime titles for each, then I can see how you may be skeptical of the comparison, but this is not an arbitrary flight of fancy on my part.

On the subject of idea-stealing, I bet there's still a number of folks who think Joss Whedon ripped off Outlaw Star with Firefly, just because of the scene with River in the case.

Re: similarities between shows, I honestly have not seen Kimba the White Lion to make any comparisons, though the fact that it has humans in it already means Lion King wasn't a direct copy. If Disney would just admit, "Yeah we took inspiration from it" this whole debate would never have happened.

Listen: both are targeted to the same seinen demographic. Both draw their primary influences from American action movies and television shows of the 1970s and 1980s. Both are quite high up there on on the violence and sexuality scale. Both feature very detailed depictions of locations and firearms while simultaneously being incredibly unrealistic. If you've only ever seen the respective anime titles for each, then I can see how you may be skeptical of the comparison, but this is not an arbitrary flight of fancy on my part.

I'm surprised no one mentioned the Read Or Die OVA yet on the subject of portrayal of Americans in animé. Our president is a cowardly pants-wetting nuke-launching idiot, and the country as a whole is treated as a stupid bulldog on England's leash. It's actually pretty awesome.