Animation
Let's talk about some animated shows, shall we? I've been watching one recently that I'd like to talk about, so I'm just going to gush about that, but feel free to veer off into whatever animated thing you think is awesome.
Conversation about manga got me thinking about a show I've been watching recently, The Tatami Galaxy. I stumbled on this completely by mistake, I was checking the new shows up on Hulu when the character designs in the preview thumbnail really caught my eye. Considering most modern anime character designs do a lot to turn me off to a show, this was a pretty big thing.
The show's art design is superb. It doesn't feel as cheap as the stuff made for kids, even if it may use many of the same cost-saving tricks, it hides them well. The character designs make me think of Ukiyo-e prints, which in the current homogenized anime world is extremely refreshing. They also include some live action film, which due to what they do with it actually looks really cool intermingling with the animation.
The show's story and narrative style took me almost the whole first two episodes to "get", but by the end of the second episode it became obvious what they're going for. Seems like a trick better suited to a short film than a series, but I'm really interested to see if they go any further with this and what paths they'll take this thing in. Even if it's just episodic from here on in The episodes almost REQUIRE either constant pausing or a second watch just to get everything, the show and spoken narration goes REALLY fast. It's worth a look just for the art, though, it remains visually interesting throughout the whole thing.
It has only aired through the second episode in Japan, and Funimation is posting subbed within 8 hours of the Japanese airing. It's the first Japanese show to really grab me since...oh, Paranoia Agent, I guess? It's really hard to recall these things and when they fit chronologically sometimes.
Conversation about manga got me thinking about a show I've been watching recently, The Tatami Galaxy. I stumbled on this completely by mistake, I was checking the new shows up on Hulu when the character designs in the preview thumbnail really caught my eye. Considering most modern anime character designs do a lot to turn me off to a show, this was a pretty big thing.
The show's art design is superb. It doesn't feel as cheap as the stuff made for kids, even if it may use many of the same cost-saving tricks, it hides them well. The character designs make me think of Ukiyo-e prints, which in the current homogenized anime world is extremely refreshing. They also include some live action film, which due to what they do with it actually looks really cool intermingling with the animation.
The show's story and narrative style took me almost the whole first two episodes to "get", but by the end of the second episode it became obvious what they're going for. Seems like a trick better suited to a short film than a series, but I'm really interested to see if they go any further with this and what paths they'll take this thing in. Even if it's just episodic from here on in The episodes almost REQUIRE either constant pausing or a second watch just to get everything, the show and spoken narration goes REALLY fast. It's worth a look just for the art, though, it remains visually interesting throughout the whole thing.
It has only aired through the second episode in Japan, and Funimation is posting subbed within 8 hours of the Japanese airing. It's the first Japanese show to really grab me since...oh, Paranoia Agent, I guess? It's really hard to recall these things and when they fit chronologically sometimes.
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MAD will take place in the universe of MAD magazine and feature classic characters such as Spy Vs. Spy and Alfred E. Newman.
Scooby Doo Mystery Inc. Episode 1: Beware The Beast From Below
Scooby Doo Mystery Inc. has had a preview pilot out already that showed off a lot of neat ideas, like an episodic series with an overarching plot, Shaggy and Velma being a secret couple, actually creepy monsters with real victims, a direct sequel to Scooby Doo: Where Are You, being set in one central location, and various other neat ideas. the first episode was notable for being the only Scooby Doo episode that didn't start with a theme song, but instead with a creepy misty logo and an episode title.
Rather Dashing, you should check out Funimations show House of Five Leaves. It also has a unique style that reminds me of Ukiyo-e prints.
Right now, as far as anime I've been watching
XXXHolic,
B Gata H Kei, and
Ergo Proxy.
I was wary of B Gata at first as the premise sounded very lewd, but it turned out to be a rather tastefully done romance premise if you can get past episode one's fanservice. About as tastefully done as its premise could be done anyway.
I also recommend Fullmetal Alchemist and Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood. Brotherhood butchers its first 14 episodes and the first series does them so much better, but it does get way way better. I recommend watching the first series before Brotherhood though. It's also famous for some of its fights, that mix science, deduction, and stylish acrobatics. Characters don't just beat away at each other, they have to use their heads to figure out how to beat their foes.
The series juggles more themes than I know how to count. Science vs. religion, what is taboo, revenge, genocide, greed, ambition, military and war, serial killing, the seven deadly sins, scientific laws, segregation, racism, etc etc.
Fullmetal Alchemist - Episode 1
I recommend this more than any other series I can recommend on the face of the planet Earth.
(I didn't finish the story because I guessed everything that would happen, and find Japanese anime story to be very lacking in general. I get that sensibilities are different in different cultures, but even as an Arab, whose culture comes between Japan and American/British, I find anime badly thought out and structured 99% of the time. I'm sure there's an anime out there for me, but I'd be lying if I said I was bothered with looking for it anymore.)
I love animation, even if I haven't seen anything besides a few select movies lately. I've been watching Wallace and Gromit over and over lately; I have a three year old sister who just demands to see it, but she gets lonely watching it alone. I've seen that, My Neighbour Totoro and Kiki's Delivery Service around 100 times each in the past year (and read the same five story books far more often; kids are demanding, but they have short-term memory). In that time I've read five of my own books and seen five of my own movies, summer vacation included. Fun!
But I started watching King of the Hill today (don't know what episodes, just rando ones). Not much in terms of animation and the designs, while effective, aren't going to win any big awards, but goddamn the show is good. I laugh out loud a couple of times every episode, and I at least smile, or laugh a bit, at every other line. The writing and characters are top notch. I'm watching it in between bouts of studying, and it gets your mind off the books and makes it fresh for knowledge. I know it's a popular show, but I wanted to give it props.
If you are looking for an awesome anime movie, Kamui no Ken is the way to go.
Oh, animation as in cartoons? Let's see...
After 2 years of not watching The Simpsons, I finally watched The Simpsons. I thought it was good. Sure, it's not as fresh as it used to be, but they try, and more than occasionally they deliver great laughs. The plots get a little weaker, though, as each episode feels more like a series of connected events rather than a full story.
I've recently watched The Drawn Together Movie: The Movie, and while I love how they kept the animation style good while using Flash, I really didn't think it was that funny. Frankly, I never like the show that much. Not because it was vulgar and violent, but because the vulgarity and violence had no contrast, since they use it every scene, which kinda weakens their effect.
And despite being criticized by Drawn Together for "Only being popular because it's preachy", South Park's latest episode, Crippled Summer, had me in stitches, and it didn't have any message or moral whatsoever, and it barely offends anyone (well, disabled people and their relatives, maybe). It was just plain funny.
I've been watching Comedy Central's Ugly Americans, and it's a pretty cool show. I like the animation and art style, and the writing is pretty funny, though some pop-culture references may feel forced. But, I still think the overall show is really fun, I mean, c'mon, it has Jack Mcbrayer as Kong with OCD.
I also like Archer. I love how it's basically a live action show, but animated. All the characters' gestures, their facial expressions, are subtle and not too exaggerated like most cartoons, and the humor really just rely on their voice acting. And it's dirty and violent enough to be funny, but not too much to lose its class. I never saw Frisky Dingo or Sealab 2021 before, but after seeing this, I kinda wished I had. Also, it has Jessica Walter.
Homestarrunner.com has the best flash animation I've ever seen on the internet, considering how often they make new episodes (well, until recently). In fact, the only time I've ever seen flash animation better than Homestarrunner.com without doing too much traditional animation is Foster's Home For Imaginary Friends. The characters in HR.com don't look like a bunch of body parts tacked together and moved like puppets, but they really look natural when they move, as if it's one whole being. Also, while the jokes and the dialogs uses plenty of random and absurd humor, it has its own style of randomness and absurdity that it feels like it makes total sense when it happen.
But most importantly, I love Venture Bros. Everything about the show is great; the characters, the writing, the art design, the animation, everything. I love its retro-science fiction style. I love the universe it takes place in, and I love its "GI Joe enlists Hunter S. Thompson and The Village People to fight an evil organization lead by David Bowie".
I'm also waiting for Futurama. I love the show, and I hope it can still maintain its quality in the revival.
Yeah, the cartoons I watch are usually adult American cartoons. I don't really watch Anime that much. Though My Neighbor Totoro is still one of my favorite childhood movies of all time.
I shouldn't, but I have to ask. I just have to ask. Why?
You couldn't have seen them both fully. I think you're going off of some sort of presupposition. You'd have to be. If you hated it that much you couldn't have seen it all the way through. I can understand someone hating that series so little its like trying to make a monkey hate bananas. I can't even grasp the concept; its not in my realm of understanding. You may not even be able to explain it to me, the concept of hating it is so alien to me.
I smell a war coming on.
Also, I love The Tick, but, let's be honest, who doesn't? right? The Tick is my favorite superhero growing up. Though I don't remember 90s cartoons much. I remember The Mask, Project Geeker, Sam and Max, of course, and those Steven Spielberg show I don't watch much.
It is shounen. I mean it is targeted toward boys. To be honest, putting aside that series, I don't get your style when it comes to anime. You seem to be pretty strict. As far as the series, it sounds like there's more going into your annoyance than just the series itself. I won't bore you with some long winded explanation about why people love the show or what its about in the heart of it, as I'm sure you get that well enough, so I'll just say I hope someday you can view it from a fresher perspective.
Samurai Jack is old?
Well, it's not on air anymore, anyway.
...Fine...
Actually, when it comes to old cartoons, I always liked Hannah Barbera 80s shows. Especially Jonny Quest and Blue Falcon.
I Love To Singa
The Funky Phantom
The 13 Ghosts of Scooby Doo
Snagglepuss
Mysterious Cities of Gold
The Pink Panther
Ohhh, yes! This was an absolute must-see when I was a child. I used to dream about the golden condor... the theme music still thrills me.
I'd really like to watch the series again, considering I was so young when it was on that I don't really remember much of the story. People tell me it holds up well.
"Typical shonen" definitely describes the manga's first few volumes (i.e. how far Toriyama's World got with its scanlations before dropping the series). Which, of course, by default includes the first third of the first series and first fifth-ish of the second. I think the first FMA starts to show its true colors around the Lab 5 arc, and then solidifies that perception shortly thereafter in Episode 25. Brotherhood gets to the good stuff a bit faster, but like Secret Fawful said, those first fourteen episodes are an absolute chore to get through. Especially compared to adaptation quality of the same source material in the first series.
That said, I don't blame you in the least if you think that's too much material to wade through before it "gets good." And if you've gotten as far as Episode 25 of the first series ... well, I'm not sure anything that comes after will convince you otherwise. It's hard to say. *shrug*
(Side Note: Most fans agree that Conqueror of Shamballa is one of the weakest components of the first series. An opinion which I too share, though I managed to enjoy it much more once I saw the English-dubbed version.)
On the other hand, FMA never entirely disregards its shonen roots. I would say that after a certain point, all of the versions transcend their "shonen-ness" rather than discard it wholesale. So if shonen does nothing for you -- even if it's shonen that's eventually turned on its ear -- I can understand. I'm not terribly bothered by shonen tropes ... at least in and of themselves. It's when the shows which employ said tropes become sprawling, seemingly directionless 300+ episode epics that I lose all interest (with One Piece being the possible exception that proves the rule, but that's a discussion for another day ...).
One huge point in FMA's favor -- for both series -- is that not only do they both clock in at well under 100 episodes, but I know they're leading somewhere. They have ended/will end in a definitive manner. Related to that, another hallmark of both series (especially the second, due to the manga) is that they're quite good at tying everything together. Which is to say, everything -- or at least very nearly everything -- happens for a reason.
Anyway ... I'll be back later to talk about other cartoons, once I've got something substantive enough written up. This topic is just way too much up my alley to leave it at talking about FMA. ^^;
... Okay, here's one quick thing I'll throw out there since Secret Fawful brought up Mysterious Cities of Gold:
Avatar: The Last Airbender. Discuss.
Thing is, people need a reason to watch a show for 50 weeks. People can't honestly tell me they did not at all like the first 50 episodes, and then finally liked it at 51.
lol zutarians. That's pretty much the first thing that comes to my mind when someone mentions Avatar, anyway.
Can we talk about animated films? Because last night I watched Fantastic Mr. Fox and it was actually really, really good! It's one of those movies that had unfortunate previews that showcased a bunch of jokes that aren't funny until you know the context, so I thought it was going to be really bad. But to my surprise, it was a very clever, funny film! I also like how it seems to use little-to-no CGI in it -- all of the effects are done using real, tangible things, like using torn-up cotton balls for smoke. That's kinda rare for a stop-motion film nowadays. And the soundtrack is really, really good. So folksy and charming!
Still, I'm a little iffy about the character designs. I'm just not a fan of the whole "realistic furry humans with animal heads" look, which is a problem I have with most anthro art.
EDIT: Speaking of anime, I recently finished Kaiji. It's a seinen show about a loser deep in debt who risks his life and/or appendages on extravagant gambles, like playing a more complex version of Rock Paper Scissors on a cruise to either win lots of money or enter a life of slave labor. It isn't for everyone, obviously, but I really enjoyed it. One thing that really stands out about the show is character designs, which are kind of the polar opposite of mainstream anime right now. As in, EVERYONE HAS A CRAZY NOSE.
So yeah. Also, the pacing's a bit slow, but it's done on purpose to help increase suspense. Still, your mileage may very.
One last thing: MANLY TEARS. ALL THE TIME.
I agree with light-rises points. Thing is, in the case of the first FMA series (screw the movie its an ending the first series didn't need), the effort is WELL worth it. And the episodes up to Lab 5 are not bad episodes, they're very good and very well written, so its not like it takes huge effort to get through them. However, it took far less episodes for me to get into the series than just at Lab 5, the Barry the Chopper episode and Nina Tucker episodes are what hooked me from the start. I basically started the series from there myself; I didn't see the first few episodes for a long time actually.
Let's take a look at the manga a second. I actually think the first series handled Barry better for one, as the episode with him kidnapping Winry is one of my favorites in anime. It was a genuinely creepy episode. The manga plot becomes better than the first anime where their plots diverge, but the plot of the first series is still remarkably good even to the very end. It's one of the few anime I've seen that had a completely satisfying ending. There was no reason to take it any further with the damn movie.
Brotherhood is a cash in for fans to see the manga animated. That would be great, if they did it well but they didn't. They destroyed the first fourteen episodes for the sake of rushing to new content, and that was a bad decision. It seriously hurt the series. I watched the first two episodes of the first series, then watched the Brotherhood equivalent, and I had to turn it off. Its hard for me to even say that the manga IS better than series one; I mean they both explained everything very well and had compelling characters.
In both cases, the main plot itself does take a bit to take off, but that's not as unusual as you make it out to be. It's like playing an episodic five part game and not seeing the big picture until game three. There's plenty of foreshadowing and build up in the beginning and the mystery and secrecy behind the story keeps things very interesting up until the major reveal of the Philosopher's Stone plot. If there wasn't sufficient build up and mystery behind it like there is, it wouldn't work. Frankly, in Brotherhood, that's part of the reason them rushing it hurt it so much. The bad guys themselves are so shrouded in secrecy that you don't even know who they are for many episodes, and it adds to the fear and suspense around the characters. The manga did this too, but once again, rushing the manga material in Brotherhood hurt the surprise in the character reveals. Sure people who had already read the manga wouldn't be so shocked, but what about newcomers. As a newcomer to FMA when I first saw it years ago, some of the revelations were absolutely shocking for me. Since I watched the show before reading the manga, some of the manga's impact was lost on me though.
As far as the aforementioned foreshadowing, the series is so well written and the foreshadowing is so well done that it flows together as smooth as butter. Even the filler episodes like Warehouse 13 are extremely well done, and add to the mythos and the world in important ways, establishing characters further and giving you more time to understand them.
Anyway, "Samurai Jack" was triply amazing because it was designed to be an "arty" kind of kids' show, had more fanservice than Tenchi Muyo (Seriously, why did Jack even bother to wear clothes?) and was set in a world that was so vaguely defined that it could feature a teenaged monster rave in one episode and a couple of futuristic-but-still-Olde-Westy bounty hunters in another episode and it was still good.
Anime wise I didn't watch a lot. I have seen all of Fullmetal Alchemist (Haven't seen the Brotherhood yet) and loved it. And I will probably get kicked for saying this but I still have a soft spot for Dragonball, although the manga is much better than the anime.
I'm not into anime much. It would have to be a grand gem for me to like it, movie or series, and also not look so samey.
Speaking of anime how about that bad market, eh?
As a fan, I'll point out something: I started watching One Piece since episode 1 and I started to love One Piece since episode 2. Or 3. Episode 1 is good for the laughs, but I was captivated at 2. I was watching an Spanish Fan Sub, get to episode, I think 50 or something (They were about to get to Alabasta...) then I decided to jump over to the manga, because I needed more. 2 days after (Starting from the same place I left the Anime) I was on Day with the English Scanlations and I never stoping to read the Manga ever since (2 years ago, in fact). That's my personal take on One Piece.
And I have no idea what any of these random Japanese words everyone keeps using are.
I agree with you, however i believe this is not done in purpose by the author. Of the few animes i watch i keep following the plot of One Piece and it cost me about 50+ episodes to get me into it. Watching the begginings of Nami the navigator really was touching, and thats what made me realize "This anime is good i wanna see where the author is going" His ability to play with the fans and readers of his manga (in my case anime) and making the ending a happy one, it's truely an art. I only hated the part where the anime felt it had a looong opening to catch my interest.
The other animes i follow are Naruto, cliche story but still i wanna see how it ends. And Full Metal Alchemist, which is a looong looong manga!
Also, your taste in anime is...let's say "obscenely bad" by my standards. A lot of the same shit from a different asshole.
My main problem with anime is that they stretch it so much. With a lot of anime, you can get away with watching only every other episode, because the first half sums up the previous episode and the second half will be summed up in the next one, pretty much.
And then they think it's not enough so they also had filler episodes that suck, or filler half-episodes (so you can't even just pretend they don't exist because they contain some important stuff too).
It's fairly rare that I like anime that was adapted from a manga, although it happens (I like Fruits Basket for instance. I feel they did a very good job of translating it into a different medium).
But manga itself has some of the anime problems, too, namely being so controlled by publishers, who can just stop a series before it has time to resolve itself, or ask the author to drag it on and on unless it's not enjoyable anymore. Sometimes it seems manga isn't written with an end in mind, and it can become a problem, I feel.
As far as Japanese movies (animated) go, I tend to like them a lot better, because they have a self-contained story that was meant to start and end, so the pacing isn't completely off due to having to rush things or slow them down.
I have to admit that as far as manga series go, I've been trying to start shorter ones if I can. If when I hear about a series it's 20+ volumes and still going, chances are I won't even try it anymore. I just had so many bad experiences with that...
On the other hand, if it's only one or two volumes, often it's because it was canceled due to lack of interest, meaning it might not be that good (although it might also just be too different, which might be nice).
I like one-shots, though, but it's hard to find them, they tend to be put at the end of a volume of some other series by the author, unless that author wrote enough of them to make a compilation (or more!).
But yeah, some years ago I came to the realisation that due to limited funds and shelve space, it would be more efficient to read shorter series. You get to read more of them, and to be fair most stories really slow down after a bit, so even with the same amount of volumes, more stuff happens if there are more stories.
Thinking back, if instead of following Detective Conan (60+ volumes at the time) I had read some shorter series...
Anyways. Just thought I'd pitch in about the whole "20 episodes isn't a warm-up, it's a complete series" thing.
I feel bad for every single mangaka. Their work conditions are dreadful -_-'.
It really was better as a one-shot. And it wasn't even that bad at first(as a comic, the animated version is pretty much uniformly horrible for a lot of reasons).
By the way, to be completely sure everyone knows what I mean by "at first", I mean I stopped somewhere within the Chunin Exam arc. I sampled bits from the later parts of the series because I've had people demand that I do so, and...it gets pretty bad.