- Joined
- Mar 30, 2023
I knew i should've recognized the anime. I might have that special on my server, but I had a hard time paying attention to the latest season.
Anime/Manga - Discuss Japanese cartoons and comics here; NO CULTURE WAR DOOMPOSTING!
- Thread starter Niachu
- Start date
vern
kiwifarms.net
- Joined
- Dec 25, 2018
Last I checked the latest episode was one with Shigeru Mizuki (GeGeGe no Kitarō) that aired a few weeks ago but I know there was 4 new episodes last year with Kazuhiko Shimamoto, Katsuya Terada, Minase Ai, and a Tezeuka special episode.
Thank you for the warning. I had completely forgot that this series existed. That's going pretty far on the backburner, yikes.
Oh really, only a year ago? I feel like most Tenchi fans are people who watched it in the 90s/00s so I'm curious your perspective on the original OVAs. I will have to watch the movies soon!
Its kind of crazy how the cultural tide has turned, not even a decade ago it was kind of silly and shameful to love Japanese media but now its openly heralded for its creativity and innovation and celebrated as a new kind of media altogether that the best artists praise. The death of Toriyama and the success of Boy and the Heron this year kind of sealed the deal and showed how worldwide the love for Japanese media is. Its amazing how these elderly Japanese men are able to create amazing content loved by so many people worldwide even into their 90s. That in all of what Western media produces in 2024 nothing matches the quality or reach of the output of a small amount of elderly Japanese men.
- Joined
- Dec 12, 2022
For me, I've always loved anime, even when I thought they were just cartoons. There was something special about being 7-8, talking about DragonBallZ or Yugioh on the playground. Then I grew up, and apparently, it was special for a lot of people.
I won't say anime is "normal" yet. It honestly never will be- and shouldn't be. I want it to still be special. I want to still shovel through a sketchy pirate site and find a old series that literally no one has a license for. Western media can barely come close to the shit I had to go through to watch all of the Nasuverse anime.
Really what I love is the creativity. Sure some of the ideas are stupid. I just finished S1 of Date A Live for the hell of it. Stupid show. Not family friendly lol. But in its stupidity, it was fun, and clearly was trying . its scary how much western media doesn't try. Im not even asking you to be good, but to be fun. Thats why i like anime, always a adventure.
(((I am NOT a jew)))
kiwifarms.net
- Joined
- Dec 14, 2022
It might seem autistic to a lot of people but I really do think Godzilla Minus One was a pivotal moment at least in discourse of art and media.
I went to a theater that was pretty active for a 2023 film. I had this a talk with a couple of older black people who had never seen a Godzilla movie before who dug the shit out of it. This film in a franchise about a radioactive dinosaur that used to be the biggest meme and autism magnet almost overnight literally stomped basically every western other film with a dozen times' it's budget.
I've seen seasonal anime get more traction every year for the past decade.
Sure a lot of it is just hype and cloutchasing, but I really think at the end of the day people are attracted to japanese media because despite all the stuff normies might find cringe about it, it's still telling a good story.
That's why I don't buy into the idea that the audience is that stupid. It's why capeshit can do so well. Say what you will about the Marvelization of cinema, but the reason comic book movies did so well in the beginning is despite being based off of characters people didn't know a lot about and a bunch of internal politics happening behind the scenes, 10 years ago people still knew how to make good movies.
The reason Japan is taking off and American media is dying a slow painful death is because despite how shitty the scheduling and overwork is for their creators, even if there is a lot of money people at the front who want to push out a product, they fundamentally know that if they just the autists work on their shit with some slight oversight and hold them to a standard for how good their work can be before being pushed out the door, they'll probably have a good thing people will enjoy.
Go figure, if you let people who like making decent fiction make decent fiction with little interference, you'll probably do a little better than if you have them kicked from the club so some techbros, bankers and bougie socialists can shit out product as a tax write off.
- Joined
- Mar 27, 2023
This is insane but I just came across this. Theres an adaptation to The Lighthouse by Junji Ito as part of Japanese promotional material.
- Joined
- Jan 31, 2015
It's not fair!!
Trollblade69
kiwifarms.net
- Joined
- Feb 6, 2022
It makes me so pissed off that this manga continually promised me "No, we're not going to screw up like Naruto, we promise! See, we're making the bad dad character atone for his wrongdoing instead of just forgiving him for his abusing! And we have his abused son out for retribution as one of our best villans!". Only to once again make most of Naruto's mistakes anyways, but without earning nearly the amount of goodwill Naruto did.
- Joined
- Dec 17, 2019
I wouldn't glamorize these things about being an inherent part of anime and manga...anime specifically. Manga's a bit of a more versatile medium, because getting approval to have your work published in even an off-kilter, adults-only magazine like Young King Ours or Young Animal isn't the tallest order in Japan. Relatively smaller and nicher titles like Innocent or Ubel Blatt can thrive in these editorial environments because they aren't subject to the Shonen Jump weekly grind or merciless editorial oversight that comes with mainstream shonen or shoujo manga titles, and they aren't being tweaked from inception to satisfy a wider merchandising or demographic reach.
Anime is a completely different beast, though. If there's any medium in Japan that's effectively compromised from the start, it's that one. And it's all in the greenlighting process. Think about it: how often do you see an anime with a middle-aged protagonist, or at least a distinctly adult, non-twink one like Guts or Kenshiro or Ryo Saeba? That's largely a thing of the past--most protagonists (and their supporting characters) fall in the squeaky adolescent range, because that's what the market demands. You can blame that on the change in consumer trends over the years, but it has a stranglehold on what kind of stories can be told within that medium. Traces of this phenomenon can be felt in gaming, too: Toshihiro Nagoshi has spoken in the past that when the first Yakuza game on PS2 was a success, he was given a lot of praise by his peers in the industry because he managed to make a success out of a game starring an older, middle-aged protagonist, which most gaming companies would have shot down as not reaching a wide enough market or going with a younger, teeny-bopper cast. Which you'll find is often the case for most games, hell most seasonal anime coming out these days. If your anime project doesn't feature certain demographic requirements, or skew towards popular industry trends (moe, harem, isekai, or whatever else is trendy for the last decade), it likely won't get greenlit or will get passed over by a production studio.
Now, are anime shows given more creative freedom than American capeshit? Certainly. But I don't know if it's intellectually honest to pretend that it's some kind of creative wonderland, when most darker or adult stories are consigned to the pages of a seinen magazine, because there's an inherent industry fear of swaying from popular consumer trends. Anime creators are pigeon-holed into the same kind of creative parameters as their American counterparts--they just aren't political or socially-conscious parameters. They're consumer-based and trend-based ones.
It's why relatively newer anime fans ended up flocking older titles from the 80s and early 90s, because the Japanese economy was in a place where you could creatively experiment with bleeding-edge animated OVAs and movies, and a wealth of storytelling genres that seem all but dead now, like cyberpunk, space opera, non-isekai high fantasy, all variations of mecha, variations of horror, and a whole host of other genres you'd be forgiven for thinking never existed in anime with all the cookie-cutter isekai and high school shows coming out now. This is not to say that industry trends didn't creatively inhibit anime shows of that time (the sheer amount of disposable mecha shows just to sell toys in that era is a prime example), but at least there was wiggle room for other genres to thrive. Hell, I only got into anime in the last five years or so, and one of the reasons I booked it to old-school anime titles is because there was also a greater variety of art styles. I think you pointed out how there's something of a negative reputation around anime having a "generic style", but it's only really locked into that style these days because...yet again...most studios and production houses don't want to make the financial risk of trying an anime art style outside of the persistent norm of seasonal shows. They want to cater to what consumers are most comfortable with, and the creative space within the industry doesn't incentivize anyone to be the next Nobuteru Yuuki or Haruhiko Mikimoto. Because the industry, for better or for worse, only prioritizes tired, generic anime designs that, frankly, lack a lot of artistic merit. And that's not me being "WESTERN ANIMATION SUPERIOR" Gaijin, here....Japanese art schools themselves will reject an artist portfolio that is exclusively anime designs, because they consider it too generic and lacking in finesse or detail to be considered proper art. And it's no fault of the artists; in an industry where no creative risks are encouraged for how characters are drawn, why would anyone experiment, or go outside the norm of the seasonal anime aesthetic?
So while I think there's less political compromises, and mangaka and light novelists are certainly given more creative freedom to project their artistic vision than any artist in an American editorial suite like Marvel or DC or Image, I would say that stagnating consumer trends and preferences have kept anime fairly static for the last decade. It's a lot of the same genres, filtered through the same art style, often limping along as the same general IPs...with many seasonal anime being a one-season glorified advertisement for a manga or isekai light novel. It makes for a less neutered, santized alternative to all the US goyslop we have to suffer through over here, but I would be lying if I said I don't find more satisfaction sifting the past for older anime titles that simply offer more variety in genre or art styles
Anime is a completely different beast, though. If there's any medium in Japan that's effectively compromised from the start, it's that one. And it's all in the greenlighting process. Think about it: how often do you see an anime with a middle-aged protagonist, or at least a distinctly adult, non-twink one like Guts or Kenshiro or Ryo Saeba? That's largely a thing of the past--most protagonists (and their supporting characters) fall in the squeaky adolescent range, because that's what the market demands. You can blame that on the change in consumer trends over the years, but it has a stranglehold on what kind of stories can be told within that medium. Traces of this phenomenon can be felt in gaming, too: Toshihiro Nagoshi has spoken in the past that when the first Yakuza game on PS2 was a success, he was given a lot of praise by his peers in the industry because he managed to make a success out of a game starring an older, middle-aged protagonist, which most gaming companies would have shot down as not reaching a wide enough market or going with a younger, teeny-bopper cast. Which you'll find is often the case for most games, hell most seasonal anime coming out these days. If your anime project doesn't feature certain demographic requirements, or skew towards popular industry trends (moe, harem, isekai, or whatever else is trendy for the last decade), it likely won't get greenlit or will get passed over by a production studio.
Now, are anime shows given more creative freedom than American capeshit? Certainly. But I don't know if it's intellectually honest to pretend that it's some kind of creative wonderland, when most darker or adult stories are consigned to the pages of a seinen magazine, because there's an inherent industry fear of swaying from popular consumer trends. Anime creators are pigeon-holed into the same kind of creative parameters as their American counterparts--they just aren't political or socially-conscious parameters. They're consumer-based and trend-based ones.
It's why relatively newer anime fans ended up flocking older titles from the 80s and early 90s, because the Japanese economy was in a place where you could creatively experiment with bleeding-edge animated OVAs and movies, and a wealth of storytelling genres that seem all but dead now, like cyberpunk, space opera, non-isekai high fantasy, all variations of mecha, variations of horror, and a whole host of other genres you'd be forgiven for thinking never existed in anime with all the cookie-cutter isekai and high school shows coming out now. This is not to say that industry trends didn't creatively inhibit anime shows of that time (the sheer amount of disposable mecha shows just to sell toys in that era is a prime example), but at least there was wiggle room for other genres to thrive. Hell, I only got into anime in the last five years or so, and one of the reasons I booked it to old-school anime titles is because there was also a greater variety of art styles. I think you pointed out how there's something of a negative reputation around anime having a "generic style", but it's only really locked into that style these days because...yet again...most studios and production houses don't want to make the financial risk of trying an anime art style outside of the persistent norm of seasonal shows. They want to cater to what consumers are most comfortable with, and the creative space within the industry doesn't incentivize anyone to be the next Nobuteru Yuuki or Haruhiko Mikimoto. Because the industry, for better or for worse, only prioritizes tired, generic anime designs that, frankly, lack a lot of artistic merit. And that's not me being "WESTERN ANIMATION SUPERIOR" Gaijin, here....Japanese art schools themselves will reject an artist portfolio that is exclusively anime designs, because they consider it too generic and lacking in finesse or detail to be considered proper art. And it's no fault of the artists; in an industry where no creative risks are encouraged for how characters are drawn, why would anyone experiment, or go outside the norm of the seasonal anime aesthetic?
So while I think there's less political compromises, and mangaka and light novelists are certainly given more creative freedom to project their artistic vision than any artist in an American editorial suite like Marvel or DC or Image, I would say that stagnating consumer trends and preferences have kept anime fairly static for the last decade. It's a lot of the same genres, filtered through the same art style, often limping along as the same general IPs...with many seasonal anime being a one-season glorified advertisement for a manga or isekai light novel. It makes for a less neutered, santized alternative to all the US goyslop we have to suffer through over here, but I would be lying if I said I don't find more satisfaction sifting the past for older anime titles that simply offer more variety in genre or art styles
The older anime viewers from the 90s/00s are precisely why I wanted to watch Tenchi. Ever since getting into Lodoss War, I was not only charmed by the old-school and earnest quality of that show, but the amount of Angelfire and Geocities fansites that still exist for this show, I was curious to visit more from that era. Maybe it was because the shows from that era were the only offerings for a ravenous US market, but anime of this time period really carries a nostalgic weight and reverence that's still echoed years later. Hearing stories about fans from the Toonami days, splurging on uber-expensive DVD sets or racing home after school to tape episodes of their beloved shows, back when anime was still kind of a dark horse of entertainment really set my curiosity ablaze.
In fact, I'm kind of on a "Toonami Generation Experience" Watch Project right now, where I'm watching shows aired in the US from that period, in their original dubs, to glean some of the hype and nostalgia for all the shows from that decade. And one of the most unavoidable shows, that is heralded by oldtaku fucking non-stop from that era, is Tenchi Muyo.
And can I just say, as completely new viewer to Tenchi, I absolutely adore this series. I swore up and down for years that I would never suffer through a harem anime, but the nice thing about the Tenchi OVAs is that they break almost all the conventions of modern harem shows. The main protagonist is surrounded by girls, but he's only romantically pursued by two of them. He's not a hopeless, romantically-deficient loser who can't get with any of them--he's just trying to get his chores done, and is not only completely uninterested in the girls' romantic advances, but is often actively annoyed and exasperated by them. Couple that with the fact that the show repeatedly shifts gears from cozy shrine shenanigans to full-on space opera battles and royal family feuds, and it also avoids the problem of most modern harems being boring, static high school shit. I wasn't bored even once when watching this show, because the amount of fun that the animators are clearly having with it is borderline infectious. You can tell that they were having a ball drawing these characters, having them engage in lightsaber duels or get into catfights in a hot spring---even a scene like Washu giving exposition is coupled by Ryoko and Ayeka throwing wads of paper and books at each other. Half the comedy, is just in how hyper-expressive and dynamic these characters are during skits. The other half is the superb English dub. I'll probably never watch this show, or Tenchi Universe, or any of the movies in Japanese, because that would mean losing the sleazy, domineering sass of Ryoko's English voice, or Ayeka's pseudo-British "ladylike" pouting and manic psycho laugh. It's one of the reasons I'm kind of a fence-sitter in that legendary "Team Ryoko or Team Ayeka" debate that's permeated anime fan circles since the 90s, because I love both of these characters way too much to decide. They really are anime's definitive answer to Archie's Betty and Veronica, and the VAs are largely the reason why they've endeared such a loving cult status in the West.
And then there's the music. I can't believe that a show as early as Tenchi managed to not only get English translations of nearly all of its opening and ending songs, but managed to avoid the usual clunky translation or weaker singers of most localized songs. Talent for Love, Lovely Moon, I'm A Pioneer, and the TV show's seminal earworm Love Will Keep You Crying are all translated and re-sung flawlessly, with the latter sung in really good English by the OG Japanese pop duo, Sonia. Nowadays, whenever a song is translated into English for an anime or a game, you wince---but for one of the first big anime shows to be brought in the fabled Toonami Explosion, these songs were handled with such care and talent. It makes you wonder how this team of localizers would have handled all the music for a Macross show.
Honestly, I can't say enough great things about this show. I could write a whole essay about how much I love Mihoshi and Kiyone, from both a design and character perspective, or I could single out genuinely moving moments like the Baby Episode with Washu, or the emotional climax of the Universe TV series. I think the franchise was really at its peak in the 90s (Tenchi in Tokyo very much excluded--fuck that show), and is proof that in the right hands, even a genre as susceptible to the WORST anime tropes like the Harem Genre can be handled really well, even for picky bastards like me. Hell, I think harem shows on the whole might have been better in that era, because shortly after Tenchi, I also watched Oh My Goddess! on someone else's recommendation, and that show is just as good as Tenchi (and maybe even a bit sweeter and cozy, in some respects).
- Joined
- Nov 10, 2021
This actually wounds me as someone who used to be really into comic books.
When I was like 11 or 12 I started reading the Rurouni Kenshin manga and it quickly became one of my favorites of all time. Around that time I also discovered the Teen Titans and my favorite Superhero Nightwing. For awhile I stopped reading Manga but I had a list of comics I read weekly.
These days though they've so butchered the industry between bad art, half baked political pandering, and just not understanding the characters that its hard to read.
Anime by comparison always seems like it at the very least as something new and interesting. I typically watch 4 episodes of anime a week with my friends after our tabletop sessions. This year I've seen: Oshi No Ko, The Witch From Mercury, Link Click, MH:A (S6), Freiren, Mashle, Apocathary Diaries, Mushuko Tensei, Jujutsu Kaisen, and Hell's Paradise all off the top of my head. All of these are very different and all of them have been really fucking good and nothing in the west really compares.
- Joined
- Jan 12, 2017
I have noticed there's been more workplace series in the last ten years—longer with manga by an additional 15 years, but anime's more accessible. High school adolescence is still going to be predominant, I'm just pleasantly surprised to see the work environment come into play more and more. It's more likely a sign of the aging population, though, kinda like how more titles focused on family relations and caring for a young child was believed to be from Shinzo Abe's mission of building back better.
Now I don't think we're going to see a return of the broke adults like we did over 30 years ago. Space Dandy I think was the last hurrah of the relatable broke-ass broken people who still helped resolve conflict.
Xenomorphs Are Cute
kiwifarms.net
- Joined
- Dec 1, 2019
The 2nd episode of KonoSuba S3 has also been leaked, by the same guy who leaked the first episode, it had a double feature release apparently. Also, the guy is being a fag by watermarking his releases, which are surprisingly still up cause usually Nyaa just bans users for that.
Also, I swear Crunchyroll is on suicide watch rn. There's like a leak everyday at this point, & it's an internal one too.
Also, I swear Crunchyroll is on suicide watch rn. There's like a leak everyday at this point, & it's an internal one too.
- Joined
- Dec 17, 2019
I think that has more to do with a middle-aged character being the only believable age-range for the kind of dilemmas and drama depicted in a workplace setting. No one's going to buy a starry-eyed Adolescent-Kun struggling with home office life, because that's almost an exclusively adult workplace concern (more often, adolescent characters will be depicted coping with high school obligations like academic performance, clubs, part-time jobs, etc).
But if there's a new isekai or shonen series on the horizon, odds are, you're not going to see an adult or middle-aged character occupy the protagonist seat in that story. Because they can't fall to their knees and engage in the hot-blooded teen angst inherent to teen characters, or be some kind of vicarious conduit for middle-aged Japanese consumers who want to live the idealized teenaged life through these characters that they didn't get to enjoy in their actual adolescent years. Make no mistake; making characters teenagers isn't simply a gesture to cater to younger Japanese audiences...plenty of NEETs and otaku well into their 30s and 40s are a target demographic, simply because they'll funnel their vicarious desires onto these teen characters. If they see an anime or manga with a character closer to their age, forced to act more mature, level-headed, or emotionally-grounded than a hot-blooded teenager, they'll instantly be turned off. The anime consumer base of Japan aren't really interested in seeing an adult or middle-aged character lead a show, unless it comes with a caveat like "guarding/protecting a kawaii daughter character", in the vein of Somali and the Forest Spirit, or they can let a moe character lead the show with them supporting, a la Magus Bride or Spy X Family, where in the latter case the girl is the literal poster-child for the series.
Now, an adventure where the adult protagonist is front and center, the sole drive of the narrative drama, where their emotions or stakes are paramount in the same way something like Fist of the North Star, or Berserk, or Macross Plus (which was a radical demographic departure for that series, in retrospect), or Legend of the Galactic Heroes did? That's less and less common these days, and only resurfaces when it's time to remake or re-adapt those older series.
Because that kind of thing has been relegated to the past, out of Japanese consumers just preferring twink protagonists surrounded by squeaky-voiced anime girls.
- Joined
- Apr 14, 2018
I don’t know how stupid Naruto got but god MHA really did the dumbest shit possible
Really bringing All For One back who isn’t even intimidating at this point given he has been a punching bag for so many chapters, and has disintegrated into cum 9 chapters ago. Not only that but reveal that he gave Shigaraki decay but not only that but told his dad to have sex which is the reason he even exists, and decay is just a copy of another quirk. Then AFO just possesses Shigaraki’s body which made all the fighting against him pointless. What happens right after the possession happens? AFO gets his ass kicked by literal who’s who haven’t been relevant at all but MHA dickriders act like this is clever writing cause “MUH THEMES!” So not only is it a dumb twist but it makes a shit load of chapters pointless and effectively ruins Shigaraki’s backstory since now he is not a failure of society but of some random supervillain. Oh and Deku lost his arms, but he lost both and at this point body injuries don’t even matter, and Horikoshi had not even killed a single heroic character.
Tl;dr Horikoshi is basically ripping off the Star Wars sequel trilogy
Trollblade69
kiwifarms.net
- Joined
- Feb 6, 2022
No, he's stealing hard from the Naruto playbook without realizing what he's stealing is all the stuff I wished he wouldn't do but apparently is both easy and hyper-popular with the Japs who couldn't understand taste if it wiped out their entire nation.
Should probably list my issues in the Naruto thread.
- Joined
- Dec 12, 2022
The faggot just needs to pull the pin and leak it all at this point. Clearly he works there, he's already legally fucked if he gets caught, might as well not drag it out.
Also yes, I imagine it's about to be a bloodbath once they find out who's leaking this shit. Full legal rape with the best lawyers on the planet.
- Joined
- Dec 17, 2022
does anyone know where i can find the first episode of konosuba 3
animepahe isnt hosting it and im not a torrent faggot
animepahe isnt hosting it and im not a torrent faggot
Last edited:
- Joined
- Mar 16, 2019
Hahaha! Good sir, with all good intent, you are speaking to a veteran. I clearly know what you are talking about, and I really appreciate your post.
I do know what you mean. There was a lot more male adult working life protagonists back in the 90s, and there was a lot more stories around high and hardcore sci-fi and fantasy, as well as OAVs and creative endeavors. The thing with all of this is the cultural and socially effects of the economic climate in Japan. The 90s are often called the Lost Decade in Japan due to the bubble burst of 1991. While it wasn't horrible and an outright economic collapse, anime of the time definitely captured the emotions, feelings, and frustrations of the time over the intensity of corporate work culture and the extreme divide and dissonance of the modern against the traditional. It's why Neon Genesis Evangelion was so famous. Then out west..... You had the more zealous and even fringe of faiths trying to censor everything from Beavis and Butthead to getting outraged that Japanese cartoons has violence and boobies in them because if they don't, Baby Jesus upon Y2K will somehow take offense to this and not grant them their 72 virgins at the pearly gates.
I would also like to say that the "emasculation" of Japanese men was kinda forshadowed by Masami Obari of all people, in his hentai series of all things around the turn of the millennium. According to Japanese history, there only has been one known era of long lasting peace, that being the Tokugawa Era, that lasted for 264 years, and that was when medieval castes were still a thing and the samurai still could do whatever they wanted. Everything else like war and anarchy lasted for at least 100 years or more and were back to back or were really intense and were lead with tyrannical oppressive regimes where opposition was often was met at the end of a gun, a blade, or at the execution block at their mercy while civilians often had to fend for themselves from basically everything. Everyone may laugh about how Japanese men aren't going around slapping women's asses and fucking, but they want their peace more than they want to fuck and potentially cause a Methusealan disaster on the Japanese archipelago. Before the year 2000, there was the Tokyo subway sarin gas attacks done by those crazy cult fucks known as Aum Shinrikyo who tried to instigate World War III with the USA and tried to bring about the apocalypse in the vein of the Waco Siege. That really shocked the shit out of everyone.
Going back into anime, it isn't the fact that "fiction impresses upon reality", so much that Japan has its own things it feels it needs to take care of. I would love more 1980s and 1990s esque anime stuff today, but the mindset for creators in Japan upon the end of the 1990s was to create more uplifting things and to combat end of the world scenarios. That is honestly beyond my power. I'll touch back upon this later.
Moe stuff is created by female creators, and while there always has been female fans with anime and manga in Japan, it just got more prevalent when the 2000s came around. That's what a lot of fans at least in the USA forget, that Japan has female creators and fans in anime and manga, while back out west comics were often stigmatized as being related with beta males and social pariahs. Then when the 2008 Global Recession kicked in, that was when female creators and moe stuff was pushed out more, it's practically comfort food.
There is also the insight from the author of Umizaru at the time, who wrote how the manga industry's practices were also beginning to show its age by 2006. A lot of newer creators who entered into publications didn't make it off of the "fly or die" trial system where once you are qualified, you take out a 1 million yen (10,000 USD) loan (not required but necessary), and for a year you make your manga with your art team, where sales and popularity determine if your series gets off the ground or you never come back. There is no safety net with this, and the creator of Umizaru was spurred to create an online manga publication site where creators have more freedom to reign.
Also, that perspective of mine is uniquely born outside of Japan. A lot of Japan really also doesn't realize what on earth it has and whether in ignorance or blind desire, that they really don't appreciate or get another angle from things that gets them a kernel of the truth that exists beyond their everyday boundaries. I get that it's not my problem nor is it my responsibility because I'm not a Japanese citizen, and that leaving Japan is very hard because of its position on the globe and flights are expensive, but they also aren't immune to learning how the grass isn't always greener on the other side, the hard way. Japan has always fought the censors and moral naysayers. The United States lets them walk all over sequential art. Japan has a community of thriving creators from young to old and something of an industry two way road. The United States has narrow precipcies and run down roads, and its industry is just as incestuous as Hollywood yet has always been marginalized since Walt Disney released Snow White. This isn't me shooting at America. I've read the books and studied things they'll never tell you.
Do I feel bad that Japanese creators of more "off beat" or unconventional works aren't as prevalent even back in their home country? Yes, yes I do. But they still have that opportunity of exposure and it is always still there and you can always fight for it in Japan. Even back then in the face of samurai ruling everything and sumptuary laws and strict provincial border patrol, there were always gamblers, wanderers, and even ninja that ran the gauntlet.
I also emphasize springboard, because there's no law or social more over there against working off of or creating your own anime style. That shit was born from angry, butthurt jealous hubris filled hobbyists out here feeling threatened that anime was going to take over America like it did back in the 80s Borg style. Even when it got popular, no one came up to them with guns and demanded they stop liking comics or Dungeons and Dragons or whatever. They might as well have said "All Asians Look the Same" and really revealed their true colors. I'm glad anime outdid these asswipes while in time they also dyed their hair and yoinked off their wieners to stuff up the hole where it used to be because they realized the world doesn't like prideful bitter little assholes eager to defend their meager little mound of moleshit.
For me, Tenchi Muyo wins out, but Saber Marionette J is still special to me and is something worth checking out. The original light novellas really are also something that shines a light on today's world too.
- Joined
- Mar 30, 2023
Xenomorphs Are Cute
kiwifarms.net
- Joined
- Dec 1, 2019