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Hey, Answerman! - Schanswerfreude


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poonk



Joined: 05 Jun 2008
Posts: 1490
Location: In the Library with Philip
PostPosted: Thu Aug 18, 2011 11:35 pm Reply with quote
I think the Flake of the Week is thisclose to dipping your pigtails in the inkwell, Brian.

Seriously, that's a lot of effort to spend on someone you supposedly dislike. Laughing
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Asterisk-CGY



Joined: 09 Mar 2007
Posts: 398
PostPosted: Thu Aug 18, 2011 11:46 pm Reply with quote
Oh hey does no one ever post here?

Ah well, as this quote I heard off of Kevin Pollak Chat Show "People don't know what they like, they like what they know"

That's how manhwa works.

ON that note, I wish someone translated a chinese comic I use to read 老夫子. I could've learned chinese to read it, back when I was learning chinese and reading this stuff, but it didn't work out.
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einhorn303



Joined: 20 Nov 2006
Posts: 1180
PostPosted: Thu Aug 18, 2011 11:51 pm Reply with quote
Regarding the first question: I totally agree, I would much rather have director commentary tracks or audio dramas over some mute, immobile fancy box.

Regarding the question on 18-30 year olds not being able to relate to manga with high school characters: well, a lot of people read manga to escape reality, not to be reminded of it. High school is a nostalgic, highly idealized time.
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Greed1914



Joined: 28 Oct 2007
Posts: 4410
PostPosted: Fri Aug 19, 2011 12:06 am Reply with quote
At first, I thought the flake must have just been a joke, but seeing how long it is, I fear it might be serious. I mean, who would take that much time for a joke that might go ignored? And if it is serious, then the worst part is that that person didn't even really explain why Brian was "wrong."
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DRWii



Joined: 16 May 2007
Posts: 636
PostPosted: Fri Aug 19, 2011 12:26 am Reply with quote
On the subject of titles aimed at older audiences, I'd just like to bring up "Usagi Drop," one of my personal favorites among what's currently airing. If you're sick of anime set in high school (which I'm not), this is worth a look.
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enurtsol



Joined: 01 May 2007
Posts: 14746
PostPosted: Fri Aug 19, 2011 12:29 am Reply with quote
einhorn303 wrote:

Regarding the question on 18-30 year olds not being able to relate to manga with high school characters: well, a lot of people read manga to escape reality, not to be reminded of it. High school is a nostalgic, highly idealized time.


For Japanese, probably. For introvert Westerners, a lot of people here seem to hate their time in high school. Laughing
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InnocentSorrow59



Joined: 12 Aug 2010
Posts: 156
Location: Los Angeles, CA
PostPosted: Fri Aug 19, 2011 12:40 am Reply with quote
My reason for not getting into manhwa isn't because I don't like it because it's not manga, I'm willing to try other forms of comics, but because from the ones I've tried, the art is...
Well, it's not bad. It's very creative and it looks very nice, you can tell they worked hard on it, but when it comes to the actual, I suppose, "meat" of the comic the flow (or movement) or the characters feels stiff. In most manga I've read, when the characters are moving you can tell and it looks like a natural movement (or as natural as possible when it's a drawing). When it comes to manhwa, it's almost kind of blocky in a sense. That's not to say all manhwa is like that, but the ones I've seen are and that kind of puts me off from it. So far, I've only really read one I liked but it was based on a video game...

As for yaoi/shounen-ai anime, I agree completely. It's not like I don't like reading it's manga counterpart, I actually enjoy it a bit more than OVAs. (Certain... Scenes I don't want to see voiced...) But that doesn't mean I don't enjoy it (the series, not those scenes!). For someone like me that isn't a fan of Junjou Romantica, it's frustrating when almost any other title you can watch is something that features a man who looks way too much like a girl or shota. (I love bishonen, but there has to be a limit!) I really wish Koisuru Boukun could get a full series...
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maaya



Joined: 14 Oct 2007
Posts: 976
PostPosted: Fri Aug 19, 2011 12:42 am Reply with quote
Regarding the "seinen" question I think one really has to differentiate between "manga" and "anime". In the west we tend to just lump them together all the time, but in Japan they are much more separated. A majority of animes are aimed at Otaku. But mangas have a much broader audience (certainly also because a manga is easier to create than an anime series).

So when you say

Quote:
Because honestly, the sad truth is that, for most Japanese fans, they simply do grow out of their love for anime.


I guess that is true. But the question is ... do they grow out of it because they start the "serious life" as you say, or do they grow out of it, because most animes are too geeky for a lot of people? I believe both are true (for sure I know quite a few people experiencing the latter).

Quote:
I turned to the 'seinen' genre, as it seemed to be aimed at my demographic (the 18-30 year old male) but found here too the majority of stories were anchored in high school with adolescent protagonists. I find this confusing, why aim at a demographic with characters that are younger than they, in a situation in which they no longer find themselves?


This certainly seems true for seinen anime series, but not for seinen mangas. There are a lot of mangas featuring adult characters. It's just that most of them don't get animated (which is btw also true for most Josei and Shojo manga in general).

I'll just go a bit into detail concerning your assumptions

Quote:
The market for adults is small in comparison for that of teenagers and children. What I thought was a vibrant and entertaining form of entertainment that actually wasn't 'cartoons for kids' was actually (mostly) 'cartoons for kids' all along.


Indeed that was a painful realization I hade to make as well. But it's more like this: "most anime are for kids OR for geeks". And many animes aimed at adult otakus, are indeed very childish and flat, so you could count them as children series from that point (only that they're too perverted or brutal).
This is also the reason a slot like "noitamina", showing anime aimed at "normal people", came into being. You should therefore check out these series first. Even though not all of them are good (and lately getting geekier and more childish), they did show a lot of series that are different (university students in Honey & Clover, working women in Hataraki Man, a 30-year-old raising a child in Bunny Drop, historical slice of life drama in House of 5 leaves, surrealistic stuff in quite a few series) and could be what you are looking for.
And then there are these rare shows, which over the years managed to become quite a few, that Brian mentions or also like Guardian of the Spirit, 12 Kingdoms, Monster. But indeed you have to search for them. They are often ignored by the majority of regular anime watchers.
Also some children animes, like Denno Coil or Beast Player Erin, are actually more mature and complex than otaku-adult-series. So you might want to try these as well. Fullmetal Alchemist eventhough being a shonen series is also worth a try.

Quote:
2. High school settings and adolescents make good plot centers and nostalgia is as effective as crack for marketing purposes.


For otakus, who are in one way or other frustrated with reality, yes. But also for people who work full time and just want some relaxing "healing" when they come home in the evening.

Quote:
3. Anime and manga fans in Japan live in a permanent state of adolescence. They don't want change so the market doesn't respond.


This is too general. Again, manga and anime needs to be separated here. But a majority of animes does seem to be aimed at such people. You have to search for the few titles that aren't, or read more mangas, where such titles are easier to find, even in English.

Quote:
8. That we mainly receive High school/adolescent based titles here in the west.


They are a minority in Japan as well. But it's true that we don't get everything either and when we do, they don't seem to sell very well. There are still some awesome titles I'd love to buy on DVD but they just won't get published.

Quote:
What does modern anime offer the aging anime fan?


Not enough indeed. At least for those who aren't geeks. You can watch older titles, but at one point you will also have seen most of them (even Legend of the Galactic Heroes is over at one point Anime hyper ). And there's not enough new stuff coming out. Maybe given the success of Tiger & Bunny some more series of this kind will be produced in the future, but once I had finished most of the backlist .... I simply ended up watching more live action series. Right now, very few new anime series manage to entertain me v.v

PS: Highschool of the Dead is very much a shonen series.
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poonk



Joined: 05 Jun 2008
Posts: 1490
Location: In the Library with Philip
PostPosted: Fri Aug 19, 2011 1:00 am Reply with quote
maaya wrote:
And there's not enough new stuff coming out. Maybe given the success of Tiger & Bunny some more series of this kind will be produced in the future, but once I had finished most of the backlist .... I simply ended up watching more live action series. Right now, very few new anime series manage to entertain me v.v.
This is exactly where I'm at. Every new season I find 1, maybe 2 new anime series and roughly 5-8 new dramas (Japanese or Korean) that pique my interest. Anime just has less to offer to me than dramas, or even manga for that matter. And as someone who has in the past considered herself a big anime fan that's pretty disappointing. Have I changed or has the anime industry changed, or possibly both? I don't know, but I'm a bit sad about it nonetheless.
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ljaesch



Joined: 03 Apr 2009
Posts: 299
Location: Enumclaw, WA
PostPosted: Fri Aug 19, 2011 1:07 am Reply with quote
I'm actually one of those people who enjoys extras on my anime DVDs, when they're available. Admittedly, I didn't really start paying attention to them until about four years ago, when I began writing reviews of anime DVDs for a website that I'm still writing for today.

I'd have to say that probably my least favorite extra are the slideshows that don't allow the user to control when the picture changes, especially if it's a slideshow that doesn't stay on a picture very long. Basically, I'm just starting to really see what the image is, and then it disappears. My favorite extras are interviews and behind the scenes material, either with the original Japanese actors or with the English dub actors.

A trend I've seen in some anime DVD box sets is that the bulk of the extras are put onto one disc, and it's usually the disc that contains the most episodes on it. It makes it feel as if there's wasted space on the other discs in the set. Recently, with some of the sets I've recently bought that were released by the same distributor, that they're including trailers on every disc... and they're the exact same trailers in the exact same order on every disc.

As for the FotW, I have to say that Brian handled that well.
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Charred Knight



Joined: 29 Sep 2008
Posts: 3085
PostPosted: Fri Aug 19, 2011 1:29 am Reply with quote
While I don't always agree with the staff of ANN (take Answerman for example, I question his claim that Gundam Seed was more depressing than U.C work like Z Gundam, V Gundam, and Gundam Unicorn) but for the most part they are doing a good job. If you're reading his column he must be doing something right.
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Imperial_Commander



Joined: 18 Jan 2009
Posts: 44
PostPosted: Fri Aug 19, 2011 1:31 am Reply with quote
Hey Brian, don't take this the wrong way but I wouldn't mind if your acting career took off and you were too busy to do Answerman!

...maybe the old Answerman would come back and take over then Laughing
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maaya



Joined: 14 Oct 2007
Posts: 976
PostPosted: Fri Aug 19, 2011 1:49 am Reply with quote
poonk wrote:
Every new season I find 1, maybe 2 new anime series and roughly 5-8 new dramas (Japanese or Korean) that pique my interest. Anime just has less to offer to me than dramas, or even manga for that matter. And as someone who has in the past considered herself a big anime fan that's pretty disappointing. Have I changed or has the anime industry changed, or possibly both? I don't know, but I'm a bit sad about it nonetheless.


I think there are several reasons. First of all it's normal that with time your tastes change. And it's also sadly true, that animes, contrary to what I used to believe, offer only a very limited number of genres. And since a lot of anime just recycle the same content over and over again, it's also normal to get tired of that at one point.
And there also seems to be an ongoing tendency for anime series to get geekier and geekier oO I didn't count the series, but I did get the impression that they are including more otaku-pandering than before. Or it's maybe that the form of pandering has changed (from mecha to moe? with mecha being much easier to stomach for non-geeks). That impression was just recently intensified with the new Last Exile series. When you compare the main characters:
Last Exile 1 -> 1 girl and 1 boy
Last Exile 2 -> 2 small girls

(I hope they will still make a good series, but it certainly made me expect much less.)

Also I think there is a reason that a lot of mangas, especially shojo and josei, but also others, are adapted into live action series rather than animes. These mangas are more aimed at "normal" people and so are live action series, while animes are not.


Last edited by maaya on Fri Aug 19, 2011 1:53 am; edited 2 times in total
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Penguin_Factory



Joined: 28 Oct 2007
Posts: 732
Location: Ireland
PostPosted: Fri Aug 19, 2011 1:51 am Reply with quote
Oh man. That Flake of the Week is glorious to behold. At first I was convinced it was a spoof, but as I scrolled down and realised just how much effort this guy put into calling out your "lack of legitimacy", whatever the hell that is, it became apparent that it is not in fact a joke.

Sometimes I love and hate the internet in equal amount.
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minakichan





PostPosted: Fri Aug 19, 2011 2:09 am Reply with quote
Yeah, I think Answerman is biased and gets some things wrong... but as much as anyone else would in his position. This person is a true idiot~
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