In the interest of fairness adult swim has been eating shit recently. I don't even know why they still run toonami when no one watches anime on TV anymore. It's basically become the nicktoons of the channel where they dump weird shit no one watches, and also n64 game reviews.
Ideally there shouldn't even BE western shows on toonami. It's fallen pretty far. But we lament the state of it because it used to be good.
This is what happens when you literally limit yourself to FUNimation Crunchyroll and Aniplex titles and only the very popular ones. Sailor Moon only got put on because the fans wouldn't stop bothering them and they managed to make a deal with Viz.
We don't know why they got Sailor Moon, or why they decided to make the Friday nostalgia block an anime block. That's the consequence of NO COMMUNICATION FROM ANYONE. Warner and CN just do these things, drop the news on us out of nowhere, and we're stuck trying to figure out what the hell is going on from blind speculation. Doesn't help that we're not even given ratings info anymore.
All I can tell is that anyone who wanted to have the old DiC dub of Sailor Moon on the block is fucking nuts - demanding yourself be subjected to bad audio quality, crap performances and heavy censorship just because you vaguely remember watching a few episodes of Sailor Moon when you were a kid. You want to die on the alter of nostalgia, then ask for DBZ instead of Kai.
I'mma be real, Sailor Moon in both sub and redub is a slog to get through because of that pesky little thing I call "Toei pacing". Their shows are either too slow-paced, or too fast-paced, never in between, it's absolutely bizarre. The DiC/Cloverway dubs didn't have that issue, and it's the darndest thing, can't really put my finger on why. Also hilariously enough, a Sailor Moon fangirl highly recommended I watch the old dub which made sense since I tend to go for old dubs personally anyway, but I kinda wonder if that was just because it would've held my attention better as someone who didn't get into it growing up.
But anyhoo, that aside, who really knows why the Rewind block failed. I wonder if it's just because they had such a scant selection that was already on the block proper, and they never bothered to show older licenses for it, because when you think of Toonami nostalgia, you're thinking of Tenchi Muyo, Cowboy Bebop, Trigun, Wolf's Rain, GitS:SAC, Hamtaro, stuff like that.
That it lasted six months with nothing more to show for it was baffling.
Remember when these people protested restored video release of SM without red tinting, as "the aesthetic would be wrong"? At lenght, using arguments about its influence on the other things...
I saw this autism with restorations of vintage Sugimori art, as well (to set an example, you won't believe how bad it turned out Diglett got distorted, both washed out and stretched, as if art we had from 90s was photos instead of scans). Nostalgia gets weird.
the old Toei Moon is fine subbed in limited doses, I'll regularly tune in for an hour or few on the Pluto channel
and tbh I've glanced at a few eps of the dub in current day and it's really not too bad handicapping for an old US dub
the Doom Tree does a pretty good job in particular outside of the first ep (which was the series pilot)
So, I actually sat down and watched it and I am genuinely shocked. Its somehow not dogshit.
Like wtf? Initially I dismissed it because of the wikipedia description of the "main" character.
And a friend recommended me scavenger's reign which was made by the same studio and had the same execs, which was an absolute unmitigated trashfire. More here:
Which further dissuaded me from watching, so I put it on the mega backburner, I eventually got around to watching it and like its actually really fucking good. Well the first season at least.
The series promises speculative fiction about UIs and it delivers speculative fiction about UIs. From start to finish they stay true to the premise, the characters are well rounded and intresting, the way the plot progresses is extremely balanced with constant escelation and downtime inbetween. The ticking clock aspects of the flaw work great to keep the pace up.
There's a well rounded ensemble cast, most if not all characters have clear motivations and intresting arcs for the most part. The show feels like it was made by someone who actually likes and respects science fiction and wanted to tell an actual thought out science fiction story instead of just an animation highlight reel like ldr.
The animation is in service to the story instead of the other way so many "sci fi" stories nowadays tend to do.
Hallmark of a good sci fi story, it should work in text, which pantheon absolutely does. Don't even see why its animated honestly, it could literally work with real actors and that's a compliment and I can definitely imagine a good novelization. Shit I'd read a novelization that goes more in depth.
Wikipedia describes it as a techno thriller and yeah. Its a techno thriller from start to finish. Again, season one at least.
Season 2 is... messy. And I'm not just talking about the last 2 episodes. It feels a lot less focused in general, it doesn't really handle all the dangling plot threads with the elegance of season 1 and it feels like it gives up on the ending. Honestly they could have just finished it at episode 6 and I think it would have been much better than adding the adendum. Its not bad but its a bit underwhelming and I expected better writing. At least it gives us a finished story?
I'm not a fan of the fact that its not really adressed in depth that uploading is suicide though. They pay some lip service to it in a line here or there but the greater implications of it aren't really examined, especially considering that by the end 4 billion humans have uploaded, its basically mass scale genocide that show never bothers adressing. I see a lot of people cope and say "Its up to interpretation" bitch no its not. What you think when they make 30 copies of david there's any continuity there?
Overal I'm happy I watched it, I thought the ability to make series like this had essentially been lost nowadays. Ending is mid, but eh, season one made it worth it.
All the main characters are white. Men are not bumbling fools or incompetent.
The only nonwhite main characters of importance are villains and between the cult "parents" the husband ended up being the good one and the woman the evil one and from the chinese scientists the woman was an unreasonable bitch and the male scientist was the one who actually could control himself.
I do think its funny that the black UI is literally the physical (or digital) embodyment of every single negative stereotype about black women though. Loud, entitled, obnoxious, stupid, selfish, arrogant, narcissistic, resorts to violence when she doesn't get what she wants. I don't like how she never faces conquences for any of that though.
Also, the andrew tate lookalike pretending to be iranian struck me the wrong way. Iranians are white, not brown.
Sony had a hit with Spider-Verse and now every movie afterwards has to look like it, with the visual stuttering, so that these 3-D CGI animations look like they're having trouble buffering, as well as crude, ignorant approximations of anime. "See, it's cool when you don’t animate everything on 1’s. The less you do that the more anime-like and stylish the movie is."
I think the reason people do this is to replicate the stop-motion animation that actual TALENTED people (see: Wallace and Gromit) did waaaaaaaaaaay back in the day. The problem is that they miss the fucking point entirely of why stop-motion animation was beloved. You can try to replicate that shit on a computer all you want, but an actual hands-on approach with love'n'passion is what makes it work.
Like at this point, old South Park is better at stop-motion than these newer shows that try to emulate it.
I think the reason people do this is to replicate the stop-motion animation that actual TALENTED people (see: Wallace and Gromit) did waaaaaaaaaaay back in the day. The problem is that they miss the fucking point entirely of why stop-motion animation was beloved. You can try to replicate that shit on a computer all you want, but an actual hands-on approach with love'n'passion is what makes it work.
Like at this point, old South Park is better at stop-motion than these newer shows that try to emulate it.
Big goddamn agree on the bold part, slight disagree on the latter.
I think like all things it's how it's used. And a whole lot of things like digital effects and computer graphics are used more like assembly line mass production when it really should be used more like a set of specialized tools. It's the eternal goddamn paradox that when a tool gets better and easier to use, the output tends to get worse on average because the barrier of entry lowering means now "anyone" can do it. And not just anyone can make something great.
A lot of hollywood's output is very boardroom play it safe paint by numbers and dick riding a fad til it stops printing the amount of money they want and it's always ends just a few years too late. And as a result a lot of the people in the industry are only getting experience in doing paint by numbers work and fad chasing as a result, so their work and it's quality suffers as does their methodologies they are allowed to learn and utilize are crippled.
TL;DR: Garbage in garbage out basically.
This is a bit of a charitable take on my end, I know plenty are no doubt true believers in their own field and it's importance while working on the same shit over and over too.
This is mostly a preamble for what I wanted to share though, which is an example of what you can accomplish when you actually give a shit or somewhat respect any medium you're trying to emulate:
Worthikids is a not that huge youtuber and their body of work is IMO hit or miss in terms of actually being entertaining, but it is almost always visually interesting.
But they've proven you can get pretty goddamn close with a computer to at least some styles of stop motion even as "Just a guy (or two)" but you have to be allowed to even bother to try in the first place or learn new methods and workflows for CGI/VFX to make it happen.
As you said. A key difference in damn near anything is the love and passion.
there was some retro scifi short thing done by, I think a Japanese guy, but it was like "Captain [namehere]" it was CG but absolutely nailed the Rankin/Bass stop motion look
there was some retro scifi short thing done by, I think a Japanese guy, but it was like "Captain [namehere]" it was CG but absolutely nailed the Rankin/Bass stop motion look
I always think about that one story where this kid turned into a mutant upon hitting puberty, and his power was destroying all organic matter within a wide radius. He was horrified to learn that he’d unintentionally killed his parents and classmates, and Wolverine mercy killed him. Trying to make a good race allegory with that is just retarded.
I’m also now remembering this shit, mainly because the responses make me laugh. View attachment 7364157
To try and keep it on the subject of Western animation, I remember so many people being like “Umm Magneto has a point”. What is it with the chronically online always going to bat for the violent warmongers, whether they be aliens, mutants, etc? Is it just the misanthropy?
Internet arguments like this opened my eyes early on to how many people can be weirdly snobby about having disabilities/mental conditions and would treat an amputee as subhuman for getting a prosthetic limb because that implies that not having that limb makes you lesser.
Even if you restrict it to the movies themselves, Magneto thinks of lesser mutants not in his inner-circle as pawns. Hes completely willing to kill a mutant child and Wolverine.
In the movies, Magneto literally abandons Mystique when she unintentionally gets shot with the cure because, no matter how she served his cause before, she's no longer one of them.
I have come to ask a completely weird question: why do people who make good cartoons (Dexter's Lab) never give parents proper names? That always bothered me ever since I was a child.
Not sure if it works for this thread, but I recommend watching Mars Express. A movie made by the guy behind Lastman (an anime-inspired series that is kinda like Berserk in the modern world with boxing matches), it's a quite well-done cyberpunk noir movie that hits all of the buttons. Maybe a bit too formulaic, as there's an equivalent of the spidertank fight from GITS that feels unnecessary, as the ending is kinda meh... But it's certainly leagues better than most western shows, animation or otherwise.
Sony had a hit with Spider-Verse and now every movie afterwards has to look like it, with the visual stuttering, so that these 3-D CGI animations look like they're having trouble buffering, as well as crude, ignorant approximations of anime. "See, it's cool when you don’t animate everything on 1’s. The less you do that the more anime-like and stylish the movie is."
This looks like the most generic thing possible. It definitely feels like the hollywood western lens of asian animation this time instead of Japan it's Korea which is the next thing to milk.
Sony had a hit with Spider-Verse and now every movie afterwards has to look like it, with the visual stuttering, so that these 3-D CGI animations look like they're having trouble buffering, as well as crude, ignorant approximations of anime. "See, it's cool when you don’t animate everything on 1’s. The less you do that the more anime-like and stylish the movie is."
Spiderverse used a mix of 2d, 3d, pop art, cgi, line art, they used 70 year old comic book drawing techniques, opting to not use any motion blurr in favour of motion smearing, animating different characters in different framerates to show stuff like experience and finesse, halftones, ben-day dots, they mixed matched various artstyles, from classic comics, to tv animation, noir, golden age comics, silver age comics, to anime to even looney tunes with different characters having different artstyles.
This is just bog standard plastic person 3D cgi with low framerate.
Don't even see why its animated honestly, it could literally work with real actors and that's a compliment and I can definitely imagine a good novelization.
