EWB's Top ## Anime

[gunnar hendershow]

Anime here means something produced in Japan, or in a Japanese style. Over there, anime's more of a blanket term for all animation. It's a difficult word to truly define, which is why I count Avatar since it is trying to be an anime.

[Ace]

1. Card Captor Sakura (The Japanese Version) - I may be new to anime, but I still loved this. The first two seasons anyway. Season three focused too much on Sakura/Li for my liking.

2. Naruto - Plubby, back away from me with that Gun. I have a good reason for putting it #2. Plubby...no...Plubbbby!

3. Vampire Knight

4. Please Teacher/Twins - Gets my votes simply because its the only other Anime I've personally seen. After this its votes based on what I want to see, compared to have seen.

5. Death Note

6. Bible Black

7. Spirited Away

8. Cowboy Bebop

9. Full Metal Alchemist

10. Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann

Edited June 6, 2008 by ---Ace Andrews---

[Ruki]

Ace, I demand you download and watch FMA, Cowboy Bebop, and Deathnote NOW!

[Ace]

If I had a PC I could download onto, sure. The one I'm using is more the house's PC then mine

I'm going to see a store in town on Monday that specializes in Anime though, so hopefully I can get them

[wCwCreator]

1. Gundam Wing AC - The one that started it all in terms of Anime for me. Great plot, great characters and themes too. Which is hard to understand why the other Gundam series seem so much like 3D cartoons? I guess I'm just a realist is all.

2. Death Note - Had to see what all the fuss was about and after the 2 midnight day marathons I'm quite impressed. Sad conclusion though.

3. Darker Than Black - Surprised it's been mentioned, considering it's relatively new and pretty short considering news that it's not getting picked up for another season.

4. Dragonball Z - Of course, America picked this up and went with it, now you got white kids all over the country pretending their asian. You could say it started a trend. Ninjas. Just wait till 09, when the movie comes out and then you'll see it come really into the mainstream, with their white actors of course.

5. Digimon - I used to collect the cards and watched the show. It was good. It's never on anymore which can only mean *sigh* that Pokemon won...

6. Pokemon - Sparse mention considering I don't watch as much Anime as the rest of you do. It's the simple formulaic episodes that just to bug the hell out of me. Like the bad guy of the week sort of thing. Ash never becomes a pokemon master, does he? But I guess it's just for the kids now so eventually you start to realize that he's never going to catch em all.

That's pretty much it. Hoped to help.

[GoGo Yubari]

Riddle me this: the American band you referred to, if they moved to Japan, learned Japanese, and began performing in Japan doing songs that completely would fit into the style of JRock, would they still not be considered JRock because they aren't Japanese?

Possibly, but this isn't a fair analogy because that is complete cultural assimilation by the people initially producing the material and making it intentionally designed so that it is released in Japan first, which is completely different from someone licensing a series and dubbing it in their own language.

Avatar is going to be aired in Japan, it's being translated into Japanese for its fans out there, which is to say, they're getting voice actors to play the parts-- at least, last I'd heard. By all means, the show has gotten popular enough that, despite it being a purely Western-made show, Japan is accepting it into its "anime" culture. Avatar stock would wind up showing up near other anime stocks out there, and chances are it will.

So my point about Avatar is reflected in my point about the American JRock band: if it's now been moved out to Japan, if it's being translated into Japanese, and if it's being accepted by the Japanese anime market as an anime in and of itself... why is it that we can't accept it as an anime here?

It's already started to be released in Japan, I've seen a couple of clips from it (unfortunately, they're not far enough to have dubbed the Dangerous Ladies, which is what I'm really looking forward to hearing just to see how they handle them). And your argument is fallacious; the Japanese term for anime encompasses all animation, so of course they would consider it "anime." It's not as if they magically refuse to show Western programs if they're not "anime enough" or something. But that's a different matter than a list that is presumably based off of the Western perception of anime, where the definition becomes more subjective.

I'm not saying that it's some grand sin if you refer to Avatar as "anime" or vote for it (damshow has already given a ruling, though I kind of disagree with the "trying to be anime" part because "influenced by" and "trying to be" are different things, though that might be subjective based on quality) I'm just saying that I don't consider it to be as such and as such that's why I didn't put it on my list. That's not an insult towards it, as Avatar is honestly much better than the vast majority of anime I've seen over the past couple of years, and as long as the finale doesn't fuck everything up, will probably end up being one of my favorite animated programs of all time. But again, the definition of "anime" in the West is fractured; different people consider it to be different things, and I wouldn't say one camp is outright right or one is wrong. As a program created and written by Americans for an American audience first and foremost, with things like its Japanese dub coming long, long after the fact, I don't think range of influence is really criterion for inclusion. It'd be like calling Nirvana punk, or something.

In any case, this is a terribly silly argument over semantics that at no point is going to be resolved because it's a matter of what personal opinion regarding two different ways to look at a cultural perception of a term. So I'm leaving it at this because like hell am I going out to that argument about the band

[mystikz]

nice someone else that liked Darker than black

FMA is so overrated in my opinion, or maybe it's just me as I couldn't stand it.

[Ruki]

Mystikz, you deserve death. DEATH!

...ok, maybe not death, but at least extreme pain and suffering.

[stokeriño]

FMA is only overrated in the sense that it's one of those series that the US market jumps up and down over so much that one might be led to believe Edward Elric is the second coming of Jesus. That however does not detract from being a bloody excellent series.

[Ruki]

FMA spoiler:

Spoiler: Click here to view

I almost cried when Hughes died!

Edited May 31, 2008 by stokeriño
fixed spoiler tags etc.

[Momo]

FMA spoiler:

Spoiler: Click here to view

I almost cried when Hughes died!

Spoiler: Click here to view

Pfft, I did cry. And when Nina had her brain blown out, and then in the episode where Sloth and Lust died.... and then when Ed died. Jesus I'm a sop.

[stokeriño]

Anyone else reading the FMA mangas? They really get very different from the TV series after the first 6 volumes or so.

[The Mask of Norro]

*snip*

I can see where you're coming from, yeah, and I agree that it's a silly argument that can't really be resolved, that's why I try to keep the argument lighthearted when it comes up

I also agree with you though, there's a big difference between "trying to be" and "influenced by", I think that was just a poor choice of words on damshow's behalf though, really.

[gunnar hendershow]

*snip*

I can see where you're coming from, yeah, and I agree that it's a silly argument that can't really be resolved, that's why I try to keep the argument lighthearted when it comes up

I also agree with you though, there's a big difference between "trying to be" and "influenced by", I think that was just a poor choice of words on damshow's behalf though, really.

Or I meant "trying to be" as a synonym for "influenced and inspired by". But yeah, I'll concede it was poor word choice from me.

[gunnar hendershow]

Sorry for the double post:

Last call for votes. Voting closes tomorrow at 4pm EST.