@coolboymew@noyoushutthefuckupdad Me neither, for the little I have seen the focus on Nippon culture/settings has been progressively migrating away to european settings. But maybe I'm wrong, after all fantasy sets be it in space or D&D fantasy have also been a thing in that time. Not that it changes the enjoyability of the content so far, outside of isekai's flooding everywhere, but I'm just worried how far will it go, especially with the westerners wanting to introduce the fucking current year everywhere.
>has been progressively migrating away to european settings
Not sure where you're seeing this, especially with Isekais, although you can maybe argue that isekais and co are basically at this point 3+ generations of separation from it's actual LotR root by now with DnD > Ultima and co > Dragon Quest > all sorts of pseudo fantasy stuff > Today's isekai
There's always a bunch of anime about kingdoms and such. Even High Card had something of a fake "England-like" country like ACCA13 was (the country was much crazier here)
@mangeurdenuage@coolboymew@noyoushutthefuckupdad >seen the focus on Nippon culture/settings that's not necessarily a bad thing. It's natural for people to want to experience and entertain foreign and exotic cultures through stories, it happens after people get used so used to their own culture that they want to experience something new, hence do so.
@coolboymew@noyoushutthefuckupdad >Not sure where you're seeing this Just an impression, as said I might be wrong, and you know much more about anime than me.
@mangeurdenuage@coolboymew@noyoushutthefuckupdad The European setting has always been popular in anime/manga. Even back in the 70s and 80s. Some of the most popular anime and manga produced of the Showa era featured Western themes and settings.
What is more concerning is the materialistic shift of the industry. Once upon a time the Japanese government used to heavily subsidize the anime industry and it led to significant developments in the art, techniques, and storytelling of the medium. With the increased funding, and less to lose should an anime fail to reach popular appeal, anime artists and directors were more willing to experiment and more people were drawn to work in the industry. Once the Japanese government cultural development bucks fell through after the bubble burst the anime industry was struggling really hard. Latching onto Moe in the early 2000 and the development of "otaku culture" as a primary driving force behind the industry is one of the things that saved it from collapsing. Unfortunately it greatly effected the growth of anime as an artistic medium.
That Miyazaki quote that people like to repost, "anime was a mistake," is sort of a mistranslation and definitely taken out of context. He was lamenting what the industry has become once it became significantly less economically viable and no longer drew in auteurs and artists looking to use the medium to explore creativity, and instead the industry began to be filled with otaku (fans) only interested in producing otaku material. Yes there have been some attempts over the last 30 years to try and create genuine creative works of art, but in general they are not profitable enough to become an entrenched and flourishing part of the business. The modern anime industry is headed by production committees who only care about the bottom line and how much they can merchandise something, and production is handled by otaku who are willing to work long hours for low wages just to be part of the business.
It really is a shame too. The money the Japanese government gave out lead to a massive growth in the development of new and innovative animation techniques and gave Japan a ton of soft power they have been coasting on ever since. Also a great number of those animation techniques are being lost as the men who either innovated them or learned them retire or die, being replaced by computer generated images or outsourced to unskilled foreign animators willing to work for a fraction of the cost.
@CrushBead@mangeurdenuage@noyoushutthefuckupdad The loss of the traditional media is really sad because it looked quite pretty, but it is what it is. In the 2000s, when the shift happened, a lot of anime looked.... kinda ugly. However that issue has mostly been solved and a lot of anime looks prettier than ever
@coolboymew@noyoushutthefuckupdad It's a shame we can't produce them in our own countries, I thought people were entertained by Nippon work because it was focused on Nippon settings.
@Nelenese@coolboymew@noyoushutthefuckupdad >that's not necessarily a bad thing. yes and no, it depends, my issue is the influence in the original country of production to the point of possibly affecting it, otherwise I agree.
@mangeurdenuage@noyoushutthefuckupdad I've mentioned this a bit in the podcast. From what I know from the French cartoon industry, it's way, way, way fucking better at actually promoting French work than the non-existent Canadian industry (which is practically dead now?) and the American industry who pretty much completely failed to capitalize on the 2000s newground culture (that's still ongoing, and they're still failing at it)
@mangeurdenuage@coolboymew@noyoushutthefuckupdad For me, it was the culture shock of viewing things through the mindset of a Japanese person which was strange and fascinating that initially drew me in. Now, all these years later, I stick around because everything produced domestically is dogshit and disgusting.
@coolboymew@noyoushutthefuckupdad > I read migrating away from, not to. Was that a typo? Most probably, I remind that I can't into english nor french fully.
@coolboymew@CrushBead@mangeurdenuage@noyoushutthefuckupdad I don't know about ugly, but before the mid-2000s it definitely had more of a Hanna-Barbera / Filmation feel to the quality than today's more polished (but almost entirely computerized) anime
@coolboymew@mangeurdenuage@noyoushutthefuckupdad You know what is sad? There is no one left in the industry capable of animating an Itano Circus. Itano himself has retired from animating and was, as far as I can tell, the last person to animate a Circus. Anno, one of Itano's students, had to call in Itano to animate a Circus for one of the rebuild movies over a decade ago, and that was the last time anyone animated a Circus.
@coldacid@mangeurdenuage@noyoushutthefuckupdad I hope toonami aftermath adds a teletoon channel soon, that would really kickass and be enough cartoons and variety to please me for a long while
@coolboymew@CrushBead@mangeurdenuage@noyoushutthefuckupdad I'm thinking more how the traditionally drawn and animated stuff looked compared to the all-digital production. That whole mid-2000s era where they were transitioning production methodology overlaps with the rise of moé though, which muddies the waters on the visual quality.
@coolboymew@mangeurdenuage@noyoushutthefuckupdad Have you ever seen Macross? You know that signature scene from Macross series where a ship launches a barrage of missiles and they beautiful fly across the screen weaving in and out from one another? That is an Itano Circus.
@coldacid@mangeurdenuage@noyoushutthefuckupdad the 90s was absolutely amazing, especially the cool absurdist cartoons I'm going on about lately. But the 2000s had plenty of good stuff. Altho' the "tween" era did a lot of damage. The 2010s were a mixed bag but still had a bunch of interesting stuff
I'm checking the 2018 TMNT with Weeble and the animation are pretty spectacular, very high effort
@mangeurdenuage@coolboymew@noyoushutthefuckupdad well that's because a lot of media in the west seem very stifled by their complete insistence to appeal to huge audiences- which is often handled by a handful of corporations rather than dozens of independent artists or smaller scale entities. Crushbread, somewhere else in this thread, talked about the crash of profitability of animation as a whole which caused a homogenization of art to focus on a safe but boring tropes- Moe as example. Now, imagine that but it's ramped up millions of times more, where the only thing that is produced is incredibly safe but boring tested ideas that have to be approved by like hundreds of business men to get a hint of approval. The west (or at least america) can't fucking make anything slightly niche since the fear of failure or unwillingness by the executives is too damn high and we get the same shit over and over again. We're stuck making the same big-budget action hollywood-flick, generic detective live-action shows or a cal-arts animation- over and over and fucking over again.
>The west (or at least america) can't fucking make anything slightly niche since the fear of failure or unwillingness by the executives is too damn high and we get the same shit over and over again
Which is hilarious because this same culture is now producing nothing but absolute stinkers that won't ever have any long lasting legs while people are still watching Seinfeld
@coolboymew@noyoushutthefuckupdad I won't say that french animation is dead, according to someone who works in it we're one of the biggest producers of animation after japan and south Korea, but for some weird reason most people will say "what is this ?". And if you look at what is produced we do produce a lot but who tf watches them ?
@coolboymew@mangeurdenuage@noyoushutthefuckupdad I know there's some gems out there, but the change in direction that happened in the late 90s with the SatAM lineups pretty much just soured me on everything but the prime time cartoons.
I still totally miss stuff like X-Men and Eek! the Cat, though. And it's always fun to go through the old 60s/70s stuff like the Planet of the Apes cartoon, Star Trek TAS, and the classic Spider-Man cartoon.
@coldacid@mangeurdenuage@noyoushutthefuckupdad I can't agree much with the 60s/70s stuff. Radio-Canada aired the classic Spider-Man cartoon after quickly cancelling the weird 3DCG one in the early? 2000s and it was utter trash. There's like 3 storyline copy-pasted that always go the same way. Teletoon Retro showed also old eps of Justice League, He-Man and co and these were utter fucking garbage
@coolboymew@mangeurdenuage@noyoushutthefuckupdad they were bad, but so bad they looped around back to being good. My tastes might be tainted by a love for camp, though, and boy howdy were those productions of that style campy!
@coldacid@coolboymew@mangeurdenuage@noyoushutthefuckupdad I loved Batman Beyond. I'm glad that we got the Return of the Joker movie and Justice League time-travel episode to wrap things up but I wish that show had gotten more seasons. And I wish all of its OST was released on cd for me to buy.
@beardalaxy@mangeurdenuage@noyoushutthefuckupdad I loved it but hated that the plot never went anywhere. Unfortunately never got to see the end because it was around the time Saturday mornings stopped existing for me, part of that was because anime were airing till like 2AM when I got cable lmao
Iznogud, Marsupilami, Ti-Toeuf (spelling?), Kid Paddle (was on cable), Lucky Luke, the 3 Marathon anime like Totally Spies, Martin Mystery and the space one that sucks ass, La bande a Odie
@anime@mangeurdenuage@noyoushutthefuckupdad the 3DCG ain't bad but from skimming it, the plot seems like it's like one of those weird almost AI generated youtube rip-off cartoon that are weird as fuck
@coolboymew@anime@mangeurdenuage@noyoushutthefuckupdad you're acting as if they have to make anything sensible and coherent to appeal to toddlers nowadays, and past that age they move on to watching youtubers we will never have kids who accidentally saw a violent scene from elfen lied on tv and ended up fucked up anymore
@coolboymew@coldacid@mangeurdenuage@noyoushutthefuckupdad >Teletoon is now completely dead, thanks to the government Last I heard, Corus rebranded Teletoon to Cartoon Network. The Canadian Cartoon Network that already existed became Boomerang at the same time. I'd say it's appropriate since the Canadian Cartoon Network ran quite a bit of oldies since it's launch.
@mrsaturday@beardalaxy@coolboymew@noyoushutthefuckupdad Inspector Gadget was a américano-franco-nippo-canadienne cooperation. Depending on the period some stuff were entirely commissioned in Japan, like "Rémi sans famille" which was perfect to give your kids depression.
@mrsaturday@beardalaxy@coolboymew@noyoushutthefuckupdad "Jérôme Barberin est victime d’un accident à Paris. Il intente sans succès un procès à son employeur puis rentre à Chavanon. Rémi apprend alors qu'il est en fait un enfant trouvé et que Jérôme aurait voulu qu'il soit placé en orphelinat. Rejeté par son père, celui-ci prétextant qu'ils n'ont pas d'argent pour l'élever, Rémi est finalement vendu par Jérôme Barberin pour quarante francs" Exibit A https://yt.artemislena.eu/watch?v=jIH9MGwTYz8
@coolboymew@SNEK@VidMasterEon@beardalaxy@noyoushutthefuckupdad >But I've heard that's actually what you should do in these scenes on the storyboard Indeed. But but censors had to pass multiple times as noted on the boards, "don't put a big bulge on the cheek when she's eating grapes, she's not eating a hamster" "remove the 0.2mm of Areola in that scene" etc..