Valid argument about anime and cartoons?

[aohige]

Originally Posted by Tempester

Now if only the American producers of film animation would get off this horrible CGI bandwagon. CGI films are so overrepresented now that I feel that the concept of high profile 2D animated films could actually be a novelty and marketing move like what Toy Story was back in 1995.

I feel quite the opposite.
After seeing Tangled, which was just as breathtaking as the first time we saw Beauty and the Beast, I'm more inclined that maybe we shouldn't really obsess over 2D vs 3D so much. 2D is NOT superior to 3D, or vice versa, and given the artistic talent (and budget ) both can excel at expressing awesome visuals.

That being said, I'm kinda sad that milestone for cel animation set by AKIRA back in 1988 still hasn't been surpassed.
It's so improbable to bring Japan's top top TOP animators together again to make something with such massive budget.
That was a miracle, and miracles don't happen very ofen.

[DonQuigleone]

I used to be pretty negative on CGI, but I've changed my tune. I think the two are equal but different. I think 2D is more appropriate for certain things. A film like Persepolis is perfect in 2D, while 3D is perfect for something like Wall-E.

3D is now a lot like "virtual" claymation. I feel like the 3D figures in front of me are almost like dolls, which I find interesting.

[Kyuu]

Oh, one thing I never mentioned:

Spoiler:

For every 1 American animation character that made you wanna fap -- there's probably 100+ among Japanese animation.

Personally, I can probably think of four: April O'Neal, She-Ra (I remember her when I was 5), Daphne, and Jessica Rabbit (maybe). But that's it. As far as anime goes -- lemme break out my spreadsheet. This is another huge difference.

[aohige]

Tinkerbell, Alice, and that girl at the end of Jungle Book were all good jailbaits.

[Kyuu]

Originally Posted by aohige

Tinkerbell, Alice, and that girl at the end of Jungle Book were all good jailbaits.

Oh wow. Totally forgot about them. Then there's Ariel. Even so, that's still not enough. The entire cast of Negima still has more numbers.

[Lord of Fire]

Well, I have yet to see an American cartoon deal with the concept of harems (unless it's taking place in Arabia or some place similar), so I'm not surprised that the amount of girls presented in cartoons is lower than in anime. Heck, I think the Moral Crusaders would vilify the networks execs for 'promoting polygamy' (even if a lot of harem anime end up in unresolved love triangles, or the main guy actually choosing one girl).

I could be wrong, though, I haven't kept myself updated with what cartoons are shown nowadays (other than MLP;FIM). Of course, me not being able to watch them (in their original language) probably has something to do with that.

[Dhomochevsky]

As someone who speaks 3 languages, 2 of which love to loan english words for all kinds of purposes, I can not really understand why this is such a big deal.
Almost always do these loaned words lose some of their original meaning in the process and sometimes they are used for completely different things!

This seems to be a 'problem' that can be entirely attributed to natural english speakers not being used to how these things usually work.

So what, anime means something else in Japan, than it does in NA.
This thread shows, that we (the english speakers) have a pretty clear understanding of what 'anime' means to us. Our language (means of communication) is working fine. Who cares what it means in another language?
If you want to reach consistency over all languages for all loaned words, good luck with that. You will have a lot of explaining to do to various locals.

[Byakou]

It's semantics. I don't think what people call it matters at all.

I personally like that we make the distinction between Japanese and western cartoons. Anime is very homogeneous, visually, stylistically. Anime is strongly tinted by Japanese culture. It makes sense to put them in their own category called "anime".

Western cartoons on the hand are very diverse, in every way, even within a single country. The Simpsons is not at all like ReBoot, ReBoot isn't at all like My Little Pony, My Little Pony isn't at all like Wakfu(France), and so on. So we're just calling them "cartoons".

[bhl88]

Diverse? Nah

Homogeneous? Not really, though it is approaching that (and there are plenty of genres too).

[aohige]

Originally Posted by Byakou

Western cartoons on the hand are very diverse, in every way, even within a single country. The Simpsons is not at all like ReBoot, ReBoot isn't at all like My Little Pony, My Little Pony isn't at all like Wakfu(France), and so on. So we're just calling them "cartoons".

..... That's because you don't know Japanese animation very well.
You don't think we have family sitcoms like Simpsons?
Newsflash: The highest ratings of animation in Japan are sitcom-like family shows similar to Simpsons.
We also have animation aimed for little girls similar to My Little Pony, that never comes over here.
In fact, nearly ALL of Japanese animation aimed at younger audiences gets ignored over here.

What you see in forums like Animesuki and sites like crunchyroll are not representitive of Japanese animation as a whole, you do realize this right?

The REAL top popular animation in Japan, which all happens to be family oriented sit-com like shows, do not get popularized over here because well, fans here are looking for something different.

I don't think you have an idea how diverse animation is in Japan, you're speaking from knowledge base of a very biased set. (i.e. western fandom)

[totoum]

Originally Posted by aohige

You don't think we have family sitcoms like Simpsons?
Newsflash: The highest ratings of animation in Japan are sitcom-like family shows similar to Simpsons.
We also have animation aimed for little girls similar to My Little Pony, that never comes over here.
In fact, nearly ALL of Japanese animation aimed at younger audiences gets ignored over here.

What you see in forums like Animesuki and sites like crunchyroll are not representitive of Japanese animation as a whole, you do realize this right?

The REAL top popular animation in Japan, which all happens to be family oriented sit-com like shows, do not get popularized over here because well, fans here are looking for something different.

Now that I think about it,I wonder how many people would look at the art of shows like Sazae-san and Crayon Shin-chan and think "hey,that looks like a cartoon!"

[aohige]

Originally Posted by totoum

Now that I think about it,I wonder how many people would look at the art of shows like Sazae-san and Crayon Shin-chan and think "hey,that looks like a cartoon!"

Or Doraemon. Ninja Hattori-kun. Paaman. Hell, all of Fujiko Fujio duo's works.
All of Akatsuka Fujio's works would work too, but his works have much less lasting power.

[Kyuu]

Originally Posted by totoum

the art of shows like Sazae-san and Crayon Shin-chan and think "hey,that looks like a cartoon!"

They're art shows? They make Spongebob look like Van Gogh's. And yea, I look at those and consider them as cartoon.

[bhl88]

There's also a thread on ANN discussing this.

[Lord of Fire]

Answerman's view on this topic is exactly like my own: both are the same thing, and the main reason why people argue over this is because most of them see cartoons as something very different, usually more child-like, than anime and thus get offended when both type of animations are lumped together.

[bhl88]

It's something hard-to-change, just because 5 shows come out, won't change "cartoons = kids" perception. Comic Code destroyed the remains of respect for comics, wonder if there was a Cartoon Code as well.

[Lord of Fire]

Originally Posted by bhl88

It's something hard-to-change, just because 5 shows come out, won't change "cartoons = kids" perception. Comic Code destroyed the remains of respect for comics, wonder if there was a Cartoon Code as well.

I'm not really arguing about that, I know that most cartoons made in the West can be considered 'kiddie fodder'. Heck, I've read reports from people who had a great idea for a (more mature) cartoon, proposed it to a network, and were rejected, because their idea wasn't 'original and creative' enough, which basically meant it wasn't aimed at the target the network CEOs had in mind.

However, this doesn't mean that cartoons are automatically inferior to anime; it's just that we're not the target audience of said cartoons (anymore) and as a result, we tend to either not enjoy them, or don't even bother watching them. And when you're pretty much only watching anime as your main form of entertainment, it's understandable that you start seeing anime as superior over cartoons, or even as something entirely different, while they're pretty much exactly alike down at their core.

[bhl88]

And with the current censorship rules, it's nearly impossible.

[Lord of Fire]

Originally Posted by bhl88

And with the current censorship rules, it's nearly impossible.

All depends on how good you are at masking it.

[bhl88]

Originally Posted by Lord of Fire

All depends on how good you are at masking it.

Not really: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.ph...ionIsSouthPark

They also want their hobby to be taken seriously by normal people, so that's also another factor for a number of anime fans to thumb their noses down at cartoons.