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New York Times article


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Animan



Joined: 05 Jan 2002
Posts: 65
PostPosted: Thu Jan 31, 2002 4:53 pm Reply with quote
Hey, this looks good!

Instead of signing into the online site, I went to the nearest store on my block that carries the New York Times newspaper (I live in Los Angeles). The article is in the Arts & Leisure section: cover story! There's also a huge photo taking up almost half the page (a clip from Metropolis).

I'm impressed!
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Animan



Joined: 05 Jan 2002
Posts: 65
PostPosted: Thu Jan 31, 2002 4:55 pm Reply with quote
Also in the same news section in Art & Leisure (along with the big "Anime, Japanese Cinema's Second Golden Age" article) there is an interesting article on pg. 33 by writer J.D. Considine on the editing of 'CardCaptor Sakura' for Amercan television. (It's in the newspaper but I don't know if you'll also find this article online.)
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Morrolan



Joined: 10 Jan 2002
Posts: 29
Location: Coquitlam, BC, Canada... byatch!
PostPosted: Thu Jan 31, 2002 4:58 pm Reply with quote
Very good article. I like how this guy actually did some homework before opening his mouth [which is more than can be said for alot of the "journalists" I've seen do anime pieces]. Don't really agree about his assertion that japanese animation has unrealistic and stiff character animation. What? It's abvious he watched them, how could he think that? I also like how it was fairly un-biased. He was definetly on the side of anime but he did also mention things like "La Blue Girl" so he did show both sides of the coin.
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Animan



Joined: 05 Jan 2002
Posts: 65
PostPosted: Thu Jan 31, 2002 5:02 pm Reply with quote
The cover story photo is very nice--it's a highly detailed city scene, in color, from METROPOLIS. The article continues (full page!) on page 22 with two more large photos: One is a nice color photo of Mima from the Satoshi Kon's PERFECT BLUE, and the other is an excellent color photo from Mamoru Oshii's GHOST IN A SHELL.

The 'Cardcaptor Sakura' article has a nice black & white photo of the Cardcaptor characters.
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Neilworms



Joined: 03 Jan 2002
Posts: 155
Location: Chicago IL
PostPosted: Thu Jan 31, 2002 5:03 pm Reply with quote
Morrolan wrote:
Don't really agree about his assertion that japanese animation has unrealistic and stiff character animation. What?


Anime does tend to be more static, and have less emphasis on the motion. In contrast though anime is much more concerned with art. The motion is quite stiff and unrealistic when compaired with Disney's older work. Disney's newer stuff on the other hand, goes too far in the other direction, way too much motion, characters change emotions too quickly and they seem to overact. On top of this the art (with the exception of Atlantis where they actually hired an outside artist to do the artwork) is usually horrible. If you look at a character in a recient disney movie, you will notice that it cannot stop moving for more than three seconds.

This guy definetly did his research, but he sort of skimped over some parts. Also his analysis was a tad strange in spots. One thing that I find odd is that he didn't state the primary reason why anime is not like disney when it comes to motion. Money.

Disney films (I believe) cost $40-80mil to produce, where as high budget anime films are anywhere from $7-20mil to produce. He said that Miyazaki approached disney's level of detail (which was mostly refering to the high frame rate movement, not the art). Guess who's films now are costing $20 mil to produce, Miyazaki's. If anime is ever able to get a hold of the technology that Disney has, not only will the art be good, but the animation will be better than the 'overacted' stuff coming out of Disney's studio. (See Blood the Last Vampire, as an example of what I'm talking about. Blood actually used technology that Disney has had since Pochohantas but Blood IMO makes much better use of it.)

In the 1960s theatrical anime (Toei's 'manga movies') actually put more emphasis on motion than on art. This is because in that time period all Japanese movies had proprotionally larger budgets than their counterparts do today. They could afford the higher budgets because films were very profitable. This happened until the early 1970s when the Japanese film industry tanked. Animation had abysimally low budgets at this time, and the standards that Tezuka developed for TV spread to film. This crash killed Toei's disney-like status in Japan and encouraged more competition, which eventually led to much more innovation.

Anime fans do tend to confuse animation with art. The artwork is vastly superior in most anime than almost all american animation. The animation in American films is superior to anime because they have the money to afford the amount of cells.

On TV American animation further sacrifices (or simplifies) the artwork to make sure animation remains smooth. Whereas on Japanese TV animation is choppy, but the artwork is not sacrificed. What many american animation critics don't understand (particularly disney worshipping ones) is that both of these styles are just as valid and both have their own strenghts and weaknesses.
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dudesup



Joined: 14 Jan 2002
Posts: 88
PostPosted: Thu Jan 31, 2002 5:06 pm Reply with quote
The article was great but he didn't talk much about anime series, even though he mentioned cowboy bebop, he talked a lot about anime movies. I liked pretty much ghost in the shell but I didn't like akira nor mononoke. It felt like a whole series briefet and cut into one movie.
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Bakafool



Joined: 09 Jan 2002
Posts: 10
PostPosted: Thu Jan 31, 2002 5:09 pm Reply with quote
Good articles, both of them were quite objective. One thing though I don't really understand, is that many people comment on the so-called choppy movement of anime. To me however, this isn't an issue at all. Other animation features that have so-called "realistic" movement is more like jelly fish. Human movement in reality isn't very graceful or smooth at all, unless maybe you're watching a ballet presentation. We're not jelly fish. Our movements can be smooth at times, and can also be jerky. I dunno, that's just my two cents because this movement issue has been buggin' me for years. :roll:
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Dan42
Chief Encyclopedist


Joined: 02 Jan 2002
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Location: Montreal
PostPosted: Thu Jan 31, 2002 5:25 pm Reply with quote
Morrolan wrote:

Don't really agree about his assertion that japanese animation has unrealistic and stiff character animation.

I agree that anime tends to have stiff character animation, but I think that makes it *more* realistic than the Disney cartoon characters who move like Jello.
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ShockWave



Joined: 11 Jan 2002
Posts: 22
Location: Atlanta
PostPosted: Thu Jan 31, 2002 5:27 pm Reply with quote
While both articles were good, I felt like the writer was comparing apples to oranges. I would have liked to have seen non Disney animated movies and American animated TV series included. I think it would have changes some of his conclusions about Japanese movement and depth.
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nagash



Joined: 23 Jan 2002
Posts: 280
PostPosted: Thu Jan 31, 2002 5:54 pm Reply with quote
Hi. I'm new to the site. I was wondering how you all felt about J.D. Considine's feelings that all anime should be edited as it comes over to the U.S.
I have to say that I disagree strongly with that. I do agree that you couldn't show the original version to children in this country, and that they did have to edit it to do so, but I am noticing that it is getting harder and harder to find the original, unedited copies.
I am only for editing the anime for kids so long as the original unedited versions are still available for the older kids and adults.
What are your thoughts?
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Animan



Joined: 05 Jan 2002
Posts: 65
PostPosted: Thu Jan 31, 2002 6:05 pm Reply with quote
"I was wondering how you all felt about J.D. Considine's feelings that all anime should be edited as it comes over to the U.S."

Hold on there...I see the makings of a bad rumor.

Nowhere in this article do I see an opinion by J.D. Considine that "all anime should be edited as it comes over to the U.S.". Most of what I read in this article are reasons WHY certain eliments in Cardcaptor Sakura are changed for the American public. The main point of the writer is that overall "American 'Cardcaptors' becomes less a translation than a transformation". And the article even starts off this way in the third paragraph:

"...But the truth is, viewers on this side of the Pacific get a decidedly skewed sense of what Japanese animation really is. For one thing, many of Japan's most popular animated series--from such ongoing classics as 'Doraemon', 'Chibi Muruko-chan' and 'Ge-ge-ge no Kitaro' and 'Detective Conan'--have never been offered to English-speaking viewers. But even those anime that have been translated sometimes go through bewildering changes as their stories morph from Japanese to an American sensibility".

The article is about the changes that happens to 'Cardcaptor Sakura' and WHY it happened. The article left me with the impression that the writer was also somewhat dismayed by changes that must take place when scenes, thought to be innocent in one country, must be changed because it may be percieved negatively in another country.

J.D.Considine was trying to show us why these editings happen. Nothing wrong with that kind of reporting.
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Tenchi



Joined: 03 Jan 2002
Posts: 4462
Location: Ottawa... now I'm an ex-Anglo Montrealer.
PostPosted: Thu Jan 31, 2002 6:06 pm Reply with quote
nagash wrote:

Hi. I'm new to the site. I was wondering how you all felt about J.D. Considine's feelings that all anime should be edited as it comes over to the U.S.


I don't think J.D. Considine was giving an opinion one way or the other in the article; it's a straight report on what changes are made to anime before it can be shown on TV, using the example of Cardcaptor Sakura. And the article wasn't about how all anime needs to be edited before it comes over to the States (which isn't even the case); just the stuff shown on TV. The vast, vast majority of anime sold on video and DVD is completely unedited (unless you consider removing the Japanese kanji/kana credits and replacing them with Romanized credits during the opening and closing sequences to be an "edit").

nagash wrote:

I have to say that I disagree strongly with that. I do agree that you couldn't show the original version to children in this country, and that they did have to edit it to do so, but I am noticing that it is getting harder and harder to find the original, unedited copies.
I am only for editing the anime for kids so long as the original unedited versions are still available for the older kids and adults.
What are your thoughts?


Where are you shopping? Compared to seven years ago, when anime was a much smaller niche market than the still-small-but-not-nearly-as-small-as-before niche market that it is today, it's much easier to find unedited anime now. Okay, it's tough to find unedited, subtitled anime on VHS now, but only because pretty much the whole core anime fan market that would care if an anime was altered has upgraded to DVD. There are no intact, subtitled tapes of Pokemon or Digimon, but only because there is no demand for intact, subtitled Pokemon or Digimon (or at least not enough of a demand for it to be profitable to put subtitled tapes out). Nelvana saw that there was enough of a demand for subtitled, intact Cardcaptor Sakura, so they decided to sell it to the hard core fans that way through Pioneer (which is why I harbour no ill feelings towards Nelvana). I'm not bothered by the changes the Cartoon Network made to Tenchi Muyo either (not that I can watch it on CN; the CRTC won't permit Canadian cable/DSS operators to carry any American cable channel if there are Canadian alternatives available, and neither YTV nor Teletoon shows it, but that's another issue for another day); I'm glad it's introducing Tenchi (and Cowboy Bebop) to Americans who otherwise would never see it; if they want to see it unmolested, they will eventually gravitate towards the uncut DVD release.
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Animan



Joined: 05 Jan 2002
Posts: 65
PostPosted: Thu Jan 31, 2002 6:11 pm Reply with quote
I actually thought that J.D. Considine's 'Cardcaptor' article was more thorough and knowledgeable on the subject than the Dave Kehr's 'Anime/Japanese Cinema' article.

I think the letters in The Miyazaki Mailing has the best obsevations on Kehr's news article. Go to:

http://listserv.brown.edu/archives/cgi-bin/wa?A1=ind0201c&L=nausicaa#17
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nagash



Joined: 23 Jan 2002
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PostPosted: Thu Jan 31, 2002 6:17 pm Reply with quote
OK. I'll go with that he is simply telling it like it is, which is how things should be anyway.
I do not go out and buy anime very often. It stinks when you have bills, but those must come first. When I do buy anime, there are a few places to go.
Anyone who knows about anime and wants unedited stuff knows where to go and what to ask in a video store. It's the people that don't know any better that I'm talking about.
A year or so ago, I was at a Suncoast. DBZ boxed sets. The edited version is placed right at kids eye level. The unedited version is placed 7 feet high on a wall that you'll only really look at on the way out the door. Also, unedited versions cost more due to subtitling and extra footage. In this case, it was a $50 markup.
I pointed this out to the manager and the crowd in the anime section flipped. I almost started a riot. It wasn't because it was apparently the last one, it was because they had moved it to where nobody would see it.
Nowadays, I either go to Tokyo Kid or one of the tables in a local comic book show. I especially buy from the comic book show. That's the one advantage I have. I can't afford to buy a lot, but when I do, I buy a series I think will take off out here. He gets them months, even years before the contracts are signed out here. I saw Nadesico about 6 months before it hit the shelves.
Granted, Nadesico wasn't really changed, but you'd be surprised at how many people complain about the changes they made in the intro. DVD and VHS versions are not the same depending on the company involved.
You're also finding all of the Toonami cartoons coming out in edited forms. Again, I understand that you simply couldn't show those in original formats to American kids, however, I say that the original versions should be offered as well.
Whoever holds the contract (in this case, AOL) can refuse to allow the anime to be released in unedited format. I'm glad to see that they aren't, thus far, but you can't help but speculate on how long that will last.
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Tenchi



Joined: 03 Jan 2002
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Location: Ottawa... now I'm an ex-Anglo Montrealer.
PostPosted: Thu Jan 31, 2002 6:26 pm Reply with quote
nagash wrote:

Anyone who knows about anime and wants unedited stuff knows where to go and what to ask in a video store. It's the people that don't know any better that I'm talking about.
A year or so ago, I was at a Suncoast. DBZ boxed sets. The edited version is placed right at kids eye level. The unedited version is placed 7 feet high on a wall that you'll only really look at on the way out the door.


I don't know how things work at Suncoast, since there are no Suncoast stores in Canada, but in the video section of HMV in Montreal, there's one whole display unit of anime DVDs, and another set of shelves for anime on VHS. It's kinda hard to miss; it's not like it's all hidden in a back room with a secret knock for the elite anime fans to gain admittance. Anyhow, if your statement "I am noticing that it is getting harder and harder to find the original, unedited copies." pertained specifically to DBZ, you should have mentioned it, since DBZ is an exception, not the rule, as far as domestic video releases go. Yes, it is far easier to find the edited TV dub version on the shelves than the unedited, but only because Pioneer makes far more of the dub tapes for the younger Toonami crowd, which is a larger market than the older fans, who are more likely to want an intact version, and, these days, much more likely to to want it on DVD. As for the DVDs, as I understand it (from reading the Dragonball Z entry on the "No Edit Zone" list at http://www.animeprime.com/reports/dbz.shtml ; I'm not a DBZ fan), they include the unedited Japanese version from episode 53 onwards, so the problem with Suncoast having to stock two different versions of DBZ for the two audiences is obsolete. Dubs produced specifically for kids TV like DBZ are a different beast entirely from dubs originally produced for video but later reedited to be shown on TV, like Tenchi Muyo, Gundam Wing or Cowboy Bebop. Yes, there are now edited versions of Gundam Wing and Tenchi Muyo being sold on video for the Toonami crowd, but only in addition to, not as a replacement for, the previously existing unedited video versions, and, as far as I know, only on dubbed VHS.


nagash wrote:

Also, unedited versions cost more due to subtitling and extra footage. In this case, it was a $50 markup.


No, the dubbed version costs far more to produce; the markup for the sub VHS is only because far more dubbed tapes were produced than sub. But on DVD, there isn't that problem.

nagash wrote:
Whoever holds the contract (in this case, AOL) can refuse to allow the anime to be released in unedited format. I'm glad to see that they aren't, thus far, but you can't help but speculate on how long that will last.


The unedited releases will last as long as there's enough of a demand for unedited releases. (What exactly does America On-Line have to do with Funmation though?)

nagash wrote:

Granted, Nadesico wasn't really changed, but you'd be surprised at how many people complain about the changes they made in the intro. DVD and VHS versions are not the same depending on the company involved.


There's nothing listed for Nadesico on the Edit List at AnimePrime.com, the most comprehensive list of any changes made worth knowing about, and I doubt any change made to a release as high-profile (to anime fans) as Nadesico would have escaped Jim Lazar's attention. But I'm not surprised that people complain about it. Pick any random scene from any unedited anime commercially available in North America, and some nitpicking fanboy somewhere is going to bitch about the translation.
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