Hello, Welcome to this episode of Superhero Ethics. Today, myself, Matthew
Fox, my Nook, and my co host Riki Hayashi are talking about the
question of what is anime and to what extent is it specifically to Japanese culture?
Is it a word that just means animation from Japan? Is it particular
styles that don't make sense outside of Japan? How does this all tie together.
It's a question that we've kind of danced around in a couple of different
other podcasts, and so we wanted to kind of dive deeper into it quickly
because, as you may have heard on recent episodes, part of Riki being
on this podcast is we're going to be looking at anime a lot more.
And I know these are issues that Riky you have a lot of thoughts on,
so let me just start with this. So let me ask you to
start and ask you how did you become introduced to anime and how has it
been a part of your understanding of yourself as either someone who just enjoys culture
or you're as a Japanese person, an American, et cetera. I mean
I grew up with it, so I grew up in the United States,
But my grandparents would send me video cassettes VHS cassettes with popular anime broadcast in
Japan, Like they would record these for me and send them to me,
especially like if I expressed some interest in a particular product, particular anime,
and like I was definitely more of a manga reader because it was easier at
that time to get manga, the comic books at bookstores. They would be
Japanese bookstores, and of course like you can get you could get anime like
VHS movies and stuff, but it's a lot easier to consume, you know,
buy and consume a book. But but I did enjoy anime, Like
the first one I really remember was Kinni Kuman. I don't know if that
one is very well known in the United States. I think it was exported
to the United States as like Muscleman. Do you remember, like the little
figurines the muscles, yes, maybe an inch tall made out of like some
kind of rubbery plastic thing. Those were all based on kinniy Kuman characters.
And it was like a kind of like wrestling, wrestling with superpowers. It's
how I would describe the aesthetic of it. And then after that, it
was. Of course, Dragonball was the most formative anime of my youth and
like even adult life perhaps, and like I got into a lot of other
stuff, but not as much as less. Most recently I have started to
catch up, But there was definitely a gap in like two thousand to two
thousand and twenty, like a twenty year gap that I just like didn't pay
much attention or consume very much, just because of where I was in my
life. Plus, like how you can get media right like now with the
streaming services, it's very easy, Yeah, but there was definitely a period
where you either had to like buy DVDs or you had to bootleg right,
which I do not advocate. Well, I know that for a while,
like the you know, if you bought a seed a DVD from Japan or
a Cape, it might not always be compatible with your particular machine because there
was, yeah, the region, the region coding. I remember trying to
figure that out, like whether I could actually buy something for sure. Well,
and let's kind of go back to those childhood days because you said that
your grandparents they were recording it off the television, so where like when it
comes to American animation, especially like you know, ongoing cereals for kids.
I tend to think of it happening at two times. There's the Saturday Morning
cartoons and then there were the after school cartoons, and so like Saturday Morning
was things like h was things like Gummy Bears, and a lot of the
different a lot of reruns of older stuff, but a lot of other kind
of like lighter shows. The stuff that was very much like He Man and
g I Joe and stuff like that was almost all like afternoon cartoons, and
of course they were going too syndication and things like that. When were you
when We're When were these cartoons broadcast on TV in Japan? I don't really
know. I mean they would clip the newspaper, they would look like the
when it was like the name with the episode, and like when it was
broadcast and tape that to the outside of the box on all of that awesome.
It was I don't know if we have any left still, but it
was it was like there was a lot of love in it, like looking
yeah for sure. Now, I like, I've been to Japan a couple
of times and I just like watched TV and my impression is that a lot
of it is on in the evening, okay, like the whole Saturday morning
cartoon thing. First off, like their school on Saturday in Japan, oh,
okay, and even like after school like for US cartoons. I think
you and I probably watched a lot of stuff from like three to six pm,
right like right after school you get stuff like I remember like Dark Wing
Duck Duck Tails, the X Men ninety, the original X Men, Batman,
the animated series like stuff like that was on, and then like right
after school period in Japan, after school kids go to juku which is like
a supplemental learn its study hall. I think a lot of the anime come
probably comes on like after like six or seven, like right after the supper
time, okay, supper, and the kids probably get to watch some TV
for an hour or two, right It is my impression of it, mm
hmm. And I think of the like there's shows like I think of like
The Muppet Show, where ostensibly it's aimed to kids, but there's also quite
a lot that adults can enjoy. And obviously a lot of anime today,
you know, many adults continue to enjoy. Yourself and in some cases myself
included were your grandparents, people who were enjoying these shows and also taping them
to you or is it just that they knew that you liked it. They
might have whatever they thought of it, but they were taping it specifically just
for you. I doubt they were watching. Yeah, my if I had
to guess, like they were probably like time timer recording it, so like
the TV might not have even been on, like the VHS was just set
to record at a certain time on a certain channel. So no, like,
I don't, I don't think that they were into it. Even my
parents, Like my parents, my dad like might have watched a couple of
episodes with me, but like he never really understood or enjoyed, right,
So I don't. Yeah, generationally, I don't. I don't think I'm
I'm kind of like I feel like I grew up in the perfect time because,
like I said, dragon Ball is still to this day one of the
biggest franchises to come out of anime, right, And I came along like
I was like maybe like eight or nine years old when it started, and
God got super into it and just enjoyed it all the way through its original
run. And I've tried to keep up. But yeah, sure, well
you're following one piece and that's gotta be enough, you know, to do
two of them. Yeah, oh gosh, Okay. The weirdest thing.
I was like doing research on one piece, and of course there's the Netflix
live action version. But then I've discovered that a different animation studio is like
redoing one piece from the very beginning. Yeah, that's the face. Iime,
like, why why do we need this? Like it's one thing to
change the medium from animation to live action and do something different with the story
in terms of like I've talked about how they condensed the story, but it
sounds like they just they're just gonna redo it. Like I wonder if it's
like a shot for shot, like the Psycho remake? Is this is it
a Japanese company? Yeah, yeah it is. I think it's Sunrise.
I mean, I I've often wondered. I know that sometimes they'll do the
remastering where like I think it's happened some older Disney films where they basically but
even then they're trying to make it look like the original. I guess get.
What I'm kind of thinking is if you have something where you're like,
look, we didn't have the animation capacity at the time to where they do
this as well as it could have been. We're going to keep all the
same voice actors, so we'll make sure that's animated in a way like I
could see someone wanting to do that. It's not like a strange project.
But maybe that's true you're doing. Anime has evolved a lot, especially like
the action aspects and the technical mastery of like showing the action fighting has changed
so much. But I could see them because I've gone back and watched like
the opening episode of the One Piece anime. It's like very dated, yeah,
And then I've seen clips of the newer stuff and it's very up to
date. But maybe like there's this desire because it's gone on for so long,
like twenty years or whatever, they're like, well, let's let's go
back and like reduce some of this old stuff that doesn't look so good anymore.
And that's something I think I see across animation styles in the Star Wars
animation world. I know a lot of times I'll see things like look at
how beautiful the animation for the bad batches, And part of that is the
advances of technology, and part of that is just a bigger budget and then
like, imagine if you could do that to season one of the Clone Wars.
Yeah, even just like season seven or season one, the technology is
night and day. Yeah, Clone Wars got like a refresh. I feel
like around season three or four, I think so, yeah, itself like
it it got noticeably better. That makes sense. So I want to be
coming about to put words in your mouth here for you anime. I've seen
the anime you were watching was in the Japanese language, correct, yes,
yeah, yeah, And so what did it feel like for you? It
was a part of and I maybe you're too young to even think of these
kind of terms or either at that point or later, like was there a
particular importance for it for you in terms of a way of like staying in
touch with that side of your culture while you were in the United States.
No, I'm sure my parents liked it or let me watch it because of
that, like because it helped with the language, But like culturally I can't
even now, like, yes, I must have absorbed something because when we're
talking about this overall topic, like I see on the screen you say,
can Americans make anime? And my answer is like yes and no. Right
in that anime just means animation. Like they shortened that word and like made
it into a Japanese word called anime. And now it's been like re imported
as a different thing, right, But originally it was just like any anything
anime animated. And in fact, like in Japan, I think when like
a Disney Pixar movie comes out, I'm sure they just referred to as anime.
They don't think of it as like American you know, anime or cartoon.
Anime just means like it's it's been drawn, right, it's just or
by computer. Right. Well, and that's that's interesting. I figured that
was one of the things we were going to get into today because at least
as I understand it, here in the United States and English speaking areas,
it often feels like when people say anime, they're not they're referring to the
idea of a particular style that has stylistic tropes and story tropes and characters.
Tu. Yeah, And that's and that's where I say, can Americans make
anime? No? But I can't. It's very hard to put my finger
on it. But like one of the products you mentioned in the notes was
Castlevania, right, and I looked into that, and it is as far
as I can tell, it's a US studio that animates it, and the
press I found about it says that it was like inspired by or done in
the style of Japanese animation. And yet there's something about it that I don't
know if it's just I can tell, like I know, and it just
doesn't feel right to me, and I don't enjoy it as a result.
I don't like, I don't want to come off like an elitist that only
the Japanese can make anime, but I think that there must be something in
the techniques or the style that is taught and the people learned by watching or
studying under other people that has led to the visual style and the animation style
that is different. Right, And it's not to say that other people can't
learn that, because I do believe like a lot of these Japanese anime now
use some like South Korean contractors, either like in house or like an entire
studio that's out of house. I know there's one studio called Studio Mirror out
of South Korea that has done some anime or like anime related things. They
did X Men ninety seven, which I think visually to me is not only
an homage to the original X Men, but also the style feels more anime
than the original X Men, especially the action sequences. So let's talk about
what that style is, because, like going on at one direct that going
in that first definition, you know, if anime is everything that is just
animated from Japan, then we're talking about Studio ghibli and Dragon Ball Z and
Hentai, which I think, you know, like there's such a wide range
there that I feel like, you know, calling anyone Stott what wouldn't make
sense. But with this other definition, then what do you think of as
the elements of anime? Like what makes something anime? So, as far
as I know, Studio Gibilie only makes movies. I believe, I'm not
sure if they have they at this point, they've probably done TV series,
but they're mostly known for movies. Right, you mentioned dragon Ball, which
is toa animation, and I believe Toe also is the one currently doing one
piece. And then they they do a lot of the you know, I've
talked about Jump Weekly, Jump Shown and Jump. I think they do a
lot of those anime that come from that manga book. And then the other
major company that I am aware of is Sunrise Animation, and for me,
they're most known for mobile suit gun dum and because of that, they seem
to focus a lot on the futuristic like mech style anime. As for Hentai,
I have no idea. Hentai refers to what would the translation be,
like the direct translation is like pervert, but basically like porn animated porn,
And I actually have like no interest in that, Like I'm being totally honest,
I have no interest in that. And so like I've never watched anything
or know of any major studios or projects. No, I'm in the same
boat. I just referenced it because it is animation that comes from Japan,
so in terms of but I don't know if that would be. But so
yeah, getting to this idea of there being a more specific style of what
you're talking about, what do you what do you think are those elements of
it? First of all, like the characters. I think anime characters are
known for, like the the big eyes, like on their faces, very
expressive eyes. Hair I think is a thing like hair color, especially like
weirdly, in a lot of the Mecca anime in the future, it seems
like it's cool to have like blue and purple hair, and that was the
thing. And then the action elements. I really think like there's something about
the way that they draw the action elements and animated that is very different and
dynamic. It's very hard to describe a visual medium in words, but for
me, like like I said, like dragon Ball and then Gundam, like
when the robots fight in Gundam, that there's just something about it that is
so luid and it makes it very exciting. Yeah. I mean one of
the things that I think of we talked about this someone during one piece,
and there was more for comedic value, but I think of it mean as
well, is that a lot of the time the animation, particularly fight scenes,
is more meant to convey the overall impression rather than being a artistic shot,
rather than being a animated but still kind of shot for shot realistic idea
of the fight, you know, the kind of like the someone jumps or
moves at high speed and so all the background behind them becomes very blurred or
things like that. I certainly saw aspects of that in some of the American
cartoons I watched, Like you mentioned a couple of Duck but not like dcktails
or something, but like Voltron for example, which my understanding is Voltron is
an americanized version of something that was very Japanese inspired or anime inspire. Well,
okay, the original Voltron is Japanese. Okay, Yeah, So thousand
anime what was it called Die die Go Ranger or something, you know,
go lie in something firm to the lion and then it had the word go
which is five because there were five lions. I don't remember the exact name.
Jew Ogle Lion is my best guess right now right the new one,
yeah, Vultron Legendary Defender. I believe it's called on Netflix from like twenty
eighteen ish is I believe that might have been actually been Studio Mirror, that
South Korean company I talked about. Oh, interest, So you're saying the
Vultron that I watched in the eighties that wasn't even a American version. That
was probably just dubbed English voices over an anime. Yeah, one that like
that era, like Voltron transformed, like the original Transformers, like those were
Japanese anime that you know, like Sabah or whatever. Other companies bought and
licensed to both like sell Toys and then broadcast on te and then yeah,
they just dubbed it over. Same thing with the original Power Rangers other than
you know, the Angel Grove, like where the actors are not in their
suits and like at school. All the action sequences in the original Power Rangers
was from Japanese TV. And then okay, well then it makes even more
sense that I was thinking those are like anime inspired. No, no,
they're just straight up anime. But yeah, because those are the shows I
think of that really, Voultron and Transformers especially that had that kind of like
not realistic anime fight scenes, but much more you know, impressionistic kind of
art majors who are listening are horrified at. These are the words that I'm
using, but I hope you getting across what I mean. Yeah, okay,
so Studio Mayor did do Vultron Legendary Defender. I mean, it says
dream Works, but it also that's why themual animation was by Studio Mirror.
So yeah, right, so they contracted them probably that makes sense. And
yeah, like I don't know, it's Vultron again. I enjoyed Voltron,
and I do think like the styling, especially like when we're talking about the
action, and the faces, like the animated faces were much closer to what
I would think of as anime, just because I'm thinking about it in that
same style. Like he Man, I know, was not with ThunderCats.
Did that have an anime origin? I don't think so. Okay, those
are the four that I remember when I was younger. Like later it became
the Ducktails and Darkling Duck and most most of the stuff that got exported in
the eighties was like the Mecca stuff, right. Robotech. Yeah, Robotech
was actually three different series that Harmony Gold together, and when they dubbed it,
they like changed a bunch of the story so that the three different series
would line up. Twelve year old me was signing into the very very beginnings
of the Internet. I remember one of the first things I've researched because I
had I had seen like some of a Robotech TV show, and I'd read
a Robotech novel, and none of the things that I remembered meshed up together.
And so I remember trying like going on some rabbit holes to try and
find out what's the actual Robotech story, and I could never find it,
And that probably helps explain why. Yeah, the most famous one that they
used the first the first series was Macross super Dimensional Fortress Macross, and they
actually referenced it in the Robotech cartoon by calling the city Macross Island. Yeah,
okay. And then the other two I don't second one, most know,
the third one was most Pedia. I think the second one might actually
just be called Southern Cross, but they're completely different products in Japan, unrelated,
and it leads to a very convoluted story. Like I actually know a
lot about Robotech. Okay, beat next to Gundam. It's probably the thing
I love the most from that era. I'm taking down to future episodes and
the harmony gold like history story that they wrote is completely nonsciensical, just like
designed to fit into what they had to show, and it's it's funny.
I like it. I like I still have very fond memories of Robotech.
I've maybe like six years ago, rewatched a bunch and it doesn't hold up.
But I know there's been a lot of Macross that's been the most successful.
There's been a lot of mac Cross stuff, and I think there's a
new series coming out soon that's awesome. We're going to be right back to
these questions right after this Welcome back everyone, So let me let me tell
us talk a little bit about what I was in the anime that made it
over here, especially in those eighties and nineties and the like, because you're
right, why are remember is a lot of the robotech stuff, though it
doesn't think about it as anime. The first time that I heard the word
anime was first of all, was the movie Akira, and then was in
regard to the TV shows that a lot of my friends who are on the
geekier side of things in college, we became our way of sort of getting
through finals times was watching this stuff. And that was Ranma one half and
Revolutionary gro Utna for those who have no idea I'm talking about, because they're
not quite as old as dirt. Ranmo one half was a what I remember
at the time, in like nineteen ninety seven, being a very funny thing
about a kid who changes genders when he falls into the water and has a
martial arts teacher and mentor who turns into a great panda when he falls into
water, and to us in nineteen ninety seven, we thought this was awesomely
queer and transpositive, and I think looking back on it today would feel very
differently about it. And then revelation of Girl Utna is just fantastically weird in
a way that I really don't remember anything about it except that they cracked the
earth shell. They cracked the shell of the world's egg in the intro credits,
What what what? And then I think we started to get the spirited
away movies and other things like that. What was kind of your impression of
like what what was driving that kind of idea of like which ones were coming
over and and what impression that made about how we how Americans were looking at
what anime is? Wow? I mean I don't know, like that that's
above my pay grade. Fair, that's fair like stuff the stuff came over,
that came over and people watched it. Like to this day, I
can't believe it took so long for Gundam to catch on m H in the
United States. So so whatever like politics or business that happened behind the scenes,
like it wasn't until I think Gundam wing that that it caught on.
And at that point, I think it had been close to like fifteen year
fifteen year franchise and most of the stuff that I loved and it just like
had no impact. Like, you know, my friends loved Robotech as I
did. They loved dragon Ball, but then like I couldn't talk to him
about Gundam because they just had never seen it and I had no knowledge of
it. So if I could like time travel and change one thing about anime,
I would say, like, get Gundam over here faster. Yeah,
the phrase Gundam wing rings some history belts for me, but I don't remember
it ever. Yeah, that was the one whatever was on like right Nami
or Nickelodeon or But even then, I think as kids, like I said,
we didn't know Vulture. We didn't know Vulture was anime. You know
that wasn't being talked about it all Transformers or anything like that. Well that's
interesting, And again I don't know. I was always aware maybe because I
was also because I was consuming like original Jabanese anime. It's not like I
watched Voltron in Japanese. But I think because of like I would get books
and stuff like magazines, like I knew it existed in Japan and its it
made more sense to me that way because it's like oh yeah, like because
there's nothing else, there was nothing else like in US media that was like
that, like there was no one in the US making like giant robot cartoons
and that's why they they imported it, right. But then to me it
was like any giant robot is from Japan and that's like that is also like
a stereotype that time, but it was like I was aware of it as
a kid of being like, if I want to get more giant robot stuff,
I have to get well. And it's so funny because even by the
time of like the movie that I think of first in terms of like robots
versus Kaiju of Pacific uh we very the name the all the monsters are give
the named Kaiju, which is a Japanese word that refers to Godzilla and like
all the creatures of that ilk and they call the robots jaegers, which is
a German word. And for me not being very educated about this and this
is you know, I was an adult when Pacific Grim came out, it
felt to me like it was a genre mash because it was Japanese monsters versus
American robots. But you know I'm here from you that no, actually it's
it's an American movie about to two Japanese genres that are clashing and and actually
like now that have gone more into the go heuro movies like there's Mechagodura and
all sorts of things like that. So I'm guessing that it's not the VC.
Things were much more interlinked than many Americans may have realized. Yeah,
I don't to this day, like I don't know why they called them yeagers.
I'm guessing it may have been for, you know, to make it
seemed not quite so Japanese to an American audience or something like that. Maybe
what what is the Japanese Is it just mecca or is there like if kaiju
is the word for the monsters, what would the word be for giant robots
in Japanese? I mean they just use the word, Okay, do they
call them meccas in Japanese? The thing is like in in the Gundam universe,
they're referred to as mobile suits. Oh, in Japanese. Right.
I don't think of what else because I guess it's been a while since I've
watched like any macross in Japanese. I can't remember what they call those or
even just like the the movie that I know is the English name is mecha
Godzilla would be mecha Gojua or would Yeah? Yeah, it was okay interesting?
So why is it do you think that? I mean, it may
be hard to say, like white people don't do something well, but I'm
tryin how the best phrase these questions? You talked about how when you've seen
Americans or people from other parts of the world trying to do anime, it
always feels kind of wrong to you. Mm hmm. Talk more about that.
Do you think it is just that it's just that because you, like,
you know, you have to learn from the people who are doing it,
and that's all happening in Japan. Is there a ways in which that,
like growing up Japanese gives you an understanding of the kind of issues and
characters and things that's talking about? What do you what do you see things?
Yeah, because like if you're a kid and you watch something like if
you watch a cartoon, mm hmm, and I did this, Like you
draw, you try to draw the characters, right, right, I draw
the characters from cartoons from the manga I had, And like that's how you
initially start learning how to draw. And if you continue with it, like
if you continue to draw and get better, like you're still mainly focusing on
the media you consume and then ultimately like you'll stop if you become a professional,
you stop drawing other people's things and make your own characters. But because
you've grown up, like with the style of drawing, especially like the faces,
I think that's the key aspect to identifying anime. It's just like something
about the proportions of the face and the eyes is different. Like I said,
the eyes are bigger. I think off of the mouths are bigger as
well, and it's just a not quite uncanny valley, but there's an unrealistic
element to their proportions, but it's still within reason of Like it's not like
they look ugly often like oftentimes I feel like they look more beauty full than
a corresponding human might. Right, But I think like if you have grown
up and seen that style of drawing and drawing it yourself and end up like
becoming an artist and creating your own characters in that style, Like, yeah,
I think it's probably just like learned behavior. Yeah, so do you
think there's a possibility it's I'm not trying to advocate for one thing or the
other here, I'm just curious. As you said, anime is now far
far more accessible. And I think there are a lot of people in Europe
and America and Africa, you know, all over the world for whom anime
maybe one of or the predominant kind of animation they're seeing. Could you envision
someone growing up in you know, Cairo or London or United States or anything
like that, for whom they're mostly seeing anime and that's what's shaping it.
And so they're going through that same process obviously. Yeah, I mean Studio
mirror, like saying like I don't know anything about like the human beings there
right, Like it's a South Korean studio and it's fairly new. So the
first thing they did was Legend of Korra. In fact, I think twenty
twelve Avacar Legend of Korra. They did the Voltron and they did like I
said, they it seems like they did X Men ninety seven. Those are
the three things on their credits that I was most familiar with, and looking
at them like they are, they feel more like anime to me than anything
else. Like even like when I was watching when I was watching Vultron,
I was like, oh, like this and then like you watch the credits
and there's no Japanese names, It's like, oh okay, that's interesting,
but it it felt much closer to anime. And I think you probably have
a generation of animators there at that studio that grew up on Dragon Ball Yea
and early One Piece as I did and all that, like the the mecha
anime I was talking about, And so if you grow up on that stuff
again, like and you learn that style, yeah, they're they're doing it
right. Like again, I'm not I'm not here to advocate for some kind
of like nationalistic definition of anime that only Japanese people can do it. This
is it is a result of of upbringing culture and learned drawing behavior, right,
And I think like a bunch of these Korean animators have grown up and
learned that. Yeah that makes sense and it looks it looks good to me.
Like I love all three of those shows for many reasons, but definitely
the animation is part of it, like the it's I keep coming back to
this this phrase, but it's the action of it, like the action in
Voltron just like feels much better to me. Yeah, I don't like I
would have to like really dig deep to find a US animated like robot thing
that I enjoy. So, I don't know, probably better robots y'all,
but it sounds interesting. I like the way you're phrasing it that it's not
it's about growing up with this stuff that until very recently most people outside of
Japan weren't growing up with, rather than being a national you know it kind
of like you have to have a Japanese sensibility or something like that, because,
yeah, I'd be very curious then to have the same conversation. Maybe
we'll be in twenty years when we have lots of people who are growing up
drawing robots that way or things like that, you know that. Yeah,
So, like I just googled best American robot anime, and the things that's
given me are Robotech, Transformers, Voltron, and gurin login. They're all
Japanese, right, just like no one no one's doing it, which is
yeah, I don't know. Maybe it's very possible that the people like you
because there's a whole industry in Japan, right, Like you can get a
job like you can you can go to an animation studio and draw robots in
this way. In the US, I would imagine like if you are an
animator, they're just like there's no studio a working on it. And if
there is a studio working on like a like some kind of robot thing,
it's going to be more like in the realistic CGI, like the Michael Bay
Transformers, right, that's essentially animated, like there that those aren't real transformers.
It's animated, but it it's different like an anime. Now, a
lot of it I think is still like very hand drawn on maybe not like
with pen and paper, like hand drawn on a computer, you know,
touch screen. But I think like that is also probably like I know less
about the technical aspects. My guess would be that that is a difference in
visually like how we perceive animera versus the computer generated. H I may be
wrong, but you haven't mentioned this yet, so I assume you haven't seen
it. Pacific Rim the Black Did you see that? No? I don't
like specific room as a franchise, so oh, I'd be curious if you
just kind of took a looks at the art of it, because it was
intent. It was an animation and animated show continuing the Pacific Rim story,
but it was specifically done as an American Japanese partnership, and I think with
mostly Japanese artists, but also they're doing art of a you know, of
robotic images that were made by a American studio. So yeah, if you're
your fans watching any that cureous, what you think of it? Yeah?
Like, I'm looking at the character design and they are very anime right now,
I'm looking at the production. Series is produced by American company Legendary Television
and animated by Japanese studio Polygon Pictures. So there you go. It was
animation was done in Japan by Polygon. What else have they done that I
might be familiar with? So they did Ghost in the Shell to some ultraman
stuff. Oh, I think these is like the Bad Gora movies. Yeah,
that makes sense that they would translate that. Yeah, there's like a
yeah, like a conkaiju stuff. Oh, Polygon did some work on the
Clone Wars. Interesting. Oh that's kind of cool. I wonder if they
were Oh God, I'm having trouble to memory the name of it. But
there was a TV show. There was a series of episodes that came out
on Disney Plus that was animated Star Wars stories from a number of different that
I think. I think they were all or mostly done by Japanese animators or
maybe Yeah, what was that called? That was Star Wars? Was it
legends? No? Star Wars? Look it up quickly, No, I
like the We never talked about that. I mean you probably did an episode,
yeah, one with Johanna Kellman actually where we both sort of started by
saying, we're not art people, so we're just gonna talk about the story
Star Wars visions that I liked most of those a lot. Was unfortunate that
the second one was my least favorite. That was like the weird band one.
Oh yeah, and so I saw that one and I stopped watching for
a while. Yeah, because the first one is very much clearly not only
a anime style, but it's it's really an homage to samurai stories where it
is very much, yeah, very much a a samurai is protecting the village
of samurai is coming to attack the village, but they're using lightsabers instead of
katanas. So I forgot earlier on you mentioned a like that's that is probably
like the most famous movie other than like the Cheepli movies, right, and
influential in its style, especially the the motorcycle slide, right, are you
do? You know what I'm talking about? Yeah, yeah, So the
famous motorcycle slide where the main character Canada like stop comes to a stop,
but also like slides his motorcycle sideways and does the skid like into the quote
unquote camera. And it's been like off parodied or just like homages to it,
like it is one of the most famous moments in anime. But the
thing about that movie, it's a terrible movie. And I say this.
I read the I read the original manga books. It's like six very thick
books, like each book is probably like three hundred pages or so two two
to three hundred pages, six volumes of that, and they condensed it into
like a two hour movie, and it just again doesn't make sense. Yeah,
like like what I think about Robotech. I attempted to watch it on
three different occasions, and granted this was always during final season of college.
I was always exhausted. It's probably also happening at two in the morning.
I never stayed awake with the three viewings. So I'm glad to hear that
at least it is visually stunning, it's exciting, but you end up like
with a lot of questions that were answered in the manga or just like didn't
exist because they changed the story so dramatically, And it reminds me of the
viewing experience of like Rise of Skywalker, Like there were so there were so
many cuts and edits and like rearranging the story, like it ends up not
making sense and you're just like, what, what did I watch? Yeah,
so I acknowledge its importance in history, but I would not really want
to watch it right now. That's fair, that's fair. I can see
that we've been talking mostly about animation style. I do know that there are
a lot of and again maybe this is more of the kind of stylistical the
idea of anime rather than just that theater you know from Japan style. But
my impression is from talking to you, I was from talking about the anime
fans, that you've got a number of these tropes that are part of animes.
The first one that comes to mind is that a character who has sort
of a tooth that goes over their lower lip is always going to be a
creature of like mischief or chaos or something like that. You'd give me a
blank expression, though, which tells me maybe I have no idea what I'm
talking about here, Well, do you have any examples? I'm just uh,
there's a character in my hero Academia, not my hero Arcademias full Metal
Alchemist. This is what I saw from recently, and Mary, my partner,
was pointing out, Oh yeah, you Seeah, that character has the
tooth over the lip. That means they're gonna be causing a lot of chaos,
but they're off of a young child with mischief. Do you remember the
character's name? I don't. I know. Another one of the tropes that
I think of is the way you talked about in one piece, how a
couple of the characters in that sort of fit into very specific different tropes.
I'm looking through the characters and I don't really see anyone. It was a
sad character, Okay. Yeah. So, like one of the things about
Japanese anime to me is that it's it's less for I don't want to put
this like I was gonna say, it's less for kids than American cartoons,
which is to say, like it's still for kids, but it's like older.
I think, like the whole cartoons are for kids. Thing that like
the way a lot of people in the United States look down upon cartoons,
right, you know, up all the way up to like you know,
Academy Awards and stuff like, oh, I you animated movie, you could
never win like Best Picture, right, Like that's definitely an attitude, and
in my opinion, that's ridiculous. But it stems from this cartoons or for
kids, and you talked about like Saturday Morning cartoons, like those are very
much for like very young kids, right like five to ten years old.
Where I would say most of the stuff we are talking about in terms of
anime is meant more for like young adults, you know, like teenager,
like early teenagers to begin with. Like I certainly started watching earlier than that,
but it appealed to me most, I think during my teenage years.
And that's where all the action elements and the you know a lot of these
are fighting anime or you know, the mecha combat anime like more geared towards
young boys. Yeah, but but there is stuff like there's certainly anime for
girls or you know, for people who are not interested in fighting. Right,
I've read you manga the Studio Ghibli movie is quite famously almost never involved
combat, right, because Miyazaki is very much about not having fighting. No
I would say that they well, okay, they don't they're they're not combat
oriented. I would say a lot of them feature war though, Naushka,
The Valley of the Wind, Princess Mono Nooke has a lot of fighting,
but it's not like one on one like personal combats, right, And you're
never like, oh, this character is such a cool fighter. It's oh,
this character is so traumatized by the fighting. How's will moving Castle has
war? And am frankly like he's he's anti war, right, Like that's
what he's portraying, the horrors of war in animation, right. And I
feel like that is a that is like a very big distinction when it comes
to anime that it it is for a slightly older audience. Yeah, like
starting audience, so like the starting audience for anime is is teenage. Let's
let's just say roughly versus you know, to put it in context, maybe
it's more like, uh, Batman the anime and it's serious than Gummy Bears
or something like that. Exactly. Yeah, Yeah, that's a that's a
pretty good pairing that I often watched back to back, I think or close
to in those hours. And yeah, because of that, I think the
appeal of anime can last longer, although all the way to well into adulthood
for us. And I think like it. It makes it feel to me
more serious, like it deals with things like serious topics and has moments of
death like Robotech. The original Robotech had multiple character deaths in the macross segment
what was his name, roy, I think who was the protagonist mentor He
dies in combat and it was like a huge moment in the series for the
characters, and it was such a huge contrast to the other main like war
based cartoon I was watching at the time, G I Joe, where famously,
every time a fighter plane blows up, they were contractually obligated by like
the code of the studio or the network to show the pilot escaping in a
parachute and surviving, like they were told directly, you cannot imply death.
And it was to me like it made Robotech, I guess cooler to kid
me that they have death, but to me, like looking back at it
now, it meant it was more real and hence more mature, right,
right, So as a kid growing up, like as you go through those
ages, it's like, oh, like now I get to watch a cartoon
where someone dies and I'm growing up, and like what I'm watching is growing
Yeah, Well, we've gone on for a while. This is obviously a
topic we can go on at great length about and hope we'll get some good
feedback and can keep discussing it. What I want to quote You mentioned something
like legend of Kora being done since like a lot of the animation was very
much an homage to Japanese style or was done by Japanese animators, and certainly
the it's precursor show, Avatar the Last Airbender, we talked a lot about
how it's very clearly anime inspired. What's kind of your feeling over what do
you think are good examples of shows that are not trying to be anime but
are still very clearly made by people who have been very influenced by anime in
positive ways? What first I would just say, like, would you describe
Avatar the Last Airbender in those kind of terms? No, I mean yes,
but not as much as Cora. Right. Once you get the legend
of Korra, it's it, and especially like know him now about the studio
that made it it seems much more clear. Avatar still has that cartoon esthetic
to it, and I'm I don't know, it's just maybe the colors too,
Like the way they use colors is more cartoony than anime. Again like
here here, I am like trying to describe colors in a podcast. But
if you've seen both, like you, you know what I mean, right,
Matthew, Like, I don't know if that if it makes sense,
but something about the vibrance of the colors and the legend of Kora, I
think it's really true. Yeah, And I'm not much of an art person,
but I definitely agree with you, and I think like when I hear
Avatar described it's very anime, like, I think it is much more about
the characters and the journey and the kind of world building than it is necessarily
the artistic style. Mmm. Yeah, I don't know. To me,
like it's it's the art style. Yeah, No, it makes sense.
That's that's an importanteks quote unquote reeks of anime. Yeah, I'm still struggling
on your question, Like, I don't know what I would say about that.
Mm hmm. No, it makes sense, especially if it is uh
for you the understanding specifically the art style, not necessarily the story and characters,
and yeah, I think it probably probably there aren't any good examples right
now, are very few. Once we're not we're not knowledgeable that. Like
the thing about Avatar the Last Air Vendor is that it's three seasons and it's
done, and it told like a very good story and package it well.
Anime is often ongoing, right because of the nature of the original, the
ip of the manga, and like we've commented on about one piece, it's
been ongoing for a thousand plus episodes, right, And I think there's something
we haven't talked about too much about, yeah, like about the storytelling of
it, of the of the nature of the way that the stories have not
necessarily have to but that they do keep going right and and don't repeat that.
I think that's a key to American comic books, like thinking mostly about
like DC and Marvel, like superhero comic books, they do this thing with
the universes and time right where they often have like infinite crisis and then they
reset it right and start retelling stories with different writers and different pencilers and artists,
Whereas in Japan, each manga and as a result, each anime is
done by one person, like one artist is writing the story, is drawing
through the entire run. Obviously, when it comes to the animation, they're
gonna have different people working on it over the years, but they have to
base their art style on the original artist and stay true to that. And
I think there has to be something there about that's a key aspect of what
an anime is. That is the production yea style all coming from one mind.
That makes a lot of sense, both in terms of, like,
there's probably gonna be much more consistency there, but also in terms of and
you're not gonna have like you said, it's not like you know, Iron
Man originally set during it is a warmonger in the Vietnam War and then in
you know, Central America and then in the Middle East, etcetera. You're
not gonna have that. But also, like, if your intention is for
these characters to never end, that was that both opens up a lot of
doors for character growth but also restricts them a lot because of what makes this
character interesting is this character flaw. You solve that character flaw, and well,
now you're going to do something totally different with that character. But let
me ask you though, because and again maybe this is just more of the
stuff that makes it the United States, and it is more of the minority.
Part of what I think of when I think of the anime is those
long shows, but also things like Cowboy Bebop or Uri on Ice or other
stuff like that, where is one single season and one pretty complete story.
Are those much more the exception? Or is there a lot of those but
just they kind of get dwarfed by the thirty season ones. I don't don't
really know, Like what's I would have to look into, like how where
Cowboy Bebop came from, and like how it was made, like it it's
a series, right, like it's originally a series, because there there is
there is a lot. There are a lot of movies that get made anime
movies that get made in Japan. Series Sunrise twenty six episodes. I don't
I don't know. I don't know why it's different. Mm hmm, my
guess would No, it is based on a manga, it says, but
it was a very short run manga and it was only a year a year
and a half hmm. So I don't know. My Without looking into the
history of Cowboy Bebop. My guess would be that it was canceled or the
artists like stopped for whatever reason, and that's what we get. But if
I had the guess, yeah, it should have got kept going in the
in the way that I've been talking about. That's fair, But yeah,
I think that's a big thing. Like when we talk about Batman, like,
who do you credit as like making Batman who he is as a character?
Right? Like do you go back to what's Bob Bob Kine? Was
that right the origional the creator? Did you talk about Frank Miller who had
like several influential books, Jeff Lowe, Grant Morrison, like these these are
all people who have worked on Batman and have had influence that other people have
ripped off of. Yeah, but it's led to like a very chaotic character
that often is probably inconsistent over the decades. I think even if you just
look at just the TV and film adaptations of Batman, trying to say that
the Michael Keaton character, the Christian Bale character, and the Batman's sixty six
character are all the same character is basically impossible. They're fundamentally different people,
all wearing the same hood and I think that's true of the comics as well,
as you know, it's just American publishing has changed. And that's true
for Wonder Woman, it's true for Superman, it's true for Captain America.
For Ray, the character has been published over little generations that they've changed quite
a bit. Yeah, it makes makes sense, and I think that is
probably. As I said, a key element of anime's appeal is that you
can have a character like Goku in Dragon Ball, and like I said,
like I grew up with this character and took a break during some of the
mayor projects I like have recently, I watched the thing and it's like,
Yep, that's still Goku. Like fundamentally the character is still the same,
and there's I think there's a comfort to that. Yeah. Well, and
we should definitely talk more about Goku, because all I really know about Goku
is that he's very often paired with Superman, not even like in a story,
but in terms of people thinking about them as very similar characters. And
just last week we did a whole episode on the Superman type. It was
about in an interview with Alan Moore, but also we got into a lot
of the Superman archetype of the character who's trusted to not do anything wrong with
his power. So might be interesting to have a conversation about that that trope
and how does Goku fit into it, and how are they different or similar?
Yeah? Absolutely, like Goku is like unfhasably naive and innocent, like
especially like originally, like there was a story where a character uses a technique
that like goes into someone's soul and expands the evil in their soul until they
blow up, And Goku didn't blow up because he had zero evil within his
heart. Wow. Wow, Yeah, I think it'd be a great conversation.
Maybe we can get Jessica Plummer in on that one, so our residents
Superman Expert. Well, Wiki, this has been a fantastic conversation. Thank
you so much, And they are the kind of last things you want to
say to people. We're gonna in our bonus section do some recommendations of anime
and some you know, maybe kind of foretellings of topics will discuss in the
future, but just for now, any of the last thoughts you want to
have on this conversation. I wasn't going to recommend something, so I'll save
that. And what I will say is to you in the audience, please
write in with feedback, because a lot of this, you know, I
tried to do some research on what studios are actually making the things that I
was watching, and like what their influences are, but a lot of this
is just like my vague impressions and opinions about anime. And and first off,
like there's no I don't think there should be a set like box that
we put things in. So when I you know, when I say like
something is or is not anime, like I'm not trying to like draw clear
lines, but but I think, like just talking about it, it feels
like there are aspects that I'm I'm sensing in them. So I would love
to hear from you, especially if you watch like more diverse anime than I
do, because like we didn't talk at all about like kind of the high
school like romance drama anime, like that's that's very much its own genre that
I don't watch it all. I know Billy is part of the sports genre,
which is another whole thing that I have watched HIQ, which is the
volleyball one, and I enjoy that, but even that, the way that
the volleyball is drawn is like very action almost combat yesh, So I'd be
curious to see, like Yuri, if they do the same thing with the
ice dancing my my, first of all, I need to point out as
someone who has a number of people in their family who competed these sports.
Ice dancing and ice skating are two different different things. But my memory i've
seen it a couple of years ago, is that there's a little bit of
that, but most of it is hyper realistic to what they actually had,
like professional ice skaters. They did like motion capture to like get some of
it, and that's cool. Apparently during the Winter Olympics around the time that
was coming out, like all the Olympic ice skaters would get together in Olympic
village and watch this together and be like, yeah, this is really accurate.
And at least one person I know at one of the more recent Olympics
did their ice skating routine that was basically as close as they could to a
redoing of the finals. So to me that just cultural interlap. Is that's
aw right? Yeah? So well if but that definitely, like you said,
lots of ways to contact us, all them on the show notes,
all them on the website. Let us know to think, what's your feedback,
what's the anime you love? What's the things that you think of?
Like, what is stuff maybe that we're not knowing about that you actually think
it's kind of anime? Similar? Pneumona is what actually that comes to mind
now that I don't know if you've seen riki that sometimes heard referred to as
kind of anime? Is similar? So let us know. For the members,
will be back very shortly with your bonus content. For everybody else,
thank you so much, we have spoken. Star Wars Generations is an ethical
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