Forum - View topicHey, Answerman! - Deadline Hollywood
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enurtsol
 Posts: 14813 |
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Hey, next week's Question of the Week shouldn't include Realdolls(tm), shouldn't it? Those things can cost several thousands.
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rinmackie
 Posts: 1040 Location: in a van! down by the river! |
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I actually own and I have watched Doggy Poo. It's actually Korean and it is based on a children's book. While the title and subject matter (it's actually about a doggy poop!) is off-putting, the story itself is surprisingly sweet. So yes, I would recommend it.
As for anime/manga merchandise I'd like to have but may never get due to scarcity and cost: Vampire Knight bed sheets! However, i did get the pillowcase for Christmas. |
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enurtsol
Posts: 14813 |
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I remember as kids, my friends and I played restaurant. One line in the menu said doggy poo........... so obviously we ordered it to see what it was about. Then came a wrapped up banana leaf. We opened it and sure enough, it was doggy poo. Truth in advertising, I guess. Just gotta share that one.
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Mistmanov
 Posts: 27 Location: Belgium |
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RE: liking diverse genres of anime: I think it may have something to do with people (sub)consciously trying to rebel against the "mainstream", against what's popular in the general population. Catchy j-pop tune X might be just as commercial/overproduced/horrible as catchy pop tune Y, but I'll give X a fair chance because at some level it at least feels as if you're listening to something "edgy"/"intellectual"/whatever, while Y is the favorite song of your little sister and being used in commercials for toilet paper.
Same for different anime genres. I enjoyed Kanon, Nodame Cantibele, Toradora, even though I normally wouldn't be caught dead watching a romantic comedy. Enjoying the stuff that your mom likes? Oh the horror! My exposure to various anime genres made it a bit clearer to me that I'm behaving irrationally btw. I'll now just watch any 5-star movie that comes on tv, no matter the genre.. but I'm still not going to watch a romantic comedy when my family is around. Guess it's some irrational desire to keep up the "he only watches high-brow stuff" image -_- |
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Myaow
 Posts: 1068 |
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Breaking news: you can watch the infamous Princess Rouge trailer from Media Blasters right here on ANN! Stream it along with the trailers for Shamanic Princess and Shinesman for the full Media Blasters pre-presentation experience.
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partially
Posts: 702 Location: Oz |
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The reason in my mind for the willingness to give things a fair shake is actually quite simple. That is that unlike many US works most anime defies genre norms. At the video rental store you can always pick a genre and find a film you will enjoy based upon genre. With anime it is not that simple, directors will often change content. Many anime cross genre boundaries or even hop them, constantly switching genre. Take Gurren Lagann, do you class it as action? Then what about the drama, romance etc? More recently Tatami Galaxy, where do you even begin with that one? Gosick which is just beginning, well it's a sort of period drama/romance maybe?/ detective/magical/fantasy thing? Another beginning Fractale, well it's sci fi/fantasy of course but then how do you class the rest of it? Hourou Musuko/Wandering Son, another I don't really want to take a stab at. Put simply there is less of a genre constriction in anime, and shows to a large degree go where they want. Perhaps somewhat due to the fact that so many of them are based on written products manga/novels, unlike US works which are usually made for the format. The end result though is that fans are almost required to give many shows a "fair shake" as there is every possibility they would miss something they would otherwise enjoy. And quite often they will find that even shows that ostensibly falls within their "preferred" genre, they simply don't enjoy. Some of my favorite anime fall within genres I wouldn't otherwise consider in any other medium.
Well it hardly seems subconscious when I would estimate a good 20%+ of anime fans feel the need to declare what an edgy/cool rebel they are  . (statistics obtained from my subconscious gut feeling!)
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Seca
 Posts: 149 Location: WA |
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As an anime fan since the mid-90s I think it's a bit safe to say that back then you kinda had to be open to trying new genres or ones that you didn't like in Western media with anime or you just didn't watch much anime as the selection was pretty lacking.
Nowadays I do have my preferred genres in both Western and Japanese media but if something has enough buzz around it I'll give it a shot at least. I've also come to terms that I really shouldn't care that much about what other people think about what I enjoy to watch or listen to because it's for my enjoyment not theirs. And I think that's helped a lot with keeping an open mind about things. |
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Cyd
Posts: 3 |
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Nice try to get people on here to listen to "other" western artists by using one with the word neko in it xD |
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Ojamajo LimePie
 Posts: 769 |
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Shamanic Princess was CPM, and it's actually pretty good. 
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TarsTarkas
 Posts: 5887 Location: Virginia, United States |
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I fell in love with the Princess Rouge trailer when I first heard it years ago due to the song used in the trailer. Never did get it or see it sadly. Nice little rememberance there.
Liked Shamanic Princess. |
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MorwenLaicoriel
 Posts: 1617 Location: Colorado |
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I don't think this is very true at all. There are many, many anime that fall strictly within their genres, and there are many western works that combine several genres into one. Wandering Son is, for example, clearly a coming-of-age drama, and we have a lot of dramas in the US dealing with issues like transexuality. Gosick is a supernatural period piece, which we have several of in the US. (At least a few of Tim Burton's films, for instance.) Gurren Lagaan is basically sci-fi, and having romance or drama in a series doesn't mean it isn't an action title. Sure, there will always be by-the-book genre films in Hollywood, but there will be those that defy conventions, and there's plenty of anime works that just stick to genre cliches. Now, some of those seem "fresh and new" to those of us in the West, but that's because we haven't grown up with it. I don't think anyone here is going to tell you that Naruto is anything but a pretty standard shounen fighting show, and one of the reasons why Princess Tutu is so highly praised is because it goes against the typical "Magical Girl" series expectations. There's TONS of movies that are based on books, "true stories" and existing properties, too, it's not like that's a rare thing, so I doubt that "original properties" are responsible for the apparent lack of genre-defying conventions you're seeing. If anything, a lot of movies and TV series that are original works are more likely to experiment outside of genre, in both the east and the west. I think if anything you really haven't given Western film a "fair shake", because the idea that there's some things you'd enjoy even if you don't like the genre, and some things you won't like even if you do, is true for both film and anime. I know I've certainly found that to be the case. (I dislike Western films but I love Unforgiven, I love fantasy but I won't touch Eragon, etc.) As an aside, I've always considered myself someone that delights in variety, whether it's anime, music, western film--in general I think every genre has stuff you can enjoy if you dig for it, even in those that are outside your typical tastes. |
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Myaow
Posts: 1068 |
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Ack! I meant to say "Elf Princess Rane" there. The other one with "princess" in the title. I never saw the show, but the trailer was funky!
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LordRedhand
 Posts: 1472 Location: Middle of Nowhere, Indiana |
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I think I got into anime because of an open mind (as long as it's not illegal or bring me serious harm I'll try it... once, and only once.( But I'm also one of those fans that has grown to avoid certain, I wouldn't call them genres but elements of shows, like extreme fans service, like Queens Blade for example, I don't need to waste my time and money on it because I know I will not like it, so I don't bother to check it out because frankly I know there is better out there for me, whether from Japan or not.
Although I do disagree with the notion of genre-hopping though... as genre is the form of which a story and really other artistic works take. That said you can have elements of say Drama or Romance in a Horror Genre, they are just going to be received/filtered vary differently than say if it was in reverse. |
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PMDR
Posts: 141 |
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Been to an anime con lately? The things are overrun with people there chasing down whatever narrow niche title they obsess over, to the exclusion of everything else. Luckily for them, there's an obsession for almost any fanatic these days. Don't like a particular character in a green sailor school uniform? No problem, there's another show where they use red blazer uniforms. At one of my earliest anime cons, I observed an attendee reviewing the now-playing video room list and declared to his companion that since he hadn't heard of the anime being shown, it had to be garbage. What it was didn't matter. It was garbage to him. At the time, it was infuriating. How can anyone look at cartoons made in a strange language from a strange land with strange concepts and accept all of those concepts and eventually make them not-strange enough to bother coming to a convention, only to drop back into the neanderthal reject/eject strange stuff mode? Years later, I have come to realize that anime doesn't change the basic behaviors, bias, and prejudices of the viewers. It does not make them smarter or more enlightened. It's not a cure for any disease. It isn't a framework that brings people together and keeps them there. More like static cling that holds them together ephemerally. And that's fine. It wasn't designed to be anything more than an entertaining form of media. If it does that, it's done its job. |
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Top Gun
 Posts: 4647 |
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I've kind of wondered myself sometimes about why I'm so interested in various genres in anime that I'd never even think about watching via Western live-action movies or TV shows, and the main reason I've come up with is that the actual medium of animation itself is what does it for me. As strange as it seems, I almost feel like animated characters come across as more real to me than their live-action counterparts. I mean, when you look at any live-action production, you're always going to see the actual people playing their roles, and I think I usually tend to think along the lines of something like, "Oh hey, there's George Clooney and Matt Damon!" It takes a very very rare performance, something like Gregory Peck in "To Kill a Mockingbird," to make me see the actor as the character. In contrast, the characters in an animated work are originally created to take on their specific roles, and even though you may recognize the actors voicing them, there's always that additional level of separation that enables you to look at them as literally embodying their roles. I'm not sure if that sounds weird to anything else, but I originally got into anime as a general fan of animation, and it's that sort of thought process that lets me enjoy things like slice-of-life that I'd have no patience for in a live-action format.
As far as books goes, I like to think that I've read my fair share of out-of-the-mainstream stuff, and I know there's a hell of a lot more out there that I'd like. And as for music, I've had several friends try to foist various "indie" sorts of artists on me, and almost uniformly...blech. Give me mainstream classic and/or modern rock any day of the week. 
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