Tag Archives: Anime

3 Major Anime Industry Sea Changes Explained By Their Effect On TV Anime (Part 1: The Late Night Revolution of 1996-1998)

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Every so often, the anime industry goes through a period of transition that alters how and for whom anime is made and distributed. Call them paradigm shifts or whatever; I call them sea changes. There are at least 4 major sea changes that I know of that have significantly altered the industry: the OVA boom of the late 80s/early 90s, the transition of TV anime from daytime to late-night from 1996-1998, the transition from cels to digital art in the early 2000s, and the Blu-Ray Era starting sometime between 2006 (when they were officially introduced) and 2009 (when they made up a majority of the market). Each one of these transitions had a unique and lasting impact on the industry. Unfortunately, I lack the knowledge to write with any real authority on the OVA boom. This article is the first in a 3-part series covering the latter 3 sea changes and how they influenced the production of anime over the past two decades.

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First Reactions: WataMote Episode 6

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This week’s episode didn’t start out up to the show’s usual standards of quality. The sex jokes at the beginning felt like they were there more for the sake of bringing the topic up than in the effort poured into making scenes independently funny. It was still fun, but it was succeeding less on creativity and more on audacity. That problem could really have just been a one-skit thing. With the way the punchlines started rolling in, though, the whole operation seemed to get back on the rails; the second half of that skit was full of decidedly basic slapstick material that worked really well. Odds are it succeeded because of its simplicity in contrast with the earlier grand delusions and cheap usage of the word “sex”.  Maybe the writers knew from the start what they were doing.

WataMote-6-6

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6 Degrees of 5Ds: Attack on Titan, Hunter x Hunter, and Free!

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The Anime Industry is a lot more interconnected than one might guess at first blush. This manifests itself both in meaningful ways and in silly ones. This series of posts, where I link Yugioh 5Ds to every other anime Kevin Bacon-style, is most definitely the latter. This time, I’m shackling the three most notable currently airing anime to the laughable albatross.

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First Reactions: Space Brothers Episode 69

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This was probably Space Brothers’ best episode in a while. I could have said a lot of good things about it; it plowed through a lot of time awful quickly, it made a pretty fun Terminator reference, Deniel’s retirement was cool, Murakoshi made it to space, Mutta’s getting a spot on a backup crew, and a bunch of other stuff. But, unfortunately, I’ll only remember it for one feature, and not a positive one. In previous episodes, there were instances of light xenophobic attitudes, but it wasn’t a consistent enough thing to be a concrete problem. Too, some non-Japanese were shown in a positive light at various points. But there’s really no justifying this:

SB-69-1

There are two reasons this could have happened. Either the anime staff were totally clueless about what depicting a black person as a gorilla meant (unlikely given the amount of research that’s gone into other parts of the show), or they knew and did it anyway. Either way, it’s stupid and extremely disappointing. I just hope to hell this doesn’t become a regular feature of the show.

New Directors: What’s In A Resume?

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Aside from perhaps the hair episode of Yami Shibai, the 5-minute preview for Go Nagai’s Robot Girls Z was the most impressive, repeatable five minutes of animation I watched last month. If you haven’t seen it yet, it’s over here. Short version: it’s a 5-minute comedy which, but for the more modern cutesy character designs, could totally have been written by Go Nagai. Its style of humor, featuring excessive violence and heroes doing more damage than the monsters they fight, is what he’s always been all about.

Being that I was excited about the project (this was only the 0th episode), I flew over to ann to check the profiles of the freaks involved. As it turns out, the director, Hiroshi Ikehata, has only ever handled one TV series before (Ring ni Kakero), which isn’t a very good sample size to judge a director on. But he has held the position of episode director numerous times, on all manner of series (from A-Channel to Yuyushiki).

There are no less than 8 new directors making their debut in this Summer 2013 season with similar information about their early careers available.* One of them is Hiroko Utsumi, the director of Free! Others run the quality gamut, from C3-Bu’s Masayoshi Kawajiri to Neptunia’s Masahiro Mukai. And, lest I forget, Shishiou Igarashi made a smashing debut with The Unlimited this winter. It’s definitely possible for first-timers to post veteran-esque performances, but far from guaranteed.

This observation led me to a question; what, if anything, can we glean from a first-time director’s experience in the bullpen? If it that experience is important, what part of it is? Is it better to have worked as an understudy to a great creator on a memorable show, or to build up tons of experience grinding out lots of support roles? To attempt to answer these questions, I pulled up resumes for the 11 directors who first got their hands on a serial anime project in 2012 and combed them over to see if anything in particular was a good indicator of their respective performances. This article outlines a number of the potential performance I examined, some better than others.

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Midseason Update: This Summer in Redline Quotes

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Redline is the best anime movie I have ever seen. By which I mean it is the best anime I’ve ever seen and the best movie I’ve ever seen. While this summer season is certainly one for the books, it’s not delivering anything quite like that movie (and it wouldn’t be fair to ask it to). But because the movie’s now available free on youtube,* and because this is definitely the most fun season to be a part of since subs of the movie became available roughly 2 years ago, I decided to pay tribute by summarizing how everyone’s doing at (roughly) the halfway hash in the words of Sweet JP and co.

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[Warning: Spoilers, if that kind of thing bothers you.]

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First Reactions: Dangan Ronpa Episode 6

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Chihiro coming back as an AI was certainly unexpected. Said AI seemed nice enough, though you can never tell with this show. More interesting than either the revelation of the AI’s existence or the fact that it was doing research to find the party responsible for the events of the show was the way characters ended up fighting over him. It makes a certain degree of sense, given Ishimaru’s pretty unstable right now and Yamada’s just like that, but it still feels like a rather silly thing for a major plot point. I guess I would have rather seen the characters just hanging out a bit more ala episode 4 over whatever this was:

DanganRonpa-6-1

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First Reactions: Free! Episode 5

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Not that it matters, since the novel Free was based on was in the Kyoto Animation Award contest, but I think they were the perfect studio for this show. Of course, it’s a given that the high-energy swimming scenes would look good.* But the motion-heavy body language is boosting the comedy along with the action. something really pronounced in the one scene where Gou and Amakata revealed they wouldn’t be sleeping outside. Hiroko Utsumi really milked those one-syllable words for all they were worth.

Free-5-3

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First Reactions: WataMote Episode 5

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This week’s installment of WataMote was probably the most painful watch yet, but offered proof-positive that Oonuma Shin is enjoying the hell out of himself. From the start, where he scattered the character design roughs over Tomoko talking about creating a character, to the ED, where he just straight-up made a viral video for the fun of it, this episode consistently spoke to how much fun the people at Silver Link making this are having.* It’s more fun than Tomoko, that’s for sure.

WataMote-5-14

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