I was apparently so caught in gaming and other distraction that I have forgotten this blog.
Well, to be honest, there is also the fandumb on the part of both anime veterans and new guys to the hobby. This is the kind of discussion that makes me sick.
As a veteran (remember I started watching them when I was 4 or 6 years old) I am of the opinion that we are way too harsh to the “new” anime. A lot are pointing fingers to moé as the single cause of the decline that seems to be ongoing. How is it different from the situation of the 1970s where Super Robot reigned supreme, or the 1980s where it was mostly sport anime? I mean, I can get tired of the always angry, always impatient and ALWAYS SHOUTING mecha pilot or the sport prodigy archetypes, they did annoy me at one point of my life as anime fan. I was always more fond of the monolithic badass of few words (like Kenshiro, Guts or The Man with No Name in Sergio Leone’s movies).
When I think about, I can think of two reasons, even tho they are not the sole reasons. Until over 10 years ago, we relied on our local importers and localizers for our anime fix. They chose for the local market and demand of the local public. I insist on the local part because every countries are fortunately not the same. As a result, USA anime fandom is not the same as those from Mexico, France, Spain, Italy, Singapore and Philipine, to name a few countries. So, while the importers gave us a choice, it was a limited choice that catered to the taste of the fandom of the moment. If sport anime is in, like because of a world cup or the olympics, one could expect more sport anime, otherwise it is the action shounen and the romcom shoujo.
It was more rare to see an anime catering to another kind of audience. Onii-sama e created a lot of shock among the french parents associations because of its homosexual tone, let’s not get started on Hokuto no Ken. So our choice was limited by what taste our education gave us and what the moral guardians allowed. In this time of broadband internet, the importers and the moral guardians hardly matters anymore, you have now the choice to watch ultraviolent anime (Elfen Lied) and what people calls girly moeshit (Aria) and anything in between.A single click and at the cost of HD space and free time, here you have the lastest episode of… Bleach, yeah an example. Yes guys, this anime the importers took so long to license, you have already seen it months or years before every “casuals”. Here, you can chuckle when your friends are telling you that Death Note is the shit, “Yeah, right, Slowpoke.” Now think about it, you now have the CHOICE. And you can see ALL the bad, with the mediocre, average, the good and the potential classic that people may talk about for the years to come. But you are seeing the bad, really and think to yourself, “What the fuck is this shit?”. You need to remember what I said about the importers. Yes, they filtered out the bad shit for thirty years, and sometimes some of the bad shit of the 1970-1990s does get through. Those are the series that are lying somewhere in a closet, shamefully hidden by the guys who licensed it and collecting dust, those are the anime that gets a few episodes aired before being pulled out of air because of poor reception. Like, “what was that anime about a new sport mixing baseball with football (what USA calls soccer)?” And you have forgotten the title, and it may be better that way because it was that bad. This is one of those anime that makes you feel lucky if you have never wasted your time with.
Now the second reason, the anime netsphere, be it forums, image boards or blogs. Before them, you relied on anime magazines. They told you what is bad and what is awesome, but not anymore. Why? Well, you can look at blogs or forums to have a hot reaction over the lastest episode of Bleach. It’s easier now to voice your opinion, and easier to be listened. The thing is that, one complains, followed by another one and another one. See where I am going? One can go to youtube and read the comments about music or movies. “Music/movies used to be better in the 1960s-1980s”. How can 1990s be bad when music give us The Cranberries, Radiohead and more, and when we got Pulp Fiction, The Crow and Se7en? How could 2000s be worse than 1980s and 1990s when you got Muse, Masterplan for music, and Shaun of the Dead, Lord of the Rings, Gladiator, Hot Fuzz for movies?
Now extend this to anime and can you see how the whole “Things used to be better in the *insert decade here*” have become laughable and disgusting to me?
I do have hope in the creative and entertainment industry of nowaday, and I want to. I am not just going to sit on my ass and cry over how more anime should be like *insertgreatclassic* here. I do want to be surprised, nicely, by the likes of Gungrave, Durararara and Bakemonogatari. And if it meant to have to roll my eyes over yet another harem anime/mecha anime/Generic Light Novel, fine. That would not stop me from trying to search for the diamond, I mean, afte all, you DO have to dig through dirt and shit to find some, right?
But the current problem I meet is when I tell that modern anime is not as bad as veterans makes it out to be, and name the series I mentioned, I get the “Yes, but…” answer. What I am supposed to answer? What those modern anime have to do or have to hope to live up the classics? I have yet to hear a compelling answer regarding why those classics are untouchable standards that everyone should bow to and never criticize. But until, all those reasons belongs to the subjective realm and are therefore not acceptable for me.
I may see myself as a veteran, but I think that veterans are just way too severe to modern anime. Especially when they forget that their classics were aired among rubbish too.
On the topic of anime, this season lacks a lot of something. Fall usually bring something good. While Summer was usually the weakest in term of offer. Summer 09 had Bakemonogatari, Tokyo Magnitude 8.0 and Umineko. Fall? Not so much. With the exception of Darker than Black, IF you liked the first.
I am trying to put what I feel about Endless Eight in simple words. However, I can’t. Just saying it is shit is not enough. To me, it is the same effect as watching Roland Garros tennis tournament where I bet on how long before all french players get kicked out of the tournament, before we get to the more interesting matches.
I would try to justify with, “Well, KyoAni always had pacing problems, just as Makoto arc showed.” However, the pacing issue have nothing to do about it. Laziness? Not really. I mean, while they reanimate the same scenes and revoice the same dialogues, lights, frames and general cinematography are different. With varying degrees of quality.
Whoever thought that it was a good idea to stretch of 30ish pages short story up to… eight episodes until now was very wrong. That guy deserves to be have all kind of unspeakable things done to him. It’s an idea on the level of “let’s bungee jump off the Effeil Tower! Without the bungee cord!”, or “Let’s wear the same board as Bruce Willis in Die Hard 3 in the middle of a ghetto!” You think it is a good idea because it requires sheer balls of titanium, until reality comes to hit you in the face, HARD. However, it appears that the ones behind that idea had NOT realized it, or just did the ostriche trick: stick one’s head in a hole to not confront the reality. There is a difference between productive audacity and vain audacity. Guess on which side I think Endless Eight is sitting.
As for the publicity side of the thing, I think it is on the same level as New Coke in the 1980s or the arrogant advertisement french campain for the Nintendo 64 in the mid 1990s. It promises you it is going to be a great thing, something like reinvented steel, then you see it is not the case.
It is unnecessary. What is sad about it is that I LOVED Endless Eight in its printed form. And they managed to make Sighs, my least favorite of the series, all the more desirable! And people stated that K-on! is the most cynical work by KyoAni as hard cold fact! Personally, I do see the ugly head of mercantile cynicism way more in Endless Eight.
The bottom line, screw Endless Eight, wake me up when it is over. I’ll be somewhere, doing pew pew in Eve Online.
A LOT of animated works had the pretention to deal with war, promising to deliver THE TRUTH about what war is, how people feels about it and should. However, too few of them actually succeed. The biggest offenders, under the “anti-war” clothing, actually does better at glorifying it. By choosing the pilot as archetype, it glamorize it.
As I have said, too few animated works managed to give people a taste of what war is and does, and how it affect people. Grave of the Fireflies is one of them. Waltz with Bashir is another of them. “Them” being the few.
Yeah, we know what’s happening with Haruhi. However, what’s making me laugh is when some fans saying inanities like “At least, back in the day, when Gainax did it with Evangelion, IT WAS AWESOME.”
Then I look at the age range of those who said that: late 10s (16 to 19) to early 20s, I can only cringe and smirk. Eva aired first in late 1995 and ended in 1996. Do your math according to their age range. Myself, I am 29. Do your math again. So what can I say about “Back in the day, when Gainax did it with Evangelion, IT WAS AWESOME.”? Did all japanese thought it was awesome?
Wrong. In regard of the reaction of a part of the viewer pool and the sponsors, NOT so quite.
Gainax did not get an endless stream of praise mails, the reactions were as polarized. Those were not as many as you would believe or like to think. I am old enough, getting closer to my 30s. I don’t exactly have a first hand experience of Eva, not living in Japan and all. However, I got reports, I read articles and interviews of Anno and some of the Gainax staff who were involved. I talked with the few japanese students who were in Paris and experienced it first hand.
And let’s be blunt, Gainax and Anno also got hate mails. And it had gone so far that Anno got death threats for the direction that Evangelion have taken. Moreover, parts of the otaku crowd grew discomfortable (they felt that Shinji and the cast were mirrors cast before their eyes) and the anime slowly alienated more and more sponsors who would not bring their money on the table after seeing where this is going (not to mention that the Gainax staff suffered from schedule issues). Back in the day, remember that Eva was first a commission from a famous toy manufacturer who wanted a series about young teens fighting in giant robots against an unknown enemy.
Thus, with a very thin budget, Gainax gave us the famous two final episodes. And RAGE ensued. A RAGE that culminated with even more hate mails and death threats. Pressured, Gainax and Anno released the two movies, infamous for their sheer nihilism and the Shinji fap to Asuka, or Shinji choking Asuka scenes. Contrasting with the more heartwarming, although abstract, final episode of the TV series. Then Anno left Eva behind him. Coming back on it only about ten years later, when the flames died out (well, not really).
I told you this story because I could not really stay silent when zealotous Haruhi and Eva fans said that ‘At least, back in the day, Gainax was awesome and got praised for that.”
Not entirely true but HEY PINK-TINTED NOSTALGIA GOGGLES ARE AWESOME, RIGHT?
Did KyoAni get hate mails for making Endless Eight as it is? Surely. Is it as bad as Gainax back in the day? I don’t think so.
However, I think that KyoAni need to get out of what I call Studio Hubris as fast as possible. A stage that some studio had gone through in the past. I really think that firing Yutaka Yamamoto have done more damage to KyoAni than fans would like to think.
Meanwhile, I resume playing Umineko no Naku Koro Ni AND Eve Online, yes I finally left RO ;)
EDIT:
Therefore, I’ll add that you guys need to be careful when you state things like “Back in the day…”
This can be wrong. As examples, Carpenter’s “The Thing” and “Big Trouble in Little China” FLOPPED back in the day, it’s the VHS market and the word-to-mouth from fans of the movie that vindicated the films. Another example, “The Good the Bad & The Ugly” got shot down by the critics of its time period, because of their scorn for the spaghetti western genre, it’s only way latter that they recognized that the movie was, well, awesome.
Thirty years, over one hundred tomes, more than enough to see characters getting old and married, to see kingdoms rise and fall. But a question was never answered: Is Guin’s leopard head a mask or a natural part of himself?
This question will never be answered. Kaoru Kurimoto left us on last evening, May 26th 2009, after a struggle against pancreatic cancer. Guin, Linda, Remus and Ishtvan are now orphans; and the saga will never be concluded. She have now joined Gygax, Jordan, Tolkien and other big names of the genre.
For those who still follow the animated adaptation, I still do, enjoy it.
Better scans should come out soon, along with translations. I mean, Force’s chapter 0 got one after all.
Forgive the puny scans, those were taken from a site you should know. As I have predicted, Vivid focus on Vivio AND the Mahou Shoujo part of the franchise. However, the magitech that gives Nanoha its flavor and its lore are still here.
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