Forum - View topicHey, Answerman: Genre Tropes
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Cowboy Cadenza
Posts: 243 Location: Poughkeepsie, NY |
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Nothing you say here convinces me that I should watch Nanoha. What's so great about this show that makes it stand out from other mahou shoujo shows? Is there a reason you think it's different, or better, than other shows of its kind? I've been hearing people criticize Zac for not wanting to see the show, but nothing anyone has ever told me about the show makes me want to see it. I generally dislike the mahou shoujo genre, as well as lolicon, so is there something about Nanoha that makes it better than that? Please, enlighten me. |
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Samurai-with-glasses
 Posts: 628 |
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lol. Answerman actually talks about anime.
I agree with much of Zac's "positive" tastes: Genshiken, Mushi-shi, NHK, Fullmetal, BECK, and Moyashimon! The Moyashimon with OCD girl (now, considering the prevalence of this type of character in real life, why don't I see them more often in fiction is beyond me), with cute microbes, with sake, and a conspiracy to teach me microbiology... The Magical Girl genre really does feel like it's dying out, although certain gems come popping up once in a while. I loved the art in Sugar Sugar Rune manga, so much so that I actually went and looked up the anime. It was firmly in the "for children" territory without a shed of otaku fanservice, but strangely enough I liked it. I swear Chocolate must have been an elementary school magical girl version of Risa from Lovely Complex; they're so alike! |
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whoisfriend
Posts: 369 |
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Nanoha isn't a typical Magical Girl show. The characters are well developed, there's not much in the way of monster of the week. Only about 4 transformations in the first two series. The girls don't use cheesy stock footage attacks. As I said before, the entire second episode of the second season is one large fight. Honestly, the first 6 episodes aren't anything special. Once Fate's past gets delved into though, it becomes amazing. Then A's comes along and blows the first season out of the water. EDIT: Plus my problem isn't in Zac not liking the show. It's with him being so opinionated about a show he has not seen at all, which is ridiculous. |
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Ojamajo LimePie
 Posts: 767 |
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I've got to disagree with the whole "CCS was mahou shoujo's last hurrah" thing. There have been several excellent magical girl series since then.
Doremi and Tutu are both as good as CCS, in my opinion. |
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fighterholic
Posts: 9193 |
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Zac, when I see you at AX next year I'm going to make sure to talk to you about Hellsing
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Dop.L
Posts: 715 Location: London |
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Nanoha: I caught up with the first series shortly before it got licensed. While it starts off as a vapid exercise in collecting plot tokens, a few episodes in (and just as I was asking myself what all the fuss was about) the storyline shifts onto a different footing.
Eva: Yes. I've come across people who think "Fly me to the moon" was written for the show before. Their musical education is severely lacking. If Frank was still alive, they'd wake up to find a horse's head on their pillow. While some of the covers are quaintly endearing, the Yoko Takahashi version makes me cringe each time I hear it. No criticism of Ms Takahashi (who's English is way better than my Japanese, and her recent theme to 'Pumpkin Scissors' is a real belter), but "Fry me to the moon and let me pray among the stars, Let me see what spling is like on Jupiter and Mars". Ow! Welcome to the NHK: Read the novel. Seriously. It's far bleaker than the anime or the manga. |
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Vortextk
 Posts: 892 Location: Orlando, Fl |
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If he was saying it was the last good one ever to be made through the end of all time I can see where you would be disagreeing. However I got out of it a more "this is the last big time hyped anime with positive reviews all over the place in this genre and there seems to be little else to come out since that seem to match it in quality as seen by the general consensus of anime fans". |
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Samurai-with-glasses
Posts: 628 |
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No offense, but Sinatra himself was doing a "cover" version of the song, so yeah. I know his is the most popular version, and I love Sinatra's music, but if you're going to call out people on that...
[grammar nazi] That is a really hard sentence to make out... [/grammar nazi] I do agree though. I doubt Zac is saying "CCS was the last good show in the magical girl genre," but more like "there hasn't been many shows since CCS that reaches the level of popularity it (and the magical girl genre in general) once had." |
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Top Gun
 Posts: 4604 |
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To the person who despised the dub of s-CRY-ed, I'm not quite sure you have a soul, drastic or not. Of course the series was a horribly generic mash of random fighting, fr00ty rainbow powers, and loud yelling of Engrish attack names. And Bang Zoom! had to fully realize this from the beginning. The job they did on the dub transformed it from something incredibly mediocre into one long, hilarious innuendo-fest. Tell me you can listen to a character with a massively phallic gun called "Big Magnum" say "It's big, it's hard, and it's coming to get ya!", or the dialogue of the infamous balls scene, and keep a straight face. And Crispin Freeman's performance as Straight Cougar might just be one of the greatest dubbing jobs in history. So yeah, if there's any series you could accuse of being ruined by its dub, sCe is probably the last.
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penguintruth
 Posts: 8465 Location: Penguinopolis |
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Zac, a great column, except you shouldn't have dignified the copy-and-paste Evangelion rant with a place in it.
First, this is absurd. Hating Evangelion is the new liking it too much. In fact, there appears to be far more Evangelion detractors today, due to its popularity, than there ever were fans of it. "Unpopular view" my ass. Saying Evangelion is the worst anime you've seen is just trying to be as "edgy" as the other ones Zac pointed out. And if it really is the worst you've ever seen, count yourself lucky.
I will concede that there are interesting parallels to Ender's Game, but it's so much a different animal than that that assertion that it's a rehashing of it is patently absurd. And it was pretty clear what themes and philosophies (the study of miscommunicaiton between humans, the concept of an evolved humanity into one being) were chosen, and they were chosen carefully and intentionally.
This is another accusation leveled against the show which is also laughable. Given the position of the characters, anyone would have a reason to complain about their lot in life. And most specifically, Shinji is an obvious example of the sort of Japanese youth Anno wanted to speak to.
"Fly Me To The Moon" may be a Sinatra standard, but it's not Sinatra's. He didn't record the song (written in 1954 by Bart Howard) until ten years after it had been written and sung several times by several artists. His version is the most popular, mind you, but it's no more a Sinatra song than it is a Paul Anka song. Maybe you should do a little discovering of your own. Sinatra sure didn't. Last edited by penguintruth on Fri Nov 09, 2007 3:18 am; edited 2 times in total |
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Ai no Kareshi
 Posts: 561 Location: South Africa |
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I quite regret that someone has nominated Final Fantasy: Unlimited for the worst anime ever, but I can't say I'm surprised. I imagine a great many people check out FF:U expecting to see Cloud and Sephiroth, only to be disillusioned when they discover that the main characters are actually two helpless kids.
Even so, I feel I must speak a few words in defence of this favourite of mine. First, I'll admit that the animation is bad. Yes, they only added proper shading halfway through the series. Yes, they reused a lot of sequences, which irked me as well. But what makes FF:U a gem is its characters and storyline. Personally, I was charmed by Ai (see the avatar), and I have yet to see another character design as awesome as that of Makenshi. As for the way the series ends, obviously it's going to be less than ideal, since the story was meant to continue for at least another 26 episodes. Speaking as someone who has read all the FF:U After media, I can testify that what you see in the anime is only scratching the surface of the plot. I appreciate that this does not help a casual viewer of the anime much, but to call it the "worst anime" just because it wasn't what you expected...? Personally, I found FF:U much more intellectually entertaining than, for instance, the no-plot-and-all-action Advent Children (though I did enjoy the latter regardlessly). As for next week's question, I am about as sick and tired of people fighting over anime vs manga as Mr Zac is of fighting over subs vs dubs... Each has its own strengths and weaknesses and I prefer one to the other depending on the specific case. It's not a matter of one being superior to the other. I'm a lazy reader myself, especially when it comes to kanji, and I'll be damned if I go by someone else's translation and that alone. At least when I watch subbed anime, the original audio is there for me to enjoy. That's probably why I watch anime more than I read manga.
Oh yeah, I almost forgot! Thank you for talking about anime for a change, Answerman. 
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nooneofconsequence
Posts: 57 Location: WV |
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Actually the fun piece of trivia regarding "Fly Me To The Moon" was that it was used in another animation, A Boy Named Charlie Brown, a couple decades before. The particular version used was done by the Vince Guaraldi Trio, and the soundtrack itself is a worthwhile pickup for any fan of jazz.
Yeah, the original comment you were responding to was a bit on the absurd side, but Evangelion is a crassly overrated series. It is really more or less a run of a mill "crisis of the week" mecha series hiding behind a facade of pop religion and philosophy jibberish that suckers people into thinking there is more than what there really is. It attempts at being a social critique are better, but the characters are just too one dimensional to really make it an effective one. So to avoid hijacking this into an Evangelion thread, that's all I'm going to say. |
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Zalis116
Moderator
 Posts: 6874 Location: Kazune City |
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Originality in anime -- I think longtime fans go through a "honeymoon" phase at the beginning where everything is incredibly new and awesome. Then with more time and exposure, certain flaws and repeated patterns come to the surface. It's at that point when you have to decide to get out of anime and move on to something else, or learn to accept and be comfortable with all the flaws and cliches. Answerfans answers: I can't imagine flack being directed at anyone for disliking Final Fantasy Unlimited, so Mr. Waters has nothing to fear. I thought it had a few good scenes here and there, and I don't hate it as much as many others do...but it's still not good. Most critics, anime viewers, and Final Fantasy fans tend to agree on that. Scryed, otoh, I found hard to seriously dislike. I wouldn't call it much more cliched than most series, and at its core, it really is just a show for teenagers (and younger) to show off bad-ass powers, cool vehicles, and a bunch of fights. As Top Gun says, the English dub took some obvious steps to add more fun to the proceedings...I can't imagine any ADR scriptwriter or VA creating lines like spoiler["It's impossible...my balls aren't there!"] purely by accident. Scryed had entertainment value for me, and it betrays more than a bit of art-school pretentiousness to say, "Educated people should like Mushishi instead of dreck like this." Don't get me wrong, I like Mushishi, I think it's better than Scryed, but it's not going to satisfy someone who's looking to pop a DVD in and have a good time. Some of Judi W. 's points about Evangelion have already been addressed, but in regards to, "Really, it's been done": the question is, had it been done as of 1995 when NGE first aired? I mean, I know some elements were supposedly taken from Gunbuster and Ideon, but was there really a huge amount of "teenager-angst-mecha-philosophy-religion" anime prior to NGE's debut? It's not historically fair to look at series like RahXephon (2002), Fafner (2004), and Aquarion (2005) and then look at NGE and say "Oh, it's been done before." |
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bleuster
 Posts: 455 Location: Orange County |
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Fly Me to The Moon came out during the 50's.
Sinatra didn't cover it till many years later. I'd say the EVA statement is a valid standpoint, but the characters made the series stand out to me, not the story or whatever made it seem "deep". |
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jetz
 Posts: 2148 Location: Manila, Philippines |
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Anime being original: Isn’t that the same for regular shows? Also, I want to add what my psychology teacher once taught us, that there are no more new stories in the world. It’s just up to anyone to make stories seem new.
Magical Girl: I saw a lot of magical girl series for the last 2 months and I’m tired of them. So tired that I dropped Shugo Chara! – It seems innocent and safe for now. And as for Nanoha, it’s not that bad. I liked A’s better though – It was more exciting and the characters were more interesting. @darcerin. I think they got the idea for MSLN from Triangle Heart.
Gotta try that. My friends from other forums have been recommending it to me, but since I’m too busy with other series I decided to put it on hold. Flake of the Week: I think that’s the best one I’ve seen so far. I like the pictures too. Answerfans: I was also disappointed that FF:U was nothing compared to the video games. I’m such a big fan of Final Fantasy that I was gonna watch it, but after the first episode, I dropped it right away. I saw the commercials of “Knights of Ramune” on local TV. I don’t need to watch it to know I’m gonna hate it. As for NGE, I liked all the episodes until the last 2. It took me more than an hour to watch each one because I kept hitting rewind just because I don’t get what they were talking about. And I actually like Shinji. I think his character seems real – If I were a 14 year old boy who was suddenly thrown into a situation like his, I would react like he did too. |
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