Guaporense and Zotis Review Animation

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Why I am an animation fan

I was a live action movie fan until quite recently, I can say I became a movie buff when I watched There Will be Blood in theaters in 2007, or 10 years ago, at that time I was really excited about live action movies. Today I don't have that kind of excitment anymore: I am now desensitized regarding this type of film. Like the effects of weaker drugs become nill when a person is already using stronger drugs, that's the way I feel about live action movies now.

Since 2011-2012 I have been an animation buff and since mid 2013 I have been watching more animation than live action film and TV. Although from 2015 onwards I have been reading more comics than watching stuff and among stuff I watched since mid 2013, about 90% has been animation.

Why? Well, that's because I first discovered the full potential of comics and animation with Miyazaki. Although I always liked comics and animation I never though they could surpass literature and live action movies, instead I regarded then as two mediums only suited for light comedic narratives. All changed when I watched Miyazaki's Spirited Away. I was doubly shocked by that timeless artistic masterpiece: it's emotional power and beauty and the fact my whole outlook about art was plain wrong. After that crucial moment I had to understand why animation could be better than live action.

While by reading Miyazaki's comic, Nausicaa, which I finished reading not very long after watching Spirited Away, I also had to reflect on the power of the comic as a means of expression: after I finished reading Nausicaa I was in such strong shock that I couldn't bring myself to focus on anything else for about 36 hours.

But, the relationship between comics and literature is very different from the relationship between animation and live action film: comics are a very different medium from literature because their sense of time is essentially different, live action film and animation are both film: Animation is more similar to live action film relative to comics/novels in that in both animation and live action, the experience of consuming it consists of watching a screen. Although it's true that photography and painting are different mediums and so is live action film and animation. Animation has greater artistic potential than live action film because it allows full artistic freedom for it's creators: the images on the screen can be anything the creators might think. So, animation represents something closer to the direct contact between the creators' mind and the audience's.

Art is communication. And animation can be regarded as a more efficient form of communication inside the medium of film than the mechanical reproduction of physical reality through live action photography. Yep, one might argue that efficiency is not everything: for a minority of persons, the difficulties in communication adds to the experience, for those people that we have stuff like Kiarostami. In fact, while film is not automatically art, since simple filming stuff is a mechanical procress, animation is always art since it always involves the active expression of the human mind in drawing the frames. Of course, it doesn't mean live action film cannot be art, only that live action film requires an active and directed effort to become art while animation is already art in it's painstaking creation process.

Since comics and animation allows full artistic freedom, as these mediums developed in Japan (and in East Asia, thanks to the massive popularity of comics in the region), the imagery used in comics and animation became progressively more attractive and their degree of sophistication increased. As a result, today, in Japan, many more young geeks are into animation than into live action film: approximately 6 times more Japanese college students reported being animation geeks than film geeks in a survey done in 2014. And I would even guess among Western developed countries anime fans already outnumber film buffs, despite animation being foreign culture and live action film being local culture. Comics and animation have reached the point now where both can be regarded as a fully developed artistic medium at least in East Asia

In future decades animation will probably eclipse live action film in popularity among serious fans of screen media, like it did in Japan. Although among commoners, live action film is going to be the medium of choice because it's the mechanical reproduction of the physical reality people live in and that is easier for most people to stomach. While more cultured people with artistic sensibility will be already used to stylization and so will consume more animation. The shift in the world's center of economic and political influence from the West to Asia, which is already occurring will also play a role since the photographic culture of the West will lose relative global influence.

In my case, after I watched Miyazaki's films I changed my perspective on the potential of animation but only partly since the quality of his films was also due to his genius besides the fact they were animated films. When I watched PMMM, which was the first non-Ghibli animation that really impressed me. That changed my perspective on the prospective number of great animation as there appear to be many. So I stopped looking for artistic masterpieces among live action movies (since that point I only discovered two new live action movies for my top 50 movies list and that was well over 4 years ago) and instead turned almost my full focus on animation: stuff like RahXephon, LOGH, Aria, K-On!, Shirobako, Kaiba, Ping Pong, Kobayashi's Dragon Maid, Lain, Yuri Kuma Arashi and Haibane Renmei. Those shows are very special combinations of visual inventiveness, beauty, aggressive expression and emotional power. Live action film feels quite like a obsolete medium by comparison: you cannot achieve the same visual effects and hence attain the same level of emotional impact. It's like comparing a stronger drug to a weaker drug.

Still, even now sometimes I still find live action stuff that I might think it's worth watching for it's literary qualitities but I have not been really impressed by the visual aspects of live action film for several years. Last time I was really impressed by the visuals of live action film was with the last Tarkovsky film I watched and that was over 5 years ago. Still I liked watching the live action TV show Mr. Robot recently although it's emotional impact was dulled by my desensitization to live action film I still identified with the show's characters to feel invested in the shows' narrative and I liked it's visual aspects.



112) JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Stardust Crusaders (2014)



This second installment of Jojo is very different from the first. While the first took itself very seriously this second season is a comedy horror narrative: now the plot got even sillier with the stands (essentially spirits that they can summon and control directly, kinda like familiars). The art style is a bit closer to the conventional 1980s shounen manga than most current stuf, it feels very distinct and is part of its appeal of it: it lacks any traces of cuteness that are present in most current animation.

The degree of melodrama is also very high but now with the higher level of comedy makes the show easier to consume even though it's ludicrous to an extreme degree, but that's the whole charm of it: it's over the top and it is now fully self conscious of it.



113) Space Brothers (2012)



This is among the most Japanese things I ever watched. In which sense do I say that? This narrative is strictly focused on realism and hard work: its an average guy whose challenge is to dedicate himself to his work and whose challenges he faces are perfectly reasonable and normal, in other words, its a fictional narrative that is strongly adherent to the reality of a career. Its very different from western fiction which is focused on exceptional things, even when set in a realistic setting they focus on the things that do not usually occur in reality.

Also, this is adapted from an award winning manga. Hence, greatness was to be expected, although Knights of Sidonia is also award winning but is not that great manga (although its very good). This is quite possibly one of the best animations ever made: the plot has great emotional resonance and it even brought tears to my eyes. Some people might find this highly emotional take of a fictional but realistic person's life to be too melodramatic but I could find full resonance in it's simplicity.



I really enjoyed it, but It's did has problem. It's way slow in narrative and one of extensive use of flashbacks I'd ever seen just step behind naruto shippuden.



Actually I think they did it as matter prevented it catch the ongoing manga so the they must sacrifice the pace a lot. I don't realized it was panel by panel as I don't read the manga but it end when manga still going and has story to cover. I hope there 2nd course for continuation tho', the story was great so did the characters



114) Eromanga Sensei (2017)



Some of the newest teenager stuff thats been coming out. Now, adapted from a novel from the same author of Oreimo, we have another tale of incest between teenager siblings. Although since this is an asian visual narrative aimed at a teenager audience there is no explicit depiction of a physical relationship between the characters (like in the Wong Kar Wai film In the Mood for Love).

The series is a harem, the traditional genre of youth fiction where a guy gets the company and love of multiple girls simultaneously without making any effort and without any rational reason: in this case the main character is a writer who writes the same type of novel that the series was adapted from (that is, Eromanga Sensei is also metafiction) and for no reason several female writers of the field fall in love with him plus his little sister who is a hikkikomori illustrator and a 13 year old girl: she appears to be homosexual in terms of being turned on by illustrations, so she is the object of the male gaze and simultaneously the male gaze.

Has awesome production values though but overall it suffers a bit from contrivances regarding character development.



115) Hinako Note (2017)



This is a rather mediocre show: its art and animation are subpar and the direction is fairly standard. The writing subsists on cliches of the genre of CGDCT, although some specific elements were rather interesting: main character is a girl who is so scared of human contact that she freezes up like a scarecrow and she was employed as a scarecrow by the local farmers, being a girl who grew up in the mountains (in Japan the only countryside of the country consists of mountains) and the animals love her. So she moves to Tokyo to overcome her fear of human contact.

I am reflecting now what I find so fascinanting in these CGDCT shows? Well, a main part of the attraction is perhaps the fact that its a forbidden fruit, being something that you would never initially expect an adult men to watch, hence being a way to rebel against society. But fundamentally the reason is that this kind of fiction explores an universal element of the human condition: the invocation of protective feelings through characters designed and whose behavior is such that it works with the objective to maximize this evocation without any regard for realism. I think that realism is overrated in Western culture.

That is an element that is mostly repressed in western culture. Interestingly, before Heavy Metal music was invented I don't think Western culture had any comparable way to invoke genuine aggression. Henceforth, this development in Japanese visual culture is a rather special thing: its like the invention of horror movies or action movies, its a new genre of fiction developed in the 21st century.



Hmm... What do you mean by realism in Western culture being overrated? Is it just a broad generalisation, or do you mean something more specific like the contrast to moe? Or they way that those type of shows let go of realism by such an extreme extent and western shows don't?



I found a good summary of the book on another site. Hmm, well I think I kinda get what you're saying. Personally I prefer reality over fantasy and moe is difficult for me to absorb. Some stuff like Saikano and Madoka I can appreciate because they are so well done, but most moe shows I don't enjoy. I understand it is an acquired taste and a niche, but sometimes it feels pedophelic or exaggerated so much that it becomes a little irritating. I find fantasy is just as popular in the West, but different kinds of fantasy. Well for one thing shows like Naruto and DBZ are way more popular than stuff like Ghost in the Shell and Akira. Hollywood blockbusters throw realism away like it's going out of style, and people love Dungeons and Dragons and Magic the Gathering. World of Warcraft was the most popular mmo for a long time despite being cartoony and extremely unrealistic. Twilight, Harry Potter, Star wars, James Bond, all absurdly unrealistic and insanely popular.



In Harry Potter and Star Wars they are unrealistic settings but they are realistic in their depiction of this unrealistic world. In moe shows like K-On! the setting is 100% realistic while the characters are all unrealistic and their behavior is very distorted. I think it's kinda like thrash metal in the sense that they focus strongly on a small set of emotions.

World of Warcraft is made by Blizzard which is a videogame company that had heavy Japanese influence in their art. For instance, they even named the cannon of a starship in Starcraft as Yamato Gun in reference to the 70s anime and a character in reference to escaflowne.

By the way, I recently read the Saikano manga (it's even better than the show) and the author said at the end of the last volume that he wrote that story based on his own life story metting his wife. He then introduced the sci fi elements to spice it up. But overall it's a more realistic and mainstream title (Saikano was published in one of the most popular Manga magazines) than those moe blobs like K-On! and YuruYuri.



Harry Potter was realistic in its depiction of an unrealistic world? I think you lost me there, not sure what you mean by that.

I know that a lot of stuff, like Blizzard, were heavily influenced by Japan, but what I'm saying is that they are really popular in the West even though they're so unrealistic. I mean, in general in my experience here in Canada, most people say things like, "It's a movie, it's not supposed to be realistic." At least I get that more than I get people agreeing that the lack of recoil in a typical action movie is absurd. Things like Hollywood action movies in contrast to Moe anime, it's just the cultural differences in interests that people have, but I don't think one is more unrealistic than the other in general. They are just unrealistic in different ways. But I see what you're saying that Western stuff is rarely unrealistic in the way that Moe is.



In Harry Potter and Star Wars they are unrealistic settings but they are realistic in their depiction of this unrealistic world. In moe shows like K-On! the setting is 100% realistic while the characters are all unrealistic and their behavior is very distorted. I think it's kinda like thrash metal in the sense that they focus strongly on a small set of emotions.
I think you are selling the lack of realism of K-On! and similar anime a bit too high. A lot of people do identify with the quirks and attitudes from its characters, there is a level of stylization that makes it divert from the real world but many things still resonate a surprising lot.

Harry Potter and Star Wars are hardly realistic. The characters are constantly put in unrealistic situations and respond in ideal, heroic or transcendental ways. Normal people do not behave like that and it's all fine because that's how it's supposed to be in a fantasy that owes nothing to reality.



By the way, here is an example of a mainstream manga magazine:


Manga serialized in there? Kingdom, Legend of Galactic Heroes, Tokyo Ghoul, etc.

While these are niche manga magazines:





Aimed at publics with specific tastes.