[barend]

am i the only one disturbed buy the current trend of japanese cartoons today???

when i was a kid we had ROBOTECH: a fun filled action packed cartoon about an alien race attacking us for the hell of it, gaint robots that shot up stuff, there was friends dying, people kissing, and someone married their cousin at one point...
we also had BATTLE OF THE PLANETS: five or so teenagers with capes and differnt weapons, a buddy in the airforce, a drag queen for an enemy, a robot, a cool ship, un underwater base, and a second in comand who was always pulling a burn to gain power...
TRANSFORMERS: a cartoon about a buch of 'machine men' that turned into vehicles and shot each other, made energon cubes, and destroyed heaps of stuff...
(there was also machine men about a bunch of transforming roborts... but japanesse? i don't remember)
AND SOME OTHER ONE I CAN'T REMEMBER THE NAME OF: a bunch of guys in outerspace in a space ship shaped like a sea ship... some guy had detatchable limbs, we found in some episode... that's all i remember clearly... and it was good.
oh, and ASTRO BOY kicked some major ass as well, ATLAS was my hero...
(and there was the YEARLING, but i don't think it helps build my case so i wan't mention it... but i just did... oh well, anyway...)

now you have, POKEMON: of which i must admit season one was very watchable... it is funny and jesse from team rocket makes me want to do naughty things... naughty, naughty things...
but at the end of the day... it's about people using little creatures in competition... barking orders at them while they do all the fighting...
DIGIMON: a ripoff of the previosly mention toon... and another overglorified show about cockfighting...
SAILOR MOON: what the hell is this show about?
THE ONE WITH THE CARDS: now this one is just lame... kids collecting cards with spirits that in no way really do anything worth mentioning... but some of them look kind of cool...
THE ONE ABOUT THE SPINNING TOPS: how old is the intended audience for that??? what a lame idea for tornement...

i mean, good lord, what the hell is all this about???

it just seems a little patronising... this in conjunction with changes made to old films from our childhood...

when i was a kid i could handle the idea of death being the thing the hero was trying to avoid... it didn't scare me but it gave the cartoon a reason to exist....
now it's all about competition, where no one can get hurt...
you could argue that the others promoted violence, but if you do then you could say that about the HOBBIT... which is just silly.

i fear that those growing up now will be spinless, scared, wimps of men and women who will grow up with an overdevloped sense of compeditiveness...
where as i grew up with cartoons that taught me the importance of survival, and people bonding together to fight common evils...

bring back cartoon violence...

FOR THE CHILDREN...

[Reader]

AND SOME OTHER ONE I CAN'T REMEMBER THE NAME OF: a bunch of guys in outerspace in a space ship shaped like a sea ship... some guy had detatchable limbs, we found in some episode... that's all i remember clearly... and it was good.

(shot in the dark)
Techno-man?

You forgot to mention probably the worst one... worse than the top one? yes!
"Yu-Gi-oh" No redeemable qualities what-so-ever. Even the title is lame.

Anyway, i agree with your point. BUT, not being a kid anymore, i could care less what the kids these days are being forced to watch.
I know that Sailor Moon was the first anime i started watching, and that made me want to look into other anime. I quickly realized that there was much violence to be found to satiate my appetite for fantasy violence.
So my point is, kids interested enough after watching the dreck they show on TV these days need not look too far for adequate violent entertainment.

I sure would like more good-quality anime to be shown on kids TV though. Then again even if they do it'll be the lucicrously bad dubbed version... can't win with plain old TV.

[Owyn]

SAILOR MOON: what the hell is this show about?

I believe it had to do with the same reason you found the first season of pokemon so enjoyable ;p

However don't give up all hope in modern cartoons, there are still some good ones around today.

Gundam Wings- A show about 5 kick ass unstopable mobile suits(robot thingies) that go around killing everything and everyone, and even when they get board attack each other, but its all for the common fight against the opression from earth Hell even in the last couple of episodes they have a war between the entire world military and a massive space army just for the sake of proving violence is bad(thats the actual reason they give in the show).

Ziods: I think this show went pansy by the seconde season, but the first ones all about these massive robot/animals and surviving in a chaotic world between governernments, with nearly everyone else against you.

Family Guy: Unrelated to violence, but its too brilliant a show not to add to a cartoon review

[Jordan]

I loved dragonball about 8 years ago, way before it became a fad over here. The comics were fun to look at. I caught DB fever during my trip to Europe. Every Kiosk had copies of DB and DBz. I bought a couple and got hooked. I could not understand the story but it didn't matter, I could kind of make it out by the pictures.

On the plane ride back home, an attractive chinese women saw me 'reading' the chinese DB I had (I had a mix of french and chinese). SHe asked me if I could understand it, when I said no, she offered to tell me the story.

On the plan, we did a seat switch and sat next to one another. She told me all the names of the characters and the story of DB. I thought it kicked BUTT!

Years later, I was sitting at my friends house watching TV. Much to my suprise I landed on a channel that was playing an ENGLISH! version of DB. After watching it for 5 mins I turned it off and could not understand how such a cool comic could be so f'in boring in cartoon format.

I hate Japanamation. It looks good on paper, but on TV it's terrible. During the 5 mins of DB I watched, 2 mins were entirely of Cell and Goku staring at eachother and sweating in rage. The other 3 mins were incoherrent fight segments mixed with poor poor voice overs.

Having said all that, I've seen other japanamation films, and they too sucked. Save one. Ninja Scroll. But I enjoyed the story more than the animation.

[J m HofMarN]

The most popular animes do indeed suck, especially the ones geared to younger audiences. GI Joe and Transformers kick the shit out of any kids cartoon in existence. I still watch GI Joe and the coolest thing about it is how much they can get away with. Seriously, watch an episode fo GI Joe and tell me what COBRA does to their troops to make them COMPLETELY UNABLE TO HIT ANYTHING! They must like pluck out their eyes upon initiation or something. And every bloody time anything blows up someone hops out with a parachute.

However there are good things happening in the world of teen and adult cartoons. Gundam Wing has been mentioned. It is incredibly good. So is Cowboy bebop and Inuyasha and I especially love Trigun. Also check out any of the anime films that come on action channel, ghost in the shell and Patlabor the mobile police are great.


As for Dragon Ball Z I used to be a fan of it and even those who like it constantly lampoon it. A fight between two people can take up like ten damned episodes and leave us right where we were before the fight happened. At one point in the series that made me stop watching it it had the heroes friend getting the living shit kicked out of him. Then it cuts to the hero who stands on a ship and remarks that he has to go save his friend. It cuts back to his friend who is bleeding a river and half dead. Then it cuts to the hero who points out that there is no time to waste and he has to go now. Then back to his friend who is being mercilessly beaten to death. Then to the hero flying through the air talking about how he has to save his friend. Then his friend predictably enough dies.

That show is just plain dumb, or at least the dub is.

[Slade]

I have seen one episode of Inuyasha, and while I'm sure I was in the middle of the story line, the absurdly complex soap-opera-like amount of things happening, plus the laughably horrible dialogue really made me wish Sea Lab 2021 was on. Now that's one goofy show.

Yu-gi-oh! is the card one.

And if you think that's boring, yesterday at the lounge, there was a 28 hour marathon of a show about a kid who plays a japanese strategy game. Yes, the entire show is watching these people play a fucking board game. They even do the standard suddenly psychadelic background behind the characters, like in the action ones where fireballs are thrown, except then they put pieces on the board. I looked at it and thought "Ooh! Farce!" And then I realized it was serious. And then I realized that people actually watched it. For 28 fucking hours straight. I was ready to stab them all for watching the show longer than 20 minutes. I'll bet Beethoven never had to deal with crappy television shows when he wanted to play his Moonlight Sonata or Fur Elise...

If I could use Flash and had a website, I would so make the biggest and best Anime satire EVER. When I finally get my own name and get serious(?) about making a humor site, those shall hopefully be good times...

[barend]

some ideas...

POKE MONNOPOLY

YU-GI-PONG

THE ONE ABOUT THE SPINNING TOPS GOES THE WEASLE

[looktothesky]

BeyBlade is the anime about the spinning tops.
SonicX is also terrible.

A lot of anime television shows shown in the mornings are terrible. I liked Megaman NT Warrior though. Well, not the dub!! The Sub is very good...!!

[SimeSublime]

I remember Technoman being good, back when I was in Primary school. And I watched the first half of Trigun at a friends place a few months back, and that was really good. Not to mention I was a huge Transformers fan as a kid. But apart from that, I'm not a fan of anime.

[WalrusOfPlastic]

And every bloody time anything blows up someone hops out with a parachute.

Something about that era... Oh the beautiful scenes in the A-Team where 50 people would be shooting at eachother with automatic weapons and no-one would get hit untill they got in some sort of automobile wich would get knocked onto it's side,explode and all the passengers would crawl out unharmed and run away.

[reiner]

I watch a good bit of anime, but I'm far from the "OMG I LOVE TEH JAPAN" fanbois/fangrrls I seem to find. I was also a big fan of the old style of giant robots and stuff blowing up. I find it hard to sift through anime lately though.

I do suggest this though. I've watched the entire sub and it is very good. Not sure how the dubbed version will be, since it seemd a bit bloody and this IS Funimation dubbing...

EDIT: I believe Slade is talking about Hikaru No Go or some such. A friend of mine was like "Yeah it's so cool" , explained the premise, and I immediately said "No"

This post has been edited by reiner: 18 October 2004 - 09:04 PM

[J m HofMarN]

"Something about that era... Oh the beautiful scenes in the A-Team where 50 people would be shooting at eachother with automatic weapons and no-one would get hit untill they got in some sort of automobile wich would get knocked onto it's side,explode and all the passengers would crawl out unharmed and run away."

WoP- I know exactly what you mean. It's like it was a load of crap and they knew it was a load of crap but they just didnt care. And, sure it was partly about merchandising but the stuff they were merchandising wa coooool. The old transformers still rock hard.

[barend]

yeah those insect animal transformewrs are MEGALAME!!!!

old trannys rock!!!






(yeah, you heard me!!!)

[Creaux]

If you want to see a decent anime...go a bit further than what's on Fox.

[SimeSublime]

Easily done, seeing as we don't have fox here.