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Btw, Guap and Zotis - what's your thoughts on anime/Japanese culture suddenly exploding into the mainstream? A few years ago, only exclusive sub-cultures enjoyed anime, now it seems like a lot of young people endorse it.
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Btw, Guap and Zotis - what's your thoughts on anime/Japanese culture suddenly exploding into the mainstream? A few years ago, only exclusive sub-cultures enjoyed anime, now it seems like a lot of young people endorse it.
In Brazil Japanese cultural influence peaked in the 1990's as there were many Japanese TV shows and movies on Brazilian TV when I was a kid. I remember watching several kaiju movies and TV shows such as Kamen Rider. By the way, Power Rangers is an American edit of Japanese super sentai shows. The peak in international popularity of anime was also the 1990's with shows like Saint Seya, DragonBall, Sailor Moon and Pokemon. Saint Seya is particularly popular in Latin America and it's very common to see people with Saint Seya shirts in Brazil. Videogames were predominantly Japanese as well such as Street Fighter and Resident Evil.
After the 1990's Japan's economic might declined and it's cultural influence declined as well. At least over Brazil. From the year 2000 onward American culture became relative more popular in Brazil.
However, all those Japanese anime, videogames and live action stuff on Brazilian TV back in the 1990's were mostly children's stuff. What is happening today in the US and Brazil is that young adults and teenagers are watching more anime and gaining access to adult anime thanks to internet streaming sites like Crunchyroll.
Also, adult anime like Wotakoi was very rare before the year 2000. While adult manga was popular in Japan adult anime was super niche and most adult manga was adapted into live action TV shows and movies. That started to change after the year 2000 as the volume of anime produced for a more mature audience expanded dramatically, finally surpassing the output of children's anime in 2015 (measured in minutes of animation)
And so the popularity of anime increased among adults in Japan and outside of Japan. But in Brazil and the US adult anime is still today very niche as most of my coworkers have never watched a single late night anime even though they watched stuff like Saint Seya, Dragonball and Sailormoon when they were kids. Although it's true that I often see undergraduate students talking about anime they are usually Chinese students.
In the US I don't think anime will ever become mainstream because mainstream US culture is not very tolerant of foreign cultural products. While in Brazil adult anime is still not mainstream and I think it will take a long time for it to become mainstream but children's anime is very well known, stuff like Naruto, Dragonball, Saint Seya, Sailor Moon, Pokemon, etc.
I guess in Korea since weebtoons are popular people there are more used to Japanese visual culture than in Western countries so I guess it's more likely that a Korean will be watching a show like Wotakoi than a Brazilian or an American.
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I guess in Korea since weebtoons are popular people there are more used to Japanese visual culture than in Western countries so I guess it's more likely that a Korean will be watching a show like Wotakoi than a Brazilian or an American.
Anime becoming mainstream in another country, I think, is impossible because it's a genre that people have to be surrounded and influenced by for generations. And the only place that has endorsed it since the early 20th century is Japan.
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Even so, there's still a backlash against anime in Korea, because there's a general perception that anime shows are only for kids. So in that sense I guess Korea resembles Brazil.
Anyway, the core of Japanese pop culture is manga not animation. In particular there exists 100 times more adult manga than adult anime. So Anime fans don't exist in Japan: there exists people who read manga casually and hardcore fans who read a lot of manga and watch the anime adaptations of their favorite titles. There does not exist adult people in Japan who mostly watch anime and don't read a lot of manga.
For example, the popular mainstream adult manga Salaryman Kantaro:
Was adapted into a popular live action show:
But now it is also being adapted into anime while 20 years ago that wouldn't happen, so adult anime is gradually gaining popularity in Japan.
Anime becoming mainstream in another country, I think, is impossible because it's a genre that people have to be surrounded and influenced by for generations. And the only place that has endorsed it since the early 20th century is Japan.
I think that Japanese animation might become mainstream in the global culture in the future. That might happen because China is gradually displacing the United States as the world's most influential country. So over the next decades Chinese culture will eventually displace American culture as the world's standard mainstream culture.
And since Chinese comics and animation are heavily influenced by Japanese comics and animation, eventually as the Chinese styles of comics and animation will become part of global mainstream culture, their heavy Japanese influence means that global audiences will become more accustomed to highly stylized Japanese style comics and animation which means that mainstream global culture will become more tolerant of what I call "anime" and that word will eventually fall from use. While eventually American shows and Hollywood movies will eventually become niche (outside of their home anglophone culture) like anime is today.
By the way, in Brazil people don't use the word "anime" like Americans do. Brazilians talk about Naruto, Evangelion and Dragonball as individual titles, they don't usually put everything into a box and call it "anime".
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197) Interviews with Monster Girls (2017)
A rather conventional series. The art and animation are very bland and unmemorable. Most characters are also not very interesting. However, it's premise and one character saves the series which is the headless girl. The premise is interesting because it's about "what if vampires and headless knights were real?" how would the world adapt to that?
Well, the show offers an answer: vampires receive blood packs from the government at regular intervals and these blood packs come from blood donators (just like today). While headless knights are explained to be heads that are connected to their bodies through wormholes.
So overall, an interesting show with a couple of interesting characters but characterized by standard writing quality and standard aesthetics. Hence, I cannot give it a score higher than .
A rather conventional series. The art and animation are very bland and unmemorable. Most characters are also not very interesting. However, it's premise and one character saves the series which is the headless girl. The premise is interesting because it's about "what if vampires and headless knights were real?" how would the world adapt to that?
Well, the show offers an answer: vampires receive blood packs from the government at regular intervals and these blood packs come from blood donators (just like today). While headless knights are explained to be heads that are connected to their bodies through wormholes.
So overall, an interesting show with a couple of interesting characters but characterized by standard writing quality and standard aesthetics. Hence, I cannot give it a score higher than .
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I have noticed that when I was a kid anime was not considered cool, but now it is.
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Look, I'm not judging you - after all, I'm posting here myself, but maybe, just maybe, if you spent less time here and more time watching films, maybe, and I stress, maybe your taste would be of some value. Just a thought, ya know.
Look, I'm not judging you - after all, I'm posting here myself, but maybe, just maybe, if you spent less time here and more time watching films, maybe, and I stress, maybe your taste would be of some value. Just a thought, ya know.
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I have noticed that when I was a kid anime was not considered cool, but now it is.
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198) From the New World (2012-2013)
Since I had finished watching this first back when it aired over 5 years ago and I remembered it as one my my favorite works of fiction ever I guess it was time for a re-watch and that was a great decision. From the New World is a true masterpiece. A truly unique anime, in fact there is nothing quite like it among the other 600 anime titles I have watched.
What I found the most interesting about it is that it is a story about an absolutely repugnant society from the point of view of the privileged elites that are living at the top of the social pyramid. While the depiction of the main characters as reasonable people shows that this kind of inhumane society could exist in a world of reasonable people: you don't need a Hitler to get to this kind of society.
Set a thousand years in the future, it shows a society that formed many centuries after the collapse of our current civilization. Our civilization collapsed due to the fact it wasn't able to handle the emergence of godlike powers in a small fraction of the world's population: a mutation that was supposedly discovered in 2011 and affecting about 0.3% of the world's population that enabled people to control matter directly with though. Essentially, it's a godlike power since the volume of energy that their power could project is enormous: a person can easily use it lift a rock that weights about 50 tons and throw it around as if it were a baseball. Apparently the show argues that our current society just couldn't handle the fact that some people having this kind of power and degenerated into a massive war that destroyed civilization.
Eventually, after many centuries of social collapse a new civilization arose but it depended on radical and inhumane methods to keep it functioning.
Besides those social stuff with humanity new species of animals have developed over a short period of time, which they argued was caused by power leaking out of people's subconscious, which lead to mutations everywhere. Now, after a thousand years of the collapse of civilization the majority of the world's sentient population is not made up of humans anymore but of humanoid rodents who are as intelligent as humans but are treated as inferior beasts because of their appearance.
Nick Creamer's review (http://wrongeverytime.com/2013/08/11...-true-heroism/) is also very good but I should point out a disagreement I had regarding the actions of one of the main characters
In terms of world building this is first class fiction. I haven't experienced fictional narratives with so well rounded world building, as the social structures depicted are very well reasoned (even though it's a tremendously brutal society I cannot easily think of ways to make it more humane and still enable it to function as a stable society) and all events in the plot make almost perfect sense and the show is populated with very good sophisticated characters that feel more like real individual people rather than stacks of tropes than it is usual in fiction. In terms of quality of it's writing it's among the best of the best.
The art and animation are excellent as well. Although the animation is not perfect it's higher in quality than the average for TV animation and in many scenes and works very well to depict what the show wants to depict. My main issue was with some poorly integrated CGI in some scenes but that's an anime from 2012-2013 and for the time it's CGI was pretty good.
One I would like to show what is a good example of the power of animation as a medium of expression, From the New World would be among my top picks. Beautiful, tragic, morally ambiguous and profound, it's everything that art should aspire to be.
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Since I had finished watching this first back when it aired over 5 years ago and I remembered it as one my my favorite works of fiction ever I guess it was time for a re-watch and that was a great decision. From the New World is a true masterpiece. A truly unique anime, in fact there is nothing quite like it among the other 600 anime titles I have watched.
What I found the most interesting about it is that it is a story about an absolutely repugnant society from the point of view of the privileged elites that are living at the top of the social pyramid. While the depiction of the main characters as reasonable people shows that this kind of inhumane society could exist in a world of reasonable people: you don't need a Hitler to get to this kind of society.
Set a thousand years in the future, it shows a society that formed many centuries after the collapse of our current civilization. Our civilization collapsed due to the fact it wasn't able to handle the emergence of godlike powers in a small fraction of the world's population: a mutation that was supposedly discovered in 2011 and affecting about 0.3% of the world's population that enabled people to control matter directly with though. Essentially, it's a godlike power since the volume of energy that their power could project is enormous: a person can easily use it lift a rock that weights about 50 tons and throw it around as if it were a baseball. Apparently the show argues that our current society just couldn't handle the fact that some people having this kind of power and degenerated into a massive war that destroyed civilization.
Eventually, after many centuries of social collapse a new civilization arose but it depended on radical and inhumane methods to keep it functioning.
WARNING: spoilers below
Apparently, only the people endowed with powers have survived after a thousand years and they live in an extremely authoritarian society. Genetic modification was made on all humans with powers to make then physically unable to kill one another: if one power users kill another person their brain is genetically programmed to use their own power to kill themselves. They only grant basic rights to people over the age of 18, before that age the government thinks that it can murder children without any problem and they murder anyone who is suspected of being emotionally unstable. Hence, the majority of all children are either executed or brainwashed and very few of the children actually manage to grow up in an environment where they have freedom of though.
Besides those social stuff with humanity new species of animals have developed over a short period of time, which they argued was caused by power leaking out of people's subconscious, which lead to mutations everywhere. Now, after a thousand years of the collapse of civilization the majority of the world's sentient population is not made up of humans anymore but of humanoid rodents who are as intelligent as humans but are treated as inferior beasts because of their appearance.
WARNING: spoilers below
Although they are not explicitly presented as slaves of the humans in the show it is argued that humans used them in various ways, for instance, when they had relatively large construction projects, although I might think that using their power would be more efficient for large scale construction?, besides that the humanoid rats are shown to be living in self sufficient societies that are separate from the human territory but that the humans regularly decide to exterminate certain rat tribes for reasons that the rats are not even made aware off. A reason such as "well, those rats pointed their arrows at us so they deserve to be slaughtered", clearly showing that the humans do not hold the rats in the same level of regard as sentient beings that are deserving of rights. Basically, they treat the rats in the same way we treat horses and cattle.
Eventually, after the rats decided to rebel against their human masters, and they almost succeed in exterminating the local human community, we learn what happened with the 99.7% of the humans who didn't have power. Since the genetic mechanism that makes people kill themselves if they hurt another human only works with people with power, the people without power were genetically modified to look like rodents as to make them be seem as less than human from the point of view of humans with power so that the people with power could still kill everybody without power with no consequences, as if they were just exterminating rats. In the end it resulted in a society that was even more unjust than the societies that came before it: lower social classes were completely dehumanized and genetically modified to look like rats while the upper class is the only one that regards itself as being human and they casually slaughter entire populations as if they were chickens!
Eventually, after the rats decided to rebel against their human masters, and they almost succeed in exterminating the local human community, we learn what happened with the 99.7% of the humans who didn't have power. Since the genetic mechanism that makes people kill themselves if they hurt another human only works with people with power, the people without power were genetically modified to look like rodents as to make them be seem as less than human from the point of view of humans with power so that the people with power could still kill everybody without power with no consequences, as if they were just exterminating rats. In the end it resulted in a society that was even more unjust than the societies that came before it: lower social classes were completely dehumanized and genetically modified to look like rats while the upper class is the only one that regards itself as being human and they casually slaughter entire populations as if they were chickens!
Nick Creamer's review (http://wrongeverytime.com/2013/08/11...-true-heroism/) is also very good but I should point out a disagreement I had regarding the actions of one of the main characters
WARNING: spoilers below
Squealer was right that his people were being subjected to a brutal treatment and they suffered as essentially slaves of the humans but genocide of the humans was not the proper response. In a way, Squealer was treating the humans in the same way the humans treated the rats: as vermin to be exterminated. While the leaders of the humans were guilty of crimes against humanity the common people were mainly unaware of what was going on so their extermination was not just.
Also, it's not true that Kiroumaru was a "defector', as Kiroumaru's faction was also exterminated by Squealer so Squealer was his mortal enemy as well. Kiroumaru himself explained that if he had access to the same opportunity as Squealer he would have done the same. Although from a pragmatic standpoint it's true that Kiroumaru decision to help the humans was stupid because his rat people and humanity as a whole would be better-off if Squealer won even if his particular tribe was destroyed, but apparently, his provincial perspective dominated his decision making. Squealer was indeed the only character in the show to see the big picture.
Finally, it's true the ending was unsatisfying but that's the point: this is a descriptive show not a normative it show. It shows how this brutal society works and not how it was supposed to work. True, a revolution didn't happen and the unfair way in which the humans treated the rats didn't end but evil never dies, only in Western fiction that it does.
Also, it's not true that Kiroumaru was a "defector', as Kiroumaru's faction was also exterminated by Squealer so Squealer was his mortal enemy as well. Kiroumaru himself explained that if he had access to the same opportunity as Squealer he would have done the same. Although from a pragmatic standpoint it's true that Kiroumaru decision to help the humans was stupid because his rat people and humanity as a whole would be better-off if Squealer won even if his particular tribe was destroyed, but apparently, his provincial perspective dominated his decision making. Squealer was indeed the only character in the show to see the big picture.
Finally, it's true the ending was unsatisfying but that's the point: this is a descriptive show not a normative it show. It shows how this brutal society works and not how it was supposed to work. True, a revolution didn't happen and the unfair way in which the humans treated the rats didn't end but evil never dies, only in Western fiction that it does.
In terms of world building this is first class fiction. I haven't experienced fictional narratives with so well rounded world building, as the social structures depicted are very well reasoned (even though it's a tremendously brutal society I cannot easily think of ways to make it more humane and still enable it to function as a stable society) and all events in the plot make almost perfect sense and the show is populated with very good sophisticated characters that feel more like real individual people rather than stacks of tropes than it is usual in fiction. In terms of quality of it's writing it's among the best of the best.
The art and animation are excellent as well. Although the animation is not perfect it's higher in quality than the average for TV animation and in many scenes and works very well to depict what the show wants to depict. My main issue was with some poorly integrated CGI in some scenes but that's an anime from 2012-2013 and for the time it's CGI was pretty good.
One I would like to show what is a good example of the power of animation as a medium of expression, From the New World would be among my top picks. Beautiful, tragic, morally ambiguous and profound, it's everything that art should aspire to be.
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Last edited by Guaporense; 08-27-18 at 11:40 PM.
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Okay, I'll watch From the New World. 
You had me at "masterpiece." And that artwork looks awesome!
You had me at "masterpiece." And that artwork looks awesome!
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From the New World is adapted from a speculative fiction novel (https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikiped...ovel_cover.jpg) so it feels much more serious and "literary" than the typical anime title. Overall I would rate it as being among my top 6-7 shows ever.
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Oh, it's Shin Sekai Yori... lol, sorry I didn't know the English title. I've already seen about seventeen episodes. It's a very good show. I should finish it...
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Final Space (2018)
Olan Rogers started out making comedic youtube videos before coming up with three episodes of his own animated cartoon, Gary Space, also on youtube. A few years later he reworked his original concept into something of a test show which got responses from some major studios. He then pitched the idea for a show which got picked up by TBS. He went from being a nobody, just some guy making videos on the internet, to executive producer and lead voice actor for the show that he originally created. When my brother showed me an episode of this show I was so instantly captivated that I pulled an all nighter watching the entire season in one sitting. Comedy blended into drama with cheerful fun and dark satire, this show had it all. The colors were vibrant, the characters lovable, and the artwork a perfect balance of complexity and simplicity. The story revolves around Gary, a prisoner isolated on a space ship, alone surrounded by robots and gradually going crazy. He's desperate for friendship when he meets a strange emotive alien that turns out to be the most desired thing in the universe. An evil villain, the Lord Commander, will stop at nothing to get his hands on the alien, but Gary won't let that happen. Along the way all kinds of crazy near-death adventures transpire woven into a heroic tale of saving the universe from evil. There are a ton of backgrounds, I think over 300, which is ridiculous for a show like this. The characters had a lot of personality, it was full of original jokes, and the drama evoked strong enough emotion to make me shed some tears. I highly highly highly highly very very highly extremely recommend it. Brilliant, refreshing, a masterpiece! And it's very cinematic with a lot of camera movement unlike many other shows.
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199) Hinamatsuri (2018)
Now this is what excellently executed entertainment should be. A consistently funny and well executed absurdist comedy that features excellent animation quality and consistently outwitted my expectations: the way this show comedy was executed was very unique.
The plot follows a yakuza and psych girl who happened to be teleported to the yakuza apartment from some another dimension that was not well explained. She apparently was raised as a human weapon by the people in that alternate dimension. But as she moved to our world she showed up in the house of a yakuza gang-member who turned out to be a very nice guy. He becomes her adoptive father and the show follows the interesting dynamics of this due and related characters.
Now this is what excellently executed entertainment should be. A consistently funny and well executed absurdist comedy that features excellent animation quality and consistently outwitted my expectations: the way this show comedy was executed was very unique.
The plot follows a yakuza and psych girl who happened to be teleported to the yakuza apartment from some another dimension that was not well explained. She apparently was raised as a human weapon by the people in that alternate dimension. But as she moved to our world she showed up in the house of a yakuza gang-member who turned out to be a very nice guy. He becomes her adoptive father and the show follows the interesting dynamics of this due and related characters.
Last edited by Guaporense; 08-27-18 at 10:47 PM.
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200) Sakura Quest (2017)
After 3 years I finally reached 200 titles reviewed in this thread!
But, blerg, this was among the most boring title among those 200. It's one of those "work life anime" titles like Shirobako made by the same studio. However, differently from Shirobako, this title doesn't work very well: they decided to make a title about the worklife of a young Japanese woman who doesn't know what to do and manages to find a job working at the tourist agency of a small Japanese town.
The most interest thing about this title is the depiction of the demographic collapse that Japan is facing right now: the young population in Japan is collapsing at the rate of 2% a year, which means that in 2018 there were 2% less people aged 15-30 that there were in 2017. This demographic collapse means that Japan's small towns are being deserted as the remaining young people migrate to the major cities like Tokyo, Nagoya and Osaka. This show depicts the decadent fictional town of Manoyama whose population is mostly elderly and middle aged people.
After 3 years I finally reached 200 titles reviewed in this thread!
But, blerg, this was among the most boring title among those 200. It's one of those "work life anime" titles like Shirobako made by the same studio. However, differently from Shirobako, this title doesn't work very well: they decided to make a title about the worklife of a young Japanese woman who doesn't know what to do and manages to find a job working at the tourist agency of a small Japanese town.
The most interest thing about this title is the depiction of the demographic collapse that Japan is facing right now: the young population in Japan is collapsing at the rate of 2% a year, which means that in 2018 there were 2% less people aged 15-30 that there were in 2017. This demographic collapse means that Japan's small towns are being deserted as the remaining young people migrate to the major cities like Tokyo, Nagoya and Osaka. This show depicts the decadent fictional town of Manoyama whose population is mostly elderly and middle aged people.
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201) Daily Lives of Highschool Boys (2012)
Was a kinda boring title this one. Well, like Sakura Quest I found that it was dragging and not capturing well my attention. It's a "sitcom" with emits a continuous stream of jokes, there is no plot. So although some of it's comedy was good a lot was quite boring so it didn't really grab my attention.
The art and animation were very plain looking as well. Well below the standards for most other titles I reviewed here. The music was also pretty bland.
So overall it's a below average title:
Was a kinda boring title this one. Well, like Sakura Quest I found that it was dragging and not capturing well my attention. It's a "sitcom" with emits a continuous stream of jokes, there is no plot. So although some of it's comedy was good a lot was quite boring so it didn't really grab my attention.
The art and animation were very plain looking as well. Well below the standards for most other titles I reviewed here. The music was also pretty bland.
So overall it's a below average title:
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i really like DKNN and the jokes just never getting old for me.
me sound redundant, but always love tsukomi-boke in typical japanese comedy since stuff like bakabon, crayon sinchan, which introduced me to the loose ly pattern in my early days
me sound redundant, but always love tsukomi-boke in typical japanese comedy since stuff like bakabon, crayon sinchan, which introduced me to the loose ly pattern in my early days
Last edited by resopamenic; 08-28-18 at 12:24 AM.
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202) Urara Meirochou (2017)
Nice slice of life title. This is one of the numerous cute girls doing cute things manga adaptations, usually from the line of magazines Manga Time Kirara who specializes in the field. This time it involves cute girls training to become Urara's which is a kind of fortune-telling art. Yes, this series incorporates a lot of supernatural fantasy elements.
The art and animation are above average while I really like Manga Time Kirara's super cute visual style.
However, the writing wasn't that strong as these characters were more well rounded than many slice of life titles but not as complex as they could have been. But still it's an above average show that managed to grab my attention for it's duration (something that I have been finding to be harder and harder).
Nice slice of life title. This is one of the numerous cute girls doing cute things manga adaptations, usually from the line of magazines Manga Time Kirara who specializes in the field. This time it involves cute girls training to become Urara's which is a kind of fortune-telling art. Yes, this series incorporates a lot of supernatural fantasy elements.
The art and animation are above average while I really like Manga Time Kirara's super cute visual style.
However, the writing wasn't that strong as these characters were more well rounded than many slice of life titles but not as complex as they could have been. But still it's an above average show that managed to grab my attention for it's duration (something that I have been finding to be harder and harder).
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