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Hey, Answerman! The Tryptophan Coma


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asukafan2001



Joined: 28 Mar 2007
Posts: 2
PostPosted: Fri Nov 27, 2009 12:48 am Reply with quote
Wasn't anime created and really brought to the forefront of their society because of after world war 2 and the atomic bomb drops their economy was in shambles.

So the entertainment industry turned towards animation as a way to save costs. As they could produce a exploding building for the same amount of cost that it takes to draw a tree blowing in the wind. So the cost effective nature of what anime provided the entertainment industry in japan made it a viable choice for them to use during there economic recovery.
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Animerican14



Joined: 19 Aug 2006
Posts: 963
Location: Saint Louis, MO
PostPosted: Fri Nov 27, 2009 1:30 am Reply with quote
Now I am unsure about your answer to that last part about the "symbolism" in the likes of Dragonball, Speed Racer, Astro Boy, & Sailor Moon... are you being sarcastic? Serious? Half & half of each, confusing that poor soul forever? Because seriously, you made me look up Chomsky on Wikipedia, but I don't feel like rummaging through that whole page. Really, at least where did that part about Chomsky come from?

(Seeing as how Linguistics might become a concentration in my English major, it could also be helpful to know if any of his contributions to linguistics somehow relate to Sailor Moon.)

Please don't let your head explode from how serious my questioning may be here. If some of that stuff said was sarcasm, well hell, it's the internet-- that kind of stuff ain't so easy to understand online all the time.
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Ai no Kareshi



Joined: 13 Mar 2005
Posts: 561
Location: South Africa
PostPosted: Fri Nov 27, 2009 1:38 am Reply with quote
I was also quite puzzled by the answer on the "symbolism" question, but yeah, I don't expect you to explain it over Thanksgiving.

We don't celebrate Thanksgiving here, by the way, so that whole thing took me by surprise too. Razz
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Labbes



Joined: 09 Feb 2008
Posts: 890
PostPosted: Fri Nov 27, 2009 1:42 am Reply with quote
Who or what exactly is "Chomsky"? I'm afraid I really do not get that part.
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Keideki_sempai



Joined: 20 Oct 2004
Posts: 6
Location: AZ
PostPosted: Fri Nov 27, 2009 2:30 am Reply with quote
I believe that he is refering to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noam_Chomsky when he says Chomsky. I am quite hard pressed to get the associating myself though. Chomsky had so many views about so many things that maybe I am missing just what connection there is between any of his work and Sailor Moon. I agree with the other views (Although the bit about DBZ might be stretching it a bit). Perhaps someone with more knowledge of Chomsky's works could tell us a bit more?
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penguintruth



Joined: 08 Dec 2004
Posts: 8503
Location: Penguinopolis
PostPosted: Fri Nov 27, 2009 2:40 am Reply with quote
Which is sadder, that people think Brian was being serious, or that they don't know who Noam Chomsky is?
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malik_chan



Joined: 07 Mar 2008
Posts: 134
PostPosted: Fri Nov 27, 2009 2:49 am Reply with quote
penguintruth wrote:
Which is sadder, that people think Brian was being serious, or that they don't know who Noam Chomsky is?


I say both, even as someone who has no idea who Chomsky is.
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Zac
ANN Executive Editor


Joined: 05 Jan 2002
Posts: 7912
Location: Anime News Network Technodrome
PostPosted: Fri Nov 27, 2009 3:14 am Reply with quote
I'll solve the mystery for all you joke sleuths having trouble with this particular conundrum:

the paragraph about symbolism is a joke
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ikillchicken



Joined: 12 Feb 2007
Posts: 7272
Location: Vancouver
PostPosted: Fri Nov 27, 2009 4:13 am Reply with quote
Zac wrote:
I'll solve the mystery for all you joke sleuths having trouble with this particular conundrum:

the paragraph about symbolism is a joke


Yeah I guess so. It's just a bit weird though. I mean he talks about how "charming and earnest" the question is and how he just had to answer it and then he turns around and kind of implies that the question is stupid by making fun of it in such a way. I can see why people would be confused.
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Seca



Joined: 04 Aug 2003
Posts: 149
Location: WA
PostPosted: Fri Nov 27, 2009 4:52 am Reply with quote
I feel I need to speak up in regards of saying anime didn't really come about until the 50's. I'm taking a Japanese Cinema class currently and got to watch what is considered Japanese first animated feature film, Momotaro no Umiwashi, which was released in 1944. It used cell animation and was surprisingly close to the standard of animation in the U.S., despite having less material to work with because of the war and being made by what was the industry norm of the time of just having a handful of animators working from the house they lived in. I think the most noticeable difference is that the film is in black and white not color, but resources for anything but the war effort were hard to come by.

And I think to say this film isn't anime is like saying that there were no cartoons being produced in the U.S. until Walt Disney. So I truly believe that saying that anime didn't exist until the 50's or 60's is doing a great disservice for the Japanese animation pioneers that came before Tezuka, who date all the way back to the 1910's.

I think pretty much all of those questions could be answered by reading a book about Japanese cinema history, or even about general film theory. And also to remember not everything is meant to be anything more than what it is, and sometimes a series about an alien that continuously gets involved in seemingly endless battles is just a series about an alien that continuously gets involved in seemingly endless battles.
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Labbes



Joined: 09 Feb 2008
Posts: 890
PostPosted: Fri Nov 27, 2009 6:48 am Reply with quote
Zac wrote:
I'll solve the mystery for all you joke sleuths having trouble with this particular conundrum:

the paragraph about symbolism is a joke


Yeah, but it feels like an experimental physics joke (I know there's a joke, I just don't get it).
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Bored_Ming



Joined: 17 Jun 2009
Posts: 242
Location: The Edge of ......
PostPosted: Fri Nov 27, 2009 7:34 am Reply with quote
Brian was just being experimental in his symbolism. My guess is he fell in love with Angles and Demons and wanted to channel a little Robert Langdon.

Excelsior!
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edzieba



Joined: 13 Dec 2006
Posts: 704
PostPosted: Fri Nov 27, 2009 7:48 am Reply with quote
Quote:
The materials they required were just the same as any professional animation studio around the globe at that time; paper, pencils, camera equipment, and lots and lots of man hours. None of those materials were hard to find and, aside from the camera equipment, not particularly expensive
Don't forget animation cells themselves. The collapse of cell producing companies, and the subsequent skyrocketing of the price of raw cells, led to the sudden and abrupt transition to digipaint in the late 90s. With the unfortunate side-effect that studios, unfamiliar and inexperienced with working on computers, produced some quite stunningly unpleasant looking shows (mainly due to the full range of brightness values available). It's only in the last 5 years or so that colour and lighting have started to approach what was common in the mid 90s. Compare Sunrise's Escaflowne (1996) for example, to Gundam Seed (2002). In 6 years, they went from a stunningly beautiful looking series, to blazingly garish colours that just hurt your eyes.
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writerpatrick



Joined: 29 Mar 2006
Posts: 685
Location: Canada
PostPosted: Fri Nov 27, 2009 9:00 am Reply with quote
It's probably easier to say when anime fandom started in North America. Basically, Star Wars started it all.

Yes, it was Star Wars that's responsible for the anime fandom we now see in North America. The success of Star Wars created a demand for more sci-fi. But there was almost nothing so TV producers started importing it.

While we did get Astro Boy and Speed Racer before, those shows didn't cause the sensation or hunger that Star Blazers did. Those shows came out during the 60s but we had nothing during the 70s. Star Blazers, named to deliberately play upon the success of Star Wars, was the first show to really get kids excited and wanting more. A whole slew of other anime followed on TV.
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_Earthwyrm_





PostPosted: Fri Nov 27, 2009 9:59 am Reply with quote
Thanks for taking the time out of your Thanksgiving holiday, Brian. Smile
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