Forum - View topicHey, Answerman! - Netflix Violation
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PurpleWarrior13
 Posts: 2025 |
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FAIRY TAIL better than SLAYERS????? HA! No no no no no no no no no NO! That has to be some sort of sick joke. Sure Fairy Tail isn't awful, and is fun to watch, but it's not terribly original. It's like One Piece, Slayers, and Harry Potter rolled into one, mixed with some "we've-seen-them-before" characters, and BOOBS, BOOBS, and more BOOBS. Slayers has a VERY unique style of humor, VERY memorable characters, and a just plain fun story line. Lina Inverse is probably my favorite anime character of all time. The series isn't perfect, but it wasn't trying to be. It did have it's share of fanservice, but mostly in a humorous way (Naga's cleavage almost mocks fanservice as a whole), and the characters have great chemistry, and you really get to know them by the end. The series started off a little boring, but by the end of Season 1, it was starting to come into it's own. Slayers NEXT gave us a great mix of comedy, action adventure, and even a little drama. While Slayers TRY wasn't quite as good as NEXT (IMO), it was still entertaining to watch. The recent seasons gave us even more to work with with new characters, and revisted plots from the original 2 seasons. The movies and OVAs are also faves of mine. Plus, the whole series has an amazing soundtrack featuring Megumi Hayashibara! What's not to love? I can understand that it's not everyone's cup of tea, but it's certainly better than Fairy Tail. It's probably my favorite non-Dragon Ball anime (and that's saying a LOT), and it has nothing to do with nostalgia (I only discovered it about 3 years ago).
But don't get me wrong. I do enjoy Fairy Tail, but not nearly as much as Slayers (to be fair, Slayers IS a top favorite of mine, so another series would have to be pretty damn good for me to like it more). Don't take it personally FT fans! ' 
I haven't seen as much Tenchi Muyo since Toonami, but it's definitely a classic, and I can't wait to FINALLY purchase FUNimation's DVD release. Ryoko cracks me up. I do like some recent series (Sgt. Frog, One Piece, Soul Eater, Slayers Revolution/Evolution-R, Summer Wars, Fullmetal Alchemist, Bakuman, among others), but my favorite anime can pretty much be summed up as: Dragon Ball/Z/GT, Slayers, Ranma 1/2, Sgt. Frog, Sailor Moon, Yu Yu Hakusho, Lupin III (to a point), Case Closed, One Piece, Inuyasha, Cowboy Bebop, Bubblegum Crisis, Revolutionary Girl Utena, and Oh My Goddess (the original OVA). As you can see, newer anime overall, just doesn't catch my attention. It's certainly not all bad, but I'm overall, not a fan of too much stuff done today. I don't know if it's the fanservice, or the type of graphics, but it has nothing to do with nostalgia, since I had only HEARD of a hand-full of those titles until only a few years ago. However, I'm still open to newer titles. I don't tune them out. I watch them, and give them a chance, but I've found it increasingly more difficult to become titles I'm interested in. |
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Shwiggie
 Posts: 65 Location: MS |
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I don't prefer older or newer...I just like what I like. To dump on a show because it's old or new or trite or unoriginal is a matter of taste, and it's difficult to empirically judge anything on that basis alone. I watch a lot of stuff I acknowledge as tripe, old and new, just because it strikes me as entertaining at the moment, but I don't necessarily put it in the same category as great stuff like FMA: Brotherhood, Evangelion, or Macross: DYRL....
...bringing me to the issue of Harmony Gold and their epic and abiding anime cockblock. I keep hoping they go belly up and legally dissolve somehow, but it hasn't happened yet. I just want a copy of a subbed and/or dubbed domestic copy of DYRL on bluray for a price that doesn't approach that of a monthly car payment. Is that really too much to ask? |
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TitanXL
 Posts: 4036 |
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How is Fairy Tail at all like One Piece or Harry Potter?
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dragon695
 Posts: 1377 Location: Clemson, SC |
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I guess the former refers to the oft raised criticism that Mashima is copying Oda's character designs. As for the latter, probably the part about being mages, maybe? I like Fairy Tail, and it has its moments, but it isn't the greatest. But neither is Slayers. |
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PurpleWarrior13
Posts: 2025 |
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The character designs remind me of One Piece, and the chracters themselves do as well. They all have OP counterparts: (Natsu = Luffy, Lucy = Nami, Gray = Zoro, Erza Scarlet = Nico Robin, Happy = Chopper). The "Magic Guild" element reminds me of Harry Potter. It's more loose, but it's the same reason Winx Club reminds me of HP. Last edited by PurpleWarrior13 on Sat May 12, 2012 6:22 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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dragon695
Posts: 1377 Location: Clemson, SC |
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Sorry to say this, but Happy is 100x better than Chopper. Just sayin'. |
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PurpleWarrior13
Posts: 2025 |
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I love Happy (not gonna lie, mostly because of his cuteness), but it's hard to compare to Chopper's mixture of badass and cuteness!
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Cecilthedarkknight_234
 Posts: 3820 Location: Louisville, KY |
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i also like the assets that lucy keeps getting every season... ahem yeah |
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ss-hikaru
 Posts: 269 Location: Western Australia |
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Oh I did the same a couple of years back. Tried rewatching the Love Hina anime which was one of the first I ever watched. Liked it the first time round, could not stand it the second time round. I think I gave up 5 minutes into the first episode... I generally only watch new anime. It's easier to get into with all the 'new anime season' coverage posts (= greater awareness of titles available) and simulcasting (= greater ability to access said anime) and so forth. I read most of Justin's Buried Treasure column. But I had no urge to track any of the titles down, reading the articles was enough for me. And gotta say, the whole 'older anime fans' whining about 'newer anime fans' not appreciating older anime does not make me feel more inclined to check out anything they recommend (or rather try to push on)to you. |
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Kikaioh
 Posts: 1205 Location: Antarctica |
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I mostly disagree with Brian's view on old vs. new anime. It's true that, from a production standpoint, newer anime have more polished visuals and more tightly directed/written story-lines. But to suggest that there's not much reason for the new fandom to go back to older works largely because new anime does the same thing old anime did but better, well, that makes the assumption that new anime is generally doing the same things that old anime used to do --- and it isn't.
The thing is, different eras focused on different subject matters, had different spirits, different popular trends, different target demographics, etc. This modern era, for example, is great if you like anime that revolves around high school teenagers living in Japan or the moe trend. Just looking at the Spring preview guide, there's maybe a dozen shows focusing on Japanese teens/pre-teens, with only a small handful of shows revolving around adults, targeted towards young children, or focusing on international/pure fantasy/sci-fi settings. If you wanted to see a good sampling of children's shows (well, ones that don't involve monster/card collecting anyways), the 60's, 70's and 80's would be a time period to look at. Lots of giant robot/superhero/Osamu Tezuka works in the 60's, the World Masterpiece Theater (lots of great shows there)/Doraemon/Time Bokan in the 70's, and a number of internationally appealing works/co-productions in the 80's (Maple Town, Mysterious Cities of Gold, Noozles, Dragon Ball, The Last Unicorn, Inspector Gadget). If you wanted to see a lot of science fiction/space opera, the mid-70's going throughout the 80's would be a good place to look. Japan was inspired a lot by Western cinema around that time (works like Star Wars, Blade Runner, Robocop, Back to the Future and Alien were very influential from my understanding). Yamato, Bubblegum Crisis, Macross, Votoms, Crusher Joe, Galaxy Express 999, Dirty Pair, Gundam, Legend of the Galactic Heroes, Wings of Honneamise, Akira, Gunbuster, etc. came out during this period. There were also quite a number of works made for older audiences during this period, such as Dominion Tank Police, Patlabor, Golgo 13, Riding Bean, Crying Freeman, City Hunter, etc. The 80's also had some really wacky and fun trends too. It saw the rise of juggernaut artists Rumiko Takahashi and Akira Toriyama, who created comedy/action classics like Maison Ikkoku, Urusei Yatsura, Ranma, Dr. Slump and Dragon Ball --- really defining pieces of the era that had resounding effects on manga, anime and video games through most of the 80's and 90's. It also saw the release of Studio Ghibli's classic early works, such as Nausicaa, Castle in the Sky, Kiki's Delivery Service, Totoro and Grave of the Fireflies. I also liked how kick-ass/awesome characters (both men and women) could be in the 80's --- Bean Bandit is a good-hearted bad-ass in Riding Bean, and A-Ko from Project A-ko had a light-spirited, tom-boyish charm to match her super-human strength. The 90's was a great period for light-hearted, cheesy, slapstick comic fantasy and adventure. Slayers, Samurai Pizza Cats, Irresponsible Captain Tylor, Shinesman, Moldiver, Mahoujin Guru Guru, El Hazard, Nuku Nuku, Fortune Quest, Haunted Junction, Elf Princess Rane, K.O. Beast, Sorcerer Hunters TV, Tenchi Muyo, Ryu Knight, etc. were all light-hearted affairs from the era with a style and spirit that aren't really made much anymore. The 90's also saw a number of works that happened to appeal to Western sensibilities, like Cowboy Bebop, Record of Lodoss War, Trigun, etc. Mecha anime started to be more sleek and digital and less bulky/mechanical. There were some experimental/philosophical works as well, like Evangelion, Ghost in the Shell, Now and Then Here and There, Neo Ranga, Perfect Blue, Kite, Key the Metal Idol and Serial Experiments Lain. 2000's is when slice-of-life, harem comedy and moe shows started defining the tone. Galaxy Angel, Love Hina, Azumanga, Lucky Star, etc., while not at all bad in their own right, started a trend that slowly phased out my interest in a lot of anime being produced. Digital technology started being used as well, and often-times the smoothness of digital motion/CG comparative to the hand-drawn animation was jarring (like in Pilot Candidate and Inter5tella 5555). Although it's definitely gotten better in recent years, I tend to think the technical animation quality of the characters themselves (anatomy/perspective) still isn't as good overall as it was at the height of the 90's (except for high production movies of course, like the Satoshi Kon films and Redline. The 1994 You're Under Arrest OVA or even the op for Metal Fighter Miku are somewhat good examples of how technically accomplished the flow/anatomy/perspective of general hand-drawn 2D animation used to be back in the day). Moving forward to the modern day we see a lot of shows that revolve around high school teens dealing with relationships or special powers/societies/situations (Kids on the Slope, Tsuritama, Medaka Box, Nyarko-san, Mysterious Girlfriend, Kuroko, Dusk Maiden), etc., and moe shows (Oreimo, Saki, Papa Kiki, Upotte, Natsu-iro, Sengoku). It's a different overall tone from generations past, and one that doesn't much appeal to me. Sure, we do get a Fujiko Mine and a Space Brothers here and there, but the overall tone right now is teens, epic fights, cuteness, panty-shots, and little girls. In my recent experience, I've found that all the anime that was too mature for me when I was a kid is just right for me now that I'm older (like Riding Bean or Burn Up), but most of this new anime is made squarely for a teenage/otaku audience --- it makes me feel either too old to be watching the new shows, or uncomfortable when a title makes fanservice out of little girls (Upotte, Oreimo and Papa Kiki, for example). I'm not at all making the case that shows in the past are better than shows in the present --- that's a matter of opinion, and depends on what kind of shows you like (and I happen to like some shows that are currently airing). But what I am saying is that different eras had different types of shows, and depending on your tastes you may find older anime more appealing to your sensibilities. Certain technical qualities may be better in the modern day, but the target audience and subject matter is different from eras past. I think that's why the whole 'nostalgia-goggles' perception doesn't hold much water. The thing is, how can I be nostalgic for anime that released before I was born, and that I saw later in my anime fandom? Isn't it possible that the anime itself speaks to my tastes as I am right now? Is it impossible for me to sit down and enjoy The Beatles, classic rock, and Casablanca, just because they released before my time? That's why I think it's good not to limit one's self to new shows when there's a plethora of quality titles in the past that do things differently that you might find appealing. Overlooking the past could mean overlooking titles you might love and enjoy. As for me, I'm not a big fan of choppy 60's anime (except Speed Racer) or 80's sci-fi anime, but I really, really love the light-hearted romps of the 80's and especially the 90's, and appreciate the spirit of some of the classic children's shows from the 70's and 80's. There are some shonen shows in the modern day that I like (One Piece, Sgt. Frog and Gin Tama for example), but I'm generally not a big fan of the teen-centric or moe shows of the day (though I did enjoy Haruhi Suzumiya). |
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Fencedude5609
 Posts: 5088 |
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I can't help but notice an awful lot of OVAs in that discussion. Its one thing to point out the YUA OVA's op as a technical accomplishment (and I guess it was, I'd have to go look again and I don't feel like bothering), but when YUA went from OVA -> to TV it was...significantly less accomplished in animation. |
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Kikaioh
Posts: 1205 Location: Antarctica |
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I think I mentioned about 80 or so anime titles in the post, and of that about 15 or so were strictly OVAs (some were both TV shows and OVAs), mostly from the 80's and early 90's when OVAs were the big thing. Is there something wrong with OVAs, out of curiosity? There are quite a number I like and that are considered classic amongst the ones I listed (El Hazard, Elf Princess Rane, Bubblegum Crisis, Gunbuster, Shinesman, Record of Lodoss War, Riding Bean, etc. are considered good or classic OVAs). And you're right, YUA the OVA was miles and away more visually accomplished than YUA the TV (even more so compared to subsequent seasons), but I was comparing the height of general animation during the 90's, and YUA the OVA was the first example that came to mind (some others I can think of would be El Hazard's op which was fantastic, Giant Robo had great animation throughout, Plastic Little was surprisingly accomplished, Escaflowne was great, Evangelion was also impressive, and so was quite a bit of Nadia). I didn't want to compare straight up movies, since those are generally as high budget as you can get, and the 90's and 2000's saw some really great animated flicks (Ghost in the Shell, Vampire Hunter D, all of the Satoshi Kon films, Ninja Scroll, etc.). |
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Fencedude5609
Posts: 5088 |
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All of those up to Escaflowne and Evangelion are OVAs though. And calling Evangelion's animation "impressive" in a completely unqualified statement is a somewhat dubious position to hold. Certainly its animation is no better than the average modern TV series. The best OVA animation now is better than the best OVA animation back then. The best TV animation now is better than the best TV animation back then. |
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Kikaioh
Posts: 1205 Location: Antarctica |
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Wow, really? You think Evangelion's animation is no better than the average modern TV series? That's a pretty remarkable statement, considering Evangelion is considered a landmark in animation and is generally praised for its excellent animation. Maybe I'd understand your perception better if you'd mention some of the modern TV shows and OVAs you're comparing to. |
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Fencedude5609
Posts: 5088 |
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Did we watch the same Evangelion? I mean, it certainly had really good animation, and it also had some really obviously phoned-in bad animation. Which is nothing unusual, for then or now, but I'm going to need a cite on "considered a landmark in animation"
You may have noticed that the OVA is effectively dead, right? But I can just point you at Gundam Unicorn and be done with that argument. As for TV series, Guilty Crown leaps to mind (though its also a good example of how great animation can't make a crappy show not crappy), or if you want something good on every level, Fate/Zero. |
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