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Utsuro no Hako wrote:

RyanSaotome wrote:

Funny thing about Girls und Panzer is that the director actually went out of his way to say there were no panty shots before the show even aired.

animenewsnetwork.com/news/2012-08-09/girls-und-panzer-2nd-promo-streamed-with-schoolgirls-and-tanks

Quote:

The video ends with a note, "There is no panty-flashing. By director Tsutomu Mizushima."

That just seems like such an odd choice for the person to use in the Answerman question.

Don't make it sound like the director was taking some stand against fanservice. It was just a pun on the fact that "Panzer" and "panties" sound the same in Japanese. In fact the series used an spelling of "Panzer" (パンツァー) to make the similarity more obvious.

Who told you that? That's how it's normally spelled, and reflects the accurate pronunciation (more or less; this is Japanese). パンザー would just be weird. Japanese bases its pronuncation on German, just like how in Japanese it's パリ, much closer to the French pronunciation of Paris than the English.

Quote:

On kind of a different
tangent, someone
mentioned supporting the
living daylight out of stuff
you like. Aside from
watching the shows on
legal streaming sites (with
AdBlock off, naturally), are
there any other ways of
doing this? Usually when I
find merchandise of stuff I
like (figures, plushies, etc.),
it's either through ANN or
just running into the stuff by
accident at cons (or running
into cheap knock offs and
going off to find the real
deal). Are there any well-known sites that keep track
of this stuff? Or do I have
already know what I'm
looking for to know, well,
what I'm looking for? (Ex: I
*just* found out about the
existence of amiami for
figures. By accident. XP)

(Just as an aside, me and
ebay haven't gotten along
very well, so I'd rather avoid
that if possible.)

Well, I buy my merchandise at Rightstuf, Crunchyroll, & Amazon (but like Ebay, there's a chance of receiving bootleg stuff at Amazon so be cautious). There are other websites as well like the ones listed here at ANN at the bottom of eah page so explore around.

"nonsensical pedophilic panty-shot series like "Girls und Panzer"," ARE YOU FREAKING KIDDING ME?!!!!!!!!

There's not ONE panty-shot in GuP, not ONE! And not only are the characters well developed, but the tank aspect is researched and the battle exciting. I'm sorry, but It pisses me off so much when people bash shows THEY DIDN'T WATCH!

dtm42 wrote:

There are plenty of great shows coming out every season, but some people get fixated on the bad shows and think that they are representative of the season as a whole.

I used to be on the camp of “why are there so many bad/mediocre shows coming out in a medium I like”, but nowadays the negative trend hardly bothers me at all. For one, each season has a handful of intelligent appealing shows among the mindless dreck. But even if that isn’t the case, why care about the bad stuff? It will always be there and complaining will not change that trend. Either deal with it or avoid it, but ranting isn’t useful.

This idea that critics are all paid off gets asserted as fact routinely, but I've never seen a shred of evidence to support it. Everyone likes to bring up what happened to Jeff Gerstmann with Gamespot, but the reason that got so much attention is because nothing like it had ever really happened before.

In reality people are just way personally invested in reviews and are incapable of handling the idea that professional critics might have an opinion that differs from their own.

walw6pK4Alo wrote:

These people also ignore that the 80s and 90s were also full of mind-numbingly dumb ecchi OVAs, but those are either ignored or given a pass because they're old. They also never know that most of the first OVAs produced were hardcore loli hentai.

Another side to it is that those mind-numbingly dumb ecchi OVAs were some of the first things a lot of us were exposed to many moons ago. Whether it's due to age or degree of initial exposure, there were a lot of things done with anime that we let pass since it was new and fresh stuff from another country that did things that we never thought we would ever see (in the US at least).

On that note, there's also that nostalgia factor going on there. Because the stuff seemed groundbreaking when these shows were coming over 20 - 30 years ago, they might still seem amazing, or at least good, today if we haven't had a "refresher" viewing. Some shows like Akira, Ninja Scroll and Patlabor have withstood the test of time to some degree, but then there are others that haven't, such as 8 Man After.

Then there's just the fact that time has allowed the human minds at large to parse out the few good shows and forget about the boring or bad ones. So it seems like people are saying old is better, but it might not be the case.

On one hand, I do understand the frustration of the letter writer (understanding of certain series notwithstanding). There are shows out there that are greatly written, yet doesn't cover the genres that are popular these days. It would be great if I could go up to someone and talk about Mushishi and not get weird looks, but that's just what reality is.

On the other hand, I do think he is poo-pooing on these mainstream shows unfairly. It might be mindless drivel at times, but there are a good amount of shows, new and old, that you can watch, support and enjoy to your heart's content, so just ignoring the shows you don't like watching is a much better way to spend your time.

Girls und Panzer is "nonsensical pedophilic panty-shot series" while Kill la Kill isn't!

Oh god my sides.
I'm sorry, but this reminds mr too much of that shitty review saying that Shirley from Strike Witches is a "slightly less hateful Asuka Langley Sohryu".
I can't stop laughing.

Not all of the shows Justin mentioned are super niche. Space Brothers, for example--It's apparently big in Japan, at least as evidenced by its place on the top ten rankings most weeks. What I'm curious about is why it's not more popular in America. I mean, it has space, it takes place in America a lot of the time, it has attractive enough character designs...why hasn't it taken off here?

Also Kill La Kill is hugely popular right now--of course, I wouldn't call Kill La Kill particularly high-minded. Laughing

Fun show though, and it's more than the sum of its panty and boob shots.

If you can't find stuff you like, even it's just a show or two a year, then you either aren't looking hard enough or are in the middle of anime burnout and just don't know it yet.

There's a segment of fandom that seems to do some odd anime equation where any bad/disliked/disinterested show that exists negates the existence of a series they do like. I don't get it. Much like anything ever in the history of humankind, there will be some things you like and some things you don't.

whiskeyii wrote:

Usually when I find merchandise of stuff I like (figures, plushies, etc.), it's either through ANN or just running into the stuff by accident at cons (or running into cheap knock offs and going off to find the real deal). Are there any well-known sites that keep track of this stuff?

Sure. Try http://www.1999.co.jp/eng/ for starters.

Raneth wrote:

Space Brothers, for example--It's apparently big in Japan, at least as evidenced by its place on the top ten rankings most weeks. What I'm curious about is why it's not more popular in America. I mean, it has space, it takes place in America a lot of the time, it has attractive enough character designs...why hasn't it taken off here?

Shows about adults rarely find a large following among Western viewers. Most of them are aged 12-24 and not so interested in the problems a guy like Mutta faces. In Japan, though, the show targets family audiences as evidenced by its 5:30 pm Saturday time slot and the use of hiragana to help children pronounce unfamiliar kanji in the subtitles.

Also the Space Brothers manga is pretty popular which reinforces the popularity of the anime adaptation.

My beef with this whole argument is that there seems to be an assumption that ecchi anime was only big in the last 10-15 years. Tenchi Muyo! was huge in the 90s and remnants of it were still being made up to a few years ago, a series with spinoffs that lasted nearly 20 years.

The problem lies with licensing here in the U.S. and how the pricing system works. Most of the ecchi series are fairly cheap, generally $10-$50 for the entire series. Then, we have some of the best, ranging from, again, $10 to outrageous prices. I say outrageous because Aniplex USA has licensed a few good series. Typically, their series are $150 and on up. Not many ecchi series are this expensive unless they are out-of-print. See Familar of Zero aka Zero no Tsukaima.

I believe that ecchi series sell more, at least here in the U.S., is because they are licensed at lower prices than other series. This makes the cost of buying these series usually cheaper and thus selling more copies, possibly making more of a profit than the non-ecchi.

jsevakis wrote:

Timeenforceranubis wrote:

Yeah, the number of pantyshots in Girls und Panzer is zero. Zero.

Thanks for that. I hadn't seen it. That's pretty funny.

I don't normally go for questions like this, but I had to turn in the column early this week, so I didn't have many submissions to choose from. Confused

Now you see what fun Brian had. Laughing

yuna49 wrote:

whiskeyii wrote:

Usually when I find merchandise of stuff I like (figures, plushies, etc.), it's either through ANN or just running into the stuff by accident at cons (or running into cheap knock offs and going off to find the real deal). Are there any well-known sites that keep track of this stuff?

Sure. Try http://www.1999.co.jp/eng/ for starters.

Raneth wrote:

Space Brothers, for example--It's apparently big in Japan, at least as evidenced by its place on the top ten rankings most weeks. What I'm curious about is why it's not more popular in America. I mean, it has space, it takes place in America a lot of the time, it has attractive enough character designs...why hasn't it taken off here?

Shows about adults rarely find a large following among Western viewers. Most of them are aged 12-24 and not so interested in the problems a guy like Mutta faces. In Japan, though, the show targets family audiences as evidenced by its 5:30 pm Saturday time slot and the use of hiragana to help children pronounce unfamiliar kanji in the subtitles.

[languagenerd]Actually, using hiragana to help pronounciation is called furigana or "ruby text"[/languagenerd]

Mune wrote:

I believe that ecchi series sell more, at least here in the U.S., is because they are licensed at lower prices than other series.

No, they aren't. Aniplex's pricing varies but is definitely higher than most other companies. Other companies have pretty set pricing structures and there is little variation of price among the same company's releases for first releases of shows. Shows getting their 3rd, 4th, or 5th release are often drastically cheaper. Otherwise, if you're finding a show for that price, it's probably because the show was released many years ago and the store is trying to get rid of it. But companies don't just sell 'ecchi series' for less than other shows.

I just wanted to mention that Kiki's delivery service doesn't currently have a bluray in the US. I know Justin you didn't mention specifically it did but you listed it with the other bluray releases. I just wanted to make sure no one got confused thinking there was a US bluray for the movie. Great article though and keep up the good work.

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