Okay. I'm sick of anime.I'm tired of how it looks, in a general sense; yes, I know there are tons of variations from one show to the next but, by and large, I'm giving it a pass. Oh, no, you cannot have my Bubblegum Crisis, Robotech and Akira DVDs -- those, I like. I'd like to see some more Miyazaki stuff. And one of these days I'll watch all of Cowboy Bebop because what I've seen is aces. If I could find a copy of the original Sol Bianca on DVD, I'd totally punch a trucker to own it.
Still. I'm...just...I dunno, I'm just not drawn to it (ha ha) anymore.
You know what I'd like to see? I'd like to see more genre animation, crafted with the same skill, dedication and love as the Japanese stuff...but in a totally western style. Look, I respect the eastern style. It has a lot of fans and it makes a lot of people happy but I'm not one of them.
I want to see something that's not overly-stylized. I really enjoy Samurai Jack, but the style remains a grain of sand forever under my skin when I'm watching -- small enough not to annoy, but present enough to be noticeable.
So. Why am I on about this, all of a sudden? Well. Y'see, today, I was looking at The William Gibson Aleph and I read this:
Burning Chrome The rights to 'Burning Chrome' were optioned by Leonard Mogel in the mid-eighties, even before the short story collection appeared. It was supposed to become a sequel to an animated SF feature, The Heavy Metal Movie, and had six script drafts by Scott Roberts with input from Gibson. The Heavy Metal Movie however failed at the box office and caused the project to halt.
I finally found my jaw somewhere under the desk, re-attached it, and freely wept over what might have been. Holy cow!
I want to see stuff like this. It can be done; hell, Heavy Metal was 27 years ago, so what the hell? Did we suddenly forget that this can be done? Is there no one putting two and two together and saying, "It's a different audience now, a different market; we can try this again"?Or are they looking at that new audience, that new market, and saying, "They'll only buy it if it's anime or looks like anime"?
There's a glimmer of good news: Turns out someone's looking into another Heavy Metal -- R-rated, adult-themed feature, according to Variety. Here's hoping it gets made and, hopefully, makes a little money. I don't necessarily want my genre animation to be R-rated and adult-themed all the time; a straight-up adaptation of, say, oh..I dunno...Neuromancer, why not, or I, Robot, or maybe even something original?
Oooh! Oooh! How about Robert E. Howard's Red Nails? No? Not ever? Can't get finished, you say?
...
...well, I guess not, then.
Maybe if Conan had big eyes and Valeria made his nose bleed.
17 comments:
I'll add my wish for the very same thing to yours and it'll add up to something... I hope.
My hope for western animation boils down to "more movies like The Iron Giant" or "another TV show on par with Batman: The Animated Series."
Or the first couple of seasons of Duckman.
A third Heavy Metal movie? Hm. Maybe. Mark me down as skeptical.
Several years ago, my freelance editing adventures had me working with Kia Asamiya. When he was in town for Wizard World, we went out to dinner with a bunch of anime fans. His only question to them was why they would bother with Japanese animation when we had such great American movies like "The Iron Giant." He couldn't see that it was the exception rather than the rule of Western animation.
For the future, Pixar's movies are generally excellent and I have high hopes for their "A Princess of Mars" adaptation.
William Gibson was in town this last week and I got to see Nancy Pearl interview him (they filmed so maybe it will show up on the Web eventually). He said he'd written many screenplays on contract - he's a emeritus member of the guild - but nothing was ever made. I suspect there is a lot of good stuff that will never get made because of the caution over profit. More today maybe than ever. It doesn't help that stinkers like Beowolf make studios shy.
More to the topic, I've never gone ga-ga over animie - I still can't understand why Akira is supposed to be so great , I mean, you know it's bad storytelling when you've got to read a wikipedia entry 10 years later just to start to understand the plot.
I do however own Cowboy Bebop and I think it's great. I also enjoyed Samurai Champloo very much. For me it's all about story and character.
I'm a big anime fan, and even had a few reviews published. That said, I'm not as into it as I used to be, and very little out there gets me terribly excited to track it down and rent it. Outside of Brad Bird and Miyazaki, there seems to be a general weakness in animation all around the world. Which is stunning, considering how much easier it is to do now than at any time in the past. There seem to be a lot of, pardon my language, half-assed projects out there, from repetitive anime offerings to the recently released Dragonlance movie, and the oddly clumsy Beowulf flick. I struggle to explain why this is, considering how Bird and Miyazaki continue to knock their projects out of the ballpark.
- Brian
[...]there seems to be a general weakness in animation all around the world. [...] considering how much easier it is to do now than at any time in the past.
I think you may have answered your own implied question ;)
pop in the GI Joe Movie or the Transformers Movie (the older cartoon one). Both are lots of fun.
I watch more children's TV now that grown-up TV, and there's actually a lot of variety to style in TV shows for children (pre-schoolers). My wife's aunt is an animator, and so is a friend of mine in LA. They both work on kids shows.
I see a lot of variety in kids' stuff, too. I just want, personally, to experience less of what I see for grown-ups and more...well...
...You know what? "Titan AE". I'd like to see more stuff like "Titan AE" for grown-ups.
I'm in about the same boat. I had a bit of my old anime-gene sparked back to life while going to art school, but for the most part, the conventions and general look of most of it just turns me off these days.
As far as I'm concerned, I think I'd just like to see more variety of style in animation. So much of it seems to fall into either standard anime or Disney cartoonism, with the unusual stuff often going unnoticed.
One anime I watched in my last year of art school was Tekkonkinkreet, which, stylistically, is a bit odd - kind of ugly, actually, though I think that adds to the atmosphere of the film - but I wonder if it would do anything for you?
In any case, I agree with the longing for more unusual animation for grown-ups. Something fairly photo-realistic would be nice.
Having said that, when most people think of that sort of style, I fear that Ralph Bakshi is who comes to mind, and I don't want that at all. His work gives me hives. In "Titan A.E.", as much as I wanted to like that film, Don Bluth seemed to be echoing Bakshi's tendency to include character movements and gestures simply for the sake of movement. None of the characters can stand still; it's like they're constantly fidgeting or mugging for the camera, instead of realistically exhibiting small movements that would occur in a normal person while just standing around...
Anyway - yeah.
If you haven't seen it in a while, watch the 1979 animated Flash Gordon from Filmation:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M216Bf4pXGc
YEAH!
Rotwang, I'm totally with you on this one. I've always liked (but not idolized) anime. But it seems to have matured in a bad way (at least that portion which makes it to American cable TV - I don't spend the effort to track everything down.) It has largely fallen into a small number of well defined formats the same as most live TV.
Stan
For decades, I've considered animation to be ideal for SF/fantasy because you can draw a crazy alien almost as easily as a normal person. But it's largely untapped potential.
Live action CGI has gotten tremendously better but it's still hugely expensive - with a budget of 100 million +, you can have to create things with a mass appeal. It also tends to warp stories into showcasing the big explosions instead of focusing on the story.
I want to see a grown up descendent of the animated Trek or an American take on things like Ghost in the Shell. I want a show that does for drama what the Simpsons did for satire.
STUART --
Dude. Fimation's Flash Gordon series is AWESOME SAUCE. Oh, it's not perfect -- not by a long shot. But it's damned earnest, and it's unpretentious, and sometimes it's just about sublime. So I second your motion, and own the DVDs.
DEVIN --
Call me crazy, but I kinda liked the twitchy nature of Bluth's characters in Titan AE. Dunno why. I never thought about it before, but now that I do, I kinda like it. Huh! Weird.
I'm looking at stills from Tekkonkinkreet and it DOES look kinda different. I don't like the character designs, but the backgrounds are swank.
Doc, there's plenty of good anime that probably won't come over here. Heroic Age, the twelve labors of Hercules, if Hercules was a giant monster. Library Wars, a girl joins a library SWAT team that fights government agents trying to burn books.
If you like Bebop, you might want to give Outlaw Star (and the similar Angel Links) a try. There's Ghost in the Shell as well, which gets mired down in metaphysics sometimes.
Satoshi Kon's decent too. Paprika's a good choice, and he did the Magnetic Rose sequence from Memories (one of the best derelict spaceship sequences I've seen). Paranoia Agent still comes around on Adult Swim sometimes.
I'll echo that Paranoia Agent and Ghost in the Shell are both good and relatively easy to find. Both in the adult speculative fiction realm with fairly realistic art. Better yet, both are relatively short, not of the Animal Z/Naruto model where they take 3 episodes to resolve a battle.
But I wish the U.S. made more stuff along the same model.
Stan
As with most graphic art, the most experimental animation work appears when plucked from unique collaborations and "untapped" sources like student portfolios. Once you are in the realm of broadcast/film production, then producers and sponsors generally have more say than the artists. This is why you see stylistic trends multiply or "resurrect" based on market-friendly ideas like "girls with guns", or "transforming toys". Cowboy Bebop fits the first source, keeping in mind that the contributors were acclaimed (non-risky) professionals like Yoko Kanno.
I love the Robotech series over the "true" anime, since that's what I grew up on. So, Robotech fans, are you up to defending the SDF1 against the USS Enterprise?
http://www.factpile.com/archives/247
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