Forum - View topicHey, Santaman! [2007-12-21]
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Iron Chef
 Posts: 487 Location: Seattle, WA |
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SoCo and cold pizza? Jeezus, dude, you're just a few nickels away from turning into the anime-writin' version of Hunter S. Thompson. Lemme know if you get a SoCo IV drip hooked up for yourself. Or if you're up here in Seattle for SakuraCon, I'll hook you up with some Bushmill's 10 year.
I have to admit that the whole "classic" anime thing is really hit and miss. I'm digging watching Slayers (though it was remastered) and I still like watching old Gunbuster and Birdy the Mighty, but I really had to fight to get through Tekkaman Blade. Compared to the super shiny look of today's shows, it really does look slip-shod. And finally, I think that the Dragonball movie is going to come out WAY too late to catch any of the original hype it might have had a few years back. It's not going to be good enough to attract any new viewers (and depending on how it's played out, the characters' relationships might go over everyone's heads), and I think the folks who saw the anime will have aged and moved past it. I just think it's too little, too late. |
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ikillchicken
 Posts: 7272 Location: Vancouver |
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About the Dragonball movie:
Won't judge until I see it, curently no actual information, yada yada yada. In my oppinion though, it seems unlikely that Dragonball will translate well to live-action. My gut feeling is that it will end up having very little to do with the actual source material. It will most likely be for the most part a generic kung-fu fighting movie with the added bonus of having the name recognition of people who watched Dragonball/DBZ when they were younger. |
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kizzmequik_74
 Posts: 302 Location: QC, Philippines |
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Now, that one cat looks like IT went through more than enough Southern Comfort.
Ah, the Final Fantasy-anime connection. I agree: the connection is apparent if you played any of the games (especially those games that came on the SNES and beyond). Often, one is a gateway to the other: anime fans check out an FF game, and gets hooked on RPGs, and vice versa. |
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Zalis116
Moderator
 Posts: 6867 Location: Kazune City |
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 ) Others like 1, 2, 5, and 8 are in the collection ready to be played. I don't credit FF for getting me into anime, but after watching a lot of anime and playing the games again, I see a lot of similarities, especially in how the dialogue gets rendered in translation.
 It's always a head-scratching moment when I read posts that say something like "Why did [company] license [recent series] when they could've gotten Violinist of Hamelin?" It is a shame that "classic" (as in pre-2000) anime doesn't command much attention anymore, outside of designated must-see titles like Evangelion and Cowboy Bebop. There are a lot of good series out there falling by the wayside, not just from the "golden age" bubble-economy 1980s (and before), but even from the Recessional 1990s. But on the upside, for those wanting to buy pre-2000 anime, it's never been cheaper, thanks to economical re-releases and liquidation pricing on the old releases. Case in point: I just bought Burn-Up Excess Vol. 2 new off the Amazon Marketplace, and it cost me 298 times more to ship it than to buy it. That's right, it was selling for one red cent. And that's not even extremely old, as it hails from 1997-98.
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ichido reichan
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if you are 15 and a super devoted fan of Naruto or Bleach today, chances are that when you turn 30, nobody will give a rat ass about that Anime titles anymore, children of the time will laugh at it and refuse to watch it considering "too old" or "Classic" and they will jump to the current hip trent of that time that misteriously will resemble a lot to DBZ and Naruto itself.
That happened to me in the time that I was 15, and your tv hits were RUROUNI KENSHIN, DBZ and the Knights of the zodiac, now people shift tastes very fast and you will be left with a memory everyone will laugh about. Is the market trend, therefore Fansub probably will never die for that very same reason, not all anime will be licensed, not all anime is known, and you will never grasp all the complete universe of titles that are being released in Japan, but still there are many treasured that are yet to being fansubbed and discovered yet. It's kenshin a classic already? 2000 is old now? Heck...So much for the publicity about the new century.... |
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Kenotic
 Posts: 167 |
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To piggyback on Zalis116 just a little -- pop culture usually ages poorly, and anime is pop culture. There are great, wonderful exceptions to this rule (Miyazaki comes to mind right away), but it would be easy to compare this to us TV DVD rereleases. Wonder why the US was ALF-crazy in 1987, but three years later it was on the verge of being canceled? It's a pop-culture driven show like most sitcoms. Those buying the DVDs now are not likely people who have never checked it out, it's people who are buying it who have watched it already. There's also a good chance those 30-somethings watching it now are realizing that it's just not as funny as they remember.
Same with anime - most of it is going to age, most of it faster than we planned. |
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SalarymanJoe
 Posts: 468 Location: Atlanta, GA, USA |
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Merry Santa-Christmas, Zac!
Only a couple of points I want to bring up this week. @"Classic" Anime I've been an anime fan for nearly 15 years and slavishly devoted to classic anime for nearly five of that. For me, it's not that classic immediately means better but compared to a lot of the TV series that were (arguably) being fansubbed, they didn't appeal to me anymore. Or, at least, Naruto didn't appeal to me the same way that Yawara did. I started going for the eighties and hitting a couple years on either side (being contemporary with anime that first seriously got me into the hobby) but now I'm going back to stuff from the sixties. Market reality; however, is that these are very low demand titles and having everything I want licensed simply isn't going to happen. However, while some complain about Xx popular series being licensed or fansub groups taking their sweet time, I like to direct people to giving "classics" a try. Some of it is acquired taste and some of it fits a niche as tight as harem or moe but I think, on the whole, most of it is great. @Final Fantasy Legend of the Crystals One of those "bad but funny because its bad" in retrospect. Outside of the points I'll address below, I don't think FF has much place in anime fandom.
As one of those who fusses, I'll let you in on my reasoning for it. While not 100% true in all cases, the short of it is: It doesn't belong. I'm a little more forgiving about people who cosplay something from Legend of the Crystals, Unlimited, Advent Children or Last Order because they are, well, animated in Japan and would fit our definition of anime. It's when people are cosplaying non-animated or non-comic characters, designs or what have you. This goes likewise for people who cosplay as the following at anime conventions: - Stormtroopers from Star Wars - Master Chief from HALO - Sold Snake from MGS - Pheonix from X-Men - Mutha-lovin' Jack Sparrow Or, anything like that. An anime convention, by definition, is a convention for people who enjoy Japanese cartoons. Manga, because its industry has become so intertwined with anime in both Japan and America, is what I consider the only permissable exception. It's all about what's appropriate. When I go to professional conferences, I'm paying good money for professional information and connections. At an anime convention, I'm paying for information and interactions with other anime fans. If you love anime and love video games, that's great - more power to anyone who has diverse interests - but there's a time and place for everything. When I'm at an anime con and someone wants to talk to me about computers or some other hobby of mine, make sure to do it at a social party when I've got a drink in my hand; when I'm actually doing con-stuff, Japanese Cartoons are Serious Business. If I had my way, things like video game rooms at conventions would be limited to anime-franchise games; no HALO tournaments or DDR. There are other cons out there that have a much more inclusive feel to them and they're typically the bigger sci-fi/fantasy conventions. If you need to wear that Stormtrooper uniform, I sugest doing it there.
We agree there. Cosplayers do look goofy. |
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Viga_of_stars
 Posts: 1240 Location: Washington D.C. in the Anime Atelier |
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Yes! Finally someone who liked FF IX! It's a very underrated Final Fantasy.
I really don't like it when people refer to something pre 2000 as classic. It's only 8 years ago! Personally I say before 1990 but that also might be wrong or based on the fact that I came in as a fan in 2000. I have to admit...my partner and I jumped on the "BLLARGGH DBZ MOVIE BAD BLARH!" train as soon as I heard Ando was trying to be Yamcha. Reading Zac answer kinda subdued me a bit. I think I'll try it. Besides I was wrong about Transformers. 
CATS ARE CUTE! |
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Anime World Order
 Posts: 389 Location: Florida |
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I 100% agree on the notion that Final Fantasy is vastly over-represented at anime conventions "because it's JAPANESE, that's why!" I don't think it belongs either, but anime conventions cost money to run, so the people organizing the events are more than happy to sell badges to people wearing outfits comprised primarily of belt buckles. Curse you, Tetsuya Nomura!
Regarding the reason nobody except a teeny tiny group of screaming psychopaths will even consider watching classic anime: Zac's reason is correct. The art--specifically, the character designs--looks "too old," and so people don't care. And yet, even though it's rationally true I can never fully accept that answer in my heart, because the question always lingers in the back of my head: "Are anime fans really THAT shallow?" I mean, is all that talk about "we watch anime for the story and characterization that by and large isn't presented in other forms of animation" just...a total lie for 95% of the people who say it? Is it just a line everyone's heard or read that SOUNDS good, so people repeat it over and over without actually believing it whenever non-anime fans want to know what the appeal of Japanese cartoons is? Surely if so many fans truly believed that, then they wouldn't mind tracking down and watching (for example) Space Pirate Captain Harlock, one of the poster children for "slow-moving, old-looking space operas" if there ever was one. But I don't need to tell anyone here that hardly anybody outside of the few people on the Corn Pone Flicks mailing list even has Captain Harlock on their radar. It's an undeniable fact that most modern anime fans are primarily concerned with the latest and greatest, and aren't especially concerned with yesterday's news. That's fine. They're entitled to that. They'll still end up seeing some excellent shows, since the amount of quality works being released now is roughly the same as it always has been. But if the primary reason for liking something really is as simple as character designs / artwork--which may very well be the case, since most anime titles released whose visuals don't conform to what people classify as the "anime look" (which doesn't really exist, but the term as used generally denotes a Shonen Jump style aesthetic) don't do very well--then it's not an insult for me to say that these people are shallow and superficial. Indeed, such behavior is the very definition of shallow and superficial. There's a small fragment inside of me that isn't dead which refuses to accept that the prevailing mindset of anime fandom is the same as the cast/fans of Bratz. This despite the mountain of evidence demonstrating it to be the case. Now I know what fanaticism feels like. |
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prime_pm
 Posts: 2336 Location: Your Mother's Bedroom |
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FFIX was a great game to me. One of the last few good games to come out on the PS1. The last FF I played, XII, I didn't even bother to finish. Yes, the graphics are good; yes, the real-time-ish battles are fun; yes, it all takes place in the Tactics world (though I couldn't really see any concrete evidence comparing the two). I even liked the new equipment/job/skill system they put in. The story just did not connect with me well. Maybe because it was a little disjointed here and there, or maybe the main character had no real connection to the plot other than "My brother's dead" and "My girlfriend has pigtails." Maybe I felt there should have been another fuzzy mascot character in there or something. Or maybe I'm just weird. Or old. Or another character impalement.
Anyone remember Grandia? As for DBZ, I'm not jumping on the hate wagon at all. But I am looking at this thing rationally; not in a stupid fanboy OMGTISSUXXOR ROFLOL dumbass way (that's actually the only comment I ever get on my amvs anymore). Has anyone REALLY looked at the visuals of DBZ for a moment? I know most anime are used to being disproportioned (just glance left a few times), but you can not honestly believe that a show like this can be made into live-action. It's not so much about CG really, but more of the situations that many of these visuals take in. The landscape, the characters, the overdrawn fight sequences, the flying using powers (maybe), the one hit kills; it's just too much, and I gather few people are going to get it. The crossover to live action is just too difficult to take in. Maybe there's something I haven't seen yet that they just invented that'll maybe blow our minds away, or maybe I'm not smoking enough, but, rationally, I can't imagine it on the silver screen. Just ask yourself: how would you imagine a Super Mario Brothers live action film to be like? Certainly not about British Bob Hoskins in a cyberpunk dinosaur mushroom alternate world trying to free the oppressed mushroom people absent of mushroom features from an evil horned Dennis Hopper with help from his Mexican brother. Try reading that last sentence out loud for a minute. I actually kinda liked SMB simply because of my sick twisted humor; it's bad and good all at once. But this is my point, and it's the same for DBZ and was for Transformers: Do Not Take It Seriously HOORAY FOR MY 100TH POST! 
Also, Merry Christmas, I guess. Last edited by prime_pm on Fri Dec 21, 2007 11:01 am; edited 2 times in total |
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DuelLadyS
 Posts: 1705 Location: WA state |
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On Final Fantasy cosplay at anime cons: It's never bothered me- I've actually yet to meet an anime fan who did not play at least the never (7+) FF games. Anime fandom and Japanese RPG fandom, even general videogame fandom seem entwined to the level of anime fandom and manga fandom- and the cons know it (ever been to a major con without a videogame room?) It's just something that will always be there, unless enough Japanese RPG cons start up to divert the gamer's attention. (That'll never happen, but if it did, I guarantee there'll be Naruto cosplayers running around and balancing things out.
)
It's kinda funny to see all the love for IX, just because it's probably my least favorite- the cast never appealed to me (save Quina. Quina rules.) I will, however, freely admit my time playing through IX was punctuated by friends and classmates desperate to scream plot spoilers at each other, despite my pleas to at least have time to leave the room first- I ended up racing through the game far faster just to see the story before I knew ALL the details. Doesn't make for enjoyable gameplay. At the moment, my favorite is XII (first one where I can say I honestly like every single major cast member, including the villain!) I've yet to play 2-6 fully though, so I reserve the option to change my mind later. 
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toddc
 Posts: 164 |
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It always amuses me when people complain about too much Final Fantasy stuff at anime conventions, as though Cloud cosplayers automatically damage the cultural integrity of Giant Robo panels or Naruto fans singing J-pop anime themes.
Isn't judging someone solely on their taste in entertainment remarkably shallow and superficial in itself? Seriously, there's some truth to it; the majority of modern anime fans tend to be teenagers, who are normally more concerned with watching things for fun instead of immersing themselves in the vast and wondrous history of Japanese pulp cartoons. It's only natural that they go for the newer, shinier, and allegedly fresher titles. But it's also a matter of spare time. Today's anime fans are far more likely to have networks of friends and hobbies that, shockingly, have nothing to do with anime. Pre-2000 anime fans were typically social retards with narrow interests and far too much free time, while modern anime fans are typically 14-year-olds who don't really have the schedules or motivation to hunt down Captain Harlock vs. The American Occupation (aka Arcadia of My Youth). They just want to watch Bleach or InuYasha or Cowboy Bebop. They're kids. Kids can be shallow at times. The best you can do is point them toward the classics that really qualify as such, and then hope that something takes root. But I wouldn't worry if most of them aren't obsessed enough to sit through Star Blazers marathons or a season of Heavy Metal L-Gaim. They may not grow up to be Better Anime Fans, but they'll likely be better adults. |
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ZeroRyoko1974
Posts: 258 |
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For a general idea of how the fight scenes in DB could look, rewatch Matrix 3.
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kouryuu
 Posts: 13 |
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Actually the situation with Final Fantasy: Unlimited is rather sad. I don't personally know the specifics around why it was yanked from the air on episode 26, but If one actually went to the Japanese Official Website back when it was still up, you could read through "After spiral" Which was a series of written web novels detailing the story as it was planned to be aired before it got canceled.
To sum it up, the "final episode" was basically only the climax of the series, with the children and Lisa returning to the children's outer world after the "defeat" of chaos. Essentially, Lisa was a person from another outer world, separate from the Outer World that was home to Kumo and Kaze. When they returned, Lisa had inherited the Demon Gun, and brought the children back to Russia with her where they encountered a new foe, Soljashy who had also crossed over from the Inner World under the employ of Gaudium. It eventually delved deep into the pasts of Lisa, Kumo, and Kaze, revealing their fates and goals, along with finally a return to the Inner World to face Chaos once again, who had not actually been destroyed. In other words, the last episode available, is basically the MAJOR turning point of the season, before it started to get several times better than the first half. So the Anime ended up being all rising action with no real conclusion as it was meant to have been. Furthermore, this is why I still heavily disagree with ADVs rendition of the label "Wonderland", Since It's actually more often referred to as the Inner World, since as the FF:U cosmos was set up, the Inner World exists as a nexus between the various Outer Worlds, the Train being one such means of traverse between them. Unfortunately, the official site has finally been taken down now that After Spiral, and the various Drama CDs that were released to finish the story, one of which, Before, detailing the events of Kumo/Kaze's world and what led to it's destruction, have been completely released for several years. So I just want to say that before you start trying to label FF:U as "Bad", at least try to keep in mind that watching the anime is similar to only reading the first half of a novel. |
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kyokun703
 Posts: 2505 Location: Orgrimmar |
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To me cosplay is cosplay. Sure, at anime cons, I like to see anime cosplay, but if someone wants to dress up as Jack Sparrow, and they do a decent job of it, I'm not going to be all elitist and say, What a dumba$$, doesn't he realize this is an ANIME con? If it's good, I'll just take their picture and move on. There's always a Jack Sparrow, and odd Stormtrooper or two, plus some Metal Gear people. At AX there were a ton of Warcraft tier armor sets that were pretty neat, and I wish I had taken more pictures.
The funniest thing my friend saw once was a bunch of Trekkies at a Renaissance Faire pretending they had beamed down on a primitive planet. I do admit the FF cosplayers seem to be over done (sometimes I feel like I'm at an FF con, not an anime con), but oh well. |
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