"After Miyazaki" article--wtf?

[usamimi]

Ok, so I saw this article on Twitter--"After Miyazaki, who are Japan's best anime directors?" http://www.dramafever.com/news/after-ha ... directors/

And I'm preeeeeeeeeetty sure the person who wrote this article is either a younger fan, or more of a casual fan, because some of their choices straight up confound me. Noriyuki Abe? Yeah, Yu Yu Hakusho was good, but I don't think it was comparable to a Miyazaki film. (And really--Tokyo Mew Mew? REALLY?) Seiji Mizushima? Morio Asaka?! Whaaaa?

Did this person just...Google some of their personal favorites and go, "Yup, that was a great series, obviously these are great directors!"? Because I call bullshit on any list that doesn't have Satoshi Kon in there, not to mention no Mamoru Oshii, no Katsuhiro Otomo, no Rintaro, etc etc? No, just...no.

At least they had the brains to include Osamu Tezuka, but loses some credibility with the fact that they didn't even use a screenshot of the Vampire Hunter D movie that Toyoo Ashida actually directed.

[Heero]

I don't know if the guy that wrote that article even has any idea about the topic he wrote on. While I'm not a fan, I can appreciate that Watanabe and Anno are on the short list, and I would maybe include Araki, but the rest seem like the guy is (mistakenly) equating "director" and "creator" and basically giving several "series directors" credit for wildly popular shounen JUMP titles. (DBZ, Bleach, etc., and in the comments he implies he'd have done the same for Naruto's director had he worked on anything else notable) I admit that my own knowledge of anime "directing" is shallow, but that list should just be "10 guys that were each involved with multiple major titles".

[usamimi]

Yeah, that sounds probable. It kind of annoys me when people who don't really have any idea what a director DOES praises directors. A director is not the same as the original creator; and a series director isn't always the same as an actual director, either. (And with TV series, it's not unusual to have multiple directors in charge of different episodes--which is why some episodes will be really strong, while others are just sort of middle-of-the-road.)

Also, I think it's weird to compare Miyazaki's film-directing career to directors that are mostly in charge of TV shows. I've never worked on either, obviously, but I assume that directing a movie is a little different than directing a TV show...so comparing the two seems a bit uneven? I can give a pass for, say, Anno (since he's worked on both), but most of the others he listed seem to be more TV series directors than movie directors, for the most part.

[davemerrill]

That article was laughable. I hate even discussing it because it was such obvious link-bait, as are most of the Buzzfeed-style list-sicles you see these days, but it's as if he picked 9 names at random and threw Tezuka in there to demonstrate he had a clue.

This article reminds me of an anime panel I was on years ago; just a general anime discussion panel at a SF convention, and a guy in the audience asked the panellists what their top 3 anime films were. We discussed it and came back with titles like Akira, Wings Of Honneamise, Ghost In The Shell, Patlabor, Totoro, Nausicaa, Grave Of The Fireflies, etc. The audience member who asked the question in the first place then dismissed all our choices and informed us of HIS top three anime films, one of which was an OVA, one of which was a TV show, and one of which was an American TV animated show.

At times it seems we're working on a level of awareness that not only others don't reach, but that they don't even know exists.

[usamimi]

At times it seems we're working on a level of awareness that not only others don't reach, but that they don't even know exists.

Man, do I know THAT feeling. I hate coming off as "snobby" anime fan, but as a friend of mine recently said "People are allowed to have their own opinions, but sometimes they just have it wrong." If that isn't a prime example, I don't know what is. (I'm reminded of a Yahoo! Question I saw someone link recently were someone asked where they could watch Korra subtitled because they REALLY liked the story, but they'd rather "watch it in the original Japanese". Um. Yeah.)