Is there not enough medieval sword-and-sorcery fantasy?

M

Mackenzie goes BLEHHHH

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We all know that in the 80s and early 90s tv used to be bustling with Dragons, magic, and medival times like crazy. And plenty of the shows were awesome but now a days everyone seems to be focusing more on being modern and down to earth with all shows. In truth I miss seeing a knight in shining armor beat down a dragon, or a wizard shooting a giant blast of energy.

What do you think of this? Do you think there isn't enough fantasy cartoons (anime too I guess) on TV anymore?

Note: This thread is referencing to medieval fantasy.
 
Fantasy is my favorite genre, mainly because you can do anything in it; where as more modern or 'grounded' series are extremely limited to just punching/kicking/firearms and so forth... while fantasy can actually have those and so much more. But I agree, I'd love to see more fantasy shows; especially if they're as unique and creative with the setting as W.I.T.C.H.: TAS was.
 
ANime has more then enough fantasy & Sci-fi, but its true most US & European cartoons of this decade havn't had as much fantasy as there predeccesors, but then again most of the good fanatasy elmements have been used or overused already so I don't really mind.:p :sweat:
 
Here is a short list of fantasy anime:

Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha
MAR
Bleach
Shakugan no Shana
Shaman King
Almost all of Hayao Miyazaki's films
Kirby; Right Back at Ya
Kiba
Yu Yu Hakusho
Sailor Moon
Cardcaptor Sakura
Magic Knight Rayearth
Spider Riders
Shinzo


And tons more, but I think you get the message.
 
Those are not the kind of fantasy I am talking about. Let me give you some of my examples.

Slayers
Rune Soldier

only one's you got right (according to my viewings) were

Shinzo
MAR
 
In this Wikipedia summary, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fantasy, it says that "Fantasy is a genre that uses magic and other forms of supernatural forms as a primary theme".

Bleach is fantasy because it has high schoolers with magical powers that fight supernatural spirits.

Spider Riders is fantasy because it involves a boy that falls in a magic portal that takes him to a magical world.

Sailor Moon is fantasy because it has some girls with magic powers and talking cats fighting weird monsters from other worlds.

See?
 
There are different forms of it. I am talking about medival fantasy we have enough regular fantasy but I am talking about medival, sorry if I wasn't clear enough.
 
Then next time clarify your statement to mean "medieval fantasy", which indeed there are not enough of. But just the word "fantasy" crosses a wide spectrum, as mkalv just showed.

One medieval anime you might be interested in is Shadow Skill, particularly because it bends gender stereotypes.
 
I'd rather see one set in the Forgotten Realms territory, with an actual storyline this time around. Forgotten Realms is my favorite campaign setting for D&D. Fat chance of that ever happening, though.
 
I second that. It'd be nice to see a new D & D-styled animated series - something with the scope of Lord of the Rings, but less grounded in reality. As much as I love LOTR, Peter Jackson always said he wanted it to feel more like a HISTORY than a FANTASY, and I really want a fantasy.

Marn, please explain why you think a Forgotten Realms series would never happen. I don't know too much about FR, to tell the truth. Is it copyrights you're concerned with or subject matter? Too many characters to boil down into a 30-minute deal? I'm curious.
 
My brother and I are kind of doing something like that. We're developing a cartoon called Wimzee & Zap which takes place in a fantasy realm which combines sci-fi and fantasy elements. Also, despite having numerous magical fantasy trappings like fairies, monsters and wizards, its' setting resembles a contemporary/futuristic society, with TVs, computers, flying cars, laser swords and superheroes.


I love fantasy stuff, but I admit that I'm a little tired of the setting of such shows always being medieval. Medieval is kind of old hat, IMO. So we tried to do something different with our show.
 
Good idea. Fantasy was wAy too broad even though I could see the original topic was was Wizards and Warrior sort of thing.

I think they simply won't make them. Even back when they tried, we got things like "Dungeons and Dragons". Total crap, both in story and animation. Until you move up to SciFi, all characters have to come from "our time" because 6-11 have to be able to relate to it. So sword skills have to come from video game skills. Medieval warfare is bloody and tireing. Not something they will use for animation. Magic and demons,,, well if you go farther than Pokimon, you deal with religious evil and good. Most Marketers aren't going to risk that. The only one I can say I really liked is "The Hobbit" and even that was cluttered with crummy musical stuff.
 
Oh, just because of the obscurity and whatnot. If they ever did make another D&D cartoon, it'd probably be it's own, general setting, or a mishmash of all the campaign settings.

For the record, the Neverwinter Nights 1 and 2 games took place in FR. I'd personally love to see a series adaption of NWN2. Great characters, epic story (though hardly orginal) and a great setting. Though any fantasy series would be great, as long as it had some creative effort put into it.

Which shows? I'm all for variety, but I think fantasy shows are rare enough that it can't be considered overplayed yet.
 
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