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Avatar debate, and future American Animation Projects

by Seven Of Four » Sun Oct 08, 2006 9:38 pm

I'm at ends with my blödsinnig brother about American Animation resembling Japanese Animation. He constantly badgers me saying Avatar The Last Airbender is Anime, and is better than any Anime, to which I reply with a swift punch or kick to random parts of his body. Is American animation that takes after Japanese Animation style Anime? Personnally I say hell no, and punch whoever says different. Anime has to originate, IMO, from Japan, and no other country. It is a sub culture wholly derived from Japan and specific animation techniques created in Japan. I know that alot of American animation projects that go straight to TV have started taking on pretty much all the techniques and style of Anime, but does that make it Anime?

Linkage to a summary of Avatar
http://www.tv.com/avatar-the-last-airbender/show/28841/summary.html

Aside from Avatar, American Animation blows hard. But it still does not deserve a place amongst the Anime realm.
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by Atory » Sun Oct 08, 2006 11:22 pm

Avatar looks more like the French Animation of the Marathon company than it does Japanime. I think these shows will create another genre as to avoid arguments like the one you are having. Have the creators ever claimed it to be anime? To my knowledge Nick has not refered to it as so, however they are claiming Kappa Mikey to be anime which it obviously isn't.
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by Seven Of Four » Mon Oct 09, 2006 1:23 am

There's also other shows like Teen Titans, which got covered in New Type America a while back. Calling it an "Anime makeover". But due to the lack of knowledge known about shows like One Piece, Dragon Ball Z, and Naruto so many people get confused about their origins, and with American shows now reflecting alot of Japanese techqiues and archetypal characters the two genres and styles will get misconstrued.
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by Mappy » Mon Oct 09, 2006 5:15 am

Most of them homage the anime style, but not the mentality behind it. Whilst it would be wrong to say there isn't a shuddering degree of immaturity behind anime produced in Japan (or wherever they hire out their shows to be made) it doesn't even begin to describe the asinine qualities of that produced in the west. They're even further backward than the anime-esque productions in the 70's and 80's by French and French-Canadian studios.

Those shows that don't try to ape the anime style are usually the ones that work.
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by Psike81 » Mon Oct 09, 2006 9:39 pm

Growing up in the 80's and 90's i think its when it was the highlight and twilight of serial American TV animation . There were shows like The Real Ghostbusters , Visionaries perhaps even Dino Riders to name a few .

I'll put it this way , ... the level of animation quality (not style) would practically be competitive with Anime in terms of the overall technical qualities of production . Then I think sometime around the mid-90s of course things began to change .

I blame 3 things here , Hanna Babara established Cartoon Network , Nickelodeon hit satellite/cable and Disney got Michael Eisner . In short (and in my opinion) it was the volume of titles all aimed at the young to very young demographics were being factory produced (note here). Being so young they can't measure quality , hence PPG , Cow + Chicken , Arrrgh Monsters , etc became widely popular .

Cutting short , I often find that American animation tend to focus on a few key points which probably stifles it :
1. Animation is always towards children , the really young and the never growing up .
2. Limited stream of genre orientation . Action only , music only , adventure only . I speculate that its because a show has a whole crew of writers to choke continuity and possible diversity .
3. Not very experimental , relates back to the first 2 .
4. Corporate branding dictated the types of titles . Nickelodeon isnt going to produce a hentai or even remotely a Wolf's Rain (the bad example for emphasis)
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by Seven Of Four » Mon Oct 09, 2006 10:28 pm

I really wish they would just stick to a style, like Johen Vasquez... he's funny. Nickelodeon fired him because they believed Zim wasn't suitable for children. But aside from Avatar, Zim was the best show and only one worth watching Nick ever had. But I'll admit, I watched and loved Rugrats, Spongebob Square Pants and I think a few other creations by Nick, mostly because the demographic they aimed were people of moderate intelligence, so anyone between the ages of 13 and 15, or anyone doing business school.
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by Psike81 » Tue Oct 10, 2006 12:46 am

people of moderate intelligence, so anyone between the ages of 13 and 15, or anyone doing business school.


i think i like that line ... considering that the UNISA school of business and management have one of the highest ratios of international student enrollment and is one of the highest enrolled programs .

i want to believe that says something . :twisted: /khaaaan
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by Ryan White » Tue Oct 10, 2006 1:03 am

Then of course you get people like my father, who believe that animated features should stay aimed at children. This isn't to say that he doesn't like cartoons, I just think that he prefers the simplicity behind what's aimed at children. I've tried to get him to watch anime, anything that has any degree of fanservice gets his eyes rolling fast enough to cause a fault in the earths spin and anything dark he considers depressing, like Serial Experiments Lain and the suicides at the start. I really should try to get him to watch Azumanga Daioh because of it's innocent humor, or something along the lines of Basilisk, where there are certain stunts that can only successfully be pulled off because of it's animated format. Oh, that's right, he loves the original Astro Boy but didn't know it was anime at the time.

Not that we can really tell is the yanks are stealing the Japanese's style for animation. Osamu Tezuka, generally regarded as the Grandfather of the anime style was a huge fan of american comics when he was a child and they style that he made his own paid homage to the creaters that he admired so much. Betty Boop had big ryes and a small mouth well before the Japanese had done something similar.

Now, keeping in mind that I'm actually enrolled in the UniSA School of Business, how exactly are fellow students and I targeted by american animation companies?
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by Last Exile » Tue Oct 10, 2006 9:18 am

Lawyer in making vs business guy in making. This should be interesting.

This whole stigma of kids only is all from 50 years of Disney and Warner Brothers being the 2 main firing squads in the field of animation. From 1930--1980, they're pretty much it for what the Western World got to see. Things from other countries and studios only began to make impact in the 80s. The Baby Boomer generation has stigmas or views that are hard to break and this is one of them.
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