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EyeOfPain wrote:

mdo7 wrote:

Regarding Justin (not Justin Servakis) question: Yeah beside TV Japan, there is also NHK World Premium. Like TV Japan, NHK World premium doesn't have a lot of English subtitled shows and is aimed at Japanese audiences not international viewers, so I find it unfortunate to watch shows without English subtitles unlike KBS World TV (which all shows have English sub). The worse of all, both TV Japan and NHK World Premium don't have internet stream nor Youtube channel.

I recently noticed that my TWC package in Dallas has TV Japan, as well as Mnet (Korean dramas, pop, etc.), and several Vietnamese channels (I believe).

Regarding Mnet, they do have their own Youtube channels:

Mnet (original Korean)

Mnet America

Mnet America has uploaded some of their shows on there BTW.

king 47 wrote:

I was the one who asked about the cellphones.

Thanks for the answer, Justin.

It was a good read, and looking through the comments was interesting.

It was a good question since most people associate Japan with new technology. For awhile I chalked it up to watching things that came out before smart phones were prominent, but it has certainly been long enough that the lack of them stands out.

Paiprince wrote:

Doing a character analysis judging by what phone they use...rather amusing.

The main characters from Railgun are strongly associated with their phone designs (like at the end of Season 1's ED1). Misaka has the kiddy frog phone, Kuroko sports a high-tech earpiece, Saten rocks a trendy smartphone, and the tech-savvy Uiharu uses an unexpectedly classic flip phone. I like when character designs extend to those kinds of details.

TV Japan became available on Charter Communications in most of Michigan recently. It's part of the Silver package (Which would up my costs too much. Unless I can talk to them, which I plan on doing soon.) I was happy to see it pop in, but since I can't watch it, it's been sad to see it, when the MHz/Worldview network stopped carrying NHK World. Yes, I know it's not "real" Japanese TV, but it was a good way to look at the stuff they have.

Well, certainly, I am a night owl by nature, but my superiors at work seem to insist giving me as many morning shifts as they can. Micromanagers who stay far and isolated from the people they're leading are the worst.

Was there some sort of backlash against American animation in the 90's that drove children of that time to anime? There were western animated TV programs that insulted kids' intelligence, but shows like those have been around almost as long as western animated TV has been around. I also don't think shows of that time were hyper-sanitized. The 80's and 90's was when writers for kids' shows were trying to push their content as far as they were allowed to. Tiny Toon Adventures even makes a direct jab at them in their intro.

I think it's because of the novelty that got them into anime. Dragon Ball Z and Pokémon were action-oriented and more serious than much of children's television at that time, and most importantly, they looked and moved really differently. Furthermore, these were serials in a time when most people working in the television business were convinced serials could not catch on among men, let alone kids.

It's a "grass is greener" effect, I think--the shows were so unlike anything they had ever seen before, and this compelled the kids to not only seek out more, but also to deride animation from the countries they lived in as being same-old same-old. (And, of course, some of the anime they'll find will be aimed at teenagers and adults, and suddenly anime is now the forbidden fruit that horror comics used to be before the Comics Code Authority stomped all over them.)

That being said, I am majorly bummed that I started collecting the Cyborg 009 manga right when Tokyopop put it out of print, and thus I only have the first two volumes.

Tenchi wrote:

I don't currently use a cell phone for the exact same reason I don't currently have cable, lack of money, but, when I do use a cell phone, it's a flip phone. And I'm fine with that. I only use it to make phone calls (and occasionally as a backup camera), I'm not interested in most smartphone features or their hefty service fees, and I especially like the amazing flip phone "special feature" that I can drop it on a hard surface repeatedly and still be able to use it.

And I don't feel self-conscious about still using a flip phone either. I mean, I still use a CD Walkman (I'm a total physical media guy) on the bus. I like the feeling that I'm not at all suspicious that anyone else wants to steal my phone.

Neither do I. I still use a flip phone (well, a slide phone anyway) because my phone is put in the same pocket as my keys. The screen is already heavily scratched that it's difficult to see it in broad daylight. I do not want that happening to a touch screen. Not in a million years.

Of course, I hold on to my things for an absurdly long time. This blue Samsung of mine I got way back in 2003.

omiya wrote:

and notice the way they stylise an ancient mobile phone:

I have trouble believing that much text in Japanese translates to so little in English.

(Then again, I did see a stage performance of the Greek play Medea, in Greek with English translations provided, where a line that took about 12 seconds to say translated to "From whom?")

leafy sea dragon wrote:

Well, certainly, I am a night owl by nature, but my superiors at work seem to insist giving me as many morning shifts as they can. Micromanagers who stay far and isolated from the people they're leading are the worst.

Is that really the case or would it be fair to say that you can't expect a job to bend to your every want and desire and that sometimes you will have to be the thing that bends to the job?

Like, I'd rather come in at 10:00AM but I come in at 8:00 because that's when the office opens. Is that really micromanagement staying isolated or just the realities of the business?

Quote:

Was there some sort of backlash against American animation in the 90's that drove children of that time to anime?

I feel like the action cartoon died in the late 1990s and early 2000s. There was a move away from pure violence cartoons or cartoons that had harsh stuff in them and a heavy push for goofballery and shenanigans being the only type of cartoon being made. The airwaves went from a ton of this stuff existing to basically just whatever Batman/Superman/Justice League cartoon was airing at the time.

I don't know if it was so much about insulting people's intelligence, especially considering stuff like Dragon Ball Z is what rose up, but the level of violence in Dragon Ball Z is what all of my friends enjoyed about it.

I kinda feel like Japan is going down that same path for kids shows. They haven't abandoned violence completely but it feels like there is a push back on just having pure carnage and now everything has to be surrounded by jokes, silliness, and the power of nakama in order to come out and have a chance of lasting more than one season.

leafy sea dragon wrote:

I have trouble believing that much text in Japanese translates to so little in English.

Translation: "In times of emergency, crew may use official-use mobile phones to communicate and check traffic information."

Quote:

Tweens look for anime because it doesn't insult their intelligence as much as hyper-sanitized American "kids" fare -- characters die, bleed, cry, and go through rough patches. The characters are cool and attractive and inspiring. Their struggles are familiar, and kids who are starting to mature can relate to their struggles.

This bit was interesting to me because this describes exactly how I felt as a tween in the 1980s, when I discovered "Starblazers" and "Robotech." My most prominent other options were "He-Man," "G.I. Joe," and "Transformers" -- it was all downhill from there. 30 minutes of shooting and blowing stuff up (but look, kids, nobody got hurt!!!), followed by a message against doing really dangerous stuff like playing near construction sites.

That, and the serialized storytelling. Beginnings, middles, and above all, endings. I loved reading SF novels, and anime gave me the closest thing I'd ever seen to that experience on my TV. Such a thing was practically unheard of in US animation at the time, and I never really saw it in live action either until "Babylon 5" came along.

Mr. sickVisionz wrote:

I kinda feel like Japan is going down that same path for kids shows. They haven't abandoned violence completely but it feels like there is a push back on just having pure carnage and now everything has to be surrounded by jokes, silliness, and the power of nakama in order to come out and have a chance of lasting more than one season.

I think the thing is, violent anime used to be more mainstream decades ago. Sexual content, violent content, they were all considered fairly mainstream back then. Nowadays, they are segregated by timeslots. Not that it matters when most kids will just record it with DVR anyway.

That being said, kids anime will always play it pretty safe. Speaking of violent shows, there seems to be a huge upsurge of violent anime the past few years and I think violence isn't just going to go away in the medium.

answerman wrote:

For years most fans came to anime looking for edgy, violent, possibly sexy entertainment. Then Sailor Moon, Dragon Ball Z, and finally Pokémon came and acted as a gateway drug for kids, while movie buffs and parents discovered Studio Ghibli movies, giving anime cultural cred.

those three series wasnt necessary a gateway for kids. for one thing SM was mainly looked at the female and young girls demograph, while DBZ was more into looked at the male demograph. Also your gonna talk DBZ,you will have to mention Gundam Wing as well cause like DBZ,that series clicked to the boy demograph and the reason why the franchise became popular in the US.

As for pokemon mainly became the phenom it was back then cause its red and blue video games was insanely popular. However you are right about the studio ghibli movies. if it wasnt for movies like princess monoke and spirited away, most parents would think that anime in general was uber violent and uber sexual to the point that those movies and OVA was near borberline hentai.

But the main thing we also forgot is that if it wasnt for the Toonami block, we wouldnt have heard about some of these series (though only gundam wing and dbz).

so i wouldnt necessary say that those three were the gateway to anime in the US alone. they had to have a lot of help and to have been released in the right timeline.

My gateway drugs were DBZ and Inuyasha followed very closely by Yu Yu Hakusho and Rurouni Kenshin on Toonami. Of course I was already in college when I started watching.

Anime kind of took away my disappoint in American Televsion at the time so much reality TV and even non-reality TV would end up disappointing me after awhile. I would get really into a series but my love for it would diminish over time.

I think anime also took the place of my love for fantasy books since I found a lot of repetitiveness and never ending series. Inuyasha was fantasy but it felt fresh for me at the time.

Although now I don't watch much long running shounen which is what I started with preferring shorter series but I still love anime.

king 47 wrote:

I was the one who asked about the cellphones.

Since you have a Chitanda avatar, did you notice that Satoshi used a smart phone (looked like an iPhone) throughout Hyouka? It was shown in close-up in one of the later episodes. It's one of the only smart phones I recall seeing in anime!

Cyborg 009 and a few other Ishinimori series are available digitally on Comixology:

https://www.comixology.co.uk/Ishimori/comics-publisher/101-0

I use Comixology for my Western digital comics and they're the engine behind the Marvel/DC digital comics stores/apps (and now owned by amazon) so they're a reliable source.

DJStarstryker wrote:

For the phone thing - It wasn't until maybe 2012 or so that smartphones exploded in Japan. Before that, everyone used flip phones. Now it's very rare to see people using a flip phone. That's been what I've noticed while living here. This is true for Tokyo, other places may have took longer to catch on.

Anime has been slower to catch up to that, though more and more anime nowadays has smartphones.

Anime is catching up on this front. Of this season's shows set in a contemporary timeline, at least A Good Librarian Like A Good Shepard, Yuki Yuna is a Hero and Celestial Method have their characters use phones that look like modern smartphones, while Shirobako uses a mix of both types.

Last edited by Mohawk52 on Sat Oct 25, 2014 1:13 pm; edited 1 time in total

There is another reason why flip-phones are prolific in current anime and that is the anime we get outside of Japan actually isn't that current. Apart from simalcasts by the time an anime is releases in Japan it's at least 4 or 5 years old in outside license, and what were the phones like in Japan back then? Wink

BTW I still use a Nokia 2722, but then I'm an old git.

on Virgin, not at&t

Mr. sickVisionz wrote:

Is that really the case or would it be fair to say that you can't expect a job to bend to your every want and desire and that sometimes you will have to be the thing that bends to the job?

Like, I'd rather come in at 10:00AM but I come in at 8:00 because that's when the office opens. Is that really micromanagement staying isolated or just the realities of the business?

To elaborate a bit further: When there was a shift in upper-level management, this new guy wanted to design everybody's schedules whereas lower-level management used to do so, and he did the day he got the position, before he even met the people working for him. Whereas I had mostly evening shifts before, he decided I should get morning shifts now. On top of that, he threw out every lower-level manager in his jurisdiction and replaced them with his people (except for one due to a technicality, and he antagonized her and repeatedly reported her--when she persisted up to when this guy was fired a couple months later, the last thing he did before losing his job was to give her two penalties at once).

Stepping back, I guess that's not micro-management, but just being a control freak.

Mr. sickVisionz wrote:

I feel like the action cartoon died in the late 1990s and early 2000s. There was a move away from pure violence cartoons or cartoons that had harsh stuff in them and a heavy push for goofballery and shenanigans being the only type of cartoon being made. The airwaves went from a ton of this stuff existing to basically just whatever Batman/Superman/Justice League cartoon was airing at the time.

I don't know if it was so much about insulting people's intelligence, especially considering stuff like Dragon Ball Z is what rose up, but the level of violence in Dragon Ball Z is what all of my friends enjoyed about it.

I kinda feel like Japan is going down that same path for kids shows. They haven't abandoned violence completely but it feels like there is a push back on just having pure carnage and now everything has to be surrounded by jokes, silliness, and the power of nakama in order to come out and have a chance of lasting more than one season.

As someone who grew up entirely on comedy (I hated action shows when I was little), I continue to watch a lot of comedic television to this day, and I would never put comedy on a lower pedestal than action.

That being said, comedy shows are much cheaper to produce than action shows, and assuming a balance of the two, like in the mid-80's, kids (well, boys, at least) were pretty evenly split between them. That they're cheaper, I'd bet, is why Stuart Snyder is so bent on keeping all action shows away from Cartoon Network, for instance. As for Disney XD, I think a number of them bombed.

I really don't see that many kids into anime anymore. Maybe it's just lack of availability on TV, maybe it's because the kids' needs for violence has been sated with video games, maybe it's because their parents are keeping any violent content away from them, or maybe it's because anime merchandise stopped showing up on store shelves leading to decreased public visibility.

In any case, you DO have Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles on Nickelodeon, and Star Wars is an evergreen franchise. Plenty of action films aimed (at least partially) at children continue to be released too, most notably the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

jr0904 wrote:

those three series wasnt necessary a gateway for kids. for one thing SM was mainly looked at the female and young girls demograph, while DBZ was more into looked at the male demograph. Also your gonna talk DBZ,you will have to mention Gundam Wing as well cause like DBZ,that series clicked to the boy demograph and the reason why the franchise became popular in the US.

As for pokemon mainly became the phenom it was back then cause its red and blue video games was insanely popular. However you are right about the studio ghibli movies. if it wasnt for movies like princess monoke and spirited away, most parents would think that anime in general was uber violent and uber sexual to the point that those movies and OVA was near borberline hentai.

But the main thing we also forgot is that if it wasnt for the Toonami block, we wouldnt have heard about some of these series (though only gundam wing and dbz).

so i wouldnt necessary say that those three were the gateway to anime in the US alone. they had to have a lot of help and to have been released in the right timeline.

Gundam Wing is not mentioned, I'm sure of it, because it did not become famous in the mainstream the way Sailor Moon, Pokémon, or Dragon Ball Z did. It was well-known among people who'd watch DBZ or Sailor Moon because it was on the same block, but it was not parodied or imitated in western media to the extent of the above three shows, nor did its popularity last after it went off the air.

Gundam Wing occupied the same status as Yu Yu Hakusho: Well-known and well-liked among anime fans, totally obscure outside of it. I could never figure out the reason why. My best guess is that they popped up on American television after DBZ, Pokémon, and Sailor Moon, and the curious non-anime-fans had by then already watched an episode of each and got their fill.

JonLa wrote:

Cyborg 009 and a few other Ishinimori series are available digitally on Comixology:

https://www.comixology.co.uk/Ishimori/comics-publisher/101-0

I use Comixology for my Western digital comics and they're the engine behind the Marvel/DC digital comics stores/apps (and now owned by amazon) so they're a reliable source.

Oh, interesting. So that's where the rights went.

I would still rather have the books though. I already have volumes 1 and 2. It'd bug me if some of my volumes were print and the rest were digital.

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