I was talking to my friend's friends. Weird, pale looking kids who I hardly knew. They were all having fun laughing at the stupid things I was saying... until I fucked up that is. Somebody mentioned that he had recently seen a new anime show, so I cut him off with, "Anime? How can you watch that stuff?" "What's wrong with anime?" "Every show is exactly the same: 'I am an effeminate Asian boy and this is my pet gigantic robot, now LET'S FIGHT!' You've seen one, you've seen them all."  Some people take their Japanese cartoons very seriously. For my seemingly harmless comments I received some of the meanest stares I have ever seen. Even worse, these stares were followed by a lecture about anime and Japanese culture. Like a fucking, "show up at 9 am, class break is at 10 so try not to fall asleep" lecture. From the lecture I was given I learned that anime is infinitely more complex than I ever imagined. In fact, the Fighting Robots genre represents only a small fragment of Japanese animation. Other themes explored in anime include: yelling, fighting except not with robots, tentacle rape and tentacle rape except not with robots. After the lecture ended, I did find out that I respect one thing about anime and manga. You see, unlike western comics and cartoons, the Japanese ones have the decency to actually end! That's the main thing that separates 'em. A Japanese comic series lasts thirty issues or so: there's a beginning, a middle and a conclusion... and after the last issue, the series ends, no more issues are published. The story has been told and the writers and artists move on to their next series with an all new story and all new characters... even if the first series was a hit! Birth, death and then regeneration in the form of a new manga. The customer's loyalty is to the artists who make the series; it's not to the brand name that the series has. American comics, by contrast, are never-ending: Spider-Man started in the 1960's, he's been wearing the same costume, fighting the same people, banging the same woman and staying the same age for forty years! It's like that played-out, eternal teenager is America's comfort toy. It's very difficult to create new conflicts in a series that's been going for decades and for hundreds of issues. You would like to constantly introduce new villains for your hero to fight, but you can't. That only alienates your fans and lowers sales because the fans don't want to see new villains, instead they want the four classic villains to keep coming back forever (and maybe, to occasionally team up with each other for variety's sake). AMERICAN TV SHOWS AND COMICS: In order to keep the classic heroes and villains coming back, you can't kill them off, so you can't create much dramatic tension. At the end of every comic, the villain goes to jail only to break out in twenty issues or the villain falls off a cliff, tumbles into a vat of acid and is presumed dead only to return a few months later like "Pathetic fools! Falling off cliffs only makes me stronger! Also, since I was covered in acid now I can fire laser beams from my eyes, your day = fucked." JAPANESE TV SHOWS AND COMICS: In a short series, since you're not trying to stretch out the story so it keeps going until eternity, you can afford to actually kill the villains. In fact, you can manipulate the hell out of your audience's emotions by killing ALL of the important characters. There's only one issue left anyway, go ahead and kill the hero's brother, his girlfriend, and all the villains. In the last issue, revive the main villain as a giant robot, and have Robot Villain fight the hero for thirty pages as the world blows up. The End. Whoa, that shit was intense!!! Meanwhile in western comics, "look Robin, the Joker fell off a cliff again!" "Is he dead?" "Probably, who cares? I guess we'll find out in fifty issues, buttsecks time now?" Lame.The Japanese series ends when its story has been told, but if virtually any American franchise keeps making money its publishers will never let it die. Look at the Batman movies from the 1990's. They rode that franchise until it was on life support and the wheels fell off. When that happened, instead of killing it and working on something exciting and different, they reset the chronology, slapped on a fancy new set of wheels and kept the story of a tortured vigilante who dresses like a bat going for ever: Batman: The new Adventures. Batman: The Dark Knight Returns. Batman Begins, the 2006 movie. Batman Begins? Batman began seventy years ago you fucks! Leave the past in the past, retire Batman's ancient ass and tell us a new story! Fuck this never-ending American diet of sequels and nostalgia. |