Guilty Pleasures

Discuss anime, especially but not limited to 1950's~1990's series, and related sub-topics
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greg
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Re: Guilty Pleasures

Post by greg »

usamimi wrote:I was then told that I shouldn't describe any put-down that wasn't referring to a minority a "slur" because I would then be "insulting minorities" by "belittling their plight". I was then told that being a woman was also the same thing as being black/a minority, and that I was stupid, ignorant, and that I should "read more".
Oh my gosh. I bet this was coming from some high school or college-aged dingus who fills her head with all sorts of crap. She probably compares gays to blacks too, which in my opinion is completely belittling the plight of blacks in America and I am sure most African Americans object to being compared in that way.

I really don't understand the rabid fanbase of MLP. I have a friend who is designing a retro-style RPG featuring MLP characters (most are original characters, though). I saw the pilot and wasn't too impressed, but I'm told that the pilot just establishes the characters and that it gets much better after that. I was really into Power Puff Girls back in the day. Sure, they're cute, but the writing was witty and the show spoofed all sorts of American comics, anime, tokusatsu/kaiju shows, and even sometimes Monty Python. I assume that this MLP show has the same allure, so I can understand and respect that. However, I don't remember PPG ever turning fans into raving lunatics like this new MLP show. I think part of the reason is because the MPS fandom is shared with Furries, thus much of the stupidity. My friend is also into furry as a genre, and has furry friends. He even visited a furry con a year or so ago. Plenty of eye rolling, since he's actually not psychotic.
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usamimi
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Re: Guilty Pleasures

Post by usamimi »

greg wrote:
usamimi wrote:I was then told that I shouldn't describe any put-down that wasn't referring to a minority a "slur" because I would then be "insulting minorities" by "belittling their plight". I was then told that being a woman was also the same thing as being black/a minority, and that I was stupid, ignorant, and that I should "read more".
Oh my gosh. I bet this was coming from some high school or college-aged dingus who fills her head with all sorts of crap. She probably compares gays to blacks too, which in my opinion is completely belittling the plight of blacks in America and I am sure most African Americans object to being compared in that way.

I really don't understand the rabid fanbase of MLP. I have a friend who is designing a retro-style RPG featuring MLP characters (most are original characters, though). I saw the pilot and wasn't too impressed, but I'm told that the pilot just establishes the characters and that it gets much better after that. I was really into Power Puff Girls back in the day. Sure, they're cute, but the writing was witty and the show spoofed all sorts of American comics, anime, tokusatsu/kaiju shows, and even sometimes Monty Python. I assume that this MLP show has the same allure, so I can understand and respect that. However, I don't remember PPG ever turning fans into raving lunatics like this new MLP show. I think part of the reason is because the MPS fandom is shared with Furries, thus much of the stupidity. My friend is also into furry as a genre, and has furry friends. He even visited a furry con a year or so ago. Plenty of eye rolling, since he's actually not psychotic.
Yeah, the majority of the people who jumped all over me were young, college-aged girls. I just assume that they're going through that phase were they've had that "realization" that they need to be more involved in "the real world" and have now dedicated part of their free time to feminist movements or whatever's trendy enough to make them look like they care...I mean, shit, I'm all for feminist stuff, being a woman; but sometimes I think younger girls take things a bit too far with their over-enthusiasm, to the point where they themselves are coming off like the very bullies they're trying to eliminate. Telling people that being a woman is akin to being a black person? Shouldn't we be telling women that they're strong and can do anything? Y'know, supporting each other? O__o I don't see what the point of putting other women down and yelling at them accomplishes at all, but maybe that's because I'm "old"! ;P

MLP does have some fun nerd references hidden here and there, but not NEARLY as many as in Powerpuff Girls, or even Foster's Home of Imaginary Friends (which Lauren Faust also worked on, it's a great series if you never saw it). I do agree that I think one of the main reasons the internet picked up on it so quickly was that furries also embraced it. (Which is funny, as far as I knew, they wanted nothing to do with the older cartoons...) And while I have had my instances of creepy dude-bros trying to "impress" me with the fact that they like it ("I know, it might sound weird to others, but I guess I'm just unique! I like a girl's show!"...yeah, ok, buddy, you don't see me making a huge deal that I've loved shit targeted towards men for YEARS but that I happen to have a vagina, do you?! You don't get a trophy for something ladies have been doing for ages, sorry.) I usually don't care, because like I said...I seem to have more run-ins with female fans than male, for some weird reason.

The show isn't even that good anymore, now that Lauren Faust has left to pursue other projects; but geez don't tell THAT to any of the random fans online unless you want an earfull. :lol:
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_D_
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Re: Guilty Pleasures

Post by _D_ »

llj wrote:
_D_ wrote:The problem with He-Man was that Skeletor could never win. According to the writers on that series, that was in the series bible. So, it became a running joke as to how Skeletor could amass all these armies of bad guys and lose every episode. Now in the real world, no one is going to work for you if you are a loser. Just about every series and most comics at the time featured just that...the villains could try as hard as they wanted but could never win! So, at that point, I just shelved the whole genre.
Well, what cartoons DO have villains that win? It's not limited to He-Man, it applies to basically every kids' cartoon ever made. I guess the only American cartoon I can think of that has a villain get close to "winning" is when Megatron killed Optimus Prime in the Transformers movie...but Megatron was also so brutally beaten up himself, he needed to be totally remade. So it was more of a stalemate.

(And Optimus came back in the TV series later on anyway)
For me, that would be Jonny Quest with it's continuing characters like Dr. Zin. To be fair, Zin never actually won (which would have resulted in the deaths of the heroes) but he never really lost either. That series was arguably Hanna Barbera's best action series. It sure was for us boy boomers who grew up then. But I was also a big booster of their space series like Space Ghost and The Herculoids. I have them all on DVD now so it's fun to go back and watch them again. I never watched the 80s cartoons in the US because I had graduated to anime by that time and shunned them. I do have a lot of them on disc but I have a hard time watching them. Among other things, I'm part way through watching the original Ultraman series from the 60s, so that will tie up a bit of my time for the next little while, along with the remainder of current domestic series and upcoming series (Arrow, Continuum Season 2, Defiance, Game of Thrones Season 3, Vikings, etc.). No more time to start anything new...

As a matter of comparison, I recently read a full run of the 60's Marvel Thor comics and compared it to the 70's incarnation. The earlier series was far better and near the end of the run, Kirby's artwork, especially in splash pages was outstanding. How all these characters could just tumble out of his mind and onto paper is beyond me...
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Re: Guilty Pleasures

Post by nordstar »

greg, I was really into the Powerpuff Girls too. The over all style of the show and nod to old favs really sucked me in.

_D_, Johnny Quest was a great show, the opening theme music is classic. That show was a fav of my mothers, so we watched it together. The whole flow of the show was fun a bit of science and history with a lot of action and suspense. Space Ghost and The Herculoids were also really cool. although the two kids from SG a little annoying at times.

I too have been reading the Thor run of comics. A few years ago at comic-con I bought the first two Essential Thor collections. These are just the b&w reprints. I also have and enjoy Thor Visionaries - Walt Simonson, Vol. 1 tpb which introduces Beta-Ray Bill. The early art is great. I don't care at all for modern Thor on his own, I just can't get into the style.
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llj
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Re: Guilty Pleasures

Post by llj »

My only problem with early Thor is Vince Colletta. :lol:
_D_
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Re: Guilty Pleasures

Post by _D_ »

llj wrote:My only problem with early Thor is Vince Colletta. :lol:
When were those? My early Thor collection starts and ends with Kirby...
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Re: Guilty Pleasures

Post by xsquid »

_D_ wrote:
llj wrote:My only problem with early Thor is Vince Colletta. :lol:
When were those? My early Thor collection starts and ends with Kirby...
Vince Colletta was Kirby's inker for most of those old days (check the credits). Apparently Ilj feels that Colletta wasn't well suited to the Master's pencils...he may have a point.
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Re: Guilty Pleasures

Post by _D_ »

I actually used to send my old Dr. Who tapes to Mike Royer who was Kirby's inker in the 70s. I could have traded the tapes for artwork rather than having got them back but I declined. Just as well as some of the stuff on those tapes was destroyed by the originating stations and only exists on those old tapes...
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Re: Guilty Pleasures

Post by davemerrill »

llj wrote:My only problem with early Thor is Vince Colletta. :lol:

quoted for truth. What that man did to Jack Kirby's pencils is a crime.

I like his late 50s romance comics, though, weirdly enough.
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Re: Guilty Pleasures

Post by davemerrill »

usamimi wrote:I love all the old 80s Pony cartoons, I watched them so much as a kid. I like the new show alright (I don't think it's like, THE BEST SHOW IN THE WORLD!! like some people do, but it's cute.) but I agree that the fandom for it freakin' SCARES me. I tried to join in a couple of conversations on the main Livejournal community and I almost instantly regretted it--there are some fans there that seem genuinely bat-shit insane. My favorite thing was when someone was using the word "brony" as a put-down towards someone, so I stupidly chimed in and said that she shouldn't use the term as if it was a slur...I was then told that I shouldn't describe any put-down that wasn't referring to a minority a "slur" because I would then be "insulting minorities" by "belittling their plight". I was then told that being a woman was also the same thing as being black/a minority, and that I was stupid, ignorant, and that I should "read more". The kicker? I WAS TOLD ALL OF THIS BY OTHER FEMALES. Um. WHAT?? :lol: SERIOUSLY? All this from a community about pink singing cartoon ponies? Yeeeeeah, I definitely stopped joining in conversations after that...(99% of them are probably a lot younger than I am, anyway...oh, to be young again and think you know everything in the world because you read about social injustices on the internet...)
I have friends who watch and enjoy the show - males and females - but I do have to say that some of the MLP fans take their fandom as license to act like total idiots. I sat in on a panel Mike Toole and Neil Nadelman were doing at AN last year and it was nightmarish. The audience would not shut up, would not sit still, did not posess indoor voices or any sense of personal space or communication skills. And these weren't 10 year old kids, these were grown adults, old enough to drive and purchase their own fedoras. Why they wear fedoras is anybody's guess.

It's my understanding that the MLP fad is waning, so there's that. They'll find something new to be annoying about, I suppose.
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