The Anime Rant
Feb. 4th, 2005 10:05 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
trinityvixenOkay, I should have known the Times wasn't gonna like "American Dad." I wished they'd done their homework before writing such an awful review of it. They keep calling all the jokes dated and done. Well, maybe if FOX hadn't kept the series on the backburner until the Super Bowl, the jokes would have been fresh. Seriously, even I know this and I don't watch Fox any more than I have to.
Then the article went from just poorly researched to bad, bad mr Times man! I give you the last paragraph:
"American Dad" has amusing moments and engaging characters, but it is to "The Simpsons" what Japanese anime is to Disney's "Fantasia": fashionable, but crude and cheaply drawn in comparison.
What a blow-hard. Anime isn't just 'fashionable,' dick cheese. Especially nowadays, where every animated film made considers itself lucky to have the heart and soul of an anime film (The Iron Giant's reviews, as I recall, mentioned that once every other sentence). When anime films come out, they more than not get great reviews, and a plurality of good reviews, especially in a paper as finicky and elitist when it comes to movies as the Times is more than most other 'genres' can say.
As for "Fantasia," well, I don't doubt that there are parts of it that are still very clever, but not a single one of those animations still looks fresh or new. If he meant "Fantasia 2000," he needs to bear in mind that while it might have been pretty, it's just a collection of music videos that are 'fashionably' in vogue because it's classical music not cheap crap like every other genre of music there are videos for. That's what I mean about the Times being elitist--if it's a boring movie with no resolution, it's probably got a good review; if you celebrate the classically good or the unbearably kitschy or eclectic, it's gold.
For every 'Fantasia," I'd take a 'crudely and cheaply drawn' Bebop every time. What about the animation in the Bebop movie for one? That's got some of the best animated fight scenes I've ever seen--some of the best fight scenes period in film. I'm not the most well-versed anime girl, sure, but I can't stand when people who are used to setting trends and telling other people why what they like is plebian and not worthy, get all uppity when trends pass them by. What a shithead.
Then the article went from just poorly researched to bad, bad mr Times man! I give you the last paragraph:
"American Dad" has amusing moments and engaging characters, but it is to "The Simpsons" what Japanese anime is to Disney's "Fantasia": fashionable, but crude and cheaply drawn in comparison.
What a blow-hard. Anime isn't just 'fashionable,' dick cheese. Especially nowadays, where every animated film made considers itself lucky to have the heart and soul of an anime film (The Iron Giant's reviews, as I recall, mentioned that once every other sentence). When anime films come out, they more than not get great reviews, and a plurality of good reviews, especially in a paper as finicky and elitist when it comes to movies as the Times is more than most other 'genres' can say.
As for "Fantasia," well, I don't doubt that there are parts of it that are still very clever, but not a single one of those animations still looks fresh or new. If he meant "Fantasia 2000," he needs to bear in mind that while it might have been pretty, it's just a collection of music videos that are 'fashionably' in vogue because it's classical music not cheap crap like every other genre of music there are videos for. That's what I mean about the Times being elitist--if it's a boring movie with no resolution, it's probably got a good review; if you celebrate the classically good or the unbearably kitschy or eclectic, it's gold.
For every 'Fantasia," I'd take a 'crudely and cheaply drawn' Bebop every time. What about the animation in the Bebop movie for one? That's got some of the best animated fight scenes I've ever seen--some of the best fight scenes period in film. I'm not the most well-versed anime girl, sure, but I can't stand when people who are used to setting trends and telling other people why what they like is plebian and not worthy, get all uppity when trends pass them by. What a shithead.
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no subject
Date: 2005-02-04 03:25 pm (UTC)If he's only seen anime tv series, and not many movies, yeah, those are crude(ly drawn) and cheaply drawn. But, considering his analogy, the Simpsons is a million times cheaper in terms of animation.
In both Japanese and American animation, tv shows are usually cheap and movies are usually big-budget, and that shows in the visual quality, but not so much in the story, where some of each are good and some of each are bad.
I've been saying for over 10 years that a medium (it's not a genre, even if the video store tries to make it one, as it spans all genres) as broad and inclusive as anime can't be pigeonholed like that. That's the real problem with what he's saying. "Anime" isn't anything. It isn't all good, it isn't all bad, it isn't all cheap, it isn't all big-budget...each individual program needs to be judged on its own merits because they don't have enough in common to be generalized over. Doing so belies his ignorance.
I also enjoyed your use of the term "dick cheese".
no subject
Date: 2005-02-04 10:48 pm (UTC)