Animation in the United States

[zakkrusz]

Well to start with, I've seen animation from France, Japan, China, Korea and Israel who can produce more mature entertainment. I'm no expert on the matter otherwise I wouldn't have asked for input, but you can go check out the links upthread or watch the stuff mentioned like Persepolis, Waltz with Bashir, or The Triplets of Belleville and see for yourself how stuff we make doesn't stack up too well as being mature.

And 'more mature' doesn't mean crap shows like King Of the Hill & South Park or pieces of shit like A Scanner Darkly, it means movies like Perfect Blue, Tokyo Godfathers, Millenium Actress, Akira, and Metropolis (not to forget Paprika, Steamboy and a few others) or TV shows like Death Note. That's the kind of animation and stories that we should be seeing
in North America, but we don't. And that is why anime's popular, and getting more so everyday.

Exactly.

But Pilot Ace has a point about the industry (both Japan and the domestic licensors here in the states and probably elsewhere like the UK and Australia.) hurting for sales. This is attributed to declining birth rates in Japan and their economic recession which has created staff shortages and lots of lay-offs in this article. While the industry still operates quality and originality has been down slightly as of late. Hopefully, it's a temporary thing.

The US anime import industry has lost 3 major players, Geneon in 2007, and Central Park Media and Kadokawa's USA branch last year. ADV also went bankrupt and zombified itself as Section 23 aka Sentai Filmworks and now only puts out half-assed sub only releases. The bell seems to be tolling for Bandai Entertainment as well. However, including Bandai, that still leaves us with 5 companies, 6 if you include NIS America which recently announced it's entry into the anime business and more still if you include Sony, Dreamworks, and Disney which release the occasional film or series.

I wouldn't say either situation is dire but both industries were steamrolling along much better in the past then they are now.

 

[CaptainCanada]

And 'more mature' doesn't mean crap shows like King Of the Hill & South Park

Er, both of those are great shows. They're comedy, but so what?

 

[zakkrusz]

And 'more mature' doesn't mean crap shows like King Of the Hill & South Park

Er, both of those are great shows. They're comedy, but so what?

That's debatable, but there a schism in what some people consider "mature." Personally...I'm not a huge fan of comedy in general. It's fine in small doses but it has zero rewatchability aspect for me. You watch it once and you've seen it and forget about it. This holds especially true for shows like the above. Maybe a better descriptive word for what I want, and what Dusty Ayres is talking about, would be something "profound" or works with depth and layers to them. Of course I'd also take some good old fashioned bloody carnage too, for bit of variety...or possibly hypocrisy, on the side.

 

[firehawk12]

Even then, animation quality is fairly low unfortunately. I took at look at the new Spider-man cartoon and it looks like a slide show at times.

Good grief, hardly. I'm not a fan of the character design style on The Spectacular Spider-Man, but it has some of the most dynamic and fluid animation I've ever seen on television. Its action scenes are incredibly well-animated, and the character animation is excellently expressive and nuanced even though the overly cartoony designs work against that.

I don't know. Maybe it's because it was in SD as well, but to my eyes the quality was a step down from the contemporary anime that I watch.

And 'more mature' doesn't mean crap shows like King Of the Hill & South Park

Er, both of those are great shows. They're comedy, but so what?

That's debatable, but there a schism in what some people consider "mature." Personally...I'm not a huge fan of comedy in general. It's fine in small doses but it has zero rewatchability aspect for me. You watch it once and you've seen it and forget about it. This holds especially true for shows like the above. Maybe a better descriptive word for what I want, and what Dusty Ayres is talking about, would be something "profound" or works with depth and layers to them. Of course I'd also take some good old fashioned bloody carnage too, for bit of variety...or possibly hypocrisy, on the side.

I will say that King of the Hill expresses Asian-American anxiety better than any other television show on American television. In fact, I don't think I've seen a television show with a more "real" Asian character than Kahn.

 

[Kegg]

And 'more mature' doesn't mean crap shows like King Of the Hill & South Park

An interesting selection, as it ignores the elephant in the room: The titan that is The Simpsons; whose nineties years are arguably the standard by which all animated sitcoms are judged.

And damn what fine years those were. Contra zakkrusz, The Simpsons's best episodes have had insanely infinite replayability value for me, above and beyond... well... almost any other television series ever made.

or pieces of shit like A Scanner Darkly,

This is also genius, a film I'd mention in the same breath as Persepolis as one of the decade's best (and just a damn fine sci-fi movie, period.) But then, I am a Philip K. Dick fanboy and this is the most faithful adaption of his work - even still, damn fine movie.

 

[Dusty Ayres]

Sorry, I hate the animation style used in the movie.

 

[zakkrusz]

That would be rotoscope or something like that anyway. Where they animate over live action. Not really a big fan of it, myself, either. Sometimes it works sometimes it doesn't.

 

[Kegg]

Sorry, I hate the animation style used in the movie.

Given the shifting sense of reality and worlds breaking apart, it suited the source material very well.

 

[Dusty Ayres]

That would be rotoscope or something like that anyway. Where they animate over live action. Not really a big fan of it, myself, either. Sometimes it works sometimes it doesn't.

It doesn't work at all, for me. And it didn't work before, either, as all of the movies that were made in it did marginally well.

Sorry, I hate the animation style used in the movie.

Given the shifting sense of reality and worlds breaking apart, it suited the source material very well.

Barely. Traditional animation would have worked just as well, or maybe the style seen in Perfect Blue, Tokyo Godfathers, Millennium Actress, Akira, and Metropolis would have worked, if the animators would get their heads out of their asses and looked at what Japanese animation does with similar stories. But no, all they can do is so-called experimental, cutting edge, state of the art, 'animation'. Mostly because they're trapped in the same ghetto that most other Americans are when it comes to animation, so much so that they go to extremes on both ends of the spectrum, instead of doing the tried and true as done in Japan.

 

[Kegg]

Barely. Traditional animation would have worked just as well,

Nope, that would have been obviously irreal, given a bit of distance from live action. Just as live action is obviously real. A Scanner Darkly's animation style played with and compressed that difference, allowing for high concept ideas like the scrambler suit to not only look good but also make sense - and adding little visual flouirishes like the minor warping of perspective when Arctor did something as simple as walk down a corridor. It's possible there were even better ways to do it (there are always better ways given enough time and money and so on) but I don't see how removing all of that thematic density would make things work better. Going into A Scanner Darkly I wasn't that keen even on the idea of animating Philip K. Dick at all, and I left considering it the best film based on his work to date.

Rotoscoping, incidentally, also worked very well for Waltz with Bashir, so it's not really an exclusively American thing, nor is all that marginal (at any rate no more marginal than any other form of 'adult' animation practices, which it has become associated with for some reason.)

 

[Peach Wookiee]

^Man, I love Tokyo Godfathers! It took me forever to find it online after AZN TV folded. I'd love to see it dubbed.