Forum - View topicGiant monsters & anime.
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hipnox
 Posts: 143 |
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Last night i was watching The Monster X Strikes Back/Attack the G8 Summit and i was struck by a question.
If there are hundreds, maybe thousands Japanese giant monster movies, why are there hardly any animes about giant monsters? Maybe its a cultural thing, given that even to this day, they are still using monster suits and stomp around miniature cities instead of using CG. maybe that's the way they like it and animation couldn´t quite cut it. |
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Key
Moderator
 Posts: 18551 Location: Indianapolis, IN (formerly Mimiho Valley) |
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This is actually an interesting question. There have been a few anime that have involved or focused on giant monsters, but their ranks are very thin; the most prominent is probably the Hanna Barbera/Toho co-production of the Godzilla animated series that ran on both American and Japanese TV back in the late '70s, and I doubt you could truly consider that "anime."
Probably just a style issue, or perhaps the giant monster movies appeal to a different demographic than anime normally does? |
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Guardsman Bass
 Posts: 158 |
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Giant monsters are one of those things that can look immensely awesome when do right on live-action movies, but which don't generally stand out too well in animated stuff unless the animation quality is really exceptional. At least, that's been my experience.
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A Mystery
 Posts: 1889 Location: Netherlands |
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There's one example I can think of: the Oozaru/big monkeys from Dragonball Z. I think those qualify as monsters. But indeed, that's about the only example I know.
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hipnox
Posts: 143 |
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well, you could say that series like Rahxephon, Evangelion, Bokurano and the like have some similarities to giant monster movies, as in giant creatures with a preference for densely populated areas fighting one another while destroying everything around them
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Spastic Minnow
 Bargain HunterExempt from Grammar Rules  Posts: 4640 Location: Gainesville, FL |
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Yeah, if you talk about the likes of Evangelion, Dai-Gaurd, Blue Gender, Godannar, Strike Witches, there are Giant Monsters in anime. Not as semi-protagonists as live action Giant Monster stories often are, but they're there. Of the ever adapting, force-of-nature, variety.
Or you could say that anime does have a HUGE amount of Gaint Monster shows-- only anime's monsters wear metal skin and people ride inside of them. |
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ailblentyn
 Posts: 1688 Location: body in Ohio, heart in Sydney |
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Interesting to consider the giant monsters in anime that are parodies of or references to live-action giant monsters. I'm really thinking of the Patlabor examples: the joke giant Hiromi monster in the original OVA, and the (definitely not a joke) creature in WXIII.
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TatsuGero23
 Posts: 1277 Location: Sniper Island, USA (It's in your heart!) |
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I guess Heroic Age would fit into what your technically looking for but yeah, it's interesting that it's rare to see a anime where the giant monster is a hero or anti-hero. Oh, we also got that old Ultraman cartoon Ultraman: The Adventure Begins too.
But like Hipnox mention, it could be that Japan is happy with it's yearly dose of Sentai and Ultraman stuff that Giant monster heroes aren't needed in Anime. For now anyways. Even Godzilla got put into temp-retirement. Like Guardsman Bass suggest, unless it has a chunk of production value put into it, it probably wouldn't look as good and it'll be hard for an Anime version not to be seen as just a parody rather then a Animated Giant Monster series. Smells like a future Gainax project to me! |
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Kruszer
 Posts: 7994 Location: Minnesota, USA |
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Personally, I'm kinda glad that it doesn't happen too often as I think they're kinda stupid.
On the other hand a major similarity between the two is still there. The Japanese fascination with self-destruction/devastation. Now, sure, we have disaster movies and such here in the west too, but the Japanese seem to have a larger obsession with destroying their own population centers and/or the enviorment than we do, specifically Tokyo and usually via aliens or monsters or some combination thereof. It's more like the symptoms of deeper cultural issues like rejecting technological progress or civilization or maybe just nihilism. Far too often we see the message that "humans are a virus on the Earth that should be exterminated". |
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EricDent
 Posts: 997 Location: Georgetown, TX |
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There is a show that does feature giant monsters in a similar vein to Godzilla.
It is called Neo Ranga. Basically it is a "what would happen if you could control a giant monster" show. The monster is only 3 stories tall, but he does fight some other monsters. Also Godzilla does show up from time-to-time (under an alias) in several anime shows. The funniest one IMO is in the series The Adventures of the Mini-Goddess when Gan-Chan (the Goddesses rat companion) eats something funky and suddenly grows into a monster very similar looking to Godzilla (they call him Gabrilla). Urd & Skuld fend him off in a very similar way to most of the military actions in the earlier Godzilla movies. There also was a animated series based on the 1998 "Godzilla" movie which was supposed to be pretty good (better than the movie at least, which is not really saying much IMO). There were some rumors that the creator of Samurai Jack was interested in doing a Gamera animated show, but plans fell through. In his latest show, Symbionic Titan, there are quite a few monster fights and all of them are pretty large. |
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