Forum - View topicANNCast - Operation Podcast Drop
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SoandSo
 Posts: 204 |
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You do realize it is quite common for professional or amatuer critical personalities and voices to exxagerate and play up elements of their personality or opinion during a review yet be much more personable or toned-down in person. The entire That Guy crew does this all the time, as does Zac; I've never heard him speak to a person in podcast or in person, I'd assume, with the same tone he adopts in anime season reviews or back when he was doing Hey Answerman! It doesn't make a person two-faced or a sockpuppet, it's simply hyperbole to grab your attention to the real points being made. Plus, it's just more entertaining. Unless, you know, it isn't. |
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Cheesecracker
 Posts: 240 |
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Not sure what you mean by all that , I wasn't call you an A-H*le. I just IMHO think your definition of a troll or trolling is wrong. My point was when words lose their meaning then communication breaks down. Thank goodness A-H*le still pretty much means what it always has. Maybe *I'm* not so good at this communication thingy.. |
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SoandSo
Posts: 204 |
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Oh no, I didn't interpret it as an attack against myself, not at all. But it still upsets me a bit because all over the web, anyone who voices even the slightest bit of opinion that grinds against the choir, especially so if they don't voice it in absolutely the kindest, most coddling words possible(ie. kneecapping every critical point with "Now this is just my opinion, but..." or "Maybe it just isn't for me ;^ ^, but...") will immdiately be branded a troll and villified, and it makes even less sense when it's on your own site or domain where you can voice whatever you please and the bitchers must be going out of their way to get upset. I'll grant you their more inflammatory diatribes and such fall in line with the definition(and if they want to call themselves trolls, who am I to argue? Besides, they can take care of themselves.), but reading many of the earlier posts in this thread, I get more the impression people are calling them trolls just because they don't like fans and they don't like their shows and screw their points because they're loud, mean doodoo heads. And that makes me put face to palm and take the Lord's name in vain. |
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Cheesecracker
Posts: 240 |
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Yes, I know. I have dealt with the difference between thought and belief. I also think hard about all the the baggage that can come from my actions. Regardless of my aim or yours there will be praise and criticism. Stepping into to spotlight and not fully accepting this a hard lesson, but it's sad when anyone thinks it's their job to teach this lesson. Note: gotta go to work- I'll pick this up later if it's still relevant by then. Last edited by Cheesecracker on Fri May 06, 2011 2:17 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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Megiddo
 Posts: 8360 Location: IL |
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So I noticed that Colony Drop averages less than a post per week (on the first page anyway). Do they just save up their thoughts for podcasts or something? I'd never think such an inactive blog would mean much of anything to the community.
EDIT: Ranked #650,000 by Alexa for USA traffic, so I'm guessing Zac is friends with these guys or something. Last edited by Megiddo on Fri May 06, 2011 2:19 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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Ashura Danshaku
Posts: 9 |
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And now for your more important objection:
I made that statement as general as I did because the post was getting uncomfortably long (and I do plan to lay out my manifesto in more legible terms shortly). What I really meant to say with that statement is this: Anime, naturally, has great potential as an art form, both aesthetically and thematically. But at the same time, it's fundamentally limited by its highly commercial nature, just the same as live-action TV and movies. I believe that consciously or subconsciously, a lot of anime fans believe that anime, more often than not, escapes this pitfall, or is somehow a lot smarter than the vast majority of TV/movies (foreign or domestic), when really it's doing most of the same things to the same degrees...just for a slightly more specialized consumer base who can get past the fact that they're watching cartoons past the age of twelve. And certainly, there's a lot of anime, most of it theatrical, with a lot more intellectual/thematic ambition than "sell toys/Shonen Jump", but there seems to be a lot of groupthink even where those true luminaries are concerned. Mamoru Oshii, for example...he's quite a competent filmmaker (one of my favorites where anime is concerned), and he has done great work within the realm of animation (even though he's pretty much gotten out of that business...hard to fault him for that these days), but just because he's working in a relatively exotic medium doesn't mean everything he touches turns to gold. (I'm thinking mostly of Innocence here, which I felt was fairly cumbersome in making its point compared to the original Ghost in the Shell.) You'll forgive me for how stereotypically "Colony Drop" this opinion may sound, but I think the best commentary on anime from within the industry itself came from the late Satoshi Kon, whose superflat sensibilities frequently cast anime in an unfavorable light. The guy not only took the industry to task for its complacency, but he knew how to tell good stories with spectacular animation on top of all that. With him gone, we at Colony Drop really do worry about anime. Who else is really as equipped AND as prominent as Mr. Kon to keep anime honest, while still maintaining a working relationship with it? The language of "dumb" was also meant to allude to Colony Drop favorites like the aforementioned BAOH and M.D. Geist, and what they can teach us about what makes an anime "bad" in the sense of "kinda stupid and lowbrow" versus "bad" in the sense of "poorly produced and/or cynically commercial to the point of degenerating the medium". They're dumb stories, sure, but they're dumb stories told with passion and admirable production values. You enjoy them on the same level of cerebral activity with which you enjoy Terminator, or at worst something like Attack of the Killer Tomatoes. Compare that to many of the lackluster shows of today, where digital production makes it easier to produce a show, but the nature of the industry and the market have stripped so much of the passion from production, as well as a lot of the creative agility once necessary to survive. You have shows bogged down in tedious and unnecessary exposition, shows with potential mangled by demographic shifts or ambiguity (whaddup Basquash!), shows with nothing to say beyond cyncial pandering to whatever otaku subset they were focus-grouped for -- a crueler mockery of the fanbase than Colony Drop could ever hope to achieve. So few shows or movies these days seem to smack of passion and ambition. This is a big reason why we make so much noise about Redline, it really does seem like a creature from a bygone age. We're all just so stumped that a film so passionate, well-animated, well-paced, and appealing to people who aren't necessarily otaku can exist today -- even after a five-year delay -- that our emotion overwhelmed our eloquence. That film really does embody a lot of what we love about (certain) old anime and miss dearly in (most) modern productions. This is getting longer than I thought it would, so I think I'll only respond to one more of your points. But I'll make it a good one. I may be a blogosphere barbarian, but I fight my battles with honor. |
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Shenl742
Posts: 1524 |
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See, I don't agree with this way of thinking at all. If you had access to a time machine and and were able to see every show that was being produced 20-30 years ago, I'm sure you'd find plenty of series ran by commercialism, copycatting eachother till creativity became bankrupt, or working overtime to appeal to certain trends and the lowest common denominator. It's kind of like stuffy old critics pining for the "Golden Age of Hollywood". I have to wonder if in the 2030s we will be the ones wondering why people aren't making stuff like Moribito or Dennou Coil. I think Sturgeon's Law applies to any era, period. Otherwise, why keep going forward if things are just going to keep getting worst? In the end, it's just something I have to believe |
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IkariGendo
Posts: 102 |
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You'd think Colonydrop was the molesting uncle from your childhood the way you keep stalking them. Most normal people that actually talk to the guys will find them a reasonably nice bunch, so I wonder who's the bigger asshole here (me, but that's besides the point)? And why does them mentioning Redline scare you?
See? Nothing to worry about. [comments removed] EDIT: P.S: Redline's and CD's target audience probably overlaps.. by a lot. [EDIT: Inappropriate comments removed. You won't last long if you keep tossing off rudeness like that, IkariGendo. - Key] |
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Ashura Danshaku
Posts: 9 |
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One quick clarification that ALWAYS comes up whenever somebody at CD makes a statement like this: We're not saying that it wasn't this way before. (I just watched 52 episodes of a show called GoLion that proves that point decisively.) All we're saying is that it seems worse than ever now. There's a lot of factors that go into this -- economic necessity, changing market tastes and the emerging otaku juggernaut, an industry starved for talent and money, the collapse of crucial producers and distributors, the influence of the Internet and the emerging international market -- but which seem to be far more pronounced now than a few decades ago. Rest assured, nobody at CD is under any delusion that the 80s was some kind of magical anime utopia when the sky rained candy and BAOH VHSes. |
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Veers
 Posts: 1197 Location: Texas |
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oh god, Zac, mayoi neko overrun... D:
Hm, I found the CD talk kind of interesting, probably because I don't really spend time reading anime blogs... like, ever, so I don't keep up with that scene. Episodic blogging in particular has always struck me as kind of silly; when it comes to the internet, I'd much rather use an IRC room or a forum to, you know, discuss a show that I'm reacting to. As for SOS... certainly some gems in there. Also, Re: Redline - I'm looking forward to it. |
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GWOtaku
 Posts: 678 |
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Kon was special, but as great a loss as his death was and is I think there is plenty of cause for optimism about theatrical anime. Consider the example of Redline: did anyone know who Takeshi Koike was before that movie? Makoto Shinkai got started making Voices of a Distant Star all by himself, and his best days are very likely ahead of him. Hoshi o Ou Kodomo looks spectacular and could be the start of him exploring new territory. Over at Madhouse, Mamoru Hosoda's put out two very good films back-to-back with The Girl Who Leapt Through Time and Summer Wars. We have film trilogies coming for Mardock Scramble and Osamu Tezuka's Buddha (especially excited for this!). Sword of the Stranger was a satisfying and visually rich effort from BONES. There's talent and good material developing on this front today, I think. In closing, I'd just note that while commercialism can be restrictive it's also not inherently negative or an excuse for a subpar show (not that I'm saying Ashura is suggesting either of these things). It's all about execution. Gundam and Yu-Gi-Oh are both cartoons advertising a product, when you get down to it, but anyone rational would agree that they are on different levels. So many good U.S. cartoons basically push toys or comic book superheroes. I'm still amazed by the fact that the SF OVA Freedom started out as an attempt to sell ramen cup noodles. You see what I'm getting at. Last edited by GWOtaku on Sat Jul 23, 2011 8:06 am; edited 4 times in total |
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Ashura Danshaku
Posts: 9 |
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True, obtaining anime back in the day as a serious pain in the ass, and it was a lot harder to guarantee the quality (not in terms of transfer but the show itself) of the product. But at the same time, I think that kind of pseudo-selection had some merit to the kind of sensibilities it cultivated in otaku. Case in point, when I got into anime back in the day (not THAT far back in the day, obviously), finding something new to watch meant playing Russian roulette with the Blockbuster anime shelf (or the Sci-Fi channel anime block). You pulled pretty much any title your mom would let you watch off of the shelf knowing that you ran the risk of pulling something crappy off. Even with the aid of Animerica, synopses on Internet fansites, and crappy trailers at the start of VHS tapes, you didn't have a lot to go on relative to today. It was a lot more about secondary sources than it was about primary sources. Even when all anime was shiny and new and magical to you back in those days, you would inevitably end up with something crappy in your hands and have to take the hit. The risk factor, I feel, was much more pronounced back then, when info was more apocryphal (not just lack of YouTube...you didn't also have thousands of blogs intimately dissecting the merits of any show that drew your interest), and you had to take a lot more initiative and subject yourself to a lot more stuff you might not have wanted or expected to run into in order to expand your horizons. And even as you grew up and went to look back on the dumb stuff you enjoyed as a kid...you might well discover that stuff you thought was bad wasn't so bad after all. But nowadays it's a lot harder to be so nobly (and that's not sarcasm) self-motivated in what you consume. It's not just how trivial it is to acquire, grow bored of, and throw away digital primary-source material. It's also that you have a million different pundits of the subculture screaming at you about the perceived merits (or lack thereof) of various shows, through blogs and podcasts, message boards and Twitter. You don't have a relatively gentle, editorially filtered voice of (however artificial) authority like Animerica, Protoculture Addicts, etc. giving you subtle hints about whether or not you'll find an anime appealing, but unless you are an adept spoiler-dodger (which these days amounts to being pretty much a Luddite) you'll end up hearing dozens of different opinions and controversies surrounding a show to shape and color your understanding of it before you've even seen the opening sequence. Enjoying this stuff in a subjective vacuum as viewer is harder than ever before. I believe new otaku entering the scene today suffer for this reality. The obvious rejoinder is to avoid the opinions of the Internet subculture and judge for yourself...but this neglects the fact that young anime fans are continually entering the scene, at earlier ages, in a far more Internet-centric scene than what we started with. It's hard to think outside of that box until you get older...and by that point a lot of your opinions are set in stone. As for "Japtoons" and similar invective -- unless you are actually of Japanese ethnicity or some relevant East Asian ethnicity and have endured abuse somehow relating to anime...I really don't see where it hurts anybody. It's pure sarcasm, there's not an ounce of racism underlying Colony Drop's use of the term (waiting for long, overreaching deconstruction telling me how racist Sean is), and we find it funny because it reminds us how far we've come. We don't conjure up any unpleasant memories of high-school persecution or small-town racism and bitterly ruminate, we simply look back and laugh at how dumb the stuff "keeping us down" really was back then. That thought motivates us and helps us keep our perspective (Internet: "What perspective?". We argue with passion for our opinions, but at the end of the day, we're fighting over Japanese cartoons (and there's no implicit sentiment there that cartoons are fundamentally juvenile...what the hell kinda kid is going to get the even-then-dated jokes in [url="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dpOPyjmB8SI"]The Dover Boys of Pimento University[/url]?), and we're cognizant of that fact. Win or lose an argument, we walk away from our PCs at the end of the day and we're people just like everybody we argued with. (Except more awesome. Could not even resist.) The only thing I seek to prove on Colony Drop's behalf is that we ARE, in fact, thinking harder about this stuff than might have come across in the podcast (where we DO, in fact, like to put on a show). People certainly get angry at many of the negative things we say...but how hard are they thinking about the positive things we say? (People have barely breathed a word about our positive impression of Madoka...and that's not just Dave being the Good Cop.) This is my last word on the subject. I apologize for the length of my posts, but I always feel compelled to go into detail, because people too often get the impression that just because my opinion is briefly stated, that it's not deeply considered. And I do encourage you guys to visit #colonydrop on IRC at esper.net. We really do welcome your intelligent conversation, because that plays directly into our goal of freeing souls weighed down by gravity. |
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AnimenexuS
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This podcast was not that bad
Lot better I thought was going to be. Should I go to their blog more. |
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nightjuan
 Posts: 1473 |
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Lots of interesting points have been made, many of which are worth debating, but I can only address one of them right now.
Then the question is what happens to those series that aren't as smart as something like Legend of the Galactic Heroes nor as passionate as Fist of the North Star, but happen to fall short in either (or both) of those categories. The implication appears to be that they should be unenjoyable for anyone other than anti-intellectual fetishists in search of pandering and personal gratification, because they just aren't good enough to be held in high regard as masterpieces nor passionately bad enough to be guilty pleasures. Therefore, adding the presence of any commercial pandering to that picture automatically makes them worth dismissing. I'd disagree, particularly because I think there can be specific elements potentially worth salvaging even in works that fail to meet either of those standards of enjoyment and, from time to time, some people will watch those shows for reasons that aren't entirely intellectually bankrupt. What's more, even the creators may have had a degree of genuine passion and skill, regardless of the cynical exploitation of certain demographics and other signs of questionable execution on their part (or, at the very least, that of the production company involved). Higurashi comes to mind as a fairly useful example. I think that series had a good core concept, some interesting bits of characterization, established an often psychologically disturbing atmosphere and dealt with a number of very intriguing questions on a thematic level. But none of this changes the fact there was also an attempt to appeal to certain creepy fetishes, the animation was never that well produced and, to be honest, the actual quality of the writing was ultimately not that great either (aside from the fact that it actually did provide a very comprehensive resolution and left almost no loose ends). I'm not going to pretend Higurashi is one of the greatest series ever made but, on the other hand, I believe it's far from being something that is only going to appeal to the worst of otaku and nobody else. Last edited by nightjuan on Fri May 06, 2011 4:36 pm; edited 4 times in total |
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Zac
ANN Executive Editor
 Posts: 7912 Location: Anime News Network Technodrome |
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They've caught the attention of many of my peers in the community, I found what they were doing to be interesting, and I thought it'd be a fun conversation. I thought it was. Believe it or not Alexa ranking is not how I determine who my guests are going to be! |
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