New anime & Dragon Ball rant

You know, I get really pissed inside about the anime and manga rage here in Belgium. On one hand, I as a mangaka who wanna be published and stuff myself just cuz I enjoy it, make good chances of becoming interesting now that every kid and adult wait for an hour for the manga shop to open, reading tankubons sitting in the street.
On the other hand - what's making anime and manga popular is commercial (sorry) shit, like Pokemon, Digimon, Medabots, Beyblade, Yugi Oh and Dragon Ball (GT, Z, whatever). And a bit Sailor Moon which I can hardly judge.
And seeing anime getting popular through THAT worries me: most mature people will now judge anime by those cheap shows, ofcourse their label on anime will be "A little boy's morning shit". *I* don't wanna be "known" as an artist within THAT. I wish series with brains and love for art and stories, stories written out of a very fond and thoughtful author's heart, would be more popular here, like, dunno, Kenshin, Fushigi, Ceres, Saiyuki, CLAMP, Furuba, or at least Gundam Wing. ANYTHING with a soul for each character, a story and no 60% and up of no-brains. I suffered an episode of Beyblade today and it clearly shows it was only made to sell plastic crap in cereals, if you know what I mean. That Ray guy and Kai may have cool design if they weren't as horribly chibified, but that's not my point.

Ah, I could go on whining about this sad future of anime forever. A rage is good for my future. But not good for my real anime lover's heart ;__;

Btw, any opinions on my "New Anime" part?

^^
Anna

The rant continues, eh?

I think that I would save up some of that angst and hate that you have for these shows, because...(lol) the future is on the way...(close your eyes now...><!)

Just wait until "the DBZ movie", with real-live actors and cg-sfx, gets made ^-^...(Imagine..Tom Cruise, as Son Goku!? Christian Slater, as Vegita?..:-)) All of the merchandising that Big Bucks for junk "Hollywood" can muster. It will dwarf in comparison to what you see now. Oh yes, it is going to get much worse for you, I am afraid..."Angst-city baby"..as "Austin Powers" might say.

So, don`t worry about "mature opinions", unless you want to get ulcers, because.. it has only just begun... kids rule the box office and they rule anime. There is no fighting with Peter Pan!

Future scope: Not that far from a kind of reality:

The DBZ and a McDonalds hamburgers tie-in, .. The Mac-Goku hamburger-combo-"happy meal" set!, with mayonaise ki-effects and figurine is on it`s way to a fast food outlet in the near future and near you! ;-)..

You are not sick now, just wait until Hollywood gets a hold of these series...Charlies Angels? No!, Sailor Moon girls!! All of the ditsy girls that you can handle, with magical, cute, twisty turns, and mini skirts.. at your disposal...It will be a BIG BANG merchandising nightmare! ("Barbie", as Sailor Moon!) :-)

You may wish after a while that you never got involved in anime at all. It might be better not to care about the mainstream, and just concentrate on your niche...It might give you less anxiety ^-^

It does for me. I have run, no sprinted!.. into my little niche anime corner, in the dark, and I try my best to stay out of the way of the "pop anime series" and not get run-over. I watch them go by, and see if there is anything that I can get out of them, but like you, mostly a big NO! But, every once and again when I come down off of my horse (stongly suggested), I can feel like a kid again, and take in all of the goofy-ness, and it only goes to reaffirm that I am different and that I simply have different tastes... A-MEN!!

And I could get more verbal about it, but I figure that there is something in anime, for everyone to enjoy, no matter how lame I might consider it, it may just be the perfect show for somebody.

And "That" IS the great thing about the Japanese Manga-anime world is its diversity. So, I try to remember, that even plants takes pleasure from being watered. So, if you do not intellectualize different genre too much, whether it be pop or as obscure as GUNNM ^-^, it is all their for someone to enjoy. Kids are the largest demographic for anime, so that will not change anytime soon, and probably never. And you will have a lot more silly shows to endure. I think that it is fortunate just to get some mature anime and hope that the powers of economy do not doom our small niche markets to oblivion....

This *is* all child's play.

You and I collect mass-produced artwork made by some kid slaving away at a very small desk in Japan or Korea. He/she is an illustrating lackey, not a great artistic mind. Putting it any other way just makes us look like crackpots. I'm serious. Tell a non-anime person how much time and money has gone into your collection and ask what they think. I've spent hundreds of hours writing and maintaining a cel collector website (come on, that's pretty deep in fandom land) and even I still have a feeble grip on reality.

Cel collecting is a microcosm of anime itself. Cels are fun conversation pieces and a fun collectible, but that's all they are: fun.

Anime generally stinks. I think that's a reasonably informed opinion since I've seen an awful lot of it. It might not be all pornography and violence like the mainstream media would have you believe, but it's certainly not the pinnacle of human creativity that "anime" people want you to believe either.

There *are* a few people who can rightfully be considered artists in the sense that they seem to be focused on telling a good story or sticking to their art rather than just filling up a weekly timeslot for 26 weeks. Leiji Matsumoto comes to mind. I'm sure he can draw any dang way he wants, but he has his unmistakable style. Lots of people think his characters are hideous. Still, he sticks to his art.

Even your list of shows you'd like to represent anime with aren't what I consider the best the medium has to offer. I think Kenshin is a good idea in a crappy show. I think Fushigi Yuugi should have been about 6 episodes, not 52. Ayashi no Ceres was only slightly better until about halfway when they just gave up on being clever. CCS is a children's show and doesn't deserve any attention past being a really well-made children's show. Gundam Wing is generally acknowledged to be one of the weakest of the batch, along with Turn-A. DBZ is pretty horrible, for sure, but so is much of the other stuff. I've seen all these shows and have cels from many of them, regardless.

Slamming popular anime isn't the point of this message. The point is that anime is more like B-movies and less like classic film. Gundam is anime. Yamato is anime. Orange Road is anime. If any were made live-action, shot-for-shot, episode-for-episode, they would be universally despised.

Want a fun little serial or an animated soap opera? Anime! Want enlightenment or insight? Books.


jn

Well,

I am sure glad that you have the guts to say all of that jn.... ^-^

(*running for cover before the flame wars begin..!)

E

Well, we all obviously have our opinions on the matter. hahahahahaha. Honestly though, it is animation and not something "real," unless we allow it to be as such. I mean, so what if vegita has no uh.....appendage......it's animation! It's just fun!