Forum - View topicHey, Answerman!- Anime World Order Edition
|
Goto page Previous 1, 2, 3, 4 Next Note: this is the discussion thread for this article |
| Author | Message | |||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|
stanislaus
Posts: 19 Location: Fargo, ND |
|
|||||||||
Seriously though, I had trouble following Twelve Kingdoms, and Moribito, although containing some of the best animated fight scenes ever, was fairly talky. Those two are good suggestions for the visual interest. My 5 year old daughter and I are looking for good anime to watch. We have viewed: Kami-Chu Sugar, A Little Snow Fairy Squidgirl (subbed, but enough visual interest to require minimal translation) Jubei-Chan Princes Tutu (excellent) I hope she will like Nadia and Slayers, I am going to try those when ware done with Princess Tutu. Mushi-shi also might hold her interest. This would be a good idea for a new thread, although I don't know -how to start one. My daughter is registered on ANN as Lucy's Life List. |
||||||||||
|
||||||||||
Anime World Order
 Posts: 389 Location: Florida |
|
|||||||||
The trouble with Nadia is that it's just too inconsistent to recommend without caveat. When it's good, it's AWESOME. When it's bad, it's some of the worst stuff you'll ever see. I stand by what was said in this review. Slayers was something I was always more interested in as a goofball comedy--high joke repetition aside--than as a serious action-fantasy. Alas, all the TV series start off silly and then try to work in this elaborate worldbuilding with high-stakes antagonistic threats. I just never buy it. The OAVs and movies don't have this problem, thankfully. Those are hijinks through and through. Mushi-shi is fantastic, but it's very slow and quiet. It usually doesn't work too well at larger anime club meetings because of that. This might be more of interest to girls slightly older than 5, but I think The Story of Saiunkoku is something that's definitely worth showing to young girls. It's a little hard to find, but Right Stuf has a few copies left. Sadly, the series was never popular here, so the second season was never released in the US. |
||||||||||
|
||||||||||
|
stanislaus
Posts: 19 Location: Fargo, ND |
|
|||||||||
|
||||||||||
|
||||||||||
nightjuan
 Posts: 1473 |
|
|||||||||
|
For whatever it's worth, Daryl's three suggestions for making visual novels and, in addition, many related sub-genres of Japanese games more popular are actually rather reasonable. His final piece of advice is definitely the most important here, regardless of the limitations imposed by annoyingly strict genre definitions.
Unfortunately, I do think that having strong gameplay elements will almost always be a requirement for achieving true commercial success outside of Japan and this will drag down many existing visual novels. Making "choose your own adventure"-style decisions or relying on a powerful non-interactive narrative simply isn't enough, in and of itself, to appeal to most casual or hardcore gamers. You can break those barriers from time to time but expecting more of a "game" and less of a "novel" is usually going to remain the most common complaint, even after everything else has been literally cleaned up. The good thing is we will continue to see other Japanese games with VN elements make it in the West, not just Phoenix Wright and Persona, so at least there's that positive thought to look forward to the future. I grew up watching a fair share of both rather violent and absolutely family friendly anime too, but let's see...how about Castle of Cagliostro? Also, showing children the more comedic and laid-back parts of Patlabor seems like a decent idea, if that's still available. You'd even think sports anime would work, since they have many of the usual shounen elements and some are directly responsible for making the medium popular around the world, but not many of those were released in the U.S. nor have they done too well. I wish I could come up with more suggestions but most of the ones that haven't already been mentioned aren't exactly easy to find or lack English dubs. |
||||||||||
|
||||||||||
Megiddo
 Posts: 8360 Location: IL |
|
|||||||||
|
I think Kaleido Star would be enjoyed by a kid (though I enjoyed it myself as a male university student), so I'd recommend that. It's bright and captivating with some warm characters and at-times compelling story.
|
||||||||||
|
||||||||||
toyNN
 Posts: 252 Location: Seattle, WA |
|
|||||||||
|
Lewis - thanks for a great and funny response. Those little girls thank you for not insulting their spirit
 .Talking with a few friends who live in Tokyo they jokingly added that their pain continued with the mad run on toilet-paper but it was restocked within a week. They also had no love for the western-media dramatizing the worst possible nuclear scenarios constantly.
|
||||||||||
|
||||||||||
Myaow
 Posts: 1068 |
|
|||||||||
My little sisters love Kaleido Star, so I'll second that! They're also nuts about Magic Knight Rayearth, Petit Princess Yucie and Angelic Layer. Since stanislaus seems to be favoring series about cool girl leads doing awesome things, I bet that these could fall right in line behind Tutu. They don't always have the most complicated plotlines (they're no Twelve Kingdoms, anyway), but they're full of heart and have really memorable, good characters. There are also some series that I feel younger girls would love, but are unfortunately only available sub-only, which might not suit the very youngest of viewers. Card Captor Sakura and Pretty Cure definitely fall into this category. |
||||||||||
|
||||||||||
|
lewisfoster
Posts: 13 |
|
|||||||||
Ah, I don't mean to be so hard on the fly-jin. But they deserve some ribbing. There was a sign at the store near me saying something to the effect that radiation doesn't make you poop more, so only one bag of toilet paper per customer. If toilet paper is your problem right now, then you have it fine. I still have friends with family missing up North 3 weeks on. Pray for Japan if you think it will help, but for the love of mod, do something for Japan as well. Lewis |
||||||||||
|
||||||||||
Mad_Scientist
 SubscriberModerator  Posts: 3011 |
|
|||||||||
And at exactly what point does a visual novel become an adventure game, I wonder? Would you consider 9 Hours 9 Persons 9 Doors an adventure game or a visual novel, for example? I'm certainly not an expert on the subject of visual novels, but while I think that the Phoenix Wright games are definitely adventure games, I'd consider 9 Hours 9 Persons 9 Doors to be a visual novel, despite the puzzle elements that are apparantly pretty uncommon in most visual novels. |
||||||||||
|
||||||||||
jojothepunisher
 Posts: 799 |
|
|||||||||
|
I think "choose your little girl to [rape] adventure" is just way too harsh, especially since a lot of the more mainstream titles are definitely not in anyway rape. Like its true that sex is involved and there are a lot of fanservice when there are no sex, but thats kind of elements in a romance that you sort of expect after the couple shares their first kiss and say their lovey-dovey lines.
What I am trying to say is that not all visual novels are trying to appeal to man. There are good titles out there that does have sex scenes, but they are there for a good reason, which is to spice up the romance part. I have several female friends who have read the whole Tsukihime and Fate/stay night and none of them said anything bad about the porn part of the story. I even asked them if they were offended, and they were like "well I can handle that, and I don't really care". But that being said, there are still titles out there like what Answerman mentioned like "Suck my dick or die". I have honestly never heard of this title until he mentioned in his column and was further surprised by it being a best seller. I googled that title after reading this column, and I wasn't surprised to learn that it was one of those visual novels that I define to be "hardcore" +18, those that are truly dedicated pornography. I believe it is these kinds of visual novels that are mostly responsible for creating such negative stigma against visual novels, so if you ever want a VN boom, you have to fix up production on these kinds of VNs, not good shits like Tsukihime and Fate/stay night. |
||||||||||
|
||||||||||
|
iathomps
Posts: 68 |
|
|||||||||
|
let me post some info I got off the internets:
"The 25 billion yen dating simulation market comprises some 200 makers who account for 400 brands. A game that sells 150,000 copies is considered a smash hit, and industry insiders estimate there are between 200,000 and 300,000 players in Japan. Of these, a core of maybe 10,000 users buy at least five to six games a year, each of which can cost between 7,000 and 10,000 yen. Successful illustrators like Carnelian and companies like Nitro+ are extremely profitable, yet the shrinking youth population and ongoing economic downturn have some distributors worried about long-term domestic sales. At the same time, the market is just starting to open up overseas through the efforts of a few small companies that are porting the games to English." One thing that hasn't been mentioned is the fact that the medium is still very young. It wasn't until 1998 that the modern visual novel was made, so it will be turning 13 this year. Compare the modern Graphic novel, which came into existence in the mid 80's, or JRPGs, which are also around 26 years old. Visual Novels just haven't had as much time to mature. Obviously only having only a little niche means you are stuck catering to the same audience who want mostly smut, but perhaps with a growing awareness among worldwide audiences, we could see more interesting things done with the medium. It has been slow, though, I remember back in 2006 when Tsukihime and Planetarian just got translated, and it was such a small underground niche 4chan fan thing. Now at least the "mainstream" anime fans of ANN have at least noticed their existence. |
||||||||||
|
||||||||||
|
stanislaus
Posts: 19 Location: Fargo, ND |
|
|||||||||
|
I suggest we move the discussion of anime for children over to the 'Recommendations for Children' topic. It hasn't been active for a while, so new ideas would be welcome.
|
||||||||||
|
||||||||||
Spark That Bled
 Posts: 20 Location: Worcester, UK |
|
|||||||||
|
Another thing that is worth pointing out is that there is also a genre (Sub-genre? Can visual novels really be called a genre?) of visual novels that are aimed squarely at females, with both reverse harem titles (where the player character is a girl surrounded by guys) and BL titles (which are exactly what they say on the tin).
Daryl cites games like Phoenix Wright, Persona, Professor Layton and 999, but his statement isn't really the case when you're looking to define a visual novel. Persona is a JRPG with dating sim elements. Phoenix Wright is a graphical adventure. Professor Layton and 999. The fact of the matter is that Visual Novels are a particularly niche medium, one that covers a vast amount of genres in itself, but still niche by it's very nature as a Visual Novel., and the lack of interactivity or gameplay that it possesses. You can take out all the porn and underage-looking girls you like and make it all about muscular body builders flexing and posing, and shooting guns all over the place, a VN is still a VN. |
||||||||||
|
||||||||||
|
Anime World Order
Posts: 389 Location: Florida |
|
|||||||||
I think the reason it hasn't been mentioned is that I don't believe that's even true! I suppose it depends on what you're classifying as "modern" because I can certainly think of graphic novels that precede the mid-1980s (refer to much of the Vertical Inc. catalog). Similarly, I can think of visual novels that were released well before the Dreamcast era. All I know is that the current "standard" interface of these "modern" visual novels doesn't look that far removed from PC adventure titles of the 1980s.
This is a very good point to bring up. In fact, it is such a good point to bring up that it is exactly what I said:
Whenever I write something, I always wonder "is there something I think I'm saying in my head that isn't actually there in the text?" In this case, the answer is "no": I even prefaced the statement with "so I'm clear"! Even if I weren't clear, the point you mention about how "the sex is only a small part of it" (which was noted in that ANNCast I linked) is not actually relevant to the issue at hand as you're talking about "reality" and I'm talking about "public perception." Emphasis of said content aside, explicit sexual content is in the majority of cases present such that the software cannot legally be sold to someone under the age of 18. Are there all-ages titles being sold in English? Sure. But what are the only sales outlets for them? The vendors themselves, who'll have their larger selection of adults-only selection on display right next to them. And to be honest? Unless you're very discerning, were it not for the 18+ warnings and the like...many of the covers for the "all-ages" titles aren't all that far removed from the porn stuff. All of that affects the public perception of the medium as being one with a heavy emphasis upon having sex with the underaged. That may be somewhat unfair, yes, but as Annf pointed out earlier the perception is actually pretty darned close to the reality:
This was a point I had originally intended to mention but couldn't, so I'm glad the comments picked up my slack. My original response to the VN question alone was something like 3500 words. I cut it down substantially since at the end of the day I am FAR more interested in recommending good anime to people. But for the sake of keeping the record straight, one must respond to these things (sigh):
I see you registered on these forums solely to post this and then insinuate that I'm advocating VNs become action shooters instead (I'm not), so I'll just point out that this bit I've quoted is ALSO what I already said. Yes, all of the titles I mentioned are indeed games and NOT visual novels; as they were mentioned as part of my talking about how visual novels can change, it thus follows that I am speaking of a scenario that has not yet come to pass in reality. Because I'm discussing a hypothetical, there are pretty much zero examples for me to choose from in the "VNs released in English" category that satisfy my criteria. As such, the observation that my statement isn't really the case when looking to define a visual novel is refuting an argument that was never made in the first place. A VN may still be a VN regardless of content, but as long as that content requires the translators to actually alter what's stated to make that "all characters depicted are over 18" disclaimer true, then you can rest assured that they'll definitely remain as particularly niche a medium as you correctly note they are. So no, none of those titles--Persona, Professor Layton, Phoenix Wright--is a visual novel. But, as I pointed out, each of those titles incorporates VN elements along with their gameplay, which makes them perfect supporting examples for my preceding proposition of "if you want this sort of thing to gain a larger footing in the US, then add more interactivity such that they're more like games." When taken in context with the bulleted list, the implication is that the titles I mentioned are, in fact, games. The point has now been brought up--twice--that "lack of interactivity" is the primary defining trait of the VN such that my suggestion would effectively make the software cease to be a visual novel at all. But where do you draw the line? Do reflexes, timing, or the lack thereof factor into things? If the line between "visual novel" and "game" is a matter of user input/decision, is there a limit to the amount of inputs/decisions permitted? If so, then defining these limits is something nobody will ever reach a consensus on. I'm reminded of the scene in Welcome to the NHK where two of the characters are discussing this very aspect of VNs when designing their own. I don't remember the details, but the conclusion they reached--which was meant for comedic effect--was something to the effect of "there is one single decision the user will make for the entirety of it: to either 'look left' or 'look right'." |
||||||||||
|
||||||||||
|
Kidnicky
Posts: 79 |
|
|||||||||
|
That movie where the three Go Nagai robots team up to fight the sea monster is the reason there's hair on my chest.
|
||||||||||
|
||||||||||
 |
All times are GMT - 5 Hours |
|
|
|
Powered by phpBB © 2001, 2005 phpBB Group