Feslmogh
01-10-2003, 09:28 AM
Animé invasion
Cartoon Network will expand Asian animation lineup (http://www.accessatlanta.com/ajc/living/0103/10anime.html)
By STEVE MURRAY
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Cartoon heroines with glistening eyes as big as wading pools. Leather-clad outcasts fighting their way through apocalyptic cityscapes. Lotsa robots and rocket ships.
These are stock elements in the Asian animation style known as Animé. Starting Monday, Cartoon Network will be showing more of the art form as it expands its "Adult Swim" programming from two to five nights a week. The revised schedule, aimed at 18- to 34-year-olds, includes several new titles of Asian animation, including "Cowboy Bebop," "Inu Yasha" and "Lupin the Third," airing late-night Mondays through Thursdays.
And if all these titles exist under the same name, they don't necessarily have a whole lot in common.
"We tend to talk about Animé as if it's one little box of DVDs over in the corner," says Sean Akins, executive producer of Cartoon Network's "Toonami," a 4-to-7 p.m. block of Animé and action cartoons. "But we're actually talking about an entire, multinational community in Asia that produces hundreds of animated shows every year." Those countries include Korea, China and most especially Japan.
Since "Toonami" launched in 1997, Cartoon Network has introduced more than a dozen Animé series to the cable airwaves. They no longer have the market entirely cornered. Last month, TechTV (available via satellite and some cable outlets) also launched its own late-night "Animé Unleashed" block of programming.
If you want to know if the cartoon you're watching is Animé, Akins says there are some telltale signs. "The male heroes always have very sexy hair," he says. Also, the form favors long-distance shots of scenes, and Tokyo is often given a "Blade Runner"-style futuristic treatment. And yes, there are those big-eyed girls with tiny mouths the size of dimes, like "Sailor Moon," a Cartoon Network staple that's currently on hiatus.
The newly acquired series "Cowboy Bebop" (1998) and "Inu Yasha" (2000) are good examples of different styles of Animé. In "Cowboy," a group of bounty hunters prowls the galaxy in their ramshackle spaceship, the Bebop. (Internet chat boards buzzed with accusations that Joss Whedon's ill-fated, sci-fi Western "Firefly" on Fox was not much more than a live-action version of the title.)
A cool purée of movie styles -- Westerns, film noir, martial arts -- "Cowboy" demonstrates a typical boys-and-toys fetishism for big weapons and snazzy machines.
The name "Inu Yasha" translates as "Dog Demon." That's what the series' long-haired antihero is, freed from magic enslavement by a Tokyo girl named Kagome who gets flung back in time to Japan's feudal age. Learning that she is the reincarnation of a powerful priestess, Kagome has to battle supernatural foes, like a giant monster known as Miss Centipede.
"It's a fantastic, magical tale and it's a lot of fun," Akins says. "It's probably one of the last handful of Japanese shows that are cell-animated. Everything is going digital now."
If "Cowboy Bebop" is heavily influenced by Western film styles, "Inu Yasha's" mythic world is very Asian. But both shows have something in common: They're peppered with stylized violence, and that's why Cartoon Network is airing the shows so late at night.
Also joining the new lineup of Animé titles in February will be "Reign: The Conqueror," an updated version of the story of Alexander the Great distributed by TOKYOPOP. It's one of the leading U.S. publishers of the Asian comic books known as manga.
Some may be familiar with Animé on the big screen. A handful of big-screen Animé features make it to American theaters every year -- most recently "Spirited Away" and "Metropolis." Earlier movies like "Akira" (1988) and "Ghost in the Shell" (1995) remain landmarks of the genre, available on video and DVD. But the animation may breathe best on TV, where its episodic form reflects its origins, the serialized manga.
"You can go into a manga store in Tokyo, and it's like a library with shelves and shelves and shelves," Akins says. When a certain story and its characters become popular, animation is the next step. The manga's creator retains many of the property's rights, unlike in the United States, where a writer sells his series or screenplay and it becomes the creative property of the studio that buys it.
In other words, a series is much more likely to retain the artist's original artistic vision. And you don't get much of that on American TV, unless you happen to be a show creator named David Chase, Alan Ball, David E. Kelley or Aaron Sorkin.
"In Japan, everything around the entire Animé community is very heightened," Akins says. "The voice talent are treated like the rock stars of Tokyo. The level of their celebrity is very, very extreme."
So if you want to see what that excitement is about -- and the kind of animation that pushes the limits of the art form -- here's a piece of advice: Figure out now how to program your VCRs for some late-night taping.
Cartoon Network will expand Asian animation lineup (http://www.accessatlanta.com/ajc/living/0103/10anime.html)
By STEVE MURRAY
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Cartoon heroines with glistening eyes as big as wading pools. Leather-clad outcasts fighting their way through apocalyptic cityscapes. Lotsa robots and rocket ships.
These are stock elements in the Asian animation style known as Animé. Starting Monday, Cartoon Network will be showing more of the art form as it expands its "Adult Swim" programming from two to five nights a week. The revised schedule, aimed at 18- to 34-year-olds, includes several new titles of Asian animation, including "Cowboy Bebop," "Inu Yasha" and "Lupin the Third," airing late-night Mondays through Thursdays.
And if all these titles exist under the same name, they don't necessarily have a whole lot in common.
"We tend to talk about Animé as if it's one little box of DVDs over in the corner," says Sean Akins, executive producer of Cartoon Network's "Toonami," a 4-to-7 p.m. block of Animé and action cartoons. "But we're actually talking about an entire, multinational community in Asia that produces hundreds of animated shows every year." Those countries include Korea, China and most especially Japan.
Since "Toonami" launched in 1997, Cartoon Network has introduced more than a dozen Animé series to the cable airwaves. They no longer have the market entirely cornered. Last month, TechTV (available via satellite and some cable outlets) also launched its own late-night "Animé Unleashed" block of programming.
If you want to know if the cartoon you're watching is Animé, Akins says there are some telltale signs. "The male heroes always have very sexy hair," he says. Also, the form favors long-distance shots of scenes, and Tokyo is often given a "Blade Runner"-style futuristic treatment. And yes, there are those big-eyed girls with tiny mouths the size of dimes, like "Sailor Moon," a Cartoon Network staple that's currently on hiatus.
The newly acquired series "Cowboy Bebop" (1998) and "Inu Yasha" (2000) are good examples of different styles of Animé. In "Cowboy," a group of bounty hunters prowls the galaxy in their ramshackle spaceship, the Bebop. (Internet chat boards buzzed with accusations that Joss Whedon's ill-fated, sci-fi Western "Firefly" on Fox was not much more than a live-action version of the title.)
A cool purée of movie styles -- Westerns, film noir, martial arts -- "Cowboy" demonstrates a typical boys-and-toys fetishism for big weapons and snazzy machines.
The name "Inu Yasha" translates as "Dog Demon." That's what the series' long-haired antihero is, freed from magic enslavement by a Tokyo girl named Kagome who gets flung back in time to Japan's feudal age. Learning that she is the reincarnation of a powerful priestess, Kagome has to battle supernatural foes, like a giant monster known as Miss Centipede.
"It's a fantastic, magical tale and it's a lot of fun," Akins says. "It's probably one of the last handful of Japanese shows that are cell-animated. Everything is going digital now."
If "Cowboy Bebop" is heavily influenced by Western film styles, "Inu Yasha's" mythic world is very Asian. But both shows have something in common: They're peppered with stylized violence, and that's why Cartoon Network is airing the shows so late at night.
Also joining the new lineup of Animé titles in February will be "Reign: The Conqueror," an updated version of the story of Alexander the Great distributed by TOKYOPOP. It's one of the leading U.S. publishers of the Asian comic books known as manga.
Some may be familiar with Animé on the big screen. A handful of big-screen Animé features make it to American theaters every year -- most recently "Spirited Away" and "Metropolis." Earlier movies like "Akira" (1988) and "Ghost in the Shell" (1995) remain landmarks of the genre, available on video and DVD. But the animation may breathe best on TV, where its episodic form reflects its origins, the serialized manga.
"You can go into a manga store in Tokyo, and it's like a library with shelves and shelves and shelves," Akins says. When a certain story and its characters become popular, animation is the next step. The manga's creator retains many of the property's rights, unlike in the United States, where a writer sells his series or screenplay and it becomes the creative property of the studio that buys it.
In other words, a series is much more likely to retain the artist's original artistic vision. And you don't get much of that on American TV, unless you happen to be a show creator named David Chase, Alan Ball, David E. Kelley or Aaron Sorkin.
"In Japan, everything around the entire Animé community is very heightened," Akins says. "The voice talent are treated like the rock stars of Tokyo. The level of their celebrity is very, very extreme."
So if you want to see what that excitement is about -- and the kind of animation that pushes the limits of the art form -- here's a piece of advice: Figure out now how to program your VCRs for some late-night taping.