Anime Apolyton

[Jon Miller]

I actually am not just a huge anime fan because of the animation. I could take it or leave it. I like some of the types of stories/etc that they do in anime which are not common in america cinema/tv.

JM

[Q Classic]

Seeker: I guess, but animation and story styles still seem to vary from country to country--so, while I guess by a loose definition you could consider Korean animation "anime", it's not... quite.

[The Mad Monk]

What about making American original content? Or would that be ignored by an 'Anime is Japanese' bias.

Exosquad is an example of "American" anime. I thought it was damn good, but it only lasted two seasons, and I haven't seen it since. The local station it was on had it on as 7 am weekday fare, which surprised me (hell it shocked me) because it was certainly not a kiddie show.

[The Mad Monk]

Originally posted by DaShi


I just couldn't get into Trinity Blood. I can say it annoyed me. It just didn't seem to grab me. E7 annoyed me in the beginning and I stopped watching it. However, I came back around the last third, where it was much better. Although I still hate those rotten kids.

Yes, you would have gotten away with it, too, if it weren't for them.

[Seeker]

Exosquad was Anime..?? MMHmmmmemmmggmmmqqmmm......maaybe.

It just didn't 'feel' anime to me.

Oh and Q-cubed:

What is your opinion of D-Wars?

[DinoDoc]

Does G1 Transformers count as anime?

[Wraith]

--"I found this on the site of Errant Story, a pretty damn good webcomic"

Yeah, I've been following them for a while.

Don't normally ready anything but the webcomic itself, though.

--"I was wondering what you all thought about it, especially in light of all the closings and pullouts."

Personally, I think he's overstating the case. Honestly, the people who watch fansubs and then never buy the series... what makes anyone think they'd buy the series without fansubs?

I know people like these. They simply don't buy DVDs much at all. Aside from the occasional blockbuster, they borrow stuff from friends and copy it, or get it from NetFlix and copy it, or just download it. Some of them are almost pure collectors, building up huge libraries of stuff they've never even thought about watching. Others do watch, but still don't buy.

Get rid of fansubs somehow, and this group will behave exactly the same. And since they're the group that gets the most complaints, this whole argument hasn't ever made much sense to me.

In any case, Geneon's problem seems to be more about Dentsu than about their own finances.

--"for instance, I've never understood why they tend to turn the Kansai dialect into the Southern one."

They give a lot of reasons, but what I think it boils down to is that at least two of the major companies, ADV and Funimation, are based in Texas, so what accent is easiest to find?

--"Particularly egregious is the tendency of some to make edits and censoring,"

This is 4Kids' business model. They don't care about the show itself, they're interested in the merchandising.

--"High prices."

This one I don't really agree with. Between online discount dealers and the complete-season sets you can get at good deals, anime isn't particularly expensive. Buying US shows like The Sopranos can be plenty pricy as well.

--"Niche market, supply glut."

This is the big problem, I think. Looking at the Anime on DVD License list things peaked in 2004, with 119 licenses announced. Contrast that with the 2002 list (not sure if 2001 is a complete list, since they probably didn't start on Jan 1st), which is only 50 titles. The anime market is growing, but not that fast. A lot of companies started to run in a "throw it at the wall and see what sticks" mode, which is rarely the best way to go about it.

Look at ADV. In the past few years, they've gone from just an anime company, to adding: a manga line, a toy line, a video-on-demand channel, a cable channel, and live-action movie production. Some of these haven't gotten off the ground, the others have faltered (although I'm not sure what the status of their VoD channel is).

--"What about making American original content? Or would that be ignored by an 'Anime is Japanese' bias."

I like US stuff too, when it's good. I've gotten four of my coworkers hooked on Invader Zim after loaning out DVDs. Exosquad got a mention as well, but no-one's put that out yet, so I can hardly support their release. US production has a huge hurdle to overcome just to market a non-comedy animation. There haven't been many, and all the exceptions I can think of (Exo Squad, The Maxx, Aeon Flux, Roughnecks, maybe Dungeons and Dragons, and so on) were action. I don't expect to see an animated drama from the US any time soon.

The bigger problem is the over-all trend in US entertainment. It's easy for US production to adopt some of the visual styles of anime, like Teen Titans does. But programs like Exosquad just don't do well with today's media execs in the face of things like cheap-yet-popular "reality" TV shows. Look at the trouble there was getting a go-ahead for something like Babylon 5. It's just going to be extremely rare for US production to start work on a venture that'll take 5 years to play out fully before they even know whether or not it'll make money.

I listen to commentary tracks on the stuff I get. They often contain all sorts of interesting tidbits. Common comments include talking about the kind of changes they're pressured to make, or how difficult it was to get even a single season agreement out of a studio, and so on and so forth.

I love it when the US market does this kind of work. I've got all the Babylon 5 DVDs, and I get shows like The Sopranos and Deadwood. But the kind of stuff you're talking about will always be rare in the US market.

The anime market in Japan has a bit of an advantage on this. They can afford to be more experimental, because they've got the otaku core that will support small-scale and small (relatively) budget stuff that's quirky or off-beat. Something like Haibane Renmei would never be made in the US market. Even something like Paranoia Agent, with a relative big-name behind it like Satoshi Kon, might make it on HBO, but only maybe, and very rarely.

(Of course, I'm not sure how well these kind of niche-within-a-niche titles do on sales in the States, either. Which is a pity, since most of my top 10 list are exactly this kind of thing. Still, Haruhi made it in to the top ten sales list. Surprising even though it does have more general market appeal than stuff like, say, Utena.)

--"There is Korean anime,"

I suspect they've got a different word for it (ie. manhwa vs. manga), but yes. A lot of the animation work has long been carried out in Korea or China. Lots of animators in Japan have complained about the lack of young people willing to do that kind of work, although who knows where that'll go as the computer tools get better.

Even the French are getting in to the act.

Doesn't bother me, although I don't know how long it'll take licensing companies to start working on these.

Edit to include replies to stuff posted while I was writing:

--"Exosquad was Anime..?"

Not exactly, but it was heavily influenced by it. I don't mean art style, but storytelling style, with long story-arcs and complex characters.

--"Does G1 Transformers count as anime?"

Certainly influenced by. Haven't seen any of it in forever, but I seem to recall they had some pretty complex multi-episode story arcs going on. It was inspired by some of the robot toys lines in Japan at the time, so there's definite influence there. The sides were more cut-and-dried good vs. evil than anime usually likes to go with, but you could certainly make the argument.

Edit the second:

In regards to US production again, there's other areas that give Japan an advantage. They've never had to deal with something like the Comics Code Authority, for instance.
There's also a much, much larger support for printed comics in Japan. Manga is huge, and even middle-aged salarymen commonly read the stuff on the train. This is a pretty typical starting point to animation careers, since it's a fairly low-cost entry into visual storytelling. Supporting this means more of a talent pool to support the animated side. They also do things like Comic Market, where self-published stuff is readily available. With over half a million in attendance, this is not a small thing at all. About the only less expensive way to get started in some kind of visual storytelling is webcomics (it will be interesting to see how or if this influences the US market in the future). I don't really see that kind of support in the US, so even with a bigger population we don't have that kind of pool of experience to draw on later on.

Wraith
"The first gift you gave me was death."
-- Tomoe ("Rurouni Kenshin")

[Q Classic]

Originally posted by Seeker
Exosquad was Anime..?? MMHmmmmemmmggmmmqqmmm......maaybe.

It just didn't 'feel' anime to me.

Oh and Q-cubed:

What is your opinion of D-Wars?

I haven't seen it, nor do I ever intend to. Yonggary was bad enough, all twenty minutes I watched.

I'd rather be waterboarded and have my nuts attached to electrodes in Gitmo than see D-Wars.

...okay, maybe not, but.

[Q Classic]

Originally posted by Wraith
--"High prices."

This one I don't really agree with. Between online discount dealers and the complete-season sets you can get at good deals, anime isn't particularly expensive. Buying US shows like The Sopranos can be plenty pricy as well.

Educate me, sensei. (I end up buying from Best Buy (though they've sorta lost me as a customer) or Amazon, and it's still $20-30 a DVD for newer series. I've been able to pick up older ones for $60ish, like Love Hina and Martian Successor Nadesico, but...)

[The Mad Monk]

It appears that Adult Swim is bringing in a new show, "Dark Place", in the Friday 2300 and 0200 time slots, starting November 9th. I haven't been able to find any details on this yet, but then, I haven't looked very hard.

Shin Chan has six new episodes starting December 10th, when it re-enters the weekday rotation.

Eureka 7 returns December 3rd, in the same time slot now occupied by Trinity Blood.

Bleach rolls over to episode 1 December 6th. Sorry, no new episodes in sight out to January 11th. Bood+ is at episode 39 at that point, perhaps Bleach will return when that finishes.

In April.

Let's see...well...okay, Voltron and Astro Boy are still chugging along in the 0500 and 0530 slots, all week long...hmm.

Oh yes. Futurama.

Not anime, but big on Adult Swim.

If you're collecting episodes of this off of AS, you're running out of time.

They will have an "All Futurama, All The Time" format from December 26th through midnight, New Year's eve. Almost nothing else -- only Voltron and Astro Boy will be spared.

And then...nothing. It will be gone from Adult Swim, never(?) to return.

...

This will be followed by a pliots marathon. Again, only Voltron and Astro Boy will be spared.

Finally, Astro Boy will own Christmas Day.

[DaShi]

Futurama will move to Comedy Central with new episodes based on movies they were planning.

I think we're waiting on the translation for more Bleach episodes, but not sure. It's odd that they are delaying it since it seemed to do well compared to their other anime.

I'm glad to see Shin Chan back. The drawing and the humor is crude but brilliant.

[Zoid]

I just watched the first episode of Cowboy Bebop (dl'ed it after watching parts of the movie on TV late last night). And I can't help to think that Firefly seems a bit influenced by it. But I may be doing Joss Whedon a disservice here, the whole "cowboy-in-space" thingie isn't exactly new... I have great expectations for the rest of the series though, 25 more episodes to watch

[Wraith]

--"Educate me, sensei."

I normally use Deep Discount. Releases from different studios have different discounts at different stores, but this one seems to be overall best without going to a bunch of different places. They don't normally have coupons, but they do a 20% off sale twice a year.

Lots of people also like Right Stuf. Between their frequent studio and other sales and their Got Anime discount, you can get some pretty cheap bundles.

There's plenty of other places, like Best Prices or DVD Planet. Buy Rite DVD and Overstock don't have consistent or comprehensive inventories, but they're cheap when they have what you want.

--"I just watched the first episode of Cowboy Bebop"

It's a pretty well done series, and one of the more accessible to people used to Western style storytelling. It has some really good episodes in it, and probably one of the creepiest next episode previews ever.

Wraith
"I rather like my predicament. It's quite tragic and beautiful, don't you think?"
-- Megu ("Rozen Maiden")

[The Mad Monk]

Previews? The CB episodes shown by AS have no previews. They also fast forward the end credits. Dammit.

[Jon Miller]

I liked Last Exile. Wasn't amazing though.

JM