anime themes

[Sephiroth]

for you hard core anime people can u answer a few questions for me?

first i am asking about things that i see in anime adds, on TV and in stores.

what is the deal with huge robots? i think many of them are cool and the ideas are neat. what started the robot craz?

wierd animals, or animals acting like human. well not furries but animals in everyday life. axample would be DBZ and a few others. Is this for pure fantasy or something else?

mid air combat, energy balls and other strange fighting. agian i point to DBZ. Why do fights always seem to be in mid air, i understand the energy balls and magic. the only reason i can think of is for effect, it looks cooler. (i thought it was funny when the simpsons did a spoof on it)

other machines, man some of the things they make up look so kick ass, others look plain retarded. i dont see much of this creativity in many american cartoons.

the only reason i am not a fan of it is cause it is just too wierd for me. it comes from a different culture, and i am not even american. i respect the work and such that goes into it and i like some of the themes, yet others just leave me asking "why??"

[Job]

Sephiroth said:

Why do fights always seem to be in mid air, i understand the energy balls and magic. the only reason i can think of is for effect, it looks cooler. (i thought it was funny when the simpsons did a spoof on it)

The Simpsons did a spoof on it?! Damn, I've got to see that!

[Sephiroth]

it was with tony hawk and homer, it was on during that 300th thing

[IMJack]

Sephiroth said:

for you hard core anime people can u answer a few questions for me?

I'm not "hard core", but I am well read. I've wondered some of these things myself.

what is the deal with huge robots? i think many of them are cool and the ideas are neat. what started the robot craz?

Blame FASA and Battletech. There's a pretty direct correlation there.

wierd animals, or animals acting like human. well not furries but animals in everyday life. axample would be DBZ and a few others. Is this for pure fantasy or something else?

Blame Walt Disney and Mickey mouse. The first modern manga artists borrowed a lot from ol' Walt (big eyes, overstated "features", anthropomorphic animals), and everyone else has just taken the concept and built on it.

mid air combat, energy balls and other strange fighting. agian i point to DBZ. Why do fights always seem to be in mid air, i understand the energy balls and magic. the only reason i can think of is for effect, it looks cooler. (i thought it was funny when the simpsons did a spoof on it)

Blame Bruce Lee and Chinese wire work for this. Martial arts has gained even more mistique in its homeland than it does in the West.

other machines, man some of the things they make up look so kick ass, others look plain retarded. i dont see much of this creativity in many american cartoons.

This is Japan we're talking about. Their main trade is taking basic technology, combining it, and making it look/act cooler than normal. :)

the only reason i am not a fan of it is cause it is just too wierd for me. it comes from a different culture, and i am not even american. i respect the work and such that goes into it and i like some of the themes, yet others just leave me asking "why??"

Fair 'nuff.

[Ichor]

I'm not sure what the first giant robot themed anime was, but I think Voltron was the one that made it popular. Transformers did too, but they are a different kind of giant robot (sentient robots instead of battle machines used by humans).

[Sephiroth]

i think dexters lab is sort of a spoof on the big robots and such. i know there was an episode that was a spoof of speed racer.

others i remember, that were and still are shown back home was transformers.

[Job]

Ichor said:

I'm not sure what the first giant robot themed anime was, but I think Voltron was the one that made it popular. Transformers did too, but they are a different kind of giant robot (sentient robots instead of battle machines used by humans).

Hm. Gigantor comes to mind.

[BlueSonnet]

Hanna Barbara are always doing a spoof of anime these days. The PPG episode with powerpuff bunny had a scene in at the end similar to Akira (explosion shaped like a growing ball).

IMJack has basically pointed the main bits out.

btw Disney has also done a spoof of anime on one or two occasions in case it wasn't obvious for some people (Lion King = Kimba the white lion rip-off. I'm not expressing my opinion on this but it is this sort of extreme that tends to infuriates an anime fan to no end).

[Rotting Corpse]

Sephiroth said:

what is the deal with huge robots? i think many of them are cool and the ideas are neat. what started the robot craz?

Gigantor started the craz. Huge robots are cool. I want my own gundam.
As for mid air fights and fireballs.
Mid air fights are eayer to animate ya dont
have to worry about foot placement.Cuz when ya kick or punch on the ground your feet dont stay in the same place. Fireballes are cool. Every own wishes they could throw fireballs.

[Lost Soul]

South Park did a pretty brutal akira spoof. It also involved rosie Odonnel somehow..

[Rotting Corpse]

Lost Soul said:

South Park did a pretty brutal akira spoof. It also involved rosie Odonnel somehow..

I reamber that one. Since we are talking about akira. Have any of you seen K'999 from the fighting game king of the fighters 2002 He is a tetsuo rip off. Hers a pic of him so ya can see for your self. http://www.404notfound.com.br/404gn/galerias/snk/kof2001/kof2001_k9999.jpg

[BlueSonnet]

Demons Hand said:

I reamber that one. Since we are talking about akira. Have any of you seen K'999 from the fighting game king of the fighters 2002 He is a tetsuo rip off. Hers a pic of him so ya can see for your self. http://www.404notfound.com.br/404gn/galerias/snk/kof2001/kof2001_k9999.jpg

Agreed! Blatant rip-off (and one of the characters in the emporers new groove looks like a character from Akira too).

Anime is a big inspiration for modern fiction these days IMHO.

[niguel]

the only good thing in anime is the beautiful girls. hentai...

[Little Faith]

I think Anime has come to the west to stay.

Not really in it's pure original form, but scores of newer european and american cartoonists are using manga-style posing and face-work ideas, though they are twisting them in their own way.

Just look at all newer superhero comics.

[Rotting Corpse]

Ichor said:

Transformers

Transformers is ont anime. The orignal toyes were from Japan (the metal ones).
The show how ever is form the US. The pople that made Gi-Joe also did transformers.Transformers were just toys and nothing else. The Gi-joe people just made the story,the cartoon and comics.

[Sharessa]

Lost Soul said:

South Park did a pretty brutal akira spoof. It also involved rosie Odonnel somehow..

Heh...I think you're talking about the Trapper Keeper episode. Yeah...it ended up assimilating Cartman and turining him into a giant squishy monster thing like the guy on Akira. They also ripped off of 2001: A Space Odessy (the deactivation scene) and The Terminator (the guy who comes from the future to warn them the the Trapper Keeper will destroy the earth). And as long as we're talking about spoofs and rip-offs...

Someone said something about Lion King. It's actualy just a retelling of Hamlet (I think, I'm sadly not very knowlegable about Shakespere). The plot is like 90% the same, or so I'm told.

And also, I saw an episode of DBZ were they did a complete rip off of this one scene in The Terminator. The scene in Terminator was when that one guy (John Connor's father) was walking down this hall in some hideout the humans had and he looks to the side and sees some women and children huddled in their rags against the walls. Then a guy walks in the door at the end of the hallway and dogs start barking at him. The T-800, having been found out starts blasting away and reaking havok. The scene in DBZ was so very similar it wasn't funny. It was when Trunks was telling them about the future he was from. In the flashback, he's walking down a hallway in some hideaway the survivors of the androids's attacks have made. He looks to the side and sees women and children in rags huddling against the walls. Then the door busts open and the androids are standing there. It was such a blatant rip-off I almost laughed. Actualy, I probably did laugh considering thats what I do when I watch DBZ. o_O

[BlueSonnet]

I'm left wondering why anime spoofs things like the KFC colonel and Queen but not things like dexter's lab and the simpsons. Probably because a) it'll just be getting ridicolous b) the simpsons is banned in japan (or so i've been told).

Little Faith said:

Not really in it's pure original form, but scores of newer european and american cartoonists are using manga-style posing and face-work ideas, though they are twisting them in their own way.

I HATE TOTALLY SPIES!!!

[Sharessa]

Simpsons is banned in Japan? What the fuck?

[Little Faith]

Japanese censorship laws seems to be beyond the realm of mortal logic.

[Ichor]

That's odd... I remember waaay back in the NES days when people were complaining about the US censorship. Remember Mortal Kombat for Nintendo? If I remember right, the Japanese version allowed blood while the US version made it clear, like sweat. It was only by the use of Game Genie that we were able to see something resembling blood, but even then it didn't look all that great, and it took quite a while for someone to even discover the code.

[IMJack]

I'm hearing/finding nothing about the Simpsons being banned in Japan.

[Empyre]

Other cultures have different sensibilities from us.

In Europe, they have no problem with nudity in games, but American game makers have to tone down the violence for the European market. This is the opposite of the way it is is here in the US.

In Japan, they have both. There is the above-mentioned violence in console games, and many of the most popular PC "games" in Japan are manga soft porn.

[BlueSonnet]

It's because the simpsons have 3 fingers and 1 thumb. That's a sign of the mafia in japan (ie having one of your fingers chopped off) so that's why they banned it. So don't expect to find bob the builder or fireman sam (english shows here) over there either.