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Answerman - I Am Not At SDCC


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Animegomaniac



Joined: 16 Feb 2012
Posts: 4082
PostPosted: Fri Jul 25, 2014 8:14 pm Reply with quote
I did not realize Funimation's commentaries were disappearing; Sure ADV's... the whole company up and vanished and Sentai's had more Japanese commentaries than dubside ones but with the advent of video commentaries, at least I can see a point to the very common Funimation ones: Getting to know a voice actor who's more voice than actor. "Who is that person, is that a real person?" It helps that Funiamtion has a large cattle call, uhh, cast pool.

I enjoy them well enough I suppose and I'm not interested in the production side as the most interesting animation has already been done years ago. Plus, if you're talented enough to produce something worth talking about, why are you wasting your time rehashing it rather than concentrating on something new?

Then there's the bottom of the barrel stuff: Japanese actor group commentaries. They're there to get cast in their next role so, ahh, be cute while at the same time, letting one person get in a line in, right? and then: group Reaction! Ahh... Repeat.

It gets even better when one of them gets star designation from producers; It's their show, they're speaking and every now and then, they allow other people to talk.
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Philmister978



Joined: 12 Jun 2011
Posts: 305
PostPosted: Fri Jul 25, 2014 8:26 pm Reply with quote
ehh123 wrote:
The interesting thing is that the users of TV Tropes actually went through the trouble of finding which overseas studios did which American cartoons. It's actually very informative.

Of course, when it came to outsourcing animation, no one did it better than TMS or their Telecom unit to be more precise. After all, they gave us scenes like this.


Funny thing about that, I was the one who did most of the work.
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Happiness for Subaru
Subscriber



Joined: 24 Feb 2011
Posts: 242
PostPosted: Fri Jul 25, 2014 9:03 pm Reply with quote
The Attack on Titan episode 13 commentary is really interesting. It show how much thought was put into pronouncing the characters' European names.
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Joe Carpenter



Joined: 29 Oct 2011
Posts: 503
PostPosted: Fri Jul 25, 2014 9:09 pm Reply with quote
I can not vouch for any other commentaries, but the English commentary tracks for R.O.D The TV on the original Geneon dvds are some of my favorite things in life
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Elves



Joined: 23 Mar 2005
Posts: 269
Location: USA
PostPosted: Fri Jul 25, 2014 10:29 pm Reply with quote
I can totally see why short episodic anime wouldn't sell really well stateside. Though wouldn't that go against the grain when our supposed shrinking attention spans are accounted for? lol Wink

There is one series in that vein which I would absolutely love to own: Damekko Dōbutsu. It's so wacky and odd that you just can't stop watching. Then, before you know it, you find yourself loving the characters and watching more. Everyone I've introduced to the show always says, "Why are we watching this?" around episode seven and we still always make it through to the very last episode. Very Happy I'm sure that a relatively continuing storyline found in the 5-6 minute episode series is what really kept me coming back for more.
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Stuart Smith



Joined: 13 Jan 2013
Posts: 1298
PostPosted: Fri Jul 25, 2014 10:54 pm Reply with quote
PurpleWarrior13 wrote:
I do wish more anime would stick with ONE theme. It helps establish an identity or an "anthem." Classic anime from the 80s-90s had some really classic themes. They don't need to swap it every 26 episodes with the J-pop song of the week. I can understand long-running shows and viewers getting tired of a particular song, but that's why they need to be so good.


Multiple themes is one thing I love about anime. It's amazing to see the amount of work they put into them. It updates and changes to reflect the current storyline of the anime which is always great to see. For western animation you can get away with having the same theme for the entire run since it's not really story focused usually, but anime is constantly changing and moving forward. It's always fun to go back to the first opening of a series and compare it to the last to see just how far the series has come.

80s and 90s anime only had one or two themes probably due to budget reasons. Dragonball Z and Sailor Moon come to mind. We should be thankful anime has become a lot stronger so we can have new themes for each new arc or storyline. Personally, you can call Cha La Head Cha La and Moonlight Densetsu classic you want, but I still got tired of them after 50 episodes.

-Stuart Smith
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jymmy



Joined: 11 Nov 2011
Posts: 1244
PostPosted: Fri Jul 25, 2014 10:56 pm Reply with quote
Vaisaga wrote:
However, by far the best is End of Evangelion's. Man I laughed my ass off during the whole thing.

The line where they, guffawing, commented that the spoiler["gunshot" they replaced] sounded "like someone got slapped" sure had me in paroxysms. The lines she claimed were "strictly for [her] own amusement" sure were funny, especially after hearing her describe them as such. Hearing them refer to the Reiquarium as the "Chamber of Guf" was also good for a laugh. Really, there are many golden little moments throughout. One of the nicest was near the end, when Amanda Winn-Lee said that in the spoken Japanese language there was no word for "I".
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Maokun



Joined: 11 Nov 2004
Posts: 53
PostPosted: Fri Jul 25, 2014 10:57 pm Reply with quote
While I agree that Tom & jerry Kids was one of the worst shows resulting from the babyfication trend, the very worst had to be A Pup Named Scooby Doo. ugh. However, if it is the price we had to pay to get the instant classic that Tiny Toons is, I guess I'll gladly stomach it.
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gravediggernalk
Space Cowboy



Joined: 13 Oct 2013
Posts: 246
Location: Alabama
PostPosted: Fri Jul 25, 2014 11:00 pm Reply with quote
jymmy wrote:
Vaisaga wrote:
However, by far the best is End of Evangelion's. Man I laughed my ass off during the whole thing.

The line where they, guffawing, commented that the spoiler["gunshot" they replaced] sounded "like someone got slapped" sure had me in paroxysms. The lines she claimed were "strictly for [her] own amusement" sure were funny, especially after hearing her describe them as such. Hearing them refer to the Reiquarium as the "Chamber of Guf" was also good for a laugh. Really, there are many golden little moments throughout. One of the nicest was near the end, when Amanda Winn-Lee said that in the spoken Japanese language there was no word for "I".


Two words to define the commentary: Baby batter
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Kikaioh



Joined: 01 Jun 2009
Posts: 1205
Location: Antarctica
PostPosted: Fri Jul 25, 2014 11:40 pm Reply with quote
Maokun wrote:
While I agree that Tom & jerry Kids was one of the worst shows resulting from the babyfication trend, the very worst had to be A Pup Named Scooby Doo. ugh. However, if it is the price we had to pay to get the instant classic that Tiny Toons is, I guess I'll gladly stomach it.


Evil or Very Mad

...I love A Pup Named Scooby Doo! Mad
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configspace



Joined: 16 Aug 2008
Posts: 3717
PostPosted: Sat Jul 26, 2014 12:12 am Reply with quote
Animegomaniac wrote:
I did not realize Funimation's commentaries were disappearing; Sure ADV's... the whole company up and vanished and Sentai's had more Japanese commentaries than dubside ones ....

Maybe Fred meant from the US industry as a whole. The English commentaries have disappeared from everyone else but Funimation. Funimation is still regularly producing them.

I still also see a lot of commentary on Japanese releases. And a lot of drama cds as well.
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omiya



Joined: 21 Sep 2011
Posts: 1827
Location: Adelaide, South Australia
PostPosted: Sat Jul 26, 2014 1:09 am Reply with quote
Stuart Smith wrote:

Multiple themes is one thing I love about anime. It's amazing to see the amount of work they put into them. It updates and changes to reflect the current storyline of the anime which is always great to see.
...
We should be thankful anime has become a lot stronger so we can have new themes for each new arc or storyline. Personally, you can call Cha La Head Cha La and Moonlight Densetsu classic you want, but I still got tired of them after 50 episodes.


Agreed. Good OP/ED (and insert) songs are an important part of an anime.

There were a few elephants in the room left out of the Answerman column:

Many of the OP/ED singers are also anime voice actors/actresses;

besides the labels mentioned, 5pb, FlyingDog, Geneon Universal and others have artists focussed on music of anime and video games;

there are also composers/lyricists who write music principally for anime;

besides their popularity in karaoke, the music of anime/games has dedicated concert series like Animelo Summer Live (10th anniversary this year), Animax Musix and 5pb live.

The impression that I have gained is that most of those involved want to grow music of anime - "making a bigger pie" rather than only "trying to get a bigger slice of the pie", so one gets strong collaborative involvement that spans different companies.

(Disclaimer - I attend 12 music of anime live shows in Japan in 2013, including Yuki Kajiura Live vol. #10, all 3 days of Animelo Summer Live, 5pb live and Animax Musix day 2).
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kevinx59



Joined: 27 Jan 2012
Posts: 959
Location: In sunny California
PostPosted: Sat Jul 26, 2014 2:14 am Reply with quote
^Don't forget about VAP, Avex, and even Warner Bros is jumping in. I've noticed that a lot of the heavy metal and screamo openings tend to be by musicians signed by VAP. I really like openings though. I spend a long time going on YouTube watching openings to anime from all time periods. I may not watch the anime but I've seen its op. Some have awesome music, and it's fun seeing some of the more creative ones. I don't like Shaft, but their openings are usually very interesting.( their choice of music is a bit more questionable). Noitamina series are usually creative with their theme music as well.

For commentaries, I like listening to ones by the creators. Plenty of director commentaries give fascinating insight into choices made and how everything came about. Not an anime, but Jean Pierre Jeunet for example talks about all the specific choices he did and why he did them. For me VA commentaries are fun to listen to at least once. Even if they aren't very informative it's interesting getting to know a bit of the personality of the VAs outside of their roles.

Oh, and it'd be cool if more shorts were released here. It's a shame Nis didn't license the Nyarko shorts, they would've made nice extra. Although the one I want is a nice Yame no Susume collection. Maybe those disturbingly addictive Puchim@s as well.
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Greed1914



Joined: 28 Oct 2007
Posts: 4427
PostPosted: Sat Jul 26, 2014 2:45 am Reply with quote
SpacemanHardy wrote:
Generally, I find English commentaries to be at their best when they're doing something out of the ordinary with them. One of the Black Butler commentaries, for instance, had the actors of the three servants staying in character for the ENTIRE commentary. Both of Good Luck Girl's commentaries also incorporated in questions from viewers for the VAs to answer, which gave them more than enough to talk about.

Even some of the ones that don't have a certain "hook" to them can be pretty fun. I remember the Baccano commentary with J. Michael Tatum, Caitlin Glass, and Bryan Massey was a hoot. I do agree, however, that most of them tend to be kind of boring sometimes. Still, it's nice to have them as an extra instead of just clean OP and ED and nothing else.


The Good Luck Girl commentary was easily one of the best I've seen for the very reason you mentioned. Sometimes it can be interesting if the actors don't actually know each other since they get to ask each other questions and keep the discussion going. I'll also give Funimation credit that they have the actors watch the particular episode entirely beforehand. There used to be a problem of some lengthy silence, and then somebody would mention that they hadn't seen that part yet, so they were distracted. As Justin mentioned, actors typically get paid for the time spent on this, so asking them to sit through a whole show might be too much. But I don't think watching one episode is a stretch.



Joe Carpenter wrote:
I can not vouch for any other commentaries, but the English commentary tracks for R.O.D The TV on the original Geneon dvds are some of my favorite things in life


I was actually pretty bummed that those didn't make it onto the Blu-ray set from Aniplex. I'm pretty sure there was an Answerman a while back saying why commentaries didn't usually carry over with the license rescues.
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PMDR



Joined: 19 Jan 2006
Posts: 140
PostPosted: Sat Jul 26, 2014 6:47 am Reply with quote
Having done SDCC once, it was immediately clear to me that the main usefulness of the show was the dealers room and the nearby beaches, and I made good use of both of those things during my time there.

Never attempted to see a single panel -it was a lost cause anyway with the whimsical policies on lines and room-clearing. I had no interest in wasting my time trying to see any of that stuff.

If I miraculously ended up back at SDCC again, I would do exactly what I did before: buy a bunch of stuff to ship back home and promptly park myself on the beach. And hit In-n-Out Burger. A lot.

San Diego is a great town. SDCC is not its best shining moment.
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