Forum - View topicMs. Answerman: The Longest Question
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biliano
Posts: 956 Location: Cleveland, OH |
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I've noticed that recent releases from AD Vision are using the MPAA television ratings for their titles - for instance, Gantz and Elfen Lied are rated TV-MA and Full Metal Panic? - Fumoffu is rated TV-PG. Why ADV is doing this, I have no idea - I would rather they stick with using the 12+, 13+, 14+, etc. ratings because they give a better range as to what's appropriate for younger viewers. The MPAA TV ratings are too generic. 
Overall, I think that Teen Titans is a pretty good show, but some of the better episodes (like the ones with Deathstroke/Slade and Brother Blood) offset some of the crappy ones (like the episode where Beast Boy was fighting an alien block of tofu - clearly the worst episode in the series). Personally I don't find the "anime" style of the series annoying - at times I think that it was rushed, but it definitely adds an unique angle to an American property. While I do believe that Warner Bros. is taking advantage of anime's growing popularity in America by trying to infuse Japanese-style animation into one of its franchises, overall I enjoy watching the series. CN will air new episodes starting this June. Last edited by biliano on Fri May 27, 2005 9:26 am; edited 2 times in total |
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ginzugirl
 Posts: 30 Location: Detroit, Michigan |
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Jason, Jason, Jason - et ux.... Congrats! FMA has officially 'arrived' at AS -- It's been "Dragonballed"! (I.E., the act of re-running a lengthy anime series from it's beginning, or other convenient 'starting point!') Like you, I was hoping this wouldn't happen, but c'est la vie, No reason to panic. This is a good thing! Rest assured eveyone interested will see the further adventures of Ed and Al. Based on experience, here's what I've observed over the years: A) if CN/AS buys the first season of a series, they usually buy the rest of it for broadcast thru the end. EXCEPTIONS: "Case Closed" & "Sailor Moon". (Reasons: "CC" just didn't hit big in the US and the SM conclusion had to much gender-bending for TV at the time. By the time that sort of thing was acceptable, SM was considered too dated to air.) AS likely sealed the deal up front with Funi for all 52 FMA when they bought series' broadcast rights. Like Ms. Answerman sez, AS is sitting on the remainder of the series to buy time to build even more buzz for the show and allow Funi and VIZ sell their manga and DVD. Take it from an old and wise Otaku: Adult Swim is going to milk FMA for all it's worth, so we'll see it ALL and OFTEN. A bunch of us have been going thru the same drill with Inu-Yasha since '02 ... with miles to go before we sleep! Take care buddy! |
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Kiaelf
 Posts: 27 Location: Buried under paperwork, anyone have a backhoe? |
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I'm actually happy they started FMA from the beginning again for the summer because I came in halfway through, so I missed a chunk. I do own the first 2 DVDs, soon to be 3, and then I'll be able to catch up to where everyone who saw from the beginning is.
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patch
 Posts: 677 Location: New York, NY |
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Just read on No Black and White in the Blue that it looks like the Cowboy Bebop REMIX DVDs have been pushed back further, but no source was given for the news. Can anyone confirm or deny this?
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slinky
 Posts: 1 Location: Denver, Colorado |
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[adult swim] does have all of the episodes for FMA licenced. The wait is for Funimation to finish the dubbing and release some more of the DVDs. [as] also has GitS: 2nd Gig licenced.
I'm sorry I can't provide a link, I read this info on the [as] message boards awhile ago but couldn't it find again. If I remember correctly both series will begin again with new episodes in September (but don't hold me to that). |
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kusanagi-sama
 Posts: 1723 Location: Wichita Falls, TX |
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To be honest, I prefer the MPAA TV ratings over the generic age ratings they had been using. The MPAA TV ratings are standardized and the generic age ratings they had been using were not standardized and confusing. For example: Samurai Champloo (last night's episode) is TV-14 VSLD TV ratings are: TV-Y TV-Y7 V/FV TV-G TV-PG V/FV S L D TV-14 V/FV S L D TV-MA V/FV S L Movie ratings are NR G PG PG-13 R NC-17 X Canada English ratings are: C C8 G PG 14+ 18+ Canadian French ratings are: G 8+ AMS 13+ AMS 16+ AMS 18+ AMS The way I see it, Canada's rating system is more generic than the US |
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Joe Mello
 Posts: 2315 Location: Online Terminal |
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I'm going to be focusing on the 1st question (on American cartoons using anime)
First of all, Teen Titans is all right in certain ways. The good episodes are either their flat-out parodies (ie getting trapped in the TV; Larry) or the serious eps. I know the writers want each character to have their own eps to assist in development, but if a giant mutant block of alien Tofu is all you can think of, then someone needs to be fired quickly. Most of the anime gimmicks do seemed forced, though, but I don't normally watch for the pretty pictures. As for Xiaolin Showdown, I feel that it's about as equally influenced by anime as Jackie Chan Adventures was, which wasn't much. I think it's more influenced by East Asian legend and folklore than a artistic style. The only two things that points to anime is Kimiko's Hairstyle of the Week and Omi who does look like a Krillin knockoff. Now about anime styles being "borrowed." First off, you need to know that there are two types of genre: stylistic and economic. Stylistic genre is what you see and Economic genre is what the companies get back on their investment. As an economic genre, anime is doing very well, so the American companies are going to try and use it to their advantage. I also believe that there is also a great irony in the borrowing of the Japanese animation style. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe back in "The Day," Ozamu Tezuka based his style of drawing off of American cartoons (Disney, et al), and all the other artists piggybacked off that when Tezuka became a household name. So, in essence, we're copying a style that was copied off of us!
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Captain Crotchspike
 Posts: 355 Location: Phoenix, AZ |
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I actually liked the tofu episode - I thought the sheer insanity of the concept was great. The use of the "lol aneemay" visual gags is still hit-or-miss at this point: Sometimes they seem forced (see the entire "TROQ" episode - although those aside, it was a good episode), sometimes they work. Overall, Teen Titans is a great show and quite honestly, probably better than most of the anime out there right now. That said, I like the recent Ninja Turtles and Justice League better.
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Andromeda
Posts: 119 Location: Florida |
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On the one hand, the official US TV or Movie ratings are only on OFFICIALLY rated titles, meaning there's no fibbing - it was rated by a group using the same standards for content appropriateness that they use for everything else. On the downside, the TV ratings are very confusing - the worst kind of alphabet soup imaginable. All I can ever get the jist of is the fact that TV-14 is for 14 or older, TV-MA is Mature Audiences, and there's something about Y being for the Younger audiences. The other letters are confusing, though, and I've always wondered why they didn't use a simpler system.
OK, what the hell is the difference between Y, Y7, and G? Seriously. I get that V is probably Violence, S is Sensuality, L is Language... but what the heck does "D" stand for? Or "FV"? You see what I mean? The TV ratings are not entirely intuitive. That said, at least they're using a standard system.
Actually, "X" isn't a real rating anymore; "NR" isn't an actual rating, either. "NR" ("Not Rated") simply shows that it WASN'T rated... hence, it's not a rating, just notice that it wasn't rated by the MPAA. "X" used to be used for any film that was considered "adult", but this included a lot of films, such as A Clockwork Orange, that weren't all that explicit by today's standards. And, unlike the other ratings in the MPAA system, it wasn't copyrighted and trademarked, so ANYBODY could use it, and did. "X" went out of usage as an official rating years ago, because they couldn't control how it was used - NC-17 ("No Children Under 17") was used as an official replacement for the uncopyrighted "X". If you're going to list ratings, you might as well list what they stand for, too. Please take that into consideration the next time you post something like that, okay?
Actually, from what I've heard, they'd have been happy to air it, but TOEI refused to license Stars for them, for whatever reason (monetary? I have no idea). Stars would not have seemed dated, assuming it got a decent dub for a change (which it likely wouldn't have, though) - the animation is much better in Stars than in all of the previous seasons. As far as sound goes, the sound quality of the dub relies on who does the dub. Speaking of which... am I the only person here with a nostalgic fondness for SM, who hopes that someday they'll release an uncut, restored, remastered, re-translated, and re-dubbed bilingual edition for such-and-such anniversary (I realize the tenth anniversery's past, but there's always 15, 20, 25, etc...)? Hey, I can dream, can't I? 
In any case, I don't mind Teen Titans. I agree that sometimes it seems like they're trying too hard to look "Japanese", but the show's kind of cute despite that. Some of the episodes are quite WTF?, though, I'll definately agree to that (that episode with the British stuff, ugh...). Actually, what bugs me about the show's art most is that it looks EXACTLY like they used "Manga-Mania" for all their character designs. Seriously. If you have the book, you know EXACTLY what I mean - I'm talking especially the original "Manga-mania" book, here. The lines are so thick, the look so utterly homogenized, that it strikes me as directly from "Manga-Mania", which makes me feel like the animators were really, REALLY lazy, because they apparently didn't even bother to watch actual Japanese animation before they jumped into trying to copy the "look" - they just picked up one of the first books they could find off the shelves at Barnes & Noble, and paged through it over a Venti Latte before heading back to the studio with an armful of character designs.
-Andromeda |
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Kazuki-san
 Posts: 2251 Location: Houston, TX |
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Actually TV ratings are done voluntarily by the broadcaster. Although they use a standardized set of guidelines, they are not all rated by the same people.
Yes they are confusing, especially since every episode is rated individually, so from one week to the next, they may be the same rating, or they may not.
It doesn't exactly take longer then 2 seconds to run a google search to find the official TV ratings page. D stands for Suggestive Dialouge. L stands for Course Language S stands for Sexual Situations V stands for Violence FV stands for Fantasy Violence (a.k.a animated) And of course as you move up the ratings scale from Y to MA, the level of language or violence the letters indicate also increases in frequency and/or severity. |
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Andromeda
Posts: 119 Location: Florida |
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Ah, thanks - I thought they were rated a parents advocacy group or something.
That... was kind of my point. If you're willing to list them, you should also be willing to take 2 seconds longer, ya know?
Actually, wasn't the original poster, Kusanagi-sama, writing that:
Yeah. Note the "confusing" part. Kind of hard to support one's argument that they're "not as confusing", if they actually ARE confusing, and are not clarified. Clarification is better way of supporting it, and is more convienient for other thread-readers, too.
Thanks for clearing it up for me (and other readers). That was very helpful and actually manages to make sense of the soup!
And it is certainly weird that the same show can have different ratings from episode to episode. I feel kinda sorry for kids whose parents have V-chips filtering out only certain things, which occasionally would then block certain episodes of a show they're otherwise watching in full. Especially if the difference is very slight, as one would normally expect from a difference of only one episode. You'd think they'd put a general set of ratings for the season, or something. Might be less work for them... oh well, I guess rating an episode still makes sense, since it's being exact, it's just odd to me. Oh, and someone mentioned "all 52" episodes of FMA. Isn't there only 51? I read it was 51 in several places, so I'm just wondering if those were ALL wrong (hey, you never know - maybe one source got it wrong, and everyone quoted them, and it snowballed or something), or if it's just a typo or something. Not that that has much to do with anything, I was just wondering.
-Andromeda |
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biliano
Posts: 956 Location: Cleveland, OH |
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To Andromeda, Kazuki-san, and kusanagi-sama: Thank you very much for your explainations.
 That definitely helped us out a lot.
As I mentioned earlier, ADV is using the MPAA ratings for their most recent releases, but I noticed that ADV and FUNImation so far are the only licensers that are using the MPAA ratings. The other companies - Bandai, Geneon, and the rest - are still using the standard rating system (12+, 13+, etc.) I don't know when or if they will use the MPAA ratings, but I hope that they don't. Still, it would be nice if someone from ADV would explain to us why they suddenly decided to use the MPAA ratings. I believe there is a studio rep from ADV that uses this forum, so hopefully he or she is reading this thread and will respond to my request.
Going back to Teen Titans, I thought the Mad Mod episodes were very funny. 
Fullmetal Alchemist: 51 episodesand 1 movie, in which some fans consider as Episode 52 (it's suppose to wrap up the "loose ends" of the series). |
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