Times the American Equivalent Was Better than Japan's

[skykiii]

It's easy to be a weeb and say Japan always does it better. In this thread I wanna discuss times they didn't.

THE RULES:

No generic examples--no listing entire genres or "any time America does X" or something like that.

The things have to have a strong point of similarity that make them comparable, or else have to be in the same franchise.

This is not a sub vs dub topic.

MY OWN EXAMPLES:

The Dungeons & Dragons Cartoon vs Record of Lodoss War
POINT OF COMPARISON: Both are animated series based on Dungeons & Dragons (Lodoss War is literally an adaptation of what happened in Ryu Mizuno's D&D campaign. And yes he was actually playing D&D at first, though he invented a new system later to avoid legal complications)

WHY I THINK THE US DID BETTER: It's a lot of things, but mainly I find the US cartoon a lot of fun and full of creative concepts, like that prison suspended over the volcano, or that treasure chest that opens into some weird dimension, and all the character interplay where Venger is obstensibly the villain but ends up helping the heroes a lot of times.

For what it's worth, there's only two Lodoss shows I'm familiar with: the first OVA adaptation, and the loosely-related Louie the Rune Soldier. Now, I like Rune Soldier, but Lodoss OVA is a show I have to be in a certain mood to watch, otherwise I just find it boring.

Transformers G1 vs the Transformers Takara Trilogy
POINT OF COMPARISON: ... They're literally in the same franchise and the Takara trilogy (Headmasters, Masterforce, and Victory) are literally continuations of the G1 story.

SO..... Its funny, but I wasn't a Transformers fan growing up, it was an IRL friend that finally got me hooked around the time the Rhino DVDs were coming out.

But once I finally watched it, I got hooked on a lot of the interesting and sometimes goofy concepts but also the rather unexpected character personalities. Seriously, how many cartoons can you name where it's the villain who wants to team up with the heroes and its not part of an evil plan and the villain turns out to be entirely honest in their intentions?

To be fair, Takara is good about maintaining some of this--Galvatron does try to stop Cybertron from exploding, after all--but....

Also to be fair, part of me has always wondered if this is a case of the shows losing something in translation. Especially Headmasters. I have the UK Metrodome set and its always bothered me that the subs don't even attempt to keep things like Grimlock or Wheelie's speech patterns, which makes me wonder what else is being lost.

Mostly though, the Takara shows make me feel like I'm watching a by-the-numbers mecha anime which would be absolutely un-notable if not for the Transformers connection. Literally riding the coattails of a better story.

For what it's worth, I didn't watch Victory because I never finished Masterforce.... I did watch the Zone OVA and surprisingly I enjoyed that.

Challenge of the Gobots vs Machine Robo: Revenge of Cronos
POINT OF COMPARISON: ... Once again, literally the same franchise.

Yeah if you didn't know, the Gobots toys were called Machine Robo in Japan.

SO..... This is similar to the Transformers thing, but also different because Machine Robo's anime is not a continuation, this is literally America and Japan got different cartoons of the same toys.

One thing that makes it hard IMO to get into giant robot anime is a lot of them feel very samey. I've heard that in many cases they start to show their unique traits if you put time in and watch them more, but.... that's kind of a huge ask. From what I saw Machine Robo felt like a very by-the-numbers anime. The only point I can give it over the Gobots cartoon is that Machine Robo makes no attempt to be similar to Transformers.

Challenge of the Gobots, meanwhile, is an interesting watch. While it makes the afformentioned attempt to ape Transformers (by being about two warring factions of alien robots who bring their war to Earth... just Cybertron is now called Gobotron), the show otherwise immediately distinguishes itself from Transformers in artstyle, tone, dialogue... it shows one advantage American works can sometimes have where even when a premise is obviously similar, the actual thing is also obviously different in a lot of very noticable respects, and I don't have to sit through the entire series to see what it brings to the table.

So what things would you have added to this list?

 

[TATE MOOOOOOOOOOOOOOODE!!]

Video games.

 

[Miriam Margoyles]

I don't remember any American cities getting nuked in World War II.

 

[Tablet County]

Robotech's first third is superior to Funimation's Macross dub by a landslide.

 

[wtfNeedSignUp]

A lot of video game openings are very mediocre in Japanese and amazing in the west.
Tales of Symphonia is the best example with the western version being gorgeous while the Japanese being very bland:

There is also Tales of the Abyss with meh vocals on absolutely god tier guitar, with the American ditching the vocals:

Besides that, Mighty Morphin Power Rangers which was way more epic than it had any right to be.

Ghost Stories is a favourite point to bring up

Sticking to genres. Japan is absolutely BTFOd by American sitcoms both humour based and non humor based.

And in general anything live action in Japan just sucks besides reality TV abusing any contestant.

 

[ToroidalBoat]

I think the American localization of Mario 64 is better.

"Super Mario 64 Version Differences" - Kaons

And of course "Super Mario USA" (AKA Mario 2) is better than Mario 2 (AKA "The Lost Levels").

 

[LifeAlert]

Virtually all written fiction. I don't know why they do this other than the merciless corporate machine, but it seems a lot of jap fiction, ESPECIALLY anime/manga have terrible writing which all follow the same conventions of copying a pre-existing formula, having generic characters and a paper-thin story that goes on way too fucking long, enforcing the cultural narrative of work hard, friends good, villain bad, etc. without any room for variation beyond the title and setting, and most importantly trying to look "cool" so that losers will cum themselves and sperg about how amazing and deep their corporate slop cartoon is with their groomers on Discord. Even when the story seems solid they will completely derail it with stupid shit that doesn't matter, new characters being suddenly dumped in, or if they even attempt to write an ending at all it will be abrupt, plot threads will be left unresolved, or it will be the most retarded, half-assed, and spiteful ending possible (e.g. MHA, Bleach, AoT)

I have seen a lot of terrible pre-current year American movies with stale or predictable writing but there's a metric fuckton of good or at least uniquely written movies to balance that out. With anime/manga it's the other way around, well-written stories that are engaging on an intellectual level and have a satisfying conclusion are the minority while the repetitive slop has always been what primarily makes up the industry. The only real value a lot of old anime/manga have is the artwork. Pre-current year anime movies are better in the writing department but there's less of them than there are full length series and good luck finding any good ones that aren't by Satoshi Kon or Studio Ghibli

 

[skykiii]

Video games.

The first rule was "no generics like 'all of X'. " Name specific games.

In fact I do notice that despite specifically saying "please no generic sweeping statements" practically every response is generic sweeping statements.

Robotech's first third is superior to Funimation's Macross dub by a landslide.

Funimation did a dub of Macross? I knew ADV did one.

Honestly in general I do find Robotech better than not just Macross but also Southern Cross and Mospeada (not that improving on Southern Cross would be a controversial statement as that show was apparently unpopular... tho I've heard people say the real facts of the case are more complicated).

 

[Tablet County]

Funimation did a dub of Macross? I knew ADV did one.

Honestly in general I do find Robotech better than not just Macross but also Southern Cross and Mospeada (not that improving on Southern Cross would be a controversial statement as that show was apparently unpopular... tho I've heard people say the real facts of the case are more complicated).

Might've been ADV, I'm not sure. It had Vic Mananana as Hikaru and had Minmei's Japanese voice actress doing fucking atrocious Engrish. Also Ulpio Minucci made one of the best fucking soundtracks I've ever heard.

 

[skykiii]

Might've been ADV, I'm not sure. It had Vic Mananana as Hikaru and had Minmei's Japanese voice actress doing fucking atrocious Engrish. Also Ulpio Minucci made one of the best fucking soundtracks I've ever heard.

That was ADV's dub. I remember the special features making a big deal out of Minmei's J actress reprising her role.... and that one commentary track between her and Misa's actress felt so much like I was listening in on girl talk.

I found her thick-as-bamboo accent rather endearing, but Reba West will always be Minmei in my head.

 

[Tablet County]

That was ADV's dub. I remember the special features making a big deal out of Minmei's J actress reprising her role.... and that one commentary track between her and Misa's actress felt so much like I was listening in on girl talk.

I found her thick-as-bamboo accent rather endearing, but Reba West will always be Minmei in my head.

At least Jap Minmei could sing.

 

[Ed Special]

Fuck it, I'll come out and say it. Even in the current tranny-coopted era, BattleTech is way more compelling mecha media than anything the Japanese animation industry has ever put out.

Also, early Madonna absolutely fucking mogs her Japanese contemporaries.

 

[peachlover669]

Video games.

I'd say this varies, if your talking triple A games then japs have us beat tenfold since they dont let corporate DEI bullshit effect the product (albeit this is slowly being eroded)
However when it comes to the indie scene american games are just much more interesting as where japanese indies have for the most part stagnated in terms of innovation and ideas.

 

[FatMebius]

I found her thick-as-bamboo accent rather endearing, but Reba West will always be Minmei in my head.

Mari Ijima is a fucking weirdo. Not sure if it was someone at ADV's decision to make her play up her accent or what, but she doesn't TALKU RIKU DISSU in real life. I've heard her at cons and shit and her accent isn't that thick. Hell, she lived in the US for a decent chunk of time. So, not sure what was going on there.

 

[skykiii]

Mari Ijima is a fucking weirdo. Not sure if it was someone at ADV's decision to make her play up her accent or what, but she doesn't TALKU RIKU DISSU in real life. I've heard her at cons and shit and her accent isn't that thick. Hell, she lived in the US for a decent chunk of time. So, not sure what was going on there.

My guess is that its because even in Macross canon, Minmei is a Chinese immigrant so the dubbers probably thought it would be cool if they showed her speaking a new language but with some hallmarks of her homeland... or else they thought it would make her adorable.

Or else the actress got better at English after the dubbing was recorded.

I wish I had the ADV DVDs of Macross, I recall they had extensive special features.

At least Jap Minmei could sing.

I didn't think Reba's singing was bad. To me the hilarious part was when someone would say "here's the debut of Minmei's new song!" and then it would be that same song she's done a dozen times.

Imagine my amazement when the exact same thing happens in Macross, showing its not just a dub issue.

EDIT

So despite the OP clearly saying "please don't use wide-sweeping generic examples like 'entire genres' or 'any time America does X' " it seems like we've all seen fit to just ignore that.

So... fuck it.

Animation in the 1980s

While there's a lot of great 1980s anime, gun to my head I think I would prefer anything American made from that time. Part of it is good ol' childhood nostalgia, but also it goes back to what I said about Transformers and Gobots--it feels like American cartoons just inherently had more variety, even when you could spot patterns the beasts were still so distinct that you could never see them as interchangeable.

By contrast its hard for me to be too enthusiastic about 1980s anime except for a few shows, because a great many of them feel like they're just the same show with minor differences. Particularly a lot of the mecha shows I find hard to get into.

That said, the situation reverses once you get to the late 1990s.... at that point I started to find American animation unbearable for a lot of reasons--among other things, there was an increasing view that "cartoons are supposed to be funny, not dramatic," gross-out humor suddenly came in vogue, lots of shows had aggressively ugly art, and in the 2000s we began to see characters who acted like ironic detached hipsters who were seemingly aware they were in a cartoon and never took it seriously even if a gun was pointed at their head--so at this point, anime became legitimately the superior medium. It still is, but nowadays both have sunk to the point where I prefer to just explore the great works of the past rather than see what new crap America or Japan is foisting on us now.

 

[Cat tit bingo]

It's a close one but time force edges out timeranger almost entirely thinks to Vernon wells as ransik

 

[el bandito loco]

It's a close one but time force edges out timeranger almost entirely thinks to Vernon wells as ransik

my friend bought the dvd set of time force when it came out then left it at my house when he left for work in the morning. my other friend and I woke up, took the cover out of the case, and used a marker to write gay on it over time so it said power rangers gay force and madlib-ed the back to say gay and fag and homo and stuff and then the next weekend he came over and was so mad he told me I could just keep it.

it was awesome I got a free dvd set of power rangers time force.

 

[SSj_Ness (Yiffed)]

It's so rare. I guess Donkey Kong, DKC2 is the best game in the franchise.

 

[Space Police]

The West has taken Transformers fiction to grand, epic heights. If Japan was fully in charge, we wouldn't have any of the cool lore and backstory from the Marvel and early IDW comics -- just a few throwaway manga strips. Imagine if Gundam got more Western involvement; we'd get more variety than just another AU with a dumb gimmick or yet ANOTHER generic grit team.

Also to be fair, part of me has always wondered if this is a case of the shows losing something in translation. Especially Headmasters. I have the UK Metrodome set and its always bothered me that the subs don't even attempt to keep things like Grimlock or Wheelie's speech patterns, which makes me wonder what else is being lost.

Yep, Headmasters is like that. It's just continuing the Transformers cartoon super cheaply because they had the money to do so. I haven't seen Masterforce, but Victory is amazing -- though lots of the appeal of Victory is Star Saber being the embodiment of justice and the designs you'll never be able to buy toys of at a reasonable price.

One thing that makes it hard IMO to get into giant robot anime is a lot of them feel very samey. I've heard that in many cases they start to show their unique traits if you put time in and watch them more, but.... that's kind of a huge ask.

Super robots live and die by the formula, but if you like the formula and you like the designs, is that a bad thing?

From what I saw Machine Robo felt like a very by-the-numbers anime.

Not really, it's got kung-fu/delinquent aspects, making it a sort of prototypical G Gundam but without the competition cringe.

Challenge of the Gobots, meanwhile, is an interesting watch. While it makes the afformentioned attempt to ape Transformers (by being about two warring factions of alien robots who bring their war to Earth... just Cybertron is now called Gobotron), the show otherwise immediately distinguishes itself from Transformers in artstyle, tone, dialogue... it shows one advantage American works can sometimes have where even when a premise is obviously similar, the actual thing is also obviously different in a lot of very noticable respects, and I don't have to sit through the entire series to see what it brings to the table.

Challenge of the Gobots is very underrated. The vehicles are cool, and the story is very engaging -- sometimes better than G1 because it takes itself more seriously. The best Machine Robo/Gobots show is Machine Robo Rescue, though. All the robots are rescue/construction themed, and they have a base in the sea with its own monorail and a conveyor belt for loading smaller robots to launch. If the Hot Wheels Robo Force cartoon got made, that would have been the best, but alas.

Besides that, Mighty Morphin Power Rangers which was way more epic than it had any right to be.

Sentai is more epic than Power Rangers and it has better vehicles. Saban has buck-broken almost every single Power Rangers into having animal robots. We need to return to the glorious days of Fiveman, Goggle-V, and Bioman where every robot was a vehicle!

And in general anything live action in Japan just sucks besides reality TV abusing any contestant.

Metal Heroes, Giant Robo, and Red Baron are amazing; delete this misinfo immediately!

Honestly in general I do find Robotech better than not just Macross

Waow, so TSMT so much TSMT! Robotech is better than Macross because its sequels are better and its interpretation of Protoculture is better. A bunch of cool crossover novels that keep the tone consistent and focused on the technology are far, far better than magical girl idol crap, and the Protoculture being a cool energy source with its own backstory of old alien civilizations is better than the Protoculture being just an old alien civilization.

 

[Tablet County]

Waow, so TSMT so much TSMT! Robotech is better than Macross because its sequels are better and its interpretation of Protoculture is better. A bunch of cool crossover novels that keep the tone consistent and focused on the technology are far, far better than magical girl idol crap, and the Protoculture being a cool energy source with its own backstory of old alien civilizations is better than the Protoculture being just an old alien civilization.

Some of the Macross sequels are good, and some of the Robotech novels can get really autistic and dumb. And Harmony Gold as a company is run by some of the most retarded boomers imaginable.
Though this shit goes incredibly hard:

I fuckin' love the Invid.