Speaking of gag strips by erotic artists, Kodansha rag Nemesis has Ichirou Yumi’s Nyuutan which makes fun of contemporary Japan, especially otakus: they’re as bad at procreation as pandas, but crap their pants out of chivalry to let a girl otaku to go to the toilet before them at Comiket.

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Funny, I was thinking about how something like Legend of the Galactic Heroes was a polar opposite of this kind of character design, but then recalled that already in Snow White there was an odd detachment between the dwarves and non-cartoony, rotoscoped human characters. Several other golden age Disney films had this too, like Sleeping Beauty. I imagine the likes of Tezuka, Nagai and Matsumoto just ran with that with when creating their own styles.

And as for Urusei Yatsura, well it was a combination of life events and the fact I find the Kazuo Yamazaki-era episodes less fun to watch than the Oshii-era ones (even if they have an obviously higher budget).

Also, I’ve been watching a lot of Urusei Yatsura lately and I loved reading your old episode reviews as I went through the episodes. Why did you stop doing them?

Never played SLA Industries so it won’t be showing up. I never really liked any “cyberpunk” games that weren’t RTG’s. And even that I have reservations about the default game world. Also SLA struck me as being full of post-Vampire decadence (Underground was probably also guilty of this).

Do you plan to talk about SLA Industries some day ? The setting is a Gunnm’s fanboy wet dream, with some bits of Blame and Appleseed thrown into for good measure.

Either way, you certainly don’t see this kind of attention to detail in this sort of fanboy content too often(Shogo: Mobile Armor Division, I’m looking at you).

too bad it stopped by 2004.

70s Nagai shows were more Toei productions. The comics by Go Nagai were usually made at the same time as the tv series so none of them are based on his comics but his concepts instead. Dynamic Productions is merely a licensing company that sells concepts to anime studios. Concerning Koutetsushin Jeeg, it’s not actually a sequel but a pseudo-sequel as the events in it actually contradict the original series.

At least you got some of Cyborg 009, when I was working at Videolog we’d get the UK Sony release schedule and it was continually moving backwards for about a year before disappearing all together (along with later seasons of that Jackie Chan cartoon).

First thing: yes penguins and bow-ties are extremely compatible AND REALLY CUTE

Second thing: why is that naked lady touching that little girl? Actual actual actual paedophilia?!

Anyway, the DBZ style Halo segment was my favorite. A lot of the Halo fans grew up with DBZ so I am assuming it must have been fairly popular. It’s also depressing how mediocre this anthology was given how this could had been another gateway to anime, not sure if the money wasn’t there or the studios didn’t care but they really should had brought their A team on this project. But that goes for all this mainstream anthology works.

If we’re counting minor penguin appearances, I believe there were penguins in episode 3 of Cardcaptor Sakura when she visits and aquarium.

I certainly like the animation in this show. While not every episode’s animation direction is as free and just simply good as 5 and especially 6′s, I still find the average Azazel episode more praiseworthy than that of a typical manga adaptation.

I agree with you, I can’t really hate Manga Entertainment either. When all this “hard-boiled” attitude came up, I was 16-17, and really made it easy for me to go on watching japanese animation without being too embarassed. It was adolescent, and so was I, but it sure wasn´t “kiddie stuff”.

If it wasn’t for that marketing angle, most old anime broadcast in Europe or South America would have remained a foggy childhood memory for many contemporary adult fans. It served its purpose, I guess. But for the average north american fan, that edgy image is all he ever knew.

/m/ = “this really good stand-out scene animated by one of Cowboy Bebop’s best animators RUINED GAIKING FOREVER.”

Guu stays pretty much on that discomfort comedy level. Mizushima’s big influence is Sam Raimi, and that torturing of his lead is also Raimi’s thing. Except of course Mizushima doesn’t have to literally drag Bruce Campbell through a forest.

I haven’t seen Adult Empire Strikes Back yet (but I need to)… I think he was the lead writer for that? As far as I know people care more about that movie’s themes and message than its humor though.

The thing about Yuasa’s humor is that it’s more just humorous situations than outright jokes, so the viewer’s amusement depends mostly on the atmosphere (which Yuasa is good at). But then so many shows fail at that by having the characters explain the joke to the audience.

There’s an interview with Daichi about Kuruneko (http://jin.jcic.or.jp/en/anime/animenews/2011_03_22/) where he goes into some detail about his process. He mentions Tetsuo Yasumi telling him not to bother with scenarios in gag shows, which is something certain overwritten, overhyped “comedies” could pay attention to.

What did you think of Mizushima’s other work? Hale+Guu was what introduced me to him, and is still a favourite.

What I DO agree with is in preferring Azazel-san over Enma-kun. I only watched it because you kept praising it and while Enma tops it in terms of design work (considering I really like the 70s Nagai + Takahiro Kimura style), Azazel’s animation is way better and I’m surprised that 90% of the jokes actually work pretty well. I’ve always had some serious issues with Japanese joke delivery but I’m not seeing any of that in this show.

As for the creepy weasel… http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dzGMOFBdiWE it’s far worse in this video than it is in that picture, especially at the beginning. Dezaki’s known for being good at making things really dramatic and the fact that he managed to make the introduction of a WEASEL into complete nightmare fuel is a testament to that. The use of color and the weird aura it has around it is fantastically terrifying.

And that’s the thing, the friend I showed Dokonjo Gaeru to is Portuguese and grew up on stuff like Doraemon, so he doesn’t have the painted “mature animation” image of Japanese cartoons that a lot of Americans have. I can’t really hate Manga Entertainment for existing considering they’re responsible for helping produce a bunch of good Production IG shows in the 2000s, but they’re also responsible to a considerable extent for a lot of the strange views on anime that English-speakers have to day. Then they passed the torch on to Adult Swim which airs fighting shonens as “adult only animation”.

I agree though that there’s a lot of preconceptions (specially in north american fandom) about what anime is supossed to be, and here’s my theory about it: anime was marketed in the US as a genre in itself. That’s true for most of the world post-”Akira”, but in many other countries anime was broadcast before the “japan pop culture explosion” on TV as child programming, along with “G.I. Joe” or “Transformers”.

I watched Dokonjo Gaeru on TV as a kid, along with Lady Oscar, Cobra, old magical girl shows, sports anime, and many other genres. So, “anime” to me means “japanese cartoons”, and honestly, I think that’s all there is. It’s the japanese word for animation.

Finally, it’s funny that you mention Anipages. That dude is simply interested in the animation itself, independently of the characteristics of the show he’s analyzing. He’ll review both Naruto or Mindgame, as long as the animation is interesting, and in that specific niche, I think it speaks of open-mindedness.

“Truly if you call yourself an anime fan , do not, i repeat do not watch this anime show.” is blatantly the most revealing quote out of the bunch and in my opinion the one that you can talk the most about. I’ve seen you make various comments about how “if you can’t see anything at all to praise about this show, maybe cartoons aren’t for you”. That’s just the thing – most anime fans are not really cartoon fans, and if they are they view “cartoons” and “anime” as two entirely different entities that should be criticized separately using entirely different standards. The reason Panty & Stocking became popular with people beyond the “anime is just Japanese cartoons” demographic (a demographic that actually seems to be mainly composed of very young people who only started watching anime recently… a lot of Deviantart kids are this way, as I’ve come to find out, which is funny considering how maligned and loathed those kids are) is that a lot of people convinced themselves that the show was animated the way it was because it was a PARODY of American cartoons as opposed to a TRIBUTE to them. A very common opinion among anime fans is that they started watching anime not as an extension of Western cartoon fandom, but as a way to get AWAY from American cartoons. This is why few popular anime critics talk on length about animation, and why people who normally pretend to not care about animation quality were up in arms over Naruto 167 “looking like fucking Looney Tunes”; just being “wacky”, “shallow” and “flashy” is something commonly associated by these groups with American cartoons, while anime is generally praised for its supposed brilliant storytelling and finer artistic qualities. The entire idea behind anime’s Western marketing in the 80s and early 90s was “it’s like cartoons but MATURE AS HELL”, and their fanbase of sci-fi fans who couldn’t care less about cartoons were what planted the seed for the current anime fanbase, a fanbase that doesn’t even view anime as cartoons. This sometimes leads to absolutely ridiculous things like a Romanian channel having a “late night adults only anime block” yet not affording shows that can pass off as “adult only”, so you had stuff like the Parappa the Rapper anime and Kyoro-chan (two of the only shows I watched on that channel funnily enough) airing at 3 AM right next to stuff like Hellsing.

The truth is that the anime fandom is one that to this day is desperately fishing for legitimacy, and to many people, forcing the idea that anime is on a whole new level of its own beyond the average “cartoon” is still very important even if they’re too self aware to actively voice this like they once did. There’s a reason why in anime communities mostly composed of older people who have an almost fully developed sense of self-awareness and are, according to most of society, “too old to be into this stuff”, claiming that Gurren Lagann is your favorite show and that Legend of the Galactic Heroes doesn’t appeal much to you is bound to be viewed as an awful opinion or at least get a “lol” response and yet the opposite is viewed as “actually having standards”. (just for the record I’m only half-projecting here – I do feel that LOGH is not my thing and I made people angry over this opinion in the past but Gurren is not my favorite anime).

And really, Enma-kun is as “cartoony” and childish as you can get – the character designs are colorful and silly, it’s full of slapstick and ridiculous gags and its humor is only “mature” in that a lot of parents would be worried about their children watching this stuff – not only does it not have the tiniest pretense of intelligence, it’s also got a lot of traits that instantly make the average modern anime fan (and hell, even a lot of the older crowd who got into anime through “Star Blazers”) think of American cartoons.

Not to say that the “fuck old anime” stance doesn’t also contribute to it – I’ll be the first to readily admit that I used to have a huge amount of negative prejudice towards old stuff. A lot of older anime fans are the type of people who say things like “will you watch all 500 episodes of this amazingly well written sci-fi political drama from the 80s that is made for REAL ADULTS, or will you keep watching your kiddy modern style over substance garbage?” and this gave me a very negative view of old anime as a whole. You’ll often see people praise hyper-detailed SHADING AND DETAIL OVAs but you’ll rarely see someone pimp Toei children’s films from the 60s and early 70s with half as much enthusiasm and rarely as more than just a “yeah things were different back then” or “it’s nice to see where it all started” novelty.

As a result, for the longest time I was like “yeah I guess I like Lupin and a handful of other series but aside from that I don’t really like old anime” and missed out on some really enjoyable stuff from that era – the main reason why I started going out of my way to dig for old stuff is reading up on Hiroyuki Imaishi’s influences. I googled up Dokonjo Gaeru, saw a few clips of foreign dubs and a full raw Japanese episode that I thought was hilarious fun as hell. I thought, “what the hell, how come a lot of shows from the 70s are subbed, but not this one?”. That’s when it finally hit me: it’s not that these shows are old – it’s that they’re so ridiculous and cartoony and supposedly “western”, something that puts off a lot of people who consider themselves “anime fans”.

And funnily enough, I linked that episode of Dokonjo Gaeru to one of my friends. He’s the type of person who watches and enjoys American cartoons and anime equally… and yet he rarely bothers with old stuff at all unless I make him watch it (we saw Animal Treasure Island together recently and he thought it was “silly but fun”). You know what his first reaction to Dokonjo Gaeru was? “I wish more modern anime stopped trying to be as pretty, shiny and detailed as possible and went for fast cartoony stuff like this”. Note that this is a guy who is absolutely NOT the type of person who reads Cartoon Brew and Anipages Daily and writes that stuff down as his personal bible or cares about his “power level” and hierarchy in the fandom, but someone who just watches whatever instantly appeals to him.

I actually really hate alot of modern anime character designs. They seem bland and soulless to me (I’m trying to watch “Anohana” at the moment, but it has exactly that look to my eyes). In that regard I like the look of Enma-kun. That said, it’s not the sort of series I feel compelled to follow: I watched one episode, and enjoyed it, and felt that it was something I approved of, but didn’t really want to watch any more. That may have more to do with the target audience than anything else.

It’s true that I really admired the no-deaths rule that seemed to float around One Piece. But come on, 1 death after all this time… and it’s led by a very interesting arc as well.

Oda will always continue to be an amazing person in my eyes. *_*

Cry Freedom Fighters wasn’t too bad as long as you looked at it as trying to capture the style of those original bombastic Uncle Sam comics rather than saying anything about today.

Pretty much in agreement on the Young Justice episodes proper. Appalling script that made nearly everyone unlikeable apart from Aqualad and T.O.Morrow. And Snapper Carr in that he didn’t say anything. Plus when the character designs aren’t being animated well/at all, they look horrible. Like people hanging on clothes hangers.

…Except for “Brave & Bold,” I guess. I’ve enjoyed much of it, but the past several episodes have really left me cold, from “Cry Freedom Fighters!” (Hey kids, Orwell was right! Ignorance IS strength! Join the TEA Party!) to the embarrassing “Darkseid Descending!” which took several characters I love and made me absolutely hate their guts.

My jury’s still out on “Young Justice.” Loved the pilot, but the follow-up episode was, as is the norm, a flat tire. Miss Martian’s self-debasing shtick takes only a few milliseconds to wear out its welcome and then promptly makes itself at home, and Superboy’s angry jerk routine likewise stinks up the room. (Oh, I’ll be happy when he eats it.)

Stuff I watch regularly: “Futurama,” “Mighty B!” (when it airs), “Squidbillies” (I grew up in that sort of mess).

The doubting character with low self esteem who becomes a badass, the gun toting female with knee high boots and large chesticles, and the big brother character who throws logic to the curb were a lot more resonant with general audiences I think than the robot battles, the plot, or even the animation style.

I kinda enjoyed PanSto more, myself: the unified and controlled but still madcap stylish art direction is pure sex, the crazy mouth-flap animation is fun as hell and the stupid cartoon entertainment was perfectly directed and storyboarded.

Also – watched the trailer for Iron man, and couldn’t shake the feeling that Stark looks like an Italian porn actor, which kept distracting me. I still noticed the not-so-good CG, though.

And it’s even worse when it descends into a hideously cliquey/elitist mishmash of injokes and 4chan references only certain people are going to get.