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Hey, Answerman! - Cartoon Panacea

TitanXL wrote:

About the only western cartoon I'd watch is probably Beast Wars, which was meant to sell toys. Despite it being a commercial, it still manages to tell a 'war story' better than any other American cartoon I've seen, since it actually felt like a war and the characters doing war-like things. And spoiler[Dinobot and Depthcharge's deaths] were handled so much better than any other American cartoon I can think of, mainly since they didn't beat around a bush like every other cartoon does. Granted, they were robots, but still, expecting more is a bit unrealistic due to censorship.

It'd like to note that there are series that deal with actual human death, sometimes to a greater degree than that. For instance, take a recent episode of Young Justice. spoiler[The basic plot revolved around a psychopath that killed his sister with a dagger and buried here in his backyard, all in order to become "pure" and rid himself of human weaknesses. They don't attempt to hide it; the guy has several taxidermy animals in his house, the character indicates he's proud of killing her her, and the rudimentary grave is given focus.] Not that the majority of US cartoons are like this, but there's more than just Beast Wars.

Alot of members of my anime club, watched avatar, and watch adventure time and my little pony FIM, though if that could happen world wide is doubtful.

glad to hear someone else still remembers the fan sub ethics.
I am glad to hear that people still respect fan subers, to a certain extent, and am really glad people stopped treating them like a witch.

RyanSaotome wrote:

Fansubbing is important to give Crunchy some competition. Crunchy wouldn't have made many of the improvements they have done in the last year (upping bitrate, better sub quality, no more hard subs) if they weren't being pressured by fansubs doing their shows better.

This is the main reason monopolies are so horrifying. No real need for the company to change or evolve or even give two craps about their customers when they're the only people around. See: Blizzard and World of Warcraft as of recent months which now has competition so it's actually trying to give their customers some decent content.

I'd think if a show doesn't capture their attention, they won't buy the product.

In either way, shoujo manga still seems to do fairly well in the US judging by the charts that get posted.

Which I guess the question is, are the businesses happy about that if the ratings aren't super high, but still profitable.

But for Pokemon, I think the anime just came out just a few weeks before the games, which isn't a huge indication if you have the video game commercials going all out with the show being in syndication at the time, so I'll probably still edge that more towards the games helping the anime moreso.

enurtsol wrote:

But would ya have sympathy if possibly the Japanese anime industry itself make stupid decisions and run itself into the ground?

"Stupid decisions" isn't my place to say, though I do certainly raise my eyebrows when decisions are made which seems to go against common sense.

Your example only scratches the surface of a much deeper problem in that the internet has changed the face of economics worldwide.

While so many are focused on the medium and distribution, they always tend to forget about the biggest movers of anime: retailers.

It's dire in terms of business outside of Japan, but it gets tremendously more difficult when all attempts to try and keep the market from shrinking even further are quelled when the Japanese come back with "No bluray. Tell your customers we're terrified of reverse importation."

Now that's a stupid decision.

So no one has heard of the upcoming Avatar: Legend of Korra,

Quote:

Is Kim Possible even on anymore?

But they are making a sequel to Avatar, something that they don't really need to do with that logic.

When Mattel ended Masters of the Universe prematurely after 2 seasons, though the ratings were good, just because the toys weren't selling enough..............

If anything, they should do more of the Avatar super-deformed shorts like "School Time Shipping."

That's what a lot of fans want, given the panel reactions here and here.

But would ya have sympathy if possibly the Japanese anime industry itself make stupid decisions and run itself into the ground?

For example, they can only rely on expensive physical media for so long. Eventually, everybody will move on from Blu-rays into whatever new tech comes next. What if that next tech doesn't rely on expensive media? In such crunch, they'd need to be wise about producing a new business model.

I believe the demand for anime and manga in the United States is still very strong and as long as quality products are being produced, we will watch and read them, but I think the idea that we're going to wait months or years for someone to release a product is no longer correct.

Mike Hazama wrote:

The recent Lagrange got SLAMMED by a critic here in his preview guide, but you can't honestly say it's still not better and more unique than anything the US is making or has ever made.

Not if you're a Japan humping Weeaboo. Otherwise though...yeah. You actually can.

And there's fanservice. Good fanservice at that. Never seen a cartoon with good fanservice. Kim Possible had triangle boobs. One word, ouch!

ikillchicken wrote:

Mike Hazama wrote: The recent Lagrange got SLAMMED by a critic here in his preview guide, but you can't honestly say it's still not better and more unique than anything the US is making or has ever made. Not if you're a Japan humping Weeaboo. Otherwise though...yeah. You actually can.

But I hate pocky so that'll be a hard sell But really, the first five minutes of Lagrange alone you got beautiful artwork and cinematography like that shot of Madoka overlooking the ocean through some trees. The water physics looked amazing and I've never seen water look so awesome out of the Americas. Then you got that cool artsy opening with a great song and visuals that remind me of that Gankutsuo anime. Plus it's an action show which stars an all female cast from what I can tell by the opening which is pretty unique if what I'm reading is right. And there's fanservice. Good fanservice at that. Never seen a cartoon with good fanservice. Kim Possible had triangle boobs. One word, ouch!

And there's fanservice. Good fanservice at that. Never seen a cartoon with good fanservice. Kim Possible had triangle boobs. One word, ouch!

Manga, on the other hand, is a whole different can of worms. It needs to ovecome the drastically different experiences between reading a book and reading an e-book. Then again, a few decades down the road, perhaps fans may not bother reading them anymore. Once you remove the limitations imposed by the medium of a static paper display, why would people bother to consume digital media that doesn't bother to move?

You're not really helping your case with comments like this. Anime is better than any western cartoon ever because boobs? You're not exactly convincing me here that you're in much of a position to judge the quality of anything.

ikillchicken wrote:

You're not really helping your case with comments like this. Anime is better than any western cartoon ever because boobs? You're not exactly convincing me here that you're in much of a position to judge the quality of anything.

Maybe he's trying to say that anime isn't afraid to have adult stuff like that.

Of course that's not necessarily true. Raise your hand if you've seen either Heavy Metals.

But they are making a sequel to Avatar, something that they don't really need to do with that logic.

If whatever they bring out still gets ratings that beat the competition, they can expand their genres if they want to. So that does give a little hope there if they are able to find another creator person who gets a chance like how Avatar did, then we're on to something.

For merchandising, it just really depends. Remember how DBZ Kai got canceled due to merchandise not selling out to expectations? And that example with 4Kids and that card game, doing too much merchandise without the focus of what brings that together. For America, seems the show might have pave the wave for things to come for that franchise.

One of the better ones that I recall that's always seem to get bypassed is Exo-Squad, also has memorable death scenes:

Exo Squad takes place sometime in the 22nd century, when Humans have fully terraformed and colonized Venus and Mars. The Neosapiens, an artificially-engineered race, have Turned Against Their Masters and launched an invasion of Earth and Venus.

The story focuses on the ExoFleet, the Homeworlds' space navy, in particular, Able Squad, a group of Exo-frame (Mini Mecha) pilots led by Lieutenant J.T. Marsh.

Exo Squad has been commonly compared to Mobile Suit Gundam, both in quality and the maturity of the themes portrayed in the series. In addition, Will Meugniot himself made a direct comparison to the Gundam series, saying that Gundam is similar to the Pacific Theater of World War II, while Exo Squad is the European Theater. Among animation fans, it's often compared with Gargoyles, Batman: The Animated Series, and Avatar: The Last Airbender as an example of how Western animation can be every bit as mature and well-made as the best Anime. Surprising, considering what studio was behind the animation.

Not necessarily. We used to have Bakugan and Beyblade players here who haven't watched an episode of the animation. It's the challenge of the games that excited them; they didn't care for the storylines.

They tried with W.I.T.C.H. (actually based on Italian comics), but unfortunately for animation, most American girls prefer watching live-action tween/teen shows with girls and handsome boys they like. (Basically, their own version of fanservice.)

And because I'm curious, it's obvious we disagree about Avatar's quality, but putting that aside for a moment, can you actually tell me what Avatar actually did for the animation front? It premiered in 2005, and what exactly has it changed? I can't really think of anything. It's not exactly a footnote in history like the first color movie by Disney (Snow White), or the first CG movie (Toy Story) It was just another Nickelodeon show. It didn't spawn a fad of imitators or change the industry or put American animation on the map internationally or anything noteworthy. It was just a show that came and went. I don't see the importance of it or why you're using it in this context like a revolutionary or experimental product.

Why must people always focus on only one part of my posts and never all of it That is only one part of my response to post #6. I'm sayin anime generic and cartoon generic are way different from each other.