News He-Man anime series from Kevin Smith coming to Netflix

The studio that did this:



will be doing this new He-Man...

 

Looks alright. I'm in.

 

I thought the 2002 series had an anime look to it, though I've only seen a couple episode of it so far.

 

Japanese (and other Asian) animation studios have been doing the actual animation on almost all American cartoons since the '80s (He-Man ironically being one of the last exceptions). For instance, Tokyo Movie Shinsha, the studio that made anime films like The Castle of Cagliostro and Akira, also worked on a ton of American shows like The Real Ghostbusters, Batman: TAS, DuckTales, and Spider-Man: TAS. The distinction between those studios' anime work and their non-anime work was at the creative end rather than the production end -- if the writers, directors, and designers were Japanese and it was made for Japanese audiences, then it was anime, and if the Japanese studio was just contracted to animate a show written, directed, and designed in the US (or Canada or Europe), then it wasn't anime.

These days, though, a lot of productions (including a number of Netflix originals) are created and written by Americans but directed and designed by Japanese filmmakers in an anime style. Those generally are considered anime.

 

I think a Korean animation studio did it.

 

OK, apples to....different apples. Plus I'm not an anime fan, I just kinda recognize the overall style. It's obviously not the big round eye style that's associated most with the term.

I think they can do a different take in the 1983 He-Man without making it radically different.

 

By ignorant people, mostly.

 

In extreme cases:

Bravery = stupidity

Cowardice = intelligence.

(With real people, a lot of other complex factors come into play)

Cringer who is smart enough to talk = coward.

Battlecat who is a dumb animal = brave.

Um...

Did the Sorceress do the same thing to Adam?

Half his IQ while quadrupling his strength + durability, to make the perfectly obedient super soldier?

 

It was an American-made show (though of course the animation work was done overseas as with nearly all US-made animated shows), but I'd say there was some anime influence to the designs, as there has been in a lot of American animation since the '80s. But being influenced by a thing and actually being that thing are different matters.

That's kind of an outdated assumption, and it was never really true. "Anime" doesn't mean a single design style; it means animation created by Japanese artists for Japanese audiences, and that embodies a wide range of design sensibilities, from highly realistic to highly caricatured. The "big eyes" thing basically goes back to Osamu Tezuka, who was emulating Disney characters like Mickey Mouse. He was certainly a pervasive influence on generations of Japanese animators, but the field has expanded far beyond those beginnings.

 

For those of us who, like I said, don't watch anime, it's the first thing that comes to mind. Sailor Moon and the like.

And I really only know anything about Sailor Moon because of this guy, whom I knew once upon a time.

 

The debate about what technically does and does not qualify as "anime" is largely pointless. Anime styles vary *wildly* depending on genre, decade, tone and even studio, plus both Japanese and western animation (and cinema) have been influencing each other, back and forth for decades, to the line can get very blurry.

And the old "it has to be made in Japan, for a Japanese audience" argument just doesn't hold water anymore since Japan and Korea have long since become where a lot of western animation gets commissioned, and what would previously had been considered "anime" by the above criteria has been increasingly produced with at least one eye towards the international market.

These days the terms is only really meant to convey a very general sense of the feel of the thing more than the look of the thing.

Chronic hairsplitters may disagree, but then, don't they always?

 

It was (unofficially) mentioned that the show got a 52 episode order, divided into 4 13-episode arcs and that they planned it out as a complete story, and as much I love the show I'm fine if they end it there.

Wouldn't mind if the same team did a sequel, prequel, sidequel or whateves set on Eternia though.

 

Again, it's not about where it's made, since virtually all American animation since the '80s has been made in Asia anyway. It's about where the creative work is done, whether the writers, directors, and designers are Western or Japanese. (By analogy, Star Trek: Discovery is an American show even though it's shot in Toronto, because the writers and producers are based in Hollywood. What defines a show's nationality is where it's conceived, not where it's physically made.)

See, here's the thing -- "anime" as a genre label is a Western concept. In Japan, it's just the word for animation in general. So it's only Westerners who perceive "anime" as a particular style distinct from "ordinary" animation, and thus it's Westerners who define what the term means in that sense. And the general consensus these days tends to be that it's a function of whether the directors and designers are Japanese anime creators, even when the writers are American (e.g. with Batman: Gotham Knight, The Animatrix, or some of Netflix's anime shows like Cannon Busters).

 

As if on cue...

 

Me neither. I don't really see He-Man in that universe, but I would love to see this show's take on Prince Adam and the rest of the royal family.

 

...oh dear...Who's going to tell him?

 

I'm diggin the bits of Eternian lore that we've seen on the show so far, I think they could do a really interesting take on a He-Man series in that universe.

But with this and the upcoming movie I doubt the higher ups would want to have a third version out at the same time.

 

I don't think you could get away with a character named Fisto these days.

 

I think an interesting way for them to go with it might be to flip it around so Adora is the one that introduces Adam to his heritage instead of the other way around as it was in the classic series. Come to think of it, did the old show ever actually tell the story of how he ended up with the power sword beyond the intro monologue?

 

There's a Clone Wars-era Jedi named Kit Fisto.