16 Oct
2002
16 Oct
'02
6:36 a.m.
Well, this *is* cctalk... :-)
On Tuesday, October 15, 2002, Ben Franchuk wrote:
Anime is a kid's product from the US point of
view, where everywhere else
it is respected prime time media ranging from general vewing to very XXX
rated products with all sorts of storylines ranging from cute to horror
and gore.
Ben is right. I was introduced to anime last year (though I had watched
Robotech as a kid), and I love it. There's everything from kiddie stuff
(e.g. Pokemon) to heady, intellectual stuff (e.g. Evangelion) to stuff that
can only be described as 'tentacle porn'.
I just watched the recent US release of 'The End of Evangelion'. It and the
26-episode Evangelion TV series that precedes it are IMHO currently the most
entertaining thing one can play on a screen.
While both the US and Japanese animators are under
both money and time
pressure to crank out TV shows, it is the movies that show the talent of
the artist.
I agree, but it is also important to note that anime TV series typically
have one all-important quality that most US animated TV series lack:
continuity. US TV animation is episodic: crisis and resolution occur within
30 minutes, and there is no plot beyond that. Every episode starts in the
same basic universe, and by the end of the episode, nothing has changed.
Many anime series, however, have an overall plot, and each episode is just a
tiny window into that. Evangelion, for instance, is like a 13-hour movie.
Cartoon network is not the place to watch Anime.
Where is?
--
Jeffrey Sharp