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With Anime Weekend Atlanta next week (live schedule is here), we’re putting the final touches on our panels. And…playing Torchlight II. In the meantime, here’s a re-casting of Gerald’s answers to the latest round of anime podcaster Q&A put forth by Regan Strongblood of the Anime82 podcast.
We added the links to the Guest Spots pages, along with Daryl’s months-delayed guest spot on the OSMCast! that he recorded back around March, but chances are high people never saw them there since we made no on-air mention of them.
If you want to hear Daryl’s answers to the same questions–it took 3 times as long!–you can head over to Anime82 and listen to them now. Or you can wait a week or so and we’ll re-cast them here. In the meantime, if you have suggestions for some great clips of AMERICANS BEING AMERICAN in anime, or if you have some more preferred openings you’d like us to consider that weren’t previously suggested, let us know in the comments.
The scientists in Ika Musume, the squid girl anime. Also the baseball team in Samurai Champloo, in that episode baseball blues. Great stuff. And the black people in harmageddon, all come to mind. I Thought they were all pretty funny.
The hot dog guy in Abenobashi. [So far, everything that anyone has mentioned is stuff we showed the last time we did the panel 5 months ago. –Daryl]
It’s not a nice picture, but Brain Power-d depicts AMERICANS BEING AMERICANS (gun diplomacy at its best). You’ve got to give props to Tomino, for making Americans look bad (even though some of the things he mentioned are true), and Arabs along with the rest of the world look good.
Another one is the “all star American” hero in Fist of the North Star. Ain (Ein) is his name if I’m not mistaken. 100% American hero. And then there’s also the caricature of Hulk Hogan also in Fist of the North Star.
I am not an anime expert, and this is my first anime podcast, but I can say the guy that answer these questions’ taste is very specific for an anime lover. This season has a lot of good anime. His taste is just too specific to appreciate a lot of different things.
[This is not how a discussion or an argument works. If you disagree with what Gerald said–an easy way to remember his name would be to look at the title of what you are posting a comment response to–and believe the Summer 2012 anime season has a lot of good anime titles that are not carried over from Spring 2012, you need to name those titles and state why they are good. –Daryl]
There is no law that states that an anime expert HAS TO LOVE every fucking anime coming out of Japan. While I can stand kawaii characters, I hate MOE so much that I won’t even start watching an anime if it has MOE SHIT. And no, kawaii and moe are not the same.
“This season has a lot of good anime” according to whom? You? I think this season has a lot of shit anime, and the few that are enjoyable are Space Brothers and The Woman Called Fujiko Mine. Harem shows are a dime a dozen and 99.99% guaranteed shit. Even harem shows (although they were not called that) of the eighties and nineties are way more interesting and enjoyable than what comes out of Japan nowadays.
[Both Space Brothers and Fujiko Mine were from the previous Spring 2012 season, not the current one. I understand that Space Brothers and Polar Bear Cafe are ongoing, but that is not relevant to the question answered. –Daryl]
Sorry if I offended anyone. It wasn’t meant to do that, I didn’t really post this to start an argument or a discussion, just one of those comments you just look at, but now I am interested.
I don’t think Gerald has seen Sword Arts Online? Or Accel World? I don’t think he has. And in the case of Fujiko Mine, it reminded me so much of Redline and it didn’t feel too special. I’m not saying they are the same thing BTW. I was watching Lupin III and I just left it at episode 8 for no special reason. Even an anime like Kono Naka ni Hitori, Imouto ga Iru! (My Little Sister is Among Them!) got me up to the latest episode. I can’t say anything on Space Brothers because I haven’t seen it.
Frankly I don’t really care what type of anime you like. I just don’t like the way you condemn a lot of this summer anime based on your preference. If you don’t like it, say you don’t like it, but don’t call them shit because they are not. “Kawaii and moe are not the same”? First of all I didn’t ask, secondly I don’t care. When an anime is good, I say it’s good. And when I don’t like an anime, I say I didn’t like it or didn’t find it interesting. I don’t speak for the world.
[Please try and use proper spelling, sentence structure, capitalization, and paragraph breaks. I’ve cleaned this up to the best of my understanding. –Daryl]
You’re talking to a podcast that thought the Five Star Stories lacked good characters but praised REDLINE for having “well developed” characterization. There’s a reason that film bombed hard in Japan.
To Cobra: you clearly haven’t watched moe anime, because like ANY genre, there’s good and bad moe shows too but the western fanbase (i.e. wannabe old timer fans) thinks moe never existed before the 00’s (it did, just didn’t have a word for it).
Speaking of which, for all the whining the western fandom does about how there’s not enough original anime, too much MOE, not enough sci-fi: I’ve not seen any hype for Mamoru Nagano’s GOTHIC MADE.
Americans being American. Well, first thing that immediately came to mind was JACK from Asobi ni Ikuyo! (aka Cat Planet Cuties). She’s seen in an American car with A&W and a cowboy hat in episode 1 & 2.
Season 3 of Yu-Gi-Oh GX, Jim “Crocodile” Cook. I could be mistaken, but I’m pretty sure he’s American. That guy is totally Alan Grant from from Jurassic Park. 4Kids gave him an Australian accent. Also, Bandit Keith from the first series. His machine monsters remind me of when America built things besides cars, and his Slot Machine monster reminds me of casinos. Also he cheats, like some do.
Guilty Crown, episode 7, I think the military guy leading the missle attack is American.
Probably doesn’t count, but in Another Lady Innocent one guy in the beginning was about to get his “Legitimate Rape” on.
Gerald, can you get the other
threetwo to watch Wakfu? Would love to hear you guys review it. I adore that show. The only animated TV show in years that managed to make me smile. Sure, the plot isn’t exactly original, but they wear all their influences on their sleeves, and charmingly so. I put this show on the same level as the last two seasons of Avatar, maybe even a little bit higher.[Wakfu is a French animated series. This is an anime podcast. –Daryl]
Clarissa watched the entire show with me, and we would never review the show on this podcast since it’s straight up not anime. Anime inspired? Yes, but definitely not anime at all. If Clarissa and I were invited on some other podcast then we’d happily review it.
I thought it was a solid show but it also broke no new grounds, nor did it try to. It’s main achievements were in being the most well animated Flash show ever made and having some unique designs. Outside of that, it’s very standard fantasy/RPG type material.
I am actually surprised to hear Gerald has some aspirations in filmmaking, have you done any shorts?
I’ve not made anything serious since it’s very hard to get people together to work on something for, basically, your own benefit. Most of my aspirations materialize in the form of stories, story-boarding and such. Film is something I wish I could go in to but the realities of the industry and…well…other things, make it basically impossible.
You should check out the American characters in Zettai Karen Children. They’re SUPER American.
Hi Carl, I got your direct message. That 4koma was some good stuff. Does that Zero-chan bait appear in the show itself?
That specific scene I’m not sure if it appears in the anime, but the character definitely does. If you want relevant episodes just go to the wiki entry http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Zettai_Karen_Children_episodes and do a search for “Comerica.”
Cause in that world, it’s not America, it’s Comerica.
@ VZMK2 : MOE is a very specific concept and no, past anime from the sixties, seventies, eighties and early nineties didn’t have moe. They had kawaii characters, but as you surely know kawaii and moe are 2 different concepts. Kawaii is the Japanese concept of “niceness” or “cuteness” and in this sense kawaii characters are as old as animation itself. Moe on the other hand is a much more recent phenomenon, and it has to do with the overt sexualization of characters mostly underage (considered as sexual objects and manifested itself through merchandise. Merchandise like those creepy pillows and blankets with the pictures of teen girls in underwear. Merchandise that is primarily bought by adult otakus).
Take for instance Linn (in Hokuto no Ken). Linn is kawaii but not moe. Now take Madoka from Madoka Magica, this character is kawaii (expressed through the puni plush style) and moe. The sexualization of Madoka is open and explicit. Another example would be Nadia from the Secret of Blue Water. Nadia is a 50-50% kawaii-moe character. Maybe one of the first to be moe in the modern sense of the word.
So while I can stand kawaii characters and certainly appreciate sexy characters, I can’t stand at all MOE characters and certainly not moe preteen characters.
–Sexualization of underage characters.
I gather you’ve never seen any Cream Lemon or Lolita Anime (Nikkatsu Video or Wonderkids, take your pick)?
It should have been pretty obvious that I was talking about mainstream i.e not hentai or pornographic anime.
I’m not really so sure that moe is a new concept in anime. The *word* may be relatively new, but the concept (which I might translate as “endearing”) is not. Also, I would say that while moe can associate itself with an overt sexual aspect, it doesn’t necessarily have to have one; Osaka from Azumanga Daioh is a famous example of a moe charater who was not particularly sexualized. It also seems that moe is not something that otaku alone are into; look at the popularity of teenage idols in Japan, something that dates back at least to the 1970s.
I’m worried that moe is used as a construct to separate the anime of today from an earlier era presumably free of moe’s corruptions (shower scenes, panty flashes, swimsuit scenes–these are not modern inventions) as I don’t believe such an era necessarily ever existed. How could it have, when anime largely originated in the cute, childish styles of Tezuka and Toei? As much as I like the chara designs of Sugino, Kawajiri, or Suda, they never represented the standard approach in anime; designs that suggest maturity or realism rather than youth and cuteness are the exception in anime, not the rule.