As was foretold, we've added advertisements to the forums! If you have questions, or if you encounter any bugs, please visit this thread: https://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/240191/forum-advertisement-faq-and-reports-thread/
Options
Japanese Anime and American cartoons? J-developers slipping here too?
Matthew
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
There's been a lot of talk recently about how it seems Japanese video game developers are slipping, losing in terms of quality to western devs. I can see what they're talking about, and I think another part of Japan may be slipping as well.
Does anyone else think that Japanese anime is slipping? quality wise?
I can't think of one new series this year that i'm interested in seeing, and the only western import i'm planning to get is Funi's "Kenichi the Mightiest Disciple" and that ended awhile ago in Japan.
I've looked over the american cartoons, and I actually think that we're outdoing them over here. There are many more US toons that I would deem as entertaining, and enjoyable, and just worth watching than I would for Japan's current crop.
Anybody else feel this way? I admit most of my current viewing is from the Cartoon network, with shows like Transformers animated, Chowder, Flapjack and others.
What are you guys feelings?
Does anyone else think that Japanese anime is slipping? quality wise?
I can't think of one new series this year that i'm interested in seeing, and the only western import i'm planning to get is Funi's "Kenichi the Mightiest Disciple" and that ended awhile ago in Japan.
I've looked over the american cartoons, and I actually think that we're outdoing them over here. There are many more US toons that I would deem as entertaining, and enjoyable, and just worth watching than I would for Japan's current crop.
Anybody else feel this way? I admit most of my current viewing is from the Cartoon network, with shows like Transformers animated, Chowder, Flapjack and others.
What are you guys feelings?
Matthew on
0
Posts
When anime and Japanese games were relatively rare and obscure, only the very best had much chance of making it stateside, meaning that we had a higher-quality selection than the true "population." Today, they're dubbing Descendants of Darkness and you can find pretty much anything on the internet. Just for a testament of just how little the need to translate cuts down on drek, witness how CN decided not to skip the universally panned Naruto filler.
On the novelty side, you have to remember that Japanese storytelling has its own set of tropes, conventions, cliches, and, perhaps, archetypes. When we first witnessed Japanese media, all this was unfamiliar to us, to the point that even the most predictable plot was unprecedented in our eyes, and stuff which the Japanese had long ago discovered was an easy rout to a cheap thrill was new and exciting. Since then, not only have we seen these things enough to be bored by them, but western producers have adopted them somewhat, so that they assault us from every direction.
It should also be noted that The Long Tail theory predicts that there will be fewer products catering to your tastes as they specialize to better serve their primary sector.
It's fun to remember "the good 'ol days" but keep in mind that there's a lot of crap from back then that no one remembers today.
Just like any medium of entertainment, really.
This seems more like comparative thread, so I'm leaving it open.
For example, has anybody besides me watched The Big Store in the last 50 years?
You had no taste and nothing to compare anything else to.
Also, Japanese developers are slipping? Says who? You?
But back on topic. Comparing anime with cartoons coming out of North America is pretty pointless. They're usually not even trying to be like each other, except for the sudden rash of obviously anime inspired kids shows that have come out recently. Not that I really watch cartoons outside of some South Park and Sponge Bob every once and a while, but it's pretty obvious to me that the biggest knock against anime right now is that there's just too much of it. Most of it is bad, just as most cartoons are bad, and most of the rest simply isn't meant for your consumption. I don't really care about anime, either, but I'll watch anything if it's actually good, and there have been some really great movies these last few years, from Studio Ghibli to the recent release of Tekkon Kinkreet (which I guess might only half count, but it's still great). As Scaflin said, without the import filters you just get more crap.
As I said, I don't watch anime, or TV, so I have no horse in this race. But I still think you're overreacting for no reason.
Anyone want to beta read a paranormal mystery novella? Here's your chance.
stream
Don't get me wrong, anime is very "samey." That is, they all seem to have about the same plot. But then, that's true of most entertainment... it's the unique hook that each one has. Out of the series that I've ever liked, I can name distinctly the reasons I liked them rather than the thousand other series - Last Exile's airborne storyline, Cowboy Bebop's unique ship designs and awesome music, Slayers' ability to tell a serious story while still making me laugh my ass off, and Gundam Wing's politics (same with Patlabor, actually).
So I guess what I'm getting at is.. either the series' you've been looking at don't have the hooks you like, or you simply need to drop anime for a while and watch other stuff. I certainly don't think it's gotten any worse.
I never asked for this!
Quality hasn't slipped at all to my knowledge. I'm equally, if not more entertained by today's batch of shows than yesterday's.
On the flipside, I'd say that American animation is back on the way up after taking a relative dip since the 90s.
Yeah this pretty much
There have been some really good shows lately
PSN ID : DetectiveOlivaw | TWITTER | STEAM ID | NEVER FORGET
When you first started I'm sure you had a huge backlog of seminal works that are head and shoulders above everything else. All the other mediocre works never get mentioned again and fall by the wayside. Now that you have access to normal availability rather than an archive of quality shows, it seems as if there is a slipping in quality. There may or may not be, it's too hard to tell in anything remotely like an objective manner.
Also you have to take into account that the more you get exposed to anime and it's specific culture and tropes, the more discriminating you become. I know that at first I was an avid consumer, but now am very discriminating in what I watch. I enjoy less shows than I did, but that's entirely internal and has nothing to do with a drop in quality.
I won't dispute that western cartoons are rising in quality. I enjoyed Avatar when it was airing, and the new Transformers and Spider-man cartoons seemed to be entertaining.
writing has been about the same. more blatant metahumor recently.
Chowder is pretty funny, and flapjack is alright. Nick has crushed a lot of great shows, and Avatar was great despite their best efforts. So great they will probably continue the universe in some form, which is rad. American animation is kinda stuck being forced to cater to rather young children, for the most part. Great writing shines through this, on really pretty rare occasions, but really picking are very slim.
In the last year, I could pretty easily name a dozen anime that I enjoyed more than any domestic animation, excluding avatar and metalocalypse(edit: and the futurama DVDs), produced in the same time frame. Heck probably going back a few years.
That's just series. Start getting into movies? Do they even make animated movies here that aren't cgi anymore? What was the last non-cgi domestic movie that didn't blow? Stitch? Everything else that's even got into a theater over here has been by Miyazaki.
Western cartoon are getting better, but I've gone back and watched damn near all the Steven Spielberg era stuff fairly recently, and I don't think it's anywhere near where it used to be.
The new Gwen Stacy is adorable and I like her better than MJ. Too bad she's going to die.
egad Batman: The Brave and the Bold
The changed the charter models pretty drastically in The Batman. I don't know anyone that though it was a good thing.
There is apparently a newer one, that just came out. From the wikipedia site, it looks fairly bad and the exact opposite direction I'd like to see the show moving in.
For better or worse, they give viewers unfiltered access to every animated thing Japan produces, and while there is a lot of good stuff there is also a lot of shit.
Yep. That one. It's definitely aimed at the uber cheesy Batman silliness, but the one episode I watched was just an endless stream of exceedingly campy crap. It's like they took all the fucked up Batman errors from the 60s and decided to make a show centered around them where he's the eternal costar to C-list super heroes.
And just for the record, the X-Men series I'm talking about hasn't started airing in the US. I got as far as episode four or five in the Canadian broadcast, but despite them including one of my favorite characters (Emma Frost), it got really REALLY fucking campy and dumb pretty fast. I liked some things that they did, like actually tossing in Rogue with the baddies and the general darker tone, but they rewrote Cyclops as basically Wolverine, Wolverine as a lovable and responsible tough guy leader, and let's not even discuss that they receive their orders from the disembodied floating head of Professor X... FROM THE FUTURE. It made my brain hurt. I think Slice got further than me here though, so he probably has a better idea of it.
Voiced by:
The latest episode I watched was the one with the Hulk, which was good if only for the ending. It's improved after the early episodes, but I've gotten bored with it. I'll watch more eventually, if only because season 2 is going to be an animated version of
Brave and the Bold has been enjoyable for me so far but I can see people not liking it if they wanted something more in line with Batman TAS because it is just so damned silly.
For the most part the only new western cartoons I keep up with are superhero shows so damned if I know how western animation is faring overall, though.
man. I'm sure I'll see them eventually, but the fact that I'm not even putting in the effort track down a copy of them says a lot about what they have done to the franchises. New Batman, in the wake of a couple pretty decent films, and new X-men and I have no motivation to steal them. That's just not right.
PSN ID : DetectiveOlivaw | TWITTER | STEAM ID | NEVER FORGET
He has a lightsaber in his belt and can breath in space.
I don't know about that, man.
It's not a decline in quality, it's a decline in available quantity.
Rock Band DLC | GW:OttW - arrcd | WLD - Thortar
See, I hear those and hear GOOD things.
But then, I lean towards the more idealistic end. I don't like regular comic Bats for this reason. In the DCAU, it's tempered by him being around more idealistic individuals so his awesome can shine through without needing to be surrounded by darkness, and in B&tB, it's handled by just making him silver-age without the bad parts(like goofy one-issue gimmicks to try and sell comics).
Gorillas riding pterodactyls wielding harpoon guns! What part of that sentence is bad?
NONE.
Name one thing wrong with what you just said
See you can't!
yalborap you can totally be my friend
PSN ID : DetectiveOlivaw | TWITTER | STEAM ID | NEVER FORGET
Edit: Actually, scratch that, the last anime I enjoyed was Samurai Champloo, a short time after WR. Fuck yeah.
They are worth multiple looks
Good long stares too, not passing glances
PSN ID : DetectiveOlivaw | TWITTER | STEAM ID | NEVER FORGET
Druaga was released either via free streaming from a website or for any donation of $2 or more they gave you access to downloadable episodes in either an .avi file or .mp4 formats for either iPods or PSPs. They never said how successful this was as far as I'm aware, but the practice has continued.
I think you mistake Gonzo's desperation to make a quick buck for their shows having an audience. Besides which, nobody's going to care what they're doing since they just completely collapsed.
Just one of my favorite anime series in a long, long time.
Well, with Viz about to follow and start streaming Naruto I guess we'll see how an already successful show fares.