Guaporense and Zotis Review Animation

Yep I though it was ok. My sister had recommended it last year. I didn't review it here?

Just checked, nope

82) Spirited Away (2001)



After watching this masterpiece of cinema for the 7th or 8th time I am asking me: what makes this movie so great? What's so incredible about it?

Spirited Away represents Miyazaki at his prime, after several highly successful movies, Miyazaki was already the king of the Japanese box office and as such accumulated a huge financial backing that essentially allowed him to do whatever he wanted to do. Hence, Spirited Away is simultaneously an auteur film and a commercial blockbuster, combining the best of both worlds: entertainment value with serious artistic accomplishment. The animation and art are simply incredible to behold in the film as the film is worth watching just for its visual aspects alone.

Spirited Away also, through the use of animation, reaches a very high level of tactility, in the sense that the simplified images of animation allow for the more abstract expression of reality through the interpretation of the human mind. This amplifies the emotional and sensory impact of the film, enabling it to reach levels that you perhaps cannot attain in any other type of medium (either live action film, literature or music).

Of course, the vast majority of animaiton is mediocre, in fact, it can be said to be generally an inferior medium to live action in depicting reality, is only through exceptional works such as Spirited Away that the full potential of animation is exercised.

And this films is truly exceptional work of the medium indeed. Pretty much all of the rest of the universe of Japanese animation pales in comparison to it's greatness, it's not only superior to other animation but also to pretty much anything I can think of: if one were to ask me just now, after watching it, what might be the greatest work of art of all time, Spirited Away might be a good candidate for such a title.

One thing that sets Spirited Away apart from other Miyazaki films is the fluidity of it's characters relationships with the protagonist: they are antagonists in certain parts of the film and then evolve to become "friends", in a way this movie reflects our own perception of the world as we see people we don't know as something apparently hostile but as interaction process we grow to develop affection for these individuals. While other Miyazaki movies have nuanced characters that are not villains or heroes, only in Spirited Away we see characters possessing fluid roles and relationships whose nature shift over time in radical ways. This allows for the creation of additional layers of profundity into the characters' that would be otherwise impossible to do in less than a couple of hours. In fact, I am not quite aware of any other film that manages to exhibit such fluidity of character's relationships.

It's truly a work of postmodern art, reflecting our post-industrialized society and also represents also a criticism of modern 21st century post-industrialized society: Miyazaki thinks that kids these days are all spoiled little brats and a little bit of child labor would do good for them to make them grown up (hence the plot of the film). Also, the movie teaches the audience that kidnapping is a good strategy for making people do what you want them to do.

I liked Spirited Away. My impression is some years old now, but I was really impressed with the amount of motion and detail in the animation. However, that's really the only thing that impressed me about it. Content-wise it was fairly light-hearted and all-age friendly. It's really hard for me to be impressed with that because I don't feel pushed. I didn't learn anything. There was nothing that I hadn't really seen before. Even in terms of the quality of the animation, I am much more impressed with older works like Akira which were so detailed and had so much motion back in the eighties. Akira made me see the whole Big Bang Theory in a light that actually made so much sense, even though I completely reject the Big Bang Theory and evolution, when you add psychic power and supernatural phenomena to the mix it makes a lot more sense. I didn't feel that with Spirited Away in terms of it's content, the spirits and gods, and the supernatural realm. It didn't add any meaning to any perspective of life. To me it felt more like a mediocre fairy tale. The old fairy tales had such fantastical elements, like talking animals and magic, but they also had profound moral lessons. The lessons that Spirited Away gave, such as the parents eating the food and turning into pigs, by comparison were unimpressive and too simplistic. Spirited Away felt more like a parade of Kami that a girl happened to get swept up in than anything else. The fantastical world almost ignored her existence, and she felt way too safe the whole time without anyone really protecting her. There were molevolent forces that should have at least tried to harm her a little more, and benevolent forces that should have had more power to protect her. Instead it felt like she was protected by luck and a lack of effort from antagonistic forces. I honestly find a lot of Miyazaki's work boring content-wise because of it's Disney-like approach to naive goodness minus the actual cultural experience to support it. That whole concept of the American family life before WW2. The American dream, when everyone from Europe flocked there because of the freedom and prosperity. Simply put, Miyazaki was influenced by Walt Disney's work, but didn't have the experiences that Walt Disney based his work on. So he tried to accomplish it, but ultimately lacked the understanding of how to. It's like Disney from a Japanese perspective with the central puzzle piece missing.

I wonder why you're so impressed with Miyazaki Guap. I really have been unable to understand it. There is obviously something about his work and style that you really enjoy, but I feel like you over reach a little when you praise him for how you feel about his work. Regardless, Spirited Away is high quality animation no matter how you look at it, and overall a solid film.

I think the five greatest works of animation are Ghost in the Shell, Perfect Blue, Akira, The Animatrix, and Fantastic Planet. But I'm also tempted to put Ping Pong up there, and maybe... just maybe... Jin Roh: The Wolf Brigade.

Well, art is art, some people are touched others are not. I should add, though, that one thing brilliant about Spirited Away is the way the characters shift from being presented as "villains" to becoming "friends", in a way the movie's plot transcends conventions and it becomes something really special in that sense.

83) Osomatsu-san (2015)



Imagine a show about 6 unemployed virgins living in their parents home and not doing anything with their lives? That's Osomatsu-san, already a modern classic of comedy it's very popular show among women in Japan as well. I notice that from the high number of artwork posted on the Japanese internet featuring the characters of the show and it's high popularity among females in those websites.



Its an adult comedy kinda like Family Guy but with a relatively more sophisticated and dark humor. It less satirical and more personal, essentially making fun of people's attitude with life instead of making fun of particular individuals or institutions in reality (like South Park does). It's more creative that way.

Some of the humor is really aggressive as well and really surpasses anything you might find in a western show.

84) Fate/Kaleid Liner Prisma Illya 2wei! Hertz (2015)



Very mediocre stuff. Adapted from a Manga but divided into two 10 episode long seasons, by the time they made this second season they ran out of plot to adapt and the TV show writers decided to try their own and we got essentially 5 episodes of slice of life often involving 10-12 year old lesbian schoolgirls jokes. Perhaps not the most healthy type of humor but it managed to keep me entertained for its duration.



After that the real plot started to unfold from episode 6 onwards and it became a completely different series now focused on action, shifting back to its original genre of fantasy action. A genre in which these characters are more competent in. Although the quality of the writing overall was significantly below the previous season, perhaps due to the discontinuity caused by the 5 slice of life episodes. Still it was more entertaining than most stuff you might find on TV these days.

I've been watching the Patlabor series, but it's a lite dissapointing.

85) Re-Zero (2016)


Now for something really entertaining. One great thing about the current Japanese entertainment industry is that while Hollywood is catering to the mainstream masses, the Japanese entertainment industry is focusing more and more on the hardcore nerds. That's great because it means they focus their products on people like me. While at the same time making stuff from time to time that feel fresh (for the most part).

This is an example, I never felt so entertained since the days when I first watched Steins: Gate. One interesting element is that it's more and more common in East Asian popular culture for RPG game mechanics to be incorporated into plots. This is an extreme example since the main character dies a dozen times during the series but when he dies he returns back in time to a certain fixed point in the past like a save-point in a videogame (hence the series' title). The series is actually set in a medieval fantasy style world where there is magic and stuff, so the main character, being a Japanese Otaku that wakes up in the middle os that world, is not even scared but starts thinking "oh this is just a traditional medieval style RPG world" It's never explained why he got there and how he manages to be immortal (although that's a skill he certainly needed because he was completely outmached by the cruel and violent medieval world he got himself into, in fact this series is realitstic in the sense that if they picked up anybody from our current world and magically transported them to the middle ages, they would certainly die and die rather quickly, as we, highly civilized 21st century denizens, would be completely unable to adapt to the conditions of life in those days).

The art and animation are very good I liked the character and costume design a lot. Although the quality of the animation declined over the course of time, as in the beginning it was really great while by the end it was just OK. Overall, it's visual quality is above average while CGI has been well integrated with hand drawn animation as Japanese animators have been improving on mixing the two up over the last 15 years.

86) Your Name (2016)



So I finally managed to watch Your Name, for me perhaps the most highly expected movie of the past couple of years. The reason being, it is already the highest grossing Japanese film of all time that's not directed by Miyazaki.

So, how good is it? Well, it didn't disappoint. It's indeed an exceptionally well crafted melancholic shoot in the arm. It's a really cute movie as well, with characters that feel substantially more human than in Makoto Shinkai's previous films. The reason is that this film is more "domestic", in the sense of depicting the not very remarkable events of daily life of it's characters. Which gives them substantial grounding, reinforcing our emotional connection to the characters in ways his previous films did not.

Overall, though, my taste for Shinkai's films is pretty inconsistent with the opinions of his fans: my favorite of his films up to Your Name was Children who Chase Lost Voices from Deep Below. But this time my opinion of his film matched his fan's opinion. It's indeed majestic: the animation is among the best ever, visually it's absolutely top notch, specially in terms of background details and the subtle integration of computer effects into hand drawn animation.

I would think it's the best animated film (released first for theaters unlike PMMM which was released for theaters in 2012 as a pair of compilation films) made since 2001, when Spirited Away was released. Yes, it's that good.

I really didn't like Children Who Chase Lost Voices. I bought it a couple of years ago, watched about two thirds of it, and pawned it. It was well drawn with a lot of attention to detail and motion, but the writing made me cringe. Still, Your Name does sound like it's at least worth checking out.

Most people like the other Shinkai movies, I am the only one who likes C.W.C.L.V.F.D.B. to be better than his other pre-Your Name movies.

Your Name is on another league, it's like Miyazaki level. In fact, better than any Miyazaki film since Spirited Away (although inferior to Spirited Away) and better than even Takahata's Kaguyahime no Monogatari

Okay, I'll check it out. I watched an interesting anime, but I keep forgetting it's name. I have the DVD at home, it just has such a weird name. It was pretty charming and had two episodes. I think it was an OVA, but the story wasn't concluded and alluded to a third episode. I don't know if it actually does have a third episode though, or if they just never finished it.

I got my brother to watch Baoh, and he liked it. I noticed that the animation was a little rough around the edges, but there is a lot of motion and it has a really charming old-school 80's vibe to the character design and artwork that I really love. It's ultra-violent too which is a plus.

This two episode OVA was based on the manga by CLAMP from 1989. Each director directed one episode. The first was made in 1991 and the second in 1992. The story in the OVA isn't complete. It left me wondering where the next episode was. There were no more episodes made though, so you'd have to go to the manga for the complete story I guess. On the DVD I have there are a few special features about the story, verses, and cast, so maybe that explains more. In total the OVA's are 90 minutes long. The story is about a mystical land ruled by an oppressive dictator who has by some mystical power become some sort of god. There is a prophecy that six warriors will destroy him, and he is trying to hunt them down before they can. Five of the warriors search for the missing sixth while being pursued by evil forces. It's a charming little anime with endearing characters and potent atmosphere. The artwork is detailed, but rough around the edges. I had never heard of this anime before, but saw it on the shelf of a second-hand shop and thought it looked interesting.

A twenty minute short based on Franz Kafka's story by the same name. The artwork is unlike anything I've seen before with distorted perception that gave me an uneasy feeling. It was recommended to me by someone on reddit when I asked for arthouse anime like Angel's Egg. Well, I wouldn't say it's anything like Angel's Egg, but it's definitely artistic.

Essay - Why Animation has only Developed in Japan

To say that Japan is the world's leading animation producer is a sheer understatement of Japan's relative position in terms of animation. A more accurate statement would be that Japan holds a monopoly of animation as a serious artform and as a general medium for entertainment. Only in Japan it's possible to find, for example, action animation, slice of life animation, serious science fiction animation, serious historical setting animation and pornographic animation.

Anyway, the interesting question to be asked is: why? Why out of 190 countries in the world only one has a well developed animation industry? Why in all other countries animation does not exist as an integral part of the cultural media mix?

I conjecture that the reasons are multiple:

1st - Market Size

Animation is costly to produce and requires a lot of manpower, which means it's much more costly and difficult to produce 1 hour of animation than 1 hour of live action film. This means that only in a country with a large population that is rich enough to spend money on animation that the artform can fully develop. This means that animation could have only develop in either:

Europe
US
Japan

Any other region of the world was too poor or too sparsely populated (Australia and Canada) to support a large animation industry. China now is becoming rich so I expect it's animation industry to develop as well in the future. Hideaki Anno himself said that the future of animation is in China. Japan with is 125 million people can be said to be the smallest market possible to support an animation industry, Korea, for example, a similar culture to Japan, doesn't have a well developed animation industr although their comics as well developed.

2nd - Western Photographic Culture

So, out of 3 regions of the world that could develop animation, 2 regions are Western: Europe and the US. These western regions have a severe cultural barrier against animation: realism in art. Since ancient greece in about 500 BC, Western Art has been dominated by the aesthetic ideal of reproducing reality accurately.

A good example of western art in its essense is this 2450 year old sculpture:


One might say that modern art has evolved beyond that but I would argue that modern art is only a reaction against western art (it values the inverse of the values of classical western art: the ugly over the beautiful, the asymmetric over the symmetric, chaos over order) rathef than something that is self supporting and also notice that very few people actually spend time appreciating modern art. 99% of the western people consume art in the following forms: live action film (either movies or tv), videogames (which try to be as realistic as possible) or literature and music. Most visual art consumed in the Western world today is not painting, it's videogames. And most videogames try to be as realistic as possible given the technology available:



Japan lacks the same aesthetic culture that values photographic realism as the absolute ideal. This makes it possible for Japan to develop art that is less realistic but still beautiful in its own way. If you take the character designs of modern seinen manga they are unrealistic but still very detailed and can be quite beautiful yet being completely different from reality. This is also because Japan's heavily developed comic book industry lead to a continous refinement of comic art and the development of a visual language that has not anchoring in western art nor in physical reality:



3rd - Historical events

Comics and animation have a close relationship. Actually one cannot differentiate the two that much: animation are comics that are filmed and edited by a director. In other words, film made using comics instead of live action photography. Hence, animation requires a well developed comic culture to develop as a medium.

The US almost developed a substantial comic book culture during the so called golden age of comics until government pressure lead to the regulation of the comic industry and it's collapse in sales and cultural significance as well as diversity. As a result, US animation became divorced from comics and hence lacked the backbone of comic book writing as a foundation for the sophistication of its writing. That's one of the reasons why the only adult animation in the US consists of cheap crude comedy like Family Guy, Archer and South Park that lacks any sophistication in direction, art, animation, writing and subtlety being very poor as examples of animation as an artform, although that might also be a consequence of the fact that US culture is lacking in subtetly in general.

Europe as a whole also has not developed a comic book industry. One might be interested in knowing why although I don't know very well the commercial history of European comic books. Things like: per capita comic book sales. It would be interesting to compare to Japan's. Anyway, the only big country in Europe is Russia and Russia is pretty poor as a country wilst the other countries lack the language market size to develop an animation industry. Europe as a whole is a bigger market than the US or Japan but lacks the unified language to be a single cultural market.

Overall these factors combined help to explain why Japan is currently the only region in the world with a well developed animation industry and culture.

What about the whole Pixar/Disney world of animation in the West? I wonder if the market in the U.S. for animation has brought the quality of it's art form down due to commercialism and industry standards. The CGI teams will tackle various animation elements for this movie or that movie, like hair in Brave. And they succeeded in nailing that aspect, but not in an artistic way like the old Disney cartoons. In my opinion Snow White was a lot more artistic in it's aesthetics than anything they've made in the last two decades. But there is still a large market for animation, it's just that for some strange reason they seem to just be focusing on bringing anime over from Japan instead of making their own adult animation. They still make a lot of Saturday morning cartoons and family oriented movies. But then, what about Avatar, and Transformers, and the way they put a lot of CGI animation into movies that also have live-action actors. A lot of movies are made on green or blue playgrounds, and then the backgrounds and other characters are added in through animation, like the Star Wars prequel trilogy, or The Matrix.

There isn't really a well developed market for animation in North America. There are very few people in NA who watch animation seriously (Japanese government estimates are of about 200,000 to 500,000 "anime fans" in NA) and that would be the potential market for animation that's not little kids stuff. There are a lot of adults who watch cartoon network as well but apparently their interest in animation is not serious enough to warrant it's own niche industry. For example, here in this forum very few people are familiar enough with animation so that they can understand the references in PMMM and this is supposed to be a forum of people that have serious interest in visual media.

Disney/Pixar does not represent an industry of animation but a section of Hollywood's market: animation in Hollywood became a genre of children's entertainment that co-exists with 95% of live action movies, this animation is always characterized by negative elements (i.e. what it cannot do):

lack of any violence,
lack of any sexuality,
lack of any moral ambiguity,
lack of any attempt in achieving gravitas
lack of seriousness
strict adherence to puritanical ideological principles
lack of any experimentation in art style
lack of any experimentation in narrative structure
lack of any experimentation in direction
lack of complexity in writing and narrative structure

When Pixar made a couple of movies with moderate complexity in it's writing, but still strictly adhering to all the other principles above, movies like Ratatouille and UP (or a movie like Wall-E that had some gravitas but it was very simplistic in it's writing), people started talking about "a revolution" in animation. Well, it certainly shows how these people certainly don't have a minimum clue about animation.

There is also the clear possibility now that serious fans of animation satisfy their need for the medium with Japanese animation. So it crowded out the possibility of the creation of a North American animation industry. Although I might add that before 1990, virtually nobody over the age of 10 in North America consumed animation and now it's common for adults to watch stuff like Simpsons. So I guess that anime's influence started to be felt in North America (thanks to stuff like laserdisks of Miyazaki films being shown to Disney executives) since the late 80's and it's not a coincidence that Disney's Rebirth in the 1990's and adult animation like Simpsons, Aeon Flux and other MTV shows started being made around 1990, about the same time that Akira showed up in cinemas in North America. Since the modern trend of North American animation began as an offshoot of anime it's unlikely that the domestic industry would have quickly developed to a degree high enough to satisfy an animation fan need's to a similar degree as the Japanese industry does without being suffocated by the anime industry. That would have only happened if Americans suffered a country-wide cultural mind erasing that essentially erased from their minds all their prejudices and biases against "cartoons". Overall, adult american animation subsists as simple cartoons made to get a cheap laugh like Simpsons and Family Guy.

Akira represented a huge cultural shock when it showed up because it was an adult animation that featured highly ambiguous characters, highly levels of violence and sexuality, highly dynamic and aggressive atmosphere, serious tone, highly complex direction and narrative structure (although not a high level of complexity in writing) and essentially was everything that NA animation was not. People who watched it understood that animation could do ANYTHING. However, the same people just consumed Japanese stuff instead of trying to create their own stuff (which is tremendously hard). For a movie like Akira to be made it requires a whole manga based highly industrialized civilization like Japan was in 1988, nothing else in the world is comparable: in 1990 the average Japanese read about 400 to 800 times more pages of comics than the average American. And for each adult animation like Simpsons or Aeon Flux made in NA, hundreds of adult OVAs were being made in Japan.

Essay - "I don't like anime"



The term "anime" as it is used in the Anglo Saxon countries is problematic. It's a term like no other because it refers to art made in a specific country: "anime" means all animation made by the Japanese people. There does not exist any similar terms like: "Runovel" for Russian novels or "whitemu" for music made by "white people". Why the hell people started using a term connected with an ethnic group? I am not aware of any term similar to "anime" and "manga" in the English language.

The term anime was made as a reaction of Anglo-Saxon animation fans to the fact that animation is regarded as a children's medium in the Anglo-Saxon countries. So they stopped calling the cartoons they watch by "cartoons" and instead used the Japanese term for cartoons, which is "anime". Thing is that this term backfired due to the rather xenophobic character of Anglo-Saxon culture because it is now possible for people to just write-off a whole world of Japanese culture with four words: "I don't like anime".

What is the meaning of those four words? The meaning is the following:

"I don't like anime."="I don't like animation that is not made by white people."

The reason is that in Japan and the rest of Asia, the term "anime" does not exist: there is only animation. The people who say "I don't like anime" are only people from Anglo-Saxon countries, in these countries the only animation most people are aware of is Anglo-Saxon animation. So when they say they dislike "anime" they are saying that "they like animation, but not the animation made by the yellow people from Japan, they just like the animation made by the local white people".

So, it's much better to just do not use the term "anime", its just a bigoted term: it associates an ethnic group with a "type" of animation. Of course, this "kind" of animation only exists in the head of some people living outside of Japan: it's is as if the whole universe of Japanese people were only capable of making one type of animation. Could anybody claim that Akiyuki Shimbo does the the same kind of animation as Masaaki Yuasa? Only the people who are ignorant of the work of both men. People who are serious about animation talk about "animation" not "anime", although it's true even among professional animators there exists a lot of prejudice.

The term "anime" is used today mostly by younger animation fans and it's also a bad term to use because younger animation fans might think that the only animation that matters is Japanese animation, while that is not far from the truth, it still excludes a lot of great stuff like Futurama and South Park (crude but great nonetheless) or movies like Gandahar, the Illusionist and Fantastic Planet. Animation is animation: good is good no matter which ethnic group makes it.

So when one watches something, one must always try to understand the appeal of it. Why people like it? Because anything is made as entertaining to some group of people which means that it's not very hard for someone to understand it if they let go of their specific ethnic biases. For instance, many Westerners think that a lot of "anime" has pedophilia, while of course 99% of it never has any pedophilia, although it's true there is some pedophilia in some titles, for instance in the 2nd to 4th seasons of Fate Kaleid features passionate graphic depictions of kissing between 11-12 year old girls, however, one must understand it and not be disturbed by it. I personally think it's cool because they are showing a big middle finger to Eurocentric cultural norms. It's the same appeal as satanic lyrics in heavy metal: it's in the spirit of rebellion from traditional society's norms. In Japan the type of comics featuring little girls made for adults has received a popular backlash as well around 1990 because a serial killer named Miyazaki who killed and mutilated the bodies of several schoolgirls in 1989 had a lot of manga featuring little girls but he had a lot of everything else in his apartment (including thousands of VHS tapes that he used to record TV shows).

But, how about if you dislike the "anime style"? There is no such thing:








The variety of styles is enormous, of course, there are tens of thousands of animators in Japan and hundreds of thousands of cartoonists, hence there are many different styles of comics and animation.

So, "anime" does not really exist: the idea of "anime" being a kind or "genre" of animation is just something that exists in the heads of some people in the Western countries. What exists is just animation, the same applies to the word "manga", that thing does not exist, what exists is comics, which is the meaning of the word "manga" of the Japanese language. So, you like/dislike animation, you like/dislike comics, you do not like or dislike a comic or animation just because it was made by a person of a specific ethnic group.

Racism, by the way, is still disseminated in the world: It's considered okay in America to claim you dislike the culture of an ethnic group and "write it off". It's even considered okay for a president to be racist since the Americans just elected a racist one right now. However, that does not mean one has to tolerate bigotry and yes "writing off" the culture of an ethnic group is bigotry.

Also, bigotry reproduces bigotry: Miyazaki has said he does not like American culture. Well, that's understandable since his work is not appreciated enough in the west, so if America is bigoted with Miyazaki's work then Miyazaki is bigoted with America.

Miyazaki is pretty much the only well known anime director in the west and he is highly revered, much more than most of the other foreign directors you hate like Kiarostami, or even other American directors like Wes Anderson or Richard Linklater. Miyazaki films usually get the stupid 'must be great' label that revered american directors get, so other than coming across like you are losing your mind i'm not sure what your point is in a thread that only me and the big anime fans actually read.

I think when people say they don't like anime they mean different things based on the person. I met a guy a couple of months ago who said he didn't like anime, but when I put forward titles like Ghost in the Shell, Akira, and Ninja Scroll he revealed his interest in them and we got talking about anime. I realised that he says he doesn't like anime simply because he doesn't want to talk to people about popular anime like Naruto, Bleach, and One Piece. Other people say they don't like anime because the anime they are familiar with doesn't appeal to them and they don't know that there is other anime out there that might appeal to them. People have the same attitude towards genres of music. When I was a teenager I said I didn't like anime because I didn't like Dragon Ball Z, Digimon, Gundam Wing, and other popular titles, even though I did like Robotech and Voltron. I just didn't know what I was talking about, and I didn't know much about anime. When people say things like that you really can't read into it too much. They aren't saying they dislike an entire culture. They are just saying they disliked what they were exposed to so far. I know people who say they don't like Chinese food, but they're of course referring to some low quality restaurants that serve a more Westernised style of Chinese food that isn't very authentic to begin with. It's not necessarily racism or bigotry.

Anime may be a superficial term, but what is important is that idea floating in people's heads that they are trying to communicate. People may not be very good at communicating. Maybe it's better to say "Japanese animation." But why use two words when there's one word that means the same thing?