I don't know where you heard that, but, it's wrong.
There was a rule to that effect back in the 1970s, but Ronald Reagan repealed it.
visit my blog!I'm pretty sure there's also an interview where Toriyama said he wanted to make Gohan the new star of the series, but brought Goku back to be the lead when that direction proved unpopular.
Still, I think we can all agree that the kinds of stories told by anime are more diverse than those told by American cartoons. True, most series follow one formula or another, but in America the number of formulas you can pick from and still have a successful cartoon tends to be much smaller than in Japan.
Where there seems to be disagreement is over (a) what the cause of this difference in variety is, and (b) whether greater variety is necessarily a good thing.
I think big budgets are to blame for lesser diversity. If you have an over 100 million dollar budget, the creators must think it's not enough to tell a straight story about people and their relationships but you have to pander to the kids audience with talking animals and chase scenes.
Only Yesterday and Grave Of The Fireflies have as good production values as rest of the Ghibli movies but they're also very different from what Miyazaki does. I'm not saying every animated movie should be mainly dramatic, but to me it doesn't say anything good about United Statesian animation industry that movies should stay mature only for the first 20-30 minutes before starting pandering to kids.
I think Pixar, Disney and other American animation studios have pidgeonholed themselves too firmly as all family studios, whereas for example Madhouse has basically no house style and some of its movies like Summer Wars and The Girl Who Leapt Through Time are family friendly and some of the others are not. Even Ghibli doesn't aim all its movies only at the same "all ages" demographic all the time.
edited 11th Aug '11 7:56:27 AM by harkko
Oh, right, so I was just hallucinating those completely different looking cards from the televised edit that 4Kids and NAS did for Yu Gi Oh.
Dude, those cards still look a lot like the real ones. All 4Kids did was erase the card text.
Now, I have heard that was because of some rule or other, but I don't remember the specifics and it's apparently not much of a rule if its so easy to get around.
I've also heard that Toriyama himself didn't like making Gohan the hero. But again, internet rumors.
How can greater variety ever be a bad thing?
edited 11th Aug '11 2:57:22 PM by MoeDantes
visit my blog!This thread is aimless, and the discussion is about a completely different subject than the OP.
On the real topic: I'm always confused when the logic of executives seems contradictory. They pulled the plug on Invader Zim, but continued to rerun episodes and hype it on the channel for a decade. Or when they hired the writer of Johnny, the Homicidal Maniac to be the writer of the series, and then were confused when it got a peripheral audience.
The problem is that execs are like fans; they're often outsiders to the overall creative process, but they think they know exactly what happens in it. And unlike fans, they can impose their will pretty easily.
edited 11th Aug '11 3:27:58 PM by Scardoll
Fight. Struggle. Endure. Suffer. LIVE.At Harkko: Sorry if I came across as saying "Your spelling is terrible, so your argument's wrong". But it WAS pretty terrible and it did detract quite a bit. But I did get your point and even agreed to a certain degree.
And Dantes. I meant promoting toys during THE COMMERCIAL BREAKS. Promoting stuff IN SHOW is fine, you do have to go through loopholes like 4kids did in Yu Gi Oh.
Lets for Example say.... Yu Gi Oh can air ads for their cards in their commercial breaks in japan.
If Kids WB/Toonzai tried to do that.....YIKES!
edited 11th Aug '11 5:30:05 PM by CocoNatts
Again, I heard of a law to that effect, but I thought Reagan repealed it. Did it get reinstated?
visit my blog!So your point is that it's not Merchandise-Driven as long as the show doesn't get changed due to trends? But to be honest anime is essentially like that - many Mecha shows appeared when it was big, and now you have many Slice of Life, etc.
That's more on Wolverine Publicity than Merchandise-Driven. Sure they may intersect but they're two different things. Also I still disagree about He-Man 2003's reasoning being "Darker and Edgier" - I'm more inclined that it's "He-Man written well". Also, you should watch Toku.Also also, if that means my favorite pony will get more development, I'm all for the Appletruck.
...how do ponies drive again?
edited 11th Aug '11 5:59:39 PM by Ookamikun
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I believe the law was to prevent companies from making television shows out of the franchise itself (thus why you often hear 80s shows like Transformers derisively refereed to as 30 minute toy commercials). Additional advertising in the form of commercials during the show is a completely different matter I think.
I've noticed the "genres rise and fall over time" thing, but I've never seen a case where that became a detriment to authors who wanted to do something different. It's like how Harry Potter set off a spate of magical-wizard-school books but you could still find plenty different, without having to have an obscure cable channel or be willing to pay high prices for hard-to-find back-issues.
We could probably spin off a separate topic about He-Man (though, let's hold that until this weekend—I probably won't be here tomorrow).
And I'd like more Applejack love, but if she gets a truck it better be some magical truck that runs on Horsepower or something.
visit my blog!It wouldn't be a detriment as it is more on them doing the Follow the Leader. Also, Tomino (I'll say Akira too but you already talked about that).
I have a feeling that as long as animation is seen as "for kids" animation will keep getting screwed. There are bright spots, though: Adult Swim, Comedy Central, and Marvel/DC's Direct-To-DVD releases. You have to find the right network for the right kind of animation.
On that note, fuck FOX. They bled The Simpsons dry, resurrected Family Guy only to make it that derrivative trud it is today and give Seth Mc Farlane two more series, and they cancled Futurama.
edited 11th Aug '11 10:10:11 PM by EnglishMajor
With blood and rage of crimson red ripped from a corpse so freshly dead together with our hellish hate we'll burn you all that is your fateThe whole "no advertisements for the show's merchandise" thing wasn't an actual law, it was a Federal Communications Commission regulation. Since the FCC only has authority over broadcast airwaves, the increasing popularity/availability of cable channels has made its regulations less relevant.
As for variety, yes, you'll find a lot more genres covered by Japanese animation than American animation. However, a lot of those Japanese cartoons, if they were made in the States, would be done in live action instead (I could see Durarara doing well on Showtime or something like that), and a lot of American TV shows like Lost or Smallville would probably have been animated if they were made in Japan.
So if you want variety, there are really plenty of TV shows and movies to choose from; it's just that in the U.S. a lot of them won't be animated. The question then becomes: what live action shows would have been improved if they'd been animated instead?
edited 12th Aug '11 1:25:06 AM by RavenWilder
Wizard Of Oz comes to mind, although I know my opinion isn't very popular on that one. The 1939 movie simply looks much more fake than Disney's Snow White And The Seven Dwarfs.
I think a lot of fantasy, sci-fi and superhero shows would benefit from being animated in general, if not for anything else but visual coherence. Something like Berserk really couldn't be made in live-action without absurdly large budget, which would end up compromising its content.
Perfect Blue has no cartoony character designs or expressions but some of the hallucinations scenes wouldn't be as fluid with CGI-live-action combination as in animation. Isao Takahata's Anne Of Green Gables combines seamlessly realism and slice of life elements with depictions of Anne's imagination, which would be difficult to execute in live-action, which is why they're usually omitted.
I'd rather have more Sci Fi. Particularly Military Science Fiction. That stuff rarely gets adapted because of the high production values required.
Fight smart, not fair.
Yes. But unfortunately that might not happen again in today's day and age. I have a feeling the 90's were a bit more lax about what they could show not so much in the interest of censorship but what the producers thought would actually make money. You think someone could pitch that kind of thing again? For kids? Not likely.
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Videogames have that covered now with Space Marine shooter #985. Unfortunately that means that the public consensus is that anything with Space Marines would be not for kids since we've got M-rated games that potray them. And we all know that M-rated videogames cause violence! Anything associated with them must as well!
edited 12th Aug '11 9:29:49 AM by EnglishMajor
With blood and rage of crimson red ripped from a corpse so freshly dead together with our hellish hate we'll burn you all that is your fate

And the USA has a law against advertising toys in Shows that promote said toys.If anything, japan is guilty of that(Cuz there is no such law there.