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I have to wonder why people in Western countries are so divided with anime. Maybe it's just the fact that it's drawn and not CGI or acted out, but I still don't quite understand. I mean, true, it has its problems- mostly, the following.

-There are times when an anime has good voice actors. They're mostly few and far between. Maybe they all live in Japan.

-Again for the most part, anime tends to be minimalistically drawn. There are very few non-essential details in most really Oriental-sided animes.

For the most part, I figure there are things live-action movies do well, and there are things that animations do well. For example, anime tends to be *alot* less expensive when people try to get into special effects. It's much easier to make it look like someone just flipped over the robots head and used their eye beams to fry its brain when there's no premise of it looking at all realistic. However, trying to do the same effects anime uses in live action (such as the "motion backgrounds") tends to look childish and poorly done. Similarly, you'll never, with a two-dimensional drawing, be able to have the same range of emotion a real and experienced actor can portray in a seconds decision.

There are, of course, exceptions to the rules. Some anime is not only very well drawn, but meticulous as well. Good example- Akira. down to the labels on the discarded Chinese food container in the side of the street to the stickers on Kaneda's bike, everything's carefully placed. The hallucination scenes are done incredibly well- but that type of subtle drama doesn't make it to big-time western theaters. Well, granted, sometimes it does, but for the most part, what makes sales? Definitely not crazily psychological movies. Or if they are psychological, they're either

"Hello, Clarice..."
"I am always very sad because of..."

You don't actually get into the cool, somewhat Freudian mental symbolism- but you can do that in anime. For some reason, it's acceptable then. If little teddy bears, bunnies, and cars started walking on the pillow of, say, Neo, the Matrix would be a less successful movie, at least by my guess.

And I would like to write more, but Ima go play Cabal now. *Flee.*

Some great points, but I can't quite find the question in there...
O.o

Honestly, I don't grade animes as harshly as i do movies. I do appreciate well put together ones, nice plot, visual appealing, and a few other things. One of my favorites, Bleach, nice plot, not the most outrageous detailing but its good enough. A combination of laughs and action.

I think people shun anime for the same reason they shun emo stuff.

Because they don't want to be consistently depressed? (At least, that's why I shun it, and all my friends shun it, and everyone I've ever known shuns it)

Japantoons are just as bad as American ones.

Possibly, but I grew up with Looney Toons and Bugs Bunny, so I'm much more accepting of that than I am of certain anime shows. I enjoy anime every now and then, some of it is done very well. But American culture and Japanese culture are just too different for anime to be integrated to the same degree over here.

Heh, I'm always drawing anime/manga, and everyone goes 'Stop drawing those Japanese People!'... Ummm. No.

My College Art Instructor once said this-
"I hate anime, I hate that they use such cheap tricks and get praised for it, I hate that they simplify things when they should complicate it, I hate how they use 5 frames for a minute, but still, there's nothing sexier than an anime babe."

All of those are good points- Japanese Anime often uses many many tricks and cheap ways of doing things (one drawing- 5 different mouth shapes- 5 minutes of switching between the mouth shapes while panning across the same image back and forth? Yep- they do that sometimes). However they also have a way of catching motion and drawing you in even with these obviously cheap tricks, why? 2 Reasons I can think of.

The style of anime has a strong use of color and a more realistic simplified person than many other cartoons that have one human who is shorter than a rabbit, a round bald head and short stocky legs and little tiny arms. People associate more with these more human looking characters.

And secondly- the Stories. Anime is not the adventures of Character X constantly hunting down character Y while blowing himself up in the process. Theres animes about just about everything, from Giant robots to guys who dress up as women to get a job as a teacher, to a realistic team of paranormal investigators to a team of totally unrealistic paranormal investigators, to stories about cute magic girls to evil sorcerers, to rock stars to little girls that have God like powers, to robot girls to catgirls, to a little boy who learns magic and becomes a school teacher at an all girls school!!

It has come down to the point that there is just about a anime out there for EVERYTHING. Many told very well like a comic, and that is what anime is, its an animated story normally based off of a Manga - which in the end is nothing more than a story created by some guy- just like Web comics. We dont really have a free comic industry here in America. Over in Japan a guy can come up with a story- draw it, and have it self published weeks later and take em around to all kinds of stores and ask them to sell it (profit sharing) or take them to a Convention and get a table. The closest thing we have to that in America is webcomics- because we dont have a local convention that comes around ever 3-4 months or the crowds to pull in enough money to cover a comic like that. If you want to do that- you have to get it published or work for a studio that has a publisher- but if you do that- your out of luck when you want to work on your own stuff and they have you making another spinoff on a wolverine comic...

You have to think that they would have to use such tricks because in Japan things seem to move a bit quicker. They need to make money and by doing this they take short-cuts which are not to noticable.
They have gameshows in which you slide doors, human tetris, and pull tableclothes off of tables. All of these are centered around those things. It's some strange stuff, but that is why I love Japanese culture, you never know what to expect next. ^^

ultimately... it's still enjoyable... in my opinion, anime(manga)'s better. there are lots of western cartoons that has totally senseless humour. not senseless funny, but really really REALLY senseless, like billy and mandy. everything is just so... sickening. in anime, the jokes feel clean, as in it realy feels good to read them and i feel good reading them. whereas when i read comics like savage dragon or a marvel comic or a dc comic, i usually get light tummyaches after reading them, there's just something about western comics that i just don't feel comfortable with.

but... wether the cartoon is good or not, depends not on how complicated it is, but just simply wether its enjoyable.

south park is kinda simplistic in terms of drawing... but i like it!

My only real 'problem' with Anime: Too often the main character gets a super power boost that makes no sense whatsoever. "I cannot lose, I must save my friend! Power of heart x20! GRRR! NOW YOU DIE GENERIC VILLAIN #052!"

Current ones I can think of (Off the top of my head, with limited anime / manga experience):

Inuyasha
Bleach
Yu-Yu Hakusho
Gundam (Zero I think it was? The one with Devil / Dark Gundam)
Naruto

Actually, you know what, basically any Anime / Manga that features a 'Power of the soul / body / mind' set of abilities (Chakra, Spirit energy, etc) tends to feature things like this.

Now, this is not to say I have problems with overpowered Anime characters. They're fine. But when there's no good explaination for a sudden jump in power other than "I drew from the depth of my soul to power my attack", I tend to get wary.

Then again, I'm mostly a Low-Fantasy type of person, so that may be why I dislike such things.

We'll you have a point there, I guess it just comes with how they think. Maybe they think that putting the main character in mortal danger that it build suspense, which it does. They just take it to far, but everything is fine by me really as long as the overall anime is good I don't focus on the any of the negatives.

Lol, that's pretty funny. Why would believing in somebody who believes in you give you strength? That just means you are trusting them to trust you, why can't you just trust yourself.