|
I hate
Anime. I know. I often get looks of shock and awe from
people who know me and know I'm a complete pop culture
junky but I hate Anime. I hate it in every incarnation
and rarely do I ever approve of it. Liking anime is akin
to having a tattoo. You grab the most obscure and edgy
design imaginable only to discover your next door
neighbor who happens to collect potato chips in the
shape of Jesus has one and suddenly you realize you're
not really as ahead of the game as you think, and that's
just where anime fans and the anime trend finds itself.
Anime fans always pretend they're ahead of everyone else
as if they're on to something other people aren't, when
in fact all of mainstream has embraced anime as the norm
and is transforming every single property it can in to
anime from "Spider-Man" to "Cloverfield." It's not hip,
and the ones that actually are obscure are much too
disturbing for anyone to actually indulge in.
There
are exceptions, though.
I find
Studio Ghibli's work to be amazing and virtually
flawless--but it's more animation cinema than anime, and
they've contributed more to film than anything else
anime related. I love "Avatar: The Last Airbender"--but
that's Western anime and not technically the genre. I
find most of the "Street Fighter" movies to be exciting.
And I do love some anime films like the infinitely cool
"Vampire Hunter D," the rare vampire hunter flick
"Blood," the incredible timeless "Akira," and of course
the bad ass underrated "Guyver." Not to mention little
bits and pieces of "Cowboy Bebop" only because it
reminds me of "Firefly" and I really love the theme
song; and there's also "Afro Samurai" a wicked little
hip hop anime piece.
But
normally I hate anime. I literally had to suffer through
"Dragon Ball Z" for hours because they wanted to see it
and I had no choice but to sit through it. For hours I
was like a man going in for a vacation to the Bahamas
looking for hot women and waiting to go out to the beach
but had to sit through a five hour presentation about a
time share first. It was long, dull, tedious, bereft of
surprises, and I had to do it or I would have to go
home. "Dragon Ball Z" has been that property in America
that's nearly immortal for reasons that vary. For some
it's cool to like the show even if you've never seen it,
for others they've seen the edited versions of it on
Cartoon Network here in America and fell in love, and
for some Vegeta has become a stylish character to
emulate whether you know him or not.
Nevertheless "Dragon Ball Z" is immensely popular and in
vogue to this day for many reasons beside the fact that
it's void of story, originality, or any form of
coherence whatsoever. And I'm not saying this as someone
whose seen two episodes on a Sunday morning while I was
on the computer barely paying attention. I've seen
episodes upon episodes of this series and its
incarnations GT, and FX or whatever in god's name was a
reboot. And I hate it. Mostly because it makes no sense
and follows a militant routine of storylines that
completely eliminate its responsibility to its audience
to be creative and the audience's responsibility to
think.
| Goku is a
super Saiyan (read: Kryptonian) who was sent
to Earth to rule over it. Instead he was
discovered and raised to be a kind man. Does
this sound familiar yet? Hell he even has
his own Zod who the story calls Vegeta, a
militant Saiyan who appears early in the
story to take over the world and kill Goku
with two sidekicks--like "Superman II." Goku
grew up to be an extremely powerful warrior
with a large jet black coif he can not cut
(the series makes note of pointing that
out), and a large monkey tale that seems
mostly like a useless extra nipple upon
first glance. When the moon is full, Goku's
rampage instincts come to play and he turns
in to a giant monkey stomping things and
roaring. Why? Let us know and we'll try to
pretend we care, thinking about boobs and
nodding while you're laying out the
intricacies his monkey powers and why he has
no powers during this period.
He has a master
(including a talking pig friend) and a
dominant (and abusive) wife who watches over
her submissive husband, and he has friends
with names like Trunks, and Shorts, and
Crillin, and Tien who has an eye above his
two eyes, all of whom are powerful but never
as powerful as he is--because what's the
point of Goku if they can fight the villains
without him? |
 |
They
all want the ultimate Maguffin--Dragon Balls, all of
which must be united to bring about the humongous Dragon
lord who will grant them a wish. I'm already bored.
Still, the story goes on in the same vein: A villain or
villains are heading to Earth, Goku and friends learn of
this, they train and train and train and train and train
(etc., etc.), the villain/s arrive on Earth to fight the
heroes one by one. The villain/s always look quite cool
but have insanely convoluted back stories and modes
including one named Cell who goes through about three
stages. This allows for a ton of fight scenes, he dies,
and re-emerges again in a new stage allowing a new form
of difficulty and more time for padding a story that
would rationally take about ten episodes to tell without
the repetition and blatant plot devices.
Meanwhile, Goku is put in to a situation where he is the
only one who can defeat the villains but can't somehow
manage to get there in time. Either he's far away from
Earth, in Heaven, stuck in a mid-world to become a Super
Super Saiyan, or is on a Dragon like road he has to walk
and fly through to get back to Earth that has zero
purpose other than to suck time and pad the story. Goku
makes it just in time along with his son who is also
destined to become his replacement as a superior
warrior. The villain/s are miraculously killed off after
many repetitive quick fight scenes and obligatory gory
sequences. All is well in the world. Now imagine that
storyline with variations repeated five or six times in
succession, how bored would you really be? Imagine
having to sit through that while wondering why your
cousin can't get that you hate the show. What's
mind-blowing is that its fans don't seem to mind at all.
The thrive on this.
I'm not
saying all Anime is awful, but most of it
really is. It's convoluted, under-whelming, weird for
the sake of being weird and void of being anything even
remotely coherent. For examples of that, check out "One
Piece," and "Ranma 1/2," two titles of which just scrape
the surface of dreck I've had to sit through in spite of
my best efforts to enjoy them. Once America discovered
this "fad" was actually here to stay they fully engulfed
every bit of the genre, while brilliantly dodging the
blatant racism (I'm looking at you, Pokemon) and
pedophilia (Ugh--"Loveless") found in just about every
title from the East. Plus I could never find the
excitement in a samurai anime featuring a big man raping
a young girl from behind as she cries out. That's not
fun.
As a
result, I had to relatively endure all forms of anime
from anime-lite programming ("Dinosaur King,"
"Ying-Yang-Yo"), Western Anime which looks like anime
but isn't ("Teen Titans," "Hi Hi Puffy Ami Yumi"),
horrific anime converted in to American sensibilities
("Yu-Gi-Oh!" and "Winx Club"), and even bear witness in
horror to comic books like "X-Men" and "Daredevil" go
through a period where they were drawn like anime
characters. It was inescapable! Hell, even a once
subversive controversial comic strip like "The
Boondocks" was turned in to a quasi-anime television
series that destroyed all of its social relevance and
just became a prop for action set pieces that served no
purpose. For every "Death Note" series which is a grim
and creepy little take on morality that is actually very
entertaining and something of a haunting epic, you'll get
"Naruto."
"Naruto"
is another series I can not fathom why it's famous at
all. It's appeared on almost every television station
imaginable in the last ten years and it's flooded the
cable networks. When I used to hang out at the local DVD
store in my neighborhood, it was a hang out spot for
high schoolers and about six or seven kids a day would
show up to the shop donning the title heroes head band
with the metal plate and wonder why people were laughing
at them behind their backs. All the while I'd sit and
listen to three teens bicker on the latest storyline and
why the main hero is bad ass and even sat in on a
passionate argument on why "YugiOh" is just a shameless
cash grab for fans' money while "Pokemon" is much more
brilliant and noble. |
