Forum - View topicHey, Answerman! [2009-11-06]
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kyokun703
 Posts: 2505 Location: Orgrimmar |
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Good call including Secret of Kells. That was an amazing cartoon. It was one of the most beautiful pieces of animation I've ever seen. Honestly, I don't know why Beveridge wrote that. I'm guessing he was forced to? Because really, that was just pure flamebait. I can't really blame Brian for thinking that the article the questioner was writing about was from obsessive otaku blog with a title like that. |
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Avarice_WP
 Posts: 44 Location: Northrend |
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Okay, thanks ikillchicken- will do. By the way, I try to be facetious and silly as much as possible when posting; sorry that it doesn't have a place here on ANN. I'm glad being somewhat insulting and disrespectful to other posters does, though. I'm sure you would fit in here http://www.mania.com/9-reasons-anime-superior-to-western-animation_article_117749.html as well. I know you don't respect my opinion though, so you probably will just ignore my advice.
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teh*darkness
 Posts: 901 |
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I guess everyone is assuming there is only one animated Batman series. To my knowledge, there are at least three. The original Batman: TAS, WB's The Batman, and the new Batman: The Brave and the Bold. Now while it seems he was referring to the original series (sadly x.x), why did everyone else jump to that conclusion prematurely, I wonder?
Wow, biased and subjective much? Art designs in all forms of media are varied and diverse. There are stupid as hell character designs in anime that make them unwatchable as well, in my opinion. Bobobo and Ultimate Muscle are two series I'll never watch because I can't stand the way they look. While I'll admit the animation quality is nearly on par with any other shounen tv series, I can't get past the character design choices. And complaining about the designs in Pixar and other studios animated movies? What's wrong with the designs in Cars? They look like cars. Your whole post reaks of the same kind of snobbish-ness that an "Anime is Superior to Western Animation" article would have.
I find it amusing that you bring up two shounen series that are relatively old, and say they are more detailed than current western animation. Have you ever actually watched an episode of Chowder or Flapjack? The designs in those shows may be outrageous, but the actual animation is amazingly well done, the backgrounds impressively vivid and fluid. It would seem to me that you are mistaking art "design" and animation. The animation quality in an episode of Megas XLR was better than almost any of Naruto's first 220 episodes.
So you won't hold a bad artsyle against an anime, but you will against a "cartoon"? Come on now, anime is just a japanese cartoon. Now while I'll admit that most cartoons coming out in the US nowadays mostly consist of slapstick and grossout gags, like Chowder and Flapjack, all you have to do is go back about a decade to find a wealth of amazing shows, though most of them were Disney Channel series. Stuff like Tail Spin, Bonkers, Darkwing Duck, Gargoyles, Gummy Bears, Batman: TAS, Ninja Turtles. Animation has simply been relegated to a children's medium in the US, and therefore has not been given the attention or manpower that it once was. But trying to say that it's crappy or inferior to anime based solely on your own perceptions and prejudices does not help the debate at all. PS> And for the love of all things heavenly and divine, would you people learn the difference between there/their/they're, your/you're, and then/than? It makes one's brain hurt to read these forums most of the time. |
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Prede
 Posts: 388 |
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Yes. Yes it does. I'll take a slight problem with fluid movement from time to time (but is almost unnoticeable anyway), over crappy thick outlined, poorly drawn figures anywday. I'm sure many would agree with me. Besides anime on the average just looks much nicer then cartoons. And have we forgetten Hanna Barbera cartoons (and others like them)? They surely do not have smoother movement then any anime. Sure you get a few gems like Batman Beyond, Batman The Animated Series or something that can do movement well, and still look decent enough, but they are the rarities in cartoons. They pull off detailed artwork with fluid movement quite well. But how many of them are there? A handfull tops? And even they pail in comparision to most anime in terms of artwork quailty. And hell most anime series/movies/ova's I watch have fluid movement, even the longer running shows. Sure not perfect all the time, but very well done. I must question what your watching if you are consistently noticing problems in regards to motion. Sure there's a few stinkers out there in terms of motion, but most can do it quite well. Sure not as fluid as a top of the line American cartoon, but pretty damn good.
I bring up two old shounen series on purpose! I could claim the artwork in Ergo Proxy, The Sky Crawlers, and Black Lagoon looks much more impressive then your average cartoon, but others claimed it was not fair to compare such series to cartoons. I sort of agree, I mean those are some top of the line stuff, so should I be compareing the best in anime to all cartoons? How about some average anime, with average artwork? Therefore I went with longer running shows, on tight budgets. I even went a step farther, and took two series from the 1990's. But still they look much nicer then your average cartoon. This only further proves my point.
No no no!!! You're not getting me here. I won't hold a bad artstyle agianst a cartoon either. As I've said before, if there story is there I'm happy. That's the most important thing to me. I will however complain until someone shuts me up on how ugly everything looks, but I'll still enjoy it for the story. The thing is 95% of cartoons do not have what I would consider a good story. If they did, perhaps I'd be more of a fan of them. I do like some cartoons, for example Titan A.E. and The Road to El Dorado are some excellent movies. Other films I liked are the stop-motion works of Henry Selick, specifically Coraline and The Nightmare Before Christmas (two of my all time favorite movies). But the general lack of quailty stories, interesting premises, mature stories, deep meanings, and 3 dimensional characters makes me not much of a fan of most cartoons coming out these days. I know not all cartoons are like that, but most are, and that's enough to make me rather jaded.
I agree with this completely. You don't know how much I want to say about this. I could write an entire book and it wouldn't be enough. But to keep it short I'll just say I think in the west animation has become a completely wasted medium, and it's a real shame. I want there to be more interesting works on this side of the Pacific, hell all over the world, besides just Japan. But I know there won't be. It's a real shame though. Yet again the "Animation Age Ghetto" strikes.
Actually part of a debate should be grounded in opinions. Opinions based on facts, but opinions none the less. If you don't ahve an opinion how can you argue for one side over the other? Eh? Hell everything is an opinion these days anyway. You can't damn me for stateing mine, when I give such good evidence to support it. I'm not going around saying "Anime is Amazing!!11oneone!, much better then those crappy american cartoons!!11One! They suck and stuf..anime is good!". Or even worse "everything from Japan is by definition better then things from other palces"  .
I find it funny so many people are so eager to jump out and say cartoons look better, and are better then anime, on an anime website... Last edited by Prede on Sat Nov 07, 2009 2:41 pm; edited 4 times in total |
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Cloe
Moderator
 Posts: 2728 Location: Los Angeles, CA |
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Silliness and a certain amount of snark certainly has its place on ANN, but posts like the following:
...exist simply for the reason of flame baiting. We have little patience for these types of posts here. Disagreement and healthy debate is fine, but please try to be respectful of others in the community.
While "cartoon" has come to most commonly refer to animation for children, its technical definition when applied to motion picture film is still "animation." And "western cartoons" is certainly not a categorization currently in use by any artist working in the industry. Western animation can include anything from Warner Bros. to Bill Plympton to Caroline Leaf to William Kentridge to Yuri Norstein; it's impossible to lump it all together under a loose term like "Western cartoons." You have to take into account that some of the most prolific animation in the world is Russian, Canadian, South African, Croatian, and Czech. Not just American on one side of the aisle and Japanese on the other. Let's get our technical terms straight here. Similarly, while I'd personally hesitate to call something like Now and Then, Here and There a cartoon (and again, this is totally personal preference, since by the dictionary it technically is), I'd have no problem calling Pokemon a cartoon. I think it's much more a look and feel sort of thing than a country of origin thing. Cartoons and kid-friendly animation can come from anywhere. Serious animation can come from anywhere. Experimental animation can come from anywhere, etc, etc, etc. People who think otherwise, in my experience, simply haven't seen enough animation. Last edited by Cloe on Sun Nov 08, 2009 10:00 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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leafy sea dragon
 Posts: 7163 Location: Another Kingdom |
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It definitely is a subversion when the humans are portrayed as the villains, though it didn't hurt Ferngully: The Last Rainforest or Bambi any. The upcoming Planet 51 worries me a bit because I know it's going to do great at the box office, despite it having the same premise as Battle for Terra, except as a children's comedy instead.
The broad term is "cartoons," which encompasses all drawn images designed to tell a story or deliver a message, whether they move or not. That's why comic strips in the newspapers are sometimes known as "cartoon strips" and why the visual gags in the editorial section are known as "political cartoons." American animation doesn't really have its own term, which is why the article everyone's talking about uses that phrase. Also, the lack of movement in anime IS noticeable. Watch a show with the volume muted and without subtitles. The sound carries many anime over and keep you from getting bored. Look at any episode of any anime series, even the high-budget ones like FLCL, and you'll see that the characters barely even move except in action sequences, and the animators try to use any excuse to not show lip movements--showing characters from the back, putting something in front of their mouths, talking psychically, and so forth. (And, of course, the animators got so exhausted after that show that they never want to do it again.) Compare it with an episode of The Boondocks, which is openly inspired from shows like Samurai Champloo. The movement there is smooth, and so is the lip-synching--despite the second season being produced by Madhouse. There IS a trade-off among both sides of the Pacific. |
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Avarice_WP
Posts: 44 Location: Northrend |
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Well that's fine Cloe. Your the moderator- if you feel I was flame baiting, then I will endeaver not to do that anymore in the future. However, while my comments before were sarcastic and silly, I'm serious now while I call you out the unfairness of your targeted reprimand. Twice I had my intelligence belittled and I tried to smooth it over with some silliness, yet you felt justified in targetting me only.
It seems demeaning statements to others are indeed tolerated by ANN while generalized statements about art forms and some unintentional flame-baiting are not. When you talk about respecting others in the community, that means moderating fairly as well. |
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vashfanatic
 Posts: 3490 Location: Back stateside |
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Whoah - is this Secret of Kells thing available in the US?
Meanwhile, while we're trotting out "bad Western animation" clips, I offer up Sita Sings the Blues, an independent picture that retells the Ramayana via blues songs. It's free and legal to download. Let your mind be blown. And bear in mind, all ye folks who talk about comparing "average" American cartoons to "average" anime - you don't watch the most popular shows. You need to compare things to Crayon-Shin-chan or Sazae-san, not things that air after midnight and need to make all their money back in merchandising. Apples and oranges. |
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kyokun703
Posts: 2505 Location: Orgrimmar |
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Sadly, not yet, on a widescale basis. I think they are trying to go for a limited US release next spring, and then hopefully a DVD/Blu-ray release. I managed to see it during an Irish Film Festival where I live. And they are having a screening in December in Seattle. |
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angieness
Posts: 162 Location: Columbus, OH |
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As an animation student I have to point out that detail does not equal superior. A problem a huge chunk of anime suffers from is sacrificing good animation for the sake of detailed still shots. Even gems like Fullmetal Alchemist heavily rely on panning and tricks like making the camera go behind the person talking to they don't to animate it. Once you have spent your college career studying animation and learning to be an animator, the way you see anime will be changed drastically.
Prior to college I was of the mindset that anime was like zomg the best and American cartoons were lame and poorly done. But then I very quickly learned exactly how many shortcuts anime takes for the sake of eye candy. It kind of killed how magical anime originally was to me but that's fine, you've got to grow up sometime right? I will say this, I love anime and western animation equally. I am a fan of animation in general and am not biased. If something amazing came from America, Canada, Japan, England, Korea, China, etc. I don't care because it's an amazing piece of animation and no one should care about where it came from. Open your minds and realize that good film, animation, music, comics, videogames, books, etc. will be good no matter where they originally came from. |
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coldspider
 Posts: 187 |
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Uh,the fact that Miramax gave an animated family movie a limited release (you know,the type of treatment most indie movies get),might have something to do with it.Hell,Pokemon 4Ever broke a million in limited release,which isn't bad at all. All it really shows is Miramax's dubious handling of the two Pokemon films they bought the distribution rights for. |
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Sea Lion
 Posts: 307 |
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Angieness made my point much more succinctly than I could. Oh, and before everyone breaks their arms patting anime creators on their backs, remember where the "classic anime" look originated -- with Mickey Mouse and Bugs Bunny. |
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infinitebeauty
Posts: 75 |
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Lovely examples. Waltz With Bashir is one of the most intense things I have ever watched. And if we are going for gorgeous Western animation, I definitely feel that The Mysterious Explorations of Jasper Morello should be mentioned. And regarding fluidity in anime- I think it is definitely noticeable when scenes are jumpy or the motion isn't so smooth. The scenes may be detailed, but when mouth flaps don't match up with the words, it really throws me out of the story. |
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Greed1914
 Posts: 4447 |
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Something I'm curious to see is just how the advertisement situation will develop with online TV viewing. Right now the two biggest reasons for people to watch TV on a site like Hulu (in general, not just anime) is the convenience of constant availability and significantly fewer commercials. Right now, a site might also have a banner ad in addition to the brief commercial breaks, but those go away if the viewer goes full screen, so they probably aren't too great. The commercials have been fewer online probably because the effectiveness of advertising that way is not as well known as standard TV commercials. Now, if the number of online viewers comes to exceed the regular TV viewers, or at least gets close, I wouldn't be surprised at all if we see companies match the number and length of commercials to the regular broadcast. After all, shows are made to make money and that can only be done with either payment from viewers or payment for advertisers. I really doubt if viewers will want to pay, at least not until some sort of disc or download option is available. So, if the ads on TV dry up, then they're going to have to follow the shows to the internet.
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ikillchicken
 Posts: 7272 Location: Vancouver |
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Frankly man, despite what you may think, your comments are not 'silly'. Nor are they sarcastic. They're just annoying. I mean, you're just calling something names. It's not clever or funny. It's just irritating to anyone who likes those things. Also, just a suggestion here but if you want to smooth things over it's probably wise to stop saying the exact same stuff that got people pissed off at you initially. I'm sorry if you thought I was insulting your intelligence. I wasn't. I was insulting the level of intelligence presented in your comments. You literally did nothing but repeatedly call stuff retarded/crappy/stupid/etc in that first post and at numerous other points. That is not an intelligent comment. You can be upset over that if you want but pretty much everyone is going to agree. |
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