From: bn981@cleveland.Freenet.Edu (Ryan Mathews)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.anime
Subject: Re: Anime, and He May Not
Date: 5 Sep 1992 06:40:49 GMT
Organization: Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, OH (USA)
Reply-To: bn981@cleveland.Freenet.Edu (Ryan Mathews)
NNTP-Posting-Host: slc10.ins.cwru.edu


I have a feeling that Marc doth take his anime a bit too seriously,
certainly more seriously than most of the so-called "fanatics" that
I have come into contact with.

Most of us watch anime for fun.  Oh sure, anime has its classics like
WINGS OF HONNEAMISE and just about anything by Miyazaki, pieces which
are treasured and watched over and over again.  But most anime is just
simple entertainment, meant to be watched simply for fun, without a lot
of analysis.

I got into anime because I liked "cartoons", but had outgrown American
television fare, and found most other American animation either too
immature, too "avant garde", or too sleazy.  I found that anime such as
the Marc-maligned BUBBLEGUM CRISIS appealed to the same tastes in me
that attracted me to action cartoons when I was a tyke, but appealed to
them on a more mature level.  I don't look for reality when I watch BGC,
I look for good action, interesting characters, and an engaging plot.

To disagree more specifically...

In a previous article, emru@CAM.ORG (Emru Townsend) says:

>By day, Priss is a nightclub singer. Celia runs a lingerie shop.
>Nene is an officer in the AD Police, Mega-Tokyo's Keystone Kops.
>Linna would like to be a nightclub singer, but she can't sing.
>Still, she remains the cheerful one. When danger strikes, they
>all put on big robot battle suits and fight like well-trained,
>bloodthirsty mercenaries. This, in the world of anime, is a
>perfectly reasonable concept.

Besides the incredible snottiness of the wording, which belies any
attempt at impartial criticism on the writer's part, it seems very
much to me that Marc has this backwards.  The ladies are Knight
Sabers first, who work other jobs for cover.  Certainly, they all
have their ambitions (aren't they allowed to?), but the Knights
come first.  Look at the way they complain when they don't have
any jobs!  If the Knight Sabers was just a sidebar to their "real"
careers, what would the problem be?

>I would argue with those who call it stylish, because I've seen that
>style before, and it didn't do much for me the first time around.

Hmm?  Where did he see it, one wonders?

You know, it's awful late to review a series that began and nearly
ended in the 80's.  I'd hazard a guess that at least some of the
anime that you've seen with this style were emulating BGC, not the
other way around.  Wasn't BGC the FIRST *original* animation video
*series*?

As for it not doing much for him, that's a matter of taste, and good
reviewers keep their own personal tastes out of their reviews.  That's
why the world is filled with crappy reviewers.

Continued in next post...I'm being timed off.

			---------- Ryan Mathews
-- 
Email: bn981@cleveland.freenet.edu      DISCLAIMER:  Any resemblence of this
Snailmail: 786 High Street              article to rational thought is
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Newsgroups: rec.arts.anime