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NEWS: Studio Trigger Animator Takafumi Hori Works on Latest Episode of Steven Universe Animated Seri

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Oooo, we got another guest Japanese animator on an American cartoon. I wonder how long we're going to see a Cartoon Network regular animator or staff work on something on a Japanese title

I would say extremely unlikely given the circumstance. Usually the reason western cartoons get Japanese guest animators or have Japanese company to animate their show is because they're huge anime fans or they're trying to get some kind of street cred. Shows like Korra, Boondocks, and Steven Universe try to build themselves as anime or at least try to insert themselves into the anime community so it makes sense why they would do these kinds of things to be more 'authentic'. Given how strong the anime industry is I don't see why any of them would need or want animators of Cartoon Network to animate a season or do a guest spot for their shows. There's no real street cred to be gained from doing so with Japanese audiences who couldn't care less about American animation, and while people often complain about anime going off model, the episodes of Steven Universe I've watched they go off model all the time and there doesn't seem to be very much 'on model' going on so it's not exactly skill they would be looking for. I would say the closest you'll get is Westerners working at Japanese studios, but most of them are French, not American. I think Japan recruits from Gobelins usually, not Calarts or other American schools.

-Stuart Smith

I'm just going off what I've heard. Japanese companies seem to reach out towards Gobelins alumni more than any other school. Thomas Romain is probably the most well known. He's the guy who made Code Lyoko then moved on to work in the anime industry in Japan. France and Japan seem to have a closer relationship than America and Japan does.

-Stuart Smith

I think the first ep of Avatar the Last Airbender I saw was one of the weaker first season eps, and it turned me off the show for years. It was when I happened to catch The Boiling Rock third season 2 parter during one of NickToons marathons that made me want to watch more. AtLA is now one of my favorite animated shows of all time. Same with Adventure Time, I didn't "get" it until I saw all the hype around that first big Marcy & Simon ep, and then I started watching all the plot focused eps. Good stuff. It's a good strategy to use for long running, filler filled shonen manga based anime, too--there you can literally pick & choose whatever arcs you want to watch & skip most everything else. Life's too short to watch bad filler!

The only problem is that it's hard to recommend a good starting point for Steven Universe in particular, because the first season is very hit-or-miss, and while many episodes contain important info towards the ongoing plot, it doesn't really get going until the finale (not that there's anything wrong with watching the finale first and going backwards). If you're not too averse to spoilers, I'd recommend picking episodes from Wikipedia's plot summaries in the episode guide based on what sounds interesting and the aspects and characters of the show you enjoy the most. A good plot heavy ep that showcases how *dark* and character-focused the series can get is the season 1 two-parter Mirror Gem (eps 25 & 26) which introduces Lapis Lazuli.
Have fun!

Then I passed on Steven Universe because the early commercials made it look like a YouTube Poop kind of show, akin to Uncle Grandpa, with the premise appearing to be a SpongeBob-like character getting dropped into a Jem and the Holograms type show.

Juno016 wrote:

And a lot of my students had heard of it, but not a single one was a fan. They liked other cartoons more.

People really like to overblow the popularity of American cartoons in Japan. People to this day still like to say My Little Pony is popular in Japan despite the fact the show was cancelled years ago and was very small to begin with and limited to the kemono demograph. They might just hear the fact that a show airs in Japan and presume it to be popular, unaware that most American cartoons air in Japan by default. This thread is the first time I've ever seen people claiming Steven Universe was popular in Japan.

Do you have any evidence that American cartoons aren't popular in Japan? Besides, people do the same for anime in the West, especially America. Anime is probably less popular in the US than American cartoons in Japan. IBO has some of the highest ratings of any anime at the moment. It has less viewers than Spongebob in Japan.

NearEasternerJ1 wrote:

Do you have any evidence that American cartoons aren't popular in Japan? Besides, people do the same for anime in the West, especially America. Anime is probably less popular in the US than American cartoons in Japan. IBO has some of the highest ratings of any anime at the moment. It has less viewers than Spongebob in Japan.

IBO? Don't forget Frozen broke the Japanese box office.

leafy sea dragon wrote:

Then I passed on Steven Universe because the early commercials made it look like a YouTube Poop kind of show, akin to Uncle Grandpa, with the premise appearing to be a SpongeBob-like character getting dropped into a Jem and the Holograms type show.

Same. I don't think I got into Steven Universe until we had that feature Jacob did about all the anime homages SU had done. Even then, I wasn't sure I wanted to keep watching, but since it was only 11 minutes a pop, it was do-able to just marathon three or four at a time. It wasn't til the body-horror of the Cat Fingers episode that I started realizing maybe Steven Universe had some hidden depth to it after all. Very glad I stuck with it.

LOL Spirited Away still had more viewers, yen was stronger back then. Where's the source for the spongebob stuff?
Has more viewers than Shin chan and stuff like that? doubt it

Yoh Yoshinari is a big fan of cartoons and he has an influence in Hori animation, I bet he made him a fan. There are some anime fans in the staff of this show also, they already did a homage to Utena in one episode.

A Disney animator did a test for an anime studio and failed because couldn't do layouts or clean his own animation to save his life. CalArts guys are too snob for anime and brainwashed to a process that doesn't work in the real world for tv, so they are still waiting for a miracle to happen and someday be able to animate their own shows.

Poor guys will be waiting for ever. I guess schools in France are more open minded when they even had people like Yasuo Otsuka giving a Masterclass.

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Usually the reason western cartoons get Japanese guest animators or have Japanese company to animate their show is because they're huge anime fans or they're trying to get some kind of street cred. Shows like Korra, Boondocks, and Steven Universe try to build themselves as anime or at least try to insert themselves into the anime community so it makes sense why they would do these kinds of things to be more 'authentic'.

-Stuart Smith

I'm not so sure about that, America gets more anime than Europe does, I hear that is quite a complaint I hear from non american anime fans saying how the anime available to them is not very good. .

The part about a lot of these creators getting Japanese guest animators for their shows because their anime fans is certainly true, but I have no idea where on earth you're getting this "street cred" thing from and it just sounds like biased nonsense to me. First off the shows you mentioned are far from the only "anime-imitators" to exist, and there have been more than a few others that dropped off by the wayside over the years. The those shows stuck out is, *shock* they were the best written/ambitious of the bunch(well in Korra's case it was the sequel to a well written show but I digress) and caught traction for that reason rather than simply because "they looked like anime"

Secondly it implies that these animators are doing guest work in these shows solely to get a paycheck or whatever, and that they otherwise have no interest in these shows , which by this example alone is already proven false considering Takafumi Hori has long since shown himself to be a fan of the show. It's certainly true that there isn't a giant sub-culture for western animation in Japan the same way there's one for anime in the west, but it doesn't mean that Japanese creatives aren't paying attention to these works at all or have no respect for them (they certainly still pay a lot of attention to Disney after all). You're free to dislike this stuff if you want but you don't need to make up false ideas about creators on either side of the ocean to prove your point