In my shameless tradition of stealing topics from the IGN boards.

[I.R Joey]

http://boards.ign.com/message.asp?topic=11844828&page=2

What's the stupidist thing you've ever seen an anime (or in our case) animation hater/ignorant person say.

[Calhoun07]

That they are just for kids.

[BourgeoisBuffoon]

That we're waging a war against Eastern toons to keep them from toppling Western ones. From very recently...yes, I know, but that really is my choice.

Though for second place is that the animation is simpy awful. I think it certainly beats some of the stuff U.S. toons have right now...

[Psycho Fox]

Originally posted by BourgeoisBuffoon
That we're waging a war against Eastern toons to keep them from toppling Western ones. From very recently...yes, I know, but that really is my choice.

Well this is a global economy so I don't think anyone should boycott foreign animation just becouse it competes with domestic animation.

[DR. BELCH]

--that the soundtrack from Sailor Moon sounded like it was lifted off a porno movie. Actually, that was more funny than stupid...and I suppose if you close your eyes and have a really open mind....

[Leaping Larry Jojo]

The segregation between "anime" and "Western animation." Also, the "all anime are 6 fps" theory, which has recently been shot down anyways.

[Salvor]

Originally posted by BourgeoisBuffoon
that the animation is simpy awful. I think it certainly beats some of the stuff U.S. toons have right now...

...that the animation is actually good!

Oh come on, apart from a few tv shows( like Cowboy Bebop or anything by Mayasaki -sorry if I spelled it wrong), the animation is rather crappy. Just take a look at some DBZ episodes... as much as I love the manga, the medriocrity of the animation is blatant at times. The problem with anime is either you get high quality or you get the lowest quality ever (Sailor Moon... oh please! ). Western animation usually provides average quality.

[Vigo Sprax]

Isn't DBZ kind of an old cartoon? Which would explain its crap quality?

[Leaping Larry Jojo]

Originally posted by Salvor

...that the animation is actually good!

Oh come on, apart from a few tv shows( like Cowboy Bebop or anything by Mayasaki -sorry if I spelled it wrong), the animation is rather crappy. Just take a look at some DBZ episodes... as much as I love the manga, the medriocrity of the animation is blatant at times. The problem with anime is either you get high quality or you get the lowest quality ever (Sailor Moon... oh please! ). Western animation usually provides average quality.

It's Hayao Miyazaki--and I would say anything by his home ccompany Studio Ghibli, not just Miyazaki.

Some movies and TV shows:

Giant Robo
Inu Yusha
Gasaraki
Card Captor Sakura second season
Now and Then, Here and There
Kazemakase Tsukikage Ran
08th MS Team
Hidamari No Ki
Arijuna
Noir
GTO
Macross Plus
Revolutionary Girl Utena (Movie, not TV series)
Rurouni Kenshin Trust
Ninja Scroll
Gundam 0083
Romeo's Blue Skies

All of these above (and much more) have high quality animation equal to or greater than Cowboy Bebop. Do not presume to judge badly animated anime as "overall..." by what you see on U.S. TV. Haven't seen some of these shows above? Then the conclusions you come to should not be made as of yet.


Sailor Moon is average quality animation. Do not fall into the common notion that number of frames equals "good" animation. It's how consistent the movements are while maintaining the low frame rate and how the characters stay on model while animating. Sailor Moon does this adequately, easily besting many episodes of Fox's Spider-Man, Fox's X-Men, Fox's Avengers, KWB's Rescue Heroes, which may have higher frame rates, but worse animation.

Digimon season 1, Pokemon, and Monster Rancher would classify as fairly poor quality.

[Leaping Larry Jojo]

Originally posted by Vigo Sprax
Isn't DBZ kind of an old cartoon? Which would explain its crap quality?

True, that. Many people seem to forget that Western TV animation were mostly of poor quality back in the late 80s and early 90s as well.

Also, DBZ is a kid's show. Kid's shows usually get chump change budgets. U.S. TV anime are mostly kid's anime.

[Salvor]

Originally posted by Leaping Larry Jojo
Do not presume to judge badly animated anime as "overall..." by what you see on U.S. TV. Haven't seen some of these shows above? Then the conclusions you come to should not be made as of yet.

Actually I've seen most of them on videotape and I do agree with you. Those are great OAVs/tv shows and do stand out as high-quality shows.

Then again, I do believe there's a great deal of other tv shows which do not meet basic standards. Sailor Moon, for instance, is horrible to my mind. The characters might stay on model, fine, but the characters look bad to begin with. And they *obviously* lack consistency Always the same gesture, always the same awful eyes... i just can't stand this particular style. And the backgrounds don't suit an animated series well. They're either too cold or too flashy. You have to aknowledge a guy like Mike Manley-who worked on Batman, Superman, Samourai Jack,...- isn't more talented than the designers who worked on the show.

Since you stated I should not judge anime "by what I see on U.S. TV", I'm afraid that's what you're doing... have you ever been to Japan? Ever watched tv there? You wouldn't believe the huge number of shows which never made it to the US. And no wonder why...

[Leaping Larry Jojo]

Originally posted by Salvor

Actually I've seen most of them on videotape and I do agree with you. Those are great OAVs/tv shows and do stand out as high-quality shows.

Then again, I do believe there's a great deal of other tv shows which do not meet basic standards. Sailor Moon, for instance, is horrible to my mind. The characters might stay on model, fine, but the characters look bad to begin with. And they *obviously* lack consistency Always the same gesture, always the same awful eyes... i just can't stand this particular style. And the backgrounds don't suit an animated series well. They're either too cold or too flashy. You have to aknowledge a guy like Mike Manley-who worked on Batman, Superman, Samourai Jack,...- isn't more talented than the designers who worked on the show.

Since you stated I should not judge anime "by what I see on U.S. TV", I'm afraid that's what you're doing... have you ever been to Japan? Ever watched tv there? You wouldn't believe the huge number of shows which never made it to the US. And no wonder why...

Actually, I have been to Japan. And I have sampled the shows there. About 70% of the shows on TV at that time were crap, and 10%-20% were gems. So, out of 80 anime shows on at the time, about 15-20 were genuinely good.

On the other hand, adding the 40 year history of anime up, there are about 2000-5000 great shows we'll never see.

Keep in mind about Sailor Moon--I said ANIMATION, not drawing style. You may not like the design work, and everyone has an opinion, but the animation, the actual movement of the characters, is about average. Always the same gestures and awful eyes? Well, that seems pretty consistent to me. Keep in mind that girl's anime (shoujo) is very hard to enjoy for someone used to boy's animation. Personally, I didn't like the Batman Beyond design style as much as other Batman series, but I will concede that it has fair to good animation. That's what I mean by "animation."

[oranthal]

the unique thing about dragonball and DBZ is that when there are very important scenes or very dramatic scenes, you can tell the animation is better and the detail of the "pencils' also gets better. for example, goku turning SSJ or gohan turning SS2.