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Post by edmonddantes on Jul 18, 2017 16:07:37 GMT -5
Fist of the North Star as an anime is horribly paced. The movie version that came out in the 80's is pretty good, but the TV series is just very, very hard to sit through. Fist of the North Star is most brilliant as a manga. The original art is infinitely better, and the plot moves at a better pace. The funny thing is this is exactly how I feel about Dragon Ball. The anime is fun but only in short bursts, but if I want to actually experience the story all the way through, the manga is the way to go. Thing with Fist.... well, I saw the movie first and while it had some parts I liked, I found a lot just kinda lame, particularly the ending. I went for the manga and anime next, but the problem is that both feel kinda pointless and the initial wow factor of the violence... maybe its just me but after just one volume I felt it had worn out its welcome. I gotta admit, I skipped to the final volume to get an idea where the story went and wasn't impressed with what I saw there either.
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Post by Snake on Jul 18, 2017 16:20:26 GMT -5
The funny thing is this is exactly how I feel about Dragon Ball. The anime is fun but only in short bursts, but if I want to actually experience the story all the way through, the manga is the way to go. Thing with Fist.... well, I saw the movie first and while it had some parts I liked, I found a lot just kinda lame, particularly the ending. I went for the manga and anime next, but the problem is that both feel kinda pointless and the initial wow factor of the violence... maybe its just me but after just one volume I felt it had worn out its welcome. I gotta admit, I skipped to the final volume to get an idea where the story went and wasn't impressed with what I saw there either. Haha, Dragon Ball as an anime gets ragged on as Drag-on Ball for a reason. The anime is choppy and low-budget, with scenes drawn out to squeeze out as many episodes as possible. The manga is mostly well-paced. And it sounds like you skipped over the best parts of Fist of the North Star. It starts slow until it introduces Jagi, Raoh, and Toki. The story really should have ended after his battles with Hyou and Kaioh. But the last arc where Bat and Rin are grown up, that's rather unsatisfying.
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Post by eatersthemanfool on Jul 20, 2017 21:42:29 GMT -5
God, fucking dragon ball.
Granted I never liked much of that shonen watsits. I never got into naruto or that one with the cat boy that everyone loved back in the day, or rouroni kenshin or any of those.
Tenchi Muyo was entertaining once in a while tho.
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Post by edmonddantes on Jul 20, 2017 21:55:29 GMT -5
Please don't mention "fucking" and "balls" in the same sentence.
I never liked the *term* "shonen" because its really kinda useless--I mean the assumption is that it means fighting-oriented series like the afformentioned balls, but in truth "shonen" magazines run all sorts of stories, including sports, cooking, and romance. So its about as useful a descriptor as "SNES game" (less useful actually, since at least "SNES game" indicates hardware compatibility even if it tells you nothing else).
The fighting stuff itself sometimes entertains me but I found that as I move on it all starts to feel generic. Even stuff that seems to break the mold, like Attack on Titan, eventually falls back into the same patterns. Most of my anime love these days is for short-run OVAs or else quirky or little-known eighties anime like Dairugger XV.
Ranma 1/2 will always be my main love though, and Lupin the Third will always be the man.
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Post by eatersthemanfool on Jul 20, 2017 22:57:32 GMT -5
It's hard to find anime that doesn't feel generic. I mean, Attack on Titan is a good example. I absolutely loved the setting there. Had some really great ideas going.
But the actual plot was hot garbage and predictable from miles away.
I assume the industry is facing the same problem AAA gaming is today. If you're going to spend large amounts of money, it's generally wiser to spend it on something that reliably sells than something that may be amazing or may utterly flop.
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Post by Sac (a.k.a Icaras) on Jul 21, 2017 7:04:19 GMT -5
I tend to find the problem for with Anime, is that when I got into it in the 90s (Via a screening of Ninja Scroll on a local free to air station) is that alot of the stuff that came out tended to be stuff that was trying to appeal to action/violence hungry young guys like I was.(And kinda still am, fighting based shows are still what I prefer to watch) These days, there is just so much anime out there, I sometimes find it hard to find something that actually will appeal to me. That's why I tend to look for stuff that's been in Shonen Jump, as I know such series are highly likely to appeal to me. (Sometimes I catch a bit of hype from other places, it's why I picked up No Game No Life, which I finished watching earlier today.) The mentions of Fist of the north star depress me, knowing I'll likely never see a (fully adapted) official translation of the manga I can buy. So unfair
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Post by JoeQ on Jul 21, 2017 9:38:34 GMT -5
Anyone wanting good shonen series should def check out Hunter X Hunter (2011) and JoJo's Bizarre Adventure (2012). HxH in particular has absolutely amazing plotting and tense battles for being such a seemingly kiddy show about a boy going on an adventure.
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Post by llj on Jul 21, 2017 19:03:28 GMT -5
Please don't mention "fucking" and "balls" in the same sentence. I never liked the *term* "shonen" because its really kinda useless--I mean the assumption is that it means fighting-oriented series like the afformentioned balls, but in truth "shonen" magazines run all sorts of stories, including sports, cooking, and romance. So its about as useful a descriptor as "SNES game" (less useful actually, since at least "SNES game" indicates hardware compatibility even if it tells you nothing else). The fighting stuff itself sometimes entertains me but I found that as I move on it all starts to feel generic. Even stuff that seems to break the mold, like Attack on Titan, eventually falls back into the same patterns. Most of my anime love these days is for short-run OVAs or else quirky or little-known eighties anime like Dairugger XV. Ranma 1/2 will always be my main love though, and Lupin the Third will always be the man. Shonen is more about the demographic they are targeting than about a genre. Shonen aim for a below 17 age group for the most part, and mostly boys (though often there is some gender crossover). Naturally, they've figured out some recurring patterns they can use that best maximizes the marketability of a title to their demographic, which is why certain formulas keep recurring. I know there are fans who try to "talk up" certain shonen stuff as being "more mature" than the average manga/anime, but I honestly haven't seen any shonen stuff that ever really feel like they fell outside of the demo they were targeting. Off the top of my head, maybe Maison Ikkoku near the end of the run, when Godai was out of college and was dealing with actual adult issues--then it moved into seinen or even josei. Fans talk up Death Note and Attack on Titan, but they ultimately are fairly juvenile affairs--they deal with complicated issues in a high-school-level-at-best manner. Because reader/viewer identification is a big priority, *most* shonen feature male protagonists who are under 17. Though this isn't a hard and fast rule (Fist of the North Star is a shonen with an adult protagonist, for example, and the odd shonen title may have a female protag) it's generally a fairly reliable indicator of who the target demo of a title is. Generally, I know what I want out of anime so I can easily spot the type of shows I'd like. I like "hard" action shows--I prefer gun-fu anime over martial arts fighting game shows. I also prefer the possibility of death in my shows--some shows you know nobody is really going to die. I also like nudity, but not the kind of "tee-hee" nudity you'd find in moe shows. And, I'm always on the lookout for anime with over-18 protagonists. I like romance, but it would take something special for me to get up for just any high school romance show. And if I had to choose between a shoujo and a shonen anime, I'd probably choose the shoujo just because the formula is different. Lastly, I'm always up for trying the more artsy-fartsy and avant-gardish stuff. I also like b-movie sleazy anime, but nobody in anime seems to do that anymore nowadays. That's what the 80s are for.
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Post by edmonddantes on Jul 22, 2017 15:30:06 GMT -5
I agree, the anime I tend to enjoy most tend to be either movies or 80s-90s OVAs. For some reason, most TV series anime tend to lose me after just a few episodes even when I really liked the buildup. Especially the ones with hundreds of episodes.
It may just be a burnout thing. Like I actually liked the uncut version of Yu-Gi-Oh Duel Monsters and still like the occasional episode but I can't marathon that thing for the life of me, as it gets repetitive really quick. Its the same as with Marvel or DC comics: When you see an episode or catch a story arc in isolation a thing will seem to have this big deep mythology, but then when you go back and see it all you realize its actually kinda stupid and shallow and whatever depth you saw was only because of your ignorance.
By the way one thing I didn't catch at first:
"I never got into naruto or that one with the cat boy that everyone loved back in the day,"
Cat-boy.... do you mean Inu-Yasha? Because he's a dog-boy (the title actually translates as "Dog-man") though if you only saw pictures I could see thinking he's a cat.
Inu-Yasha was in particular an anime I feel weird about, because like I said Ranma 1/2 is my fave and was also my gateway drugs, and for a long time Rumiko Takahashi's works in general were a high point in creativity for anime and manga. I mean just for example:
* A guy and a girl who became immortal from eating mermaid flesh travel around and get involved with various goings-on.
* Space aliens force a perv to play tag and wind up sticking around due to poor communication and making things completely effed up.
* A boy who turns into a girl and happens to be a martial artist is arranged in marriage to everyone and winds up either fighting or conspiring with various neurotics, many of whom also transform into stuff.
That's just in broad strokes, even when you get to particulars her work tended to be unique (IE when Ranma finally started introducing chi attacks, there was always a "how" and "why" to the way they worked and how they came to be, instead of just being something cool to show off--so for example powerful-looking stuff like the Dragon Ascension Wave is actually hard to pull off and requires a lot of tricky steps and temperature manipulation).
Then she goes and makes Inu-Yasha... which not only is a generic quest for a magic crystal, but even recycles ideas from Takahashi's previous work (the whole concept of a modern schoolgirl going back to feudal Japan was one Takahashi had used in a short story called Fire Tripper, while most of the actual cast are basically the cast of Ranma given new names and slightly different personalities. Like Ryoga gets reborn as... Koga. Yeah, really thinking outside the box there).
It's just sad.
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Post by Snake on Jul 22, 2017 16:58:44 GMT -5
Inu Yasha just got repetitive. It was enjoyable for the first 8~10 volumes. But at a certain, point, it becomes the same old tired storyline. Thank goodness it eventually ends on a good note. Perhaps moreso than Ranma 1/2. Ranma 1/2's ending was a cop-out.
For me, Takahashi's most impressive work was Maison Ikkoku. It was so real, and so grounded. It gives a nice time-period snapshot of 1980's Japan. She writes the dynamic of a first love/unrequited love rather well too.
Fire Tripper is an interesting paradox story, although the way the romance works out is a bit odd for my taste.
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Post by llj on Jul 22, 2017 20:59:55 GMT -5
Maison Ikkoku really is great. And its ending feels well earned. You never feel like it cops out or jumps through stupid hoops to get there. Godai and Kyoko's road to getting where they wanted was long and hard, and aside from the sitcom antics, there was actually realistic, practical reasons for why Godai took so long with Kyoko, like him trying to find a career for himself first. I like that it doesn't fall into the "As long as we love each other, money doesn't matter!" cliche. Making money is an actual problem in the world Maison Ikkoku--something many modern anime seem to magically ignore or explain away with some rich parent/family/guardian or some quick fix "windfall" at the end. There is none of that here--just actual working class characters all the way through.
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Post by edmonddantes on Jul 29, 2017 10:18:29 GMT -5
Maison Ikkoku is one I need to revisit, since Takahashi's early work is her best.
In honesty tho I kinda stopped watching anime recently. There's a lot of reasons.... everything feels like a rehash of an anime I watched in my teens, just plain nothing is interesting, too many clear pandering trends (seriously as a guy who likes to write my own cute little girl characters in my own fiction attempts, it says something when seeing moe girls is enough to make me lose interest)... but...
Mainly I've just come to have some huge ideological problems with anime. Two in particular:
One, women. Not to go all Social Justice Warrior or Radical Feminist here, but sometimes how anime treats women bothers me. One example is a scene from Sailor Moon R (an early episode, IIRC): Artemis says "You know, since the world is at peace now..." and starts lovingly rubbing on Luna... who freaks out, yells "you pervert!" and scratches him.
Luna and Artemis ARE CATS. It makes NO SENSE for Luna to behave that way.
Which in general is my problem: Japan seems to have this idea that their attitudes are universal. Like, if you had a story about a barbarian girl who was raised by wolves and only recently started living with other humans (...actually, sorta similar to Leela from the Tom Baker era of Doctor Who...) and you licensed your story out to Japan, she'd suddenly be cooking or worrying about being seen naked even though it makes no sense for her character because those are learned traits, not instinctive ones. Believe me, I'd love to be proven wrong about this.
About that moe thing I mentioned earlier... I like cute things, but the problem with anime-cute (at least nowadays) is that it tends to be only visual, it rarely ever extends to the personality. It's like with cats: Even if two cats look similar, the cuter one is gonna be the one that chases string or tries to climb up your chair when you're trying to speedrun Quake in nightmare mode. moe girls are like a cat that sits there and makes cute noises but doesn't do much else. I will warm up to ones that have genuinely cute ideosyncratic personalities, like Fuuko Ibuki from Clannad, Rin Tezuka from Katawa Shoujo, or Konata from Lucky Star, but 98% of moe girls can go screw themselves.
The other thing that bothers me about anime... takes some explaining.
Okay, not long ago I was watching the Dartz arc of Yu-Gi-Oh, and during his big final duel with Yugi and Kaiba, Dartz goes into the typical villain speech where he says the world is all bad and corrupt but he will remake it. Or, as The Spoony One once put it, "The world is so full of violence and effing hatred, so I will violently hatefrag the world!"
That isn't my problem.
My problem is Yugi and Kaiba had absolutely no comeback for the guy.
And this happens again and again in anime: the bad guy will make a totally legit point about how wrong the world is, a point the heroes even agree with (or at least acknowledge)... but somehow we're still supposed to want to see the bad guy get beaten. The only way it kinda makes sense is if their plan involves a lot of death or its something insane that won't work... or then there's cases where the bad guy's "plan" is actually just committing suicide in a roundabout way (I don't know how to spoilermark or I would name names here), in which case they were just wasting everybody's time.
I mean, just once I would like to see either
A) a show where the hero actually argues the point with the bad guy and proves he's wrong (and I mean ACTUALLY proves it, not just gives a naive speech which is somehow taken as a valid counterarguement because the plot says so. Looking at YOU, Naruto).
B) the hero realize the "bad guy" is completely right and end up joining him.
or
C) the hero being the one trying to change the world.
And yes, I may be crossing some cultural boundaries with these remarks, but still these are things that bother me more than they used to.
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Post by kaoru on Jul 29, 2017 10:29:39 GMT -5
I mean, there are a lot of legit reasons to not be into anime (anymore). But judging from your two prime examples... maybe you should just stop watching 15+ year old shows aimed at a 6-12 year age group xD
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Post by llj on Jul 29, 2017 11:48:33 GMT -5
Yeah, part of watching anime is knowing the demographic of the title you're getting into. A lot of people are growing up and some of the same stuff that they liked as a kid won't appeal as much anymore, if your expectations are that a title should have grown with you.
That's why building an eye to seek out the stuff that better fits your current sensibilities. They're still out there, although complaints that they seem harder to find now is valid.
(Not that I did not say "mature" since that's a relative term. Many adults even in their 40s still have relatively juvenile tastes)
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Post by edmonddantes on Jul 30, 2017 13:49:48 GMT -5
To be honest, I do often like fairly juvenile stuff. Heck I even recently watched the Rambo cartoon and actually had fun with it. I also actually am huge into eighties cartoons so old animation doesn't bother me.
I didn't hate Sailor Moon or Yu-Gi-Oh, just both had aspects I found bothersome that I happen to see in a lot of other anime--and I haven't seen evidence that these things have anything to do with how old the show is or its target demographic.
And I usually like cute kids in fiction, just the moe trend bothers me for the reasons stated--they ain't cute.
Usually with me and anime I'll start out interested but then either I'll just lose interest, or else the show itself will go in absolutely bonkers directions (Attack on Titan, I'm looking at you). I find things work out best if I stick to OVAs or movies. There are some worth watching to the end tho... I need to finish Dairugger XV...
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