Forum - View topicPile of Shame - Bite Me! Chameleon
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vanfanel
 Posts: 1242 |
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I don't think mahjong anime has made great inroads in the West either...or does that count as sports?
Several years back, I was at a bus station in rural Kyushu before sunup, and no one else was there but a lone security guard and a gang of noisy young punks. When their bus came, they left a pile of cans and snack food wrappers behind on the floor where they'd been sitting, along with a comic magazine featuring...yep!...bikers with funny hairdos beating the crap out of each other. It's incredibly irresponsible for shounen magazines to glorify and sentimentalize this kind of thing...and yet...this is a genre so alien to my culture and experience that it's kind of fascinating, and sometimes the stories are a guilty pleasure sort of fun in and of themselves. I never saw Chameleon, and since I'm not into gross-out humor, I probably won't ever see it, but doggonit, I liked Shonan Bakusozoku....enough to have watched the other OVAs of it that AnimEigo never released. Another one that's rather fun (which I would recommend for a future column) is "Kyou Kara Ore Wa!!" (which focuses on fighting and humor, and has pretty nice animation). The closest thing to a delinquent anime to have proven successful in the West would probably be "Yu-Yu Hakusho," though the supernatural/tournament elements do quickly crowd out the delinquency stuff. |
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HeeroTX
Posts: 2046 Location: Austin, TX |
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I don't know if its funny or REALLY sad that based only on the above description I would say: In Japan: That's a bunch of delinquents that no doubt bother many people In USA: That's "normal" teenagers/young adults hanging out. |
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Fronzel
Posts: 1906 |
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Cromartie is, of course, a parody of delinquent shows. That the "delinquents" generally just sit around talking about stupid stuff is the main joke. |
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vanfanel
Posts: 1242 |
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Ehhh...it's kind of hard to describe, but the atmosphere was a little different from a group of normal Japanese teens. More aggressively loud than playfully loud. Also, there's a 10:00 pm curfew for teens in this town, and this group had clearly been out all night. Usually if you run into teens that early in the morning, they'll be wearing school or sports uniforms, but these guys were dressed to look tough. I was glad the security guard was there. We've got a number of bikers around here, though they don't seem to be organized into large gangs like I've occasionally seen in Fukuoka. During Golden Week especially, I can hear motorcycle engines roaring literally all night long, with occasional interruptions by police sirens. One night I was walking home late, and saw a big crowd of young people on the sidewalk. Bikers were performing stunts in front of them. Police cars were sitting nearby, just waiting for them to cross some line. Suddenly a bike appeared with two people on it. One drove; the other, wearing a Scream mask, discharged a fire extinguisher into the crowd. I got past that, and was almost home when a biker went past me, followed by a police car. The biker slowed down and started waving around a lit signal flare, taunting the cop. The patrol car turned on its siren at last, at which point the biker started running. He was wanting to be chased. |
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1thought
Posts: 65 |
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I don't know about they can't sell here.
A genre is a complete failure in the North America market because of the early VHS OVA days of anime releases? Anyways there isn't a lot of delinquent anime to even begin with most of it was never animated outside of a short OVA series no matter how popular the manga was. Although GTO is very popular it seems and also a lot of people liked it. I don't know if it a big seller for Tokyopop originally but that's a successful delinquent series in the North America market or at least it seemed like it was. It wasn't strictly high school student delinquent.It was a delinquent becomes a teacher but still very much a delinquent genre series. There just isn't to hardly any delinquent genre anime TV series probably because maybe the bad influence on a wider audience or the violence I don't know. But for manga the genre has had hits in the past. The 3rd most popular manga in the late 80 and early 90's in Weekly Shonen Jump only behind Slam Dunk and Dragon Ball was Rokudenashi Blues which was a delinquent genre series with a boxing theme also and creator has another hit with delinquents Rookies in the late 90's early 2000's in Weekly Jump. Jump also had another hit Hareluya II Boy And other series with delinquent characters Slam Dunk, Yu Yu Hakusho and Sakigake Otokojuku. Shonen Sunday also had it's big hit of Kyou Kara Ore Wa. And Shonen Magazine has Shonan Junai Gumi and later GTO, and Chameleon Young Jump Salaryman Kintaro. I really wish Viz would try releasing say Rokudenashi Blues on their Advanced Jump line or Sig line and possibly a 2 in 1 thing like the recent Ranma 1/2 reissue since it's 42 volumes. For a 21 volume release. I really think Viz should try something like that a 2 in 1 to begin with. I think the genre can work in North America it's just never really been given a chance. |
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whiskeyii
 Posts: 2245 |
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Yeah, but almost all of the shows you mentioned (the ones I recognized at least) had some other STRONG story aspect aside from straight up delinquency. Yu Yu Hakusho was about a guy who was a Jerk with a Heart of Gold, and not really a delinquent like everyone though (and later morphed into a battle manga). Slam Dunk opens with a failed love confession and then moves swiftly into basketball territory. Plus, there's just the straight up culture divide. When people in the US think "delinquents", we usually think of petty thieves, gang members, and other ne'er do wells.
Japan's delinquents seem more like thugs; guys just spoiling for a fight. They're dangerous, sure, but compared to the definition of a typical US delinquent? It's a little hard to see what all the fuss is about. |
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vanfanel
Posts: 1242 |
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And Masanori Morita's art on that is pretty awesome. He's especially great with facial expressions. (If anyone reading this is curious, just Google ”ろくでなしブルース”) OTOH, while it's true that his works are more than just delinquents goofing around and/or getting in fights ... they do tend to turn into sports dramas sooner or later (boxing for "Rokudenashi Blues"; baseball for "Rookies"), so, um, yeah ... kiss of death x 2. |
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jcaliff
 Posts: 156 Location: Houston |
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I always kind of liked Be-bop High School. And I got a kick out of Shounan Bakusouzoku. Chameleon doesn't sound like my kind of series though - I'm not really into gross-out humor like that.
I think that maybe part of the reason that delinquent manga never really caught on is that we don't really have that close of an equivalent subculture in the US. The 1960s style pompadours make it all look silly to us for one thing. We don't have the school uniforms either, so we don't have that visual cue. Real US high school gangs often deal with guns and drugs which are a lot less common in Japanese manga versions of high school gangs. When we read about gang violence it isn't usually a few guys beating another guy up under a bridge, it's someone getting shot. Yankee also typically have that whole bushido/samurai honor thing in a modern day setting going on. I think it's just hard for a lot of westerners to relate. It doesn't help any that in the manga that do catch on, the stereotypical delinquents are usually comic relief. That said, most of what I like is humorous. |
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leafy sea dragon
 Posts: 7163 Location: Another Kingdom |
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Wait, you mean there were bad reviews of anime in the late 80's and through the 90's? I thought western anime fans during that time were far too defensive and scared to dislike any anime at all. I mean, until around 2002 or so, most anime fans I met became apologists if a bad anime came out and tried REAL hard to like every single anime they culd find.
It's good to know there were at least a few anime fans during then who weren't afraid to admit there was such a thing as a bad anime.
Perhaps that's why this genre never does well in the United States: The appeal in Japan must be because it's shocking and appalling but fascinating at the same time, whereas these delinquents in these series are, to Americans, just normal teens trying to deal with a brutally rule-based society. That actually got me thinking: Would Bart Simpson had been more popular had The Simpsons been simulcast back in 1990? Wouldn't he have fit the delinquent behavior popular in Japan at the time? Or was his behavior, even in Season 1, a bit too extreme? Or am I confusing the nature of these Japanese delinquents with troublemaking kids in the USA? It seems like the Japanese delinquents largely fought among each other, and they became a menace of sorts through rude behavior and haughty attitude. I live in Los Angeles, one of the American gang strongholds. My middle school's boy's restroom was a major dealing spot for heroin. Gangsters nearly invaded my high school to start a shootout because one of the students owed $100,000 to a drug lord. It's a pretty different type of teenage unruliness. (And, of course, I grew up with the Rampart scandal going on not far from where I live). |
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dtm42
Posts: 14084 Location: currently stalking my waifu |
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The Kanto Women Delinquent Alliance was rumoured to have twenty thousand members at its height, pretty much all of whom were teenagers. Holy moly. Japanese delinquents may not be as dangerous as their American counterparts (though that is still up for debate), but they were certainly better organised.
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Mikeski
Posts: 608 Location: Minneapolis, MN |
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Brian: Look, you've got it all wrong! You don't NEED to follow ME, You don't NEED to follow ANYBODY! You've got to think for your selves! You're ALL individuals! The Crowd: Yes! We're all individuals! Brian: You're all different! The Crowd: Yes, we ARE all different! ...counterculture: you're doing it wrong. |
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1thought
Posts: 65 |
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Agreed Morita's really has a nice art style and his manga just has a lot of personality. I really wish Viz would try releasing Rokudenashi Blues for North America. I think something from him could be a stand out title for any manga fans looking for creators who really leave their mark. Well maybe just calling it delinquent genre isn't the best word or description. Really what can you call it or how to define it? A series that deals with high school thugs and bullies? Maybe. One of the funniest moments of this type of character was in Dragon Ball Z where this old couple is oh poor Chi Chi her husband dyed his hair blonde and became a delinquent and now her son has done the same. Last edited by 1thought on Thu Sep 18, 2014 8:42 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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Redbeard 101
Oscar the Grouch
Forums Superstar  Posts: 16935 |
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There were a lot more of us than you give credit for. And there were a lot more bad reviews they you realize or have seen. You need to meet more people heh. The difference was we did watch the bad ones because our options were more limited. Now you can skip bad shows, back then...bad show or no show. Almost all the anime fans from back then that I knew all could distinguish a bad show from a good show and we didn't force ourselves to like a bad show. Then again what qualified as a bad show back THEN given the limited library we had to watch compared to the amount of titles available now is also different. So just take that into consideration before you pass judgment on all us old fans. |
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leafy sea dragon
Posts: 7163 Location: Another Kingdom |
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Yeah, I was half-joking about that--I was just incredibly annoyed at those people I met who kept trying to like every anime they saw, especially the guy who ran my high school's anime club. (Though perhaps that's a somewhat different case as he saw "anime" as a status symbol. TV shows like Pokémon, he refused to call as "anime" and simply referred to them derogatorily as just "cartoons.") The bad review mentioned towards the end of the article felt really refreshing to me.
I'd imagine buyer's remorse, or whatever the equivalent would be since most never bought any anime to begin with, would play a role: During then, you had to have the right connections or go through a lot of effort to get even a bit of anime, and if it turned out to not be that good, it'd make sense to try to self-justifyone's efforts. |
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championferret
 Posts: 765 |
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Oh hey, my university had a japanese section in its library with a bunch of old manga and they had the complete set of this thing. I'd never heard of it and flipped through, went 'what the fresh hell' and put it back. Never knew they made an anime.
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