Good heavens, it's been quiet around here, hasn't it!
So I've been getting back into anime a bit, lately, and I thought I might look into writing some reviews for it. I don't know how often it will be, as I'll probably wait until I finish a series or a season or something like that. However, I figured I should at least put down a few words about my history with anime, just so you know where I'm coming from and what I like.
Before I got into anime as a hobby in high school, I had seen a few things. I seem to recall my mother renting My Neighbor Totoro when I was kinda little. A major series I watched was Samurai Pizza Cats, but I didn't really know it was anime at the time. What a bonkers series!
However, I was more into video games early on, so when Pokémon landed in the US, I got swept up into it like a lot of kids, watching the cartoon, playing the games, collecting cards, etc. Before long, I had made the KidsWB Saturday morning lineup a part of my routine. Shortly thereafter, I discovered Toonami, which cemented itself in my daily schedule.
At first, it was older stuff like Robotech and Voltron, but soon came Dragon Ball Z, Gundam Wing, Outlaw Star, The Big O, Tenchi Muyo, and Blue Submarine No. 6. Just tons of fascinating sci-fi action series that showed me the storytelling potential of the medium. While I wasn't brave enough to stay up for the Midnight Run (which later became Adult Swim), I did find other fans in high school, and we talked about shows and shared VHS tapes, which is how I discovered Irresponsible Captain Tylor.
By the time I was in college, I was watching stuff wherever I could get it. Between the Sci-Fi channel (before it became Syfy), DVDs from my local library, downloading fansubs, on-demand through the cable box, or early attempts at online streams. These were the days of Fullmetal Alchemist, Kodocha, One Piece, Full Metal Panic, Neon Genesis Evangelion, Cowboy Bebop, Trigun, Soul Hunter, FLCL, Scrapped Princess, Gundam 00, and Gurren Lagann. This eventually led to my early attempts at writing anime reviews on a blog called the Anime Guidepost (you can see those over in the Old Blogs section of my website). I also began reading a tremendous amount of manga, and was buying both anime and manga pretty regularly.
As streaming and fansubs improved, I tried to keep up with it. It was kind of fun, being able to watch shows that had been broadcast in Japan just a few weeks prior. I recall getting into stuff like The Tower of Druaga, Corpse Princess, Guin Saga, Shangri-La, Valkyria Chronicles, Star Driver, and the ambitious attempt to simul-dub Kurokami. However, I soon began to feel overwhelmed by how much was coming out season after season, and by 2012, I was pretty burned out on anime. Since then, I have only watched a handful of series, picking up a show here or rewatching something there.
Over the past 8 years, I had still kept up with the fandom, largely by lurking on forums or keeping an eye on various news sites, but I wasn't really watching anything. While I was still relatively burned out, I also saw that trends had developed that I just wasn't interested in. The whole "isekai" style, where a character from our world gets taken to a fantasy world and becomes a hero, had come to dominate the new series, and they never interested me much. I felt like much the appeal of anime had been lost to me.
So what changed? I don't know. But as I became aware of some of the stuff that was coming out for Autumn 2020, I suddenly decided it was time to give it another shot. I'm going to be keeping up with a few series and finding others to watch in the meantime, so I figured I could start writing up reviews again, like I did in college. I think I'll follow my "Last Watched" format, where I'll cover 3 or 4 at once, so I wouldn't expect an anime review right away.
However, I'm kind of excited about anime again, and that's a feeling I haven't felt in quite a while. I know there's tons of stuff I can catch-up on streaming services, and there are plenty of DVD and Blu-Ray collections I've picked up over the years that could finally get some attention. In short, I won't have a shortage of things to write about.
The anime I tend to like focus on quality characters in interesting settings, so I'm drawn to action, sci-fi, and fantasy, for sure. However, I'm also willing to watch other genres, like romantic comedies, but I feel like a premise is too gimicky, I won't bother (thus my lack of interest in "isekai" shows). I love mecha stuff, and I know there's plenty of Gundam I could dig into that I simply haven't yet. Perhaps I'll go over some of my favorites in another article.
For now, though, this should cover the basics, so keep an eye out for some anime-related articles in the future, along with everything else I do around here (when I get around to it). In the meantime, I hope everyone is staying safe and sane.
Something that I think anime and manga do differently than western art are the emotional beats are more overt.
ReplyDeleteThese range from the slight gasp, to going over the top and turning the character's face into an emoji, but overall it makes me wonder if in Japanese culture it is more commonly accepted to show (at least through art) people react emotionally.
American writing has their beats for sure, but they tend to be more subtle and leave space for the reader to interpret, or are masked by a cavalier toughness. There's a focus on the actions rather than how they feel inside which drives their actions. American storytelling feels more "external" to me. Maybe it's a holdover from British emotional restraint mixed with rugged frontier individualism? Maybe Americans keep their reflections to themselves, feel like they're showing weakness if they emote, or don't take time to reflect as much.
A great example of this is the comic adaptations of Star Wars: A New Hope, where the Death Star destroys Alderaan. The silver-age 1977 Marvel comic adaptation feels stiff to me, and moves quickly over Leia grappling with the possibility that her entire planet would be destroyed. As an interrogation subject, it seems like she breaks immediately.
https://i.pinimg.com/originals/7b/47/6a/7b476af9a9166083be77fd7738a45fdd.png
The 1997 Special Edition comic adaptation does better by at least spending one more page on the interaction. There's more panels used to build up tension. However, the facial expressions are even more stoic than before! 1977's close up on Tarkin as he states "You are too trusting" carries such pernicious gravitas. 1997's close up on Leia as she supposedly is shocked that her planet has become the target shows no worry at all! The 1977 expressions hold more facial emotion than most of the 1997 panels. The gravitas is visually in the environmental shots, which have a nice view of the Death Star firing on the planet which will be referenced later.
https://m.comixology.com/Star-Wars-A-New-Hope-Special-Edition-1997-2-of-4/digital-comic/269288
The manga adaptation takes things even further. Where a total of 2-3 pages have been given to this scene in the western comics, the manga has a total of TEN pages. There's just so many more emotional beats that they call out. There's two pages of lead up showing the Death Star arriving, and the citizens of Alderaan's panic. The emotional build up has motion and drama. The interaction between Leia and Tarkin emotes so much more -- her defiance, his malevolence, her shock, worry, and wrestling over whether she will betray her secret. Though exaggerated from what is seen in the film, they convey the emotion of the scene much more overtly than the western adaptations. The firing of the Death Star laser is more dynamic than the Special Edition, but right in the middle is that pause mentioned earlier, a reflective shot of the Death Star firing on the planet. A dot, a small moon, tiny in comparison to this planet, touches out with a thin needle of light. The next panels show just how powerful this tiny thing is, as the explosion rages on the surface over crowds of people and ravages the globe. This is an inversion of the Special Edition's panel where the Death Star is shown as larger than Alderaan, simply because that is where the viewer's perspective has been. The manga has placed the viewer's perspective on Alderaan throughout the scene to make its destruction hit home. The scene ends with more emotional beats showing Leia's crushed mourning, then her steely resolve where we see she has recovered to her prior defiance. She is not broken. This is so much more powerful on an individual emotional level than the western perspective.
https://scans-daily.dreamwidth.org/5287382.html?thread=160758998#cmt160758998