Blog Talkback: Toons of the 2000s: Anime We Hope Never Come to America

R

Rage of the Jew

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Well here's a comparison. Evangelion Rebuild 1.11 costs 5,040 yen for the DVD, and 6,040 for the Blu-ray. That's over an hour and half of content.

A hentai that just came out is 5,980 yen for about 23 minutes of content.

See where the money comes from?
 
Except that that's not what you're doing, and before I get into this, let me just point out that nobody cares what the impotent 4channers think, so nobody need mistakenly believe that I'm trying to stand up on their behalf.

I get it, you want something to serve as a counterpoint to your "5 great shows of the '00s that haven't been licensed (but should be)." So you're going for "5 awful shows of the '00s which we hope vanish from the planetary memory forever." Fine. Dandy. So we're going to get a look at the worst the first decade of the millennium had to offer, right?

Nu-uh. Of the five titles on this list, four of them came out in the past two years or so, and for all the claims you make that this is about quality, what do your analyses boil down to?

School Days' characters are a vile mess of irredeemable immorality.
Chokotto Sister is all exploitative fanservice.
Kiss X Sis is overrun with lolita sister-con fanservice.
Ultimate Girls' premise is exploitative of women and offensive.
Kodomo no Jikan needs no introduction.

Seeing a pattern?

Now I know that when you take those aspects out, you're left with "series x has no plot and horrible direction," which also describes many, many other anime produced in the past ten years, but if this the criterion that you're always going to fall back on...

Maybe it wouldn't have jumped out at me quite so much if this topic didn't seem to be coming up all the time lately, but when ARGH QUEEN'S BLADE/STRIKE WITCHES is joining ARGH HOLLYWOOD ANIME as the complaint that keeps worming its way into threads, it's pretty hard to ignore.

In the end... between nearly all the titles on this "retrospective of the decade" being pretty recent, the content being the common link between all of them, and your own (very strong, very public) feelings on the matter... I'm sorry, but I'm having a very hard time not seeing this post as "Today We Soapbox on This Perceived Issue."

This is not only not what the post was supposed to be, but is also contrary to the spirit of the entire event. People do "worst movies/songs/whatever" lists as fun retrospectives all the time, but they do it so that we can laugh together at them, or enjoy them in that perverse MST3K way. This one is just angry, and it expects us to be angry too.

Instead I'm just feeling annoyance, but it's not over the shows.

I'm sorry that I'm coming on strong here, and I'm certainly no fan of the lolicon/fanservice motif, but it feels like there's been an increasing trend towards ranting and complaining here for the past year. When those complaints start becoming "rabroad Official," I can't really say I like the direction the forum is going.
 
So, GWO and Karl Olson:

Have you seen Boku no Pico? I was expecting to see that on the list, since the only group of people who would want something like that in America are NAMBLA members.
 
Moonphase definitely flirts the loli genre but it is generally inoffensive. Also a bit boring. But, it looks great. And I actually finished it, so that's something. So while it's not horrible, I wouldn't watch it again.
 
Nice to see the abomination known as UG make the list, since it's the only one on the list that actually bankrupted a company. I really have to wonder who that thing was intended for.
 
It's also possible that you're reading far more into this than there is, finding a pattern you set out to find. Yeah, lots of shows had bad writing and little reason to exist; that was never going to be sufficient reason to make this list. The exploitative elements, completely unredeemed, are an obvious quality to look for when selecting the worst of the worst.

So what is the pattern you see? Lolicon, fanservice, sex, and immorality in entertainment are bad? We've gone over that. You haven't even seen the Top 5 which this entry was a counterpoint to. Most of the titles are recent? Is the problem that we don't like a current trend? There are always good trends and bad trends. It could have been something else, years ago. Heck, if we were giving in to common complaints on this forum, it'd probably be a list of purely moe series instead. Anger? I'm not feeling it.

Technically, I'm not seeing any "rabroad Official" label on this event. Ok, maybe that's not entirely fair. It is our blog, and it's something that was open for staff participation. Entries like The Fall and Rise (?) of 2D Animation or The End of Broadcast Kids' Television are obviously meant to be informative works on a decade of animation history, but do you really think the Top 5's are supposed to be the entire site's final word on good taste? Of course not. Each Top 5 is an opinion piece. Sure, we tried to be fair, seeking as much staff input as we could get, but the collective result is still an opinion, isn't it?

You say you don't like ranting, but what are you participating in right now with your lengthy accusations? You're asking for an explanation, and you're getting one. No, actually, you've received several. Can we move on?

Instead of relentlessly questioning our motives, tell us what you'd have picked! Tell us why! At great length!

--Romey
 
Hey yeah. How do you have a list like this without Boku no Pico on it? :p Now that should have been there instead of School Days.

(Granted, I didn't actually see it nor did I want to so unlike the other choices I have no experience with it)
 
Ha, well-made list, interesting that all of them are of the loli/moe variety, which is really unneeded in this day and age. But ah if only Strike Witches and that... Witchblade or whatever (the one where you strike clothes off of scantily clad women or something) were unlicensed, I woudl assume they'd be on the list as well.
 
I know this is a bit much to ask but...

I wouldn't mind a "What if" blurb like the article does if it were the case that Queen's Blade was never licensed and actually made the Top 5.
 
I have actually heard of it (I often read Sankaku and /a/ - they give me a short list of titles to avoid, and they keep me abreast of attempts made by ignorant people to prosecute thought crime,) and since Pico's outright pornographic, I didn't even bother to bring it up.

If someone tried to do a Pico-like TV series though, it'd have to have outstanding writing and direction to get around the connotations of the concept. Otherwise, you're shooting for a ultra-narrow audience that you could never, ever market to without causing trouble in US.
 
You forget that myself and many other mods also spent a huge amount of time on this forum writing literally thousands of words more defending the right to free speech specifically in regards lolicon material (see the Handley guilty thread,) and that I gave stamps of approval to shows like Gunslinger Girl (loli,) Koi Kaze (incest,) and Desert Punk (fanservice and blatant misogyny.) Further still, in the case of Koi Kaze I spent pages debating it's merits against it's critics, including other staffers, which should prove we aren't some sort of hive mind.

Thus, it's not the morality or the tropes - on the contrary, I think weird morality can be a fantastic jump point if you can sell your characters and premise with the right drama or humor, and the same sell can cover for tropes. However, poor direction/pacing/emotional communication, especially when that's an issue of fanservice dominating a show, is quantifiably weak.

To put it another way, I think Kite is brilliant, and it's more screwed up than anything we put on that list. Ditto with Perfect Blue. However, those works also know that when you're that messed up, you have to get the audience to buy in beyond the sexuality and violence as soon as possible. You have to direct and pace such that they buy into it inspite of the unsettling material in play. Some works do it through drama while something like Puni Puni Poemi (which I think is genius satire) does it via comedy, but the fact is you can communicate very taboo topics, and do so well. You can't take halfway measures though - especially when you get as bombastic as something like Kodomo, you've gotta really stick that characterization and direction (or atleast blow the humor out like Rizelmine) ahead of the service. You lose most of the audience otherwise.
 
In the last episode of Matt Wilson's online cartoon "Bonus Stage", an anime a character mentions involves a girl who gains powers from embarrassment, claiming that it's a real show.
And now I finally know that "Ultimate Girls" was said cartoon. It does sound stupid, and all these shows sound horrible.
 
I totally agree, and in my experience I'd point to Berserk and even Basilisk. There's immorality aplenty there (especially in Berserk--hi Griffith!) but I don't complain. Why? Because they're (IMO) good. The content serves the story instead of supplanting it.

Karl and Romey have covered everything all too well, but on a personal note I'll chime in that I really don't think that I or anyone else has been on any sort of crusade. Yeah, I hated the QB license and still do, but I didn't harp on and on in the Strike Witches thread and I was one of those arguing that Handley was a creepy guy that still didn't deserve to potentially end up in jail. I do recall our sexism/feminism thread but for the most part that was a good discussion, and if you look at my posts I think there's a lot more there than some anti-moe agenda. Heck, there are people that would write off Haruhi Suzumiya and Kanon whereas I defend them. In any case we're seemingly talking 3 to 5 theads focusing on this theme at the most in 2009, which I do not think is excessive amidst the dozens upon dozens of threads covering other topics. So if rubberchicken or anyone else thinks being negative about it is a silly diversion that's totally valid, but I wouldn't call it an epidemic by any means. It's certainly not something I'm going out of my way to bring up, though I make no apology for participating when it does come up. Yet all things considered, I prefer talking about things that are great.
 
The director and writer of that OVA series have worked on mainstream anime (Gundam SEED, FMA, Hikaru no Go, even Dinosaur King, respectively), so a toned-down TV adaptation may be a possibility. NOT that's something I'm eagerly anticipating though. :ack:
 
Someone mentioned School Days, right?

Why? It's different from other Romance shows, it has a great whiplash. I'd say FUNi should licence it.
 
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