Has Japan or anime altogether lost its balls?

[SteveH]

A kid from Indonesia who follows my YouTube channel was excitedly telling me about some new anime which he described as "Yamato 2199, but with a submarine." I really cannot remember the name of the show, but Aoshima has a model kit of that submarine. So I checked out the opening animation of the show on YT. Oh guess what? The ocean has claimed the earth again and the cities are underwater. Gee, we haven't seen that before a hundred times. Oh and guess what, the crew are a bunch of silly young girls. Now wait for the opening credits to introduce the characters. Extreme close-up of the first girl's tits, then her ass, then it pans back. Repeat for the next girl: tits, ass, then pans back. Then the next girl. Oh wait, the one after that looks to be 9, so we don't get an extreme closeup of her girl parts. But here comes the next girl, and check out those knockers! That must mean that she's an endearing character, right? Character development? Bah! That'll just take a backseat to sales of Miss Busty's PVC figures in Akihabara. Oh look, now we see one girl crawling around on the bridge of the submarine like an absurd buffoon. Isn't that weird and creepy? That must be some real character development right there. Next it's a shot of the whole crew, and yup, I cannot remember seeing a single male in the crowd. The fate of the world is at stake, so we need these moeblobs to save the day! I can't even remember the name of the show. I just immediately filed it in the "this loathesome crap sucks" bin of my mind. Sorry, kid in Indonesia, but I'm slightly offended that you'd compare this to Yamato. I'll forgive you because of your age and level of hormones. Nice submarine, though.

Steve, I get what you're saying and while I do agree with you to a point about such fans, at least speaking for myself and many others, it's not that I'm wanting to see shows that are exactly like what drew me into anime originally. I am just sick of the seeing the shows that are exactly all the same type of pandering, unoriginal, uninspired crap. Once upon a time, it seemed that we had more to choose from. It seemed that there was a lot more originality, variety, and chances taken. Now it's just slim pickings these days. If anybody tells me I need to just "get with the times," then sorry, but I refuse.

Arpeggio of Blue Steel.

Dunno about 'underwater cities' but the rest...yeah. I watched that whole darn thing out of a sense of hopefulness, that maybe, maybe it would actually break out, dare to take things in a different...nope.

MOE harem warship avatars longing to be 'commanded' by the protagonist.

*brrrr*

Here's the sad thing. I really liked the world building. I mean, it was basically 'Blue Submarine No. 6' with the serial numbers filed off but OK, I could roll with it. The core story, "We have to get this macguffin to the far off mysterious land called America to save the world" could be seen as both a take on Yamato and a rehash of the long derided and ignored Blue Noah (Nishizaki's 'make work' TV series that filled production time and trained up the animator staff that made Be Forever Yamato), so that's familiar territory.

But yeah. fetish clothing. Underaged girls. *sigh*

[danth]

I remember when fan service and pandering meant showing giant robots shooting the shit out of each other in fully detailed glory. Shells falling, vernier thrusters adjusting, gears grinding, volleys of hundreds of missiles.

I also miss dynamic animation where characters and mecha are drawn from multiple angles along with the background of the scene. You just don't do that shit anymore, too expensive, unless you do it with computers and it's a movie, but even then why bother.

Now animators are too fucking cheap and lazy to animation FACES so you just see a mouth moving on the character's cheek while their chin and lips are static. That is just the worst, but it's standard now.

[usamimi]

Now animators are too fucking cheap and lazy to animation FACES so you just see a mouth moving on the character's cheek while their chin and lips are static. That is just the worst, but it's standard now.

That's an old trick that's been around for a while--I remember seeing it in the original Sailor Moon series (especially in Supers and Stars) and I've never been fond of it, either. It looks really weird.

[llj]

Anime has almost NEVER animated talking "realistically", with the exception of feature length films and some OVAs. The ol' flappin' mouth on a static face is a tradition that has carried on since the early Tezuka days of anime.


I'm definitely not down with CGI mecha and spaceships, though. You get some 2D characters talking and then you switch to CGI battles...it's too obvious a visual divide. Some anime, like a few of the newer Gundams, have managed to seamlessly mix CGI animation with "regular" 2D animation, but a lot of shows are going the route of Aquarian where basically NO action scene is 2D animation anymore. Bodacious Space Pirates for example is a very solid show, but the obvious CGI space battles sometimes take you out of the show.

[greg]

Arpeggio of Blue Steel.

Dunno about 'underwater cities' but the rest...yeah. I watched that whole darn thing out of a sense of hopefulness, that maybe, maybe it would actually break out, dare to take things in a different...nope.

MOE harem warship avatars longing to be 'commanded' by the protagonist.

Yep, that's it. Pukatronic. Didn't it feature the ocean levels rising to submerge cities? Maybe my mind was just filling in that trope automatically since everything else I saw in that OP was so freaking derivative, pandering, and lame. I couldn't even stick through the first episode. The OP itself lost me.

I'm definitely not down with CGI mecha and spaceships, though. You get some 2D characters talking and then you switch to CGI battles...it's too obvious a visual divide. Some anime, like a few of the newer Gundams, have managed to seamlessly mix CGI animation with "regular" 2D animation, but a lot of shows are going the route of Aquarian where basically NO action scene is 2D animation anymore. Bodacious Space Pirates for example is a very solid show, but the obvious CGI space battles sometimes take you out of the show.

The space battles in 2199 look nice, and the CG animation is blended pretty well with the 2D animation.

Gosh, suddenly I remember that old Battletech cartoon from the '90s and how terribly the CG clashed with the rest of the show. It didn't just take me out of the show, it spat me out like an ejection seat.

That Space Pirates show seemed fairly interesting, after the first couple of episodes. That reminds me... I still haven't seen Stellvia, even though I own the whole series on DVD and I've read the manga that was translated into English.