Otaku USA: As Geek Culture Assimilates, Otaku Remain Outcasts
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hosannainexcelsis
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It's worth pointing out here that Cowboy Bebop was not created with an eye towards Western audiences (unlike, say, Space Dandy, where simultaneous international airings were a part of a business strategy from the beginning), it was just Shinichiro Watanabe and company making what they wanted to make. It was also massively popular and successful in Japan.
That wasn't Kotaku; it was io9. Still part of the Gawker network, but a different site with different writers.
The live action KLK argument kind of falls apart when you think about how often teenage characters are portrayed in a sexualized manner in live action, just played by adults so that makes it okay. The example of Transformers was used earlier in this thread as a case where it's apparently fine and it's been done in two of those movies. Yeah KLK is on another level from those but the supposition that underage actors would actually be used is a stretch that's makes the argument not even worth considering when the real issue of teenage characters being portrayed as objects of desire is hardly exclusive to anime and manga and focusing so hard on it frankly starts to come across as concern trolling in my view much of the time when the real issue is that people take offense to or are weirded out by sexualized content in a 2D medium in the first place, which is a lot harder to argue against.
I mean Teen Sex Comedy is a whole genre of American live action films for fuck's sake!
I mean Teen Sex Comedy is a whole genre of American live action films for fuck's sake!
hosannainexcelsis
Member
Those screenshots don't look too bad, but I can still see traces of the awkward, stilted acting that puts me off most modern Japanese live-action (that and the awful cinematography) in the poses of the actors in the first screen. I think I'd prefer watching the anime adaptation, which has a great aesthetic.
Didn't know this. The structure of the show still feels very western like what I'd watch of Batman TAS back in the day. It's super popular in the west too, never even leaving the Adult Swim lineup of shows because it never really drops in viewership. Probably the easiest recommendation to make.
NaDannMaGoGo
Member
Nah, more like Richard Eisenbeis. A lot of his tastes are very, very different. It's one reason I can take his Xenoblade X import preview as seriously because his tastes are way too wild from my own.
Ah yes, there's going to be such a good selection of gender equality-critiquing anime from a country that doesn't even rank in the top 100 for women's rights.
hosannainexcelsis
Member
Coincidentally, much of Batman TAS was animated in Japan!
Watanabe and his team were certainly influenced by Western media when making Cowboy Bebop, which is a big reason why it found so much success over here, but that's different from making a conscious decision to appeal to Westerners. A lot of the best anime directors are people who are interested in a wide variety of film and television from outside their medium and incorporate those influences into their work, no matter who their works are aimed at.
There is a feminist movement in Japan, but it's going to take a long time before major changes happen, sadly. There's still so many problems with tradition, workplace, and housewives.
Empyrean Heaven
Member
Untouchables.
Subpar Spatula
Banned
This is meaningless. I gave you a scenario.
The show isn't too out there, that's ridiculous. Kill la Kill shit is every where anime.
I use Kill la Kill as an example. It's one of many shows that show these pervy scenes that people are OK with. You're simply ignoring the point of the question.
I ask because I doubt many people here would say, "yeah! I would watch a live action Kill la Kill" because you would actually be watching some really creepy, pervy stuff.
This is one of the reasons why big media stays away from anime: a lot of it is really gross and the fans don't necessarily care because they're so used to it. Any kind of criticism is defended with "how many have you watched?", "there's X and Y out there as well!", "it's subverting genres!", "there's naked guys too, people love it!", "it's just a cute show!", "cultural differences!". There's a strange denial that exists where fans think the perverted stuff is really niche but whenever you go and buy anime merchandise at stores, online, or at conventions there's usually a wide array of weird pervy shit like waifu pillows with "10000-year-old waifu who just happens to look like a prepubescent girl who wears a short gothic loli outfit, she also has a scythe!" on them. The medium and fans need to mature more before anyone will take you seriously. This doesn't mean anime fans are pedos or creepy man-man children who masturbate to an unconscious Asuka hospital photo, but they're very relaxed about what they see in anime and for some reason that's defended because it's the norm.
I personally think the need to be taken seriously is the most immature thing there is.
Not everything is meant for mass consumption and silly dumb ass shit like KLK can coexist with serious cool stuff like Bebop.
You main issue seems to be that people are ok with some pervy shit and thus that must mean they are okay with all. KLK got hype due to its staff behind it and while it could have been a lot better, it was exactly what people expected from that staff (for better or for worse).
Not everything is meant for mass consumption and silly dumb ass shit like KLK can coexist with serious cool stuff like Bebop.
You main issue seems to be that people are ok with some pervy shit and thus that must mean they are okay with all. KLK got hype due to its staff behind it and while it could have been a lot better, it was exactly what people expected from that staff (for better or for worse).
Probably why I've been enjoying a lot Masaaki Yuasa's works. He has a lot of influences from Tex Avery, Ladislas Starevich, Wallace and Gromit, Fantastic Planet and so on, and it shows in a lot of his works. He was even a guest animator for the episode Food Chain in Adventure Time.
They would use adults like they do now with shows that are live instead of anime.
Subpar Spatula
Banned
And? That's not what I asked. The fact you go to "they would use adults" is answer enough, it seems.
LaserBuddha
Member
There's really no level of pandering close to that of anime that a western live action show could get away with.
Although if next week on Arrow, the camera could stop and focus on the sun setting behind the shape of Thea's labia (beneath panties of course) as she does a slow motion handstand kick, I would tune in.
The Silver
Member
Yeah a big problem with anime/manga/LN is that it's so incestuest, its a constant cycle of them copying each other and not looking outside their bubble. Over time it just all melds together until everything(obviously I don't mean literally eveything) is a mix of same old tropes over and over, same old settings, same old characters.
I'm not saying that the sexualization isn't overdone and poorly used in certain series. I'm saying that's a separate argument from the one about underage characters everyone focuses on.
hosannainexcelsis
Member
Yes, Yuasa is an excellent example of a director with a wide range of influences. Just look at the visual style in Kaiba. Although the works he creates have more of a niche appeal than Cowboy Bebop. Ping Pong is probably his most accessible work.
(Also, he was guest director/writer for Food Chain, not animator. He brought on his animator buddies from Science Saru and art director Kevin Aymeric, who he worked with on Kickheart, Ping Pong, and Space Dandy, to help with the episode. It's pretty cool that Adventure Time did this, and a neat episode!)
There is such a huge range of characters sizes that we wouldn't even be watching the same show.
To me being nude is not the same as being sexualized. There is so much worse that is mainstream.
Subpar Spatula
Banned
You're really trying hard not to say yes or no. I said if it had the budget to make it live action scene for scene, would you watch it? There's a lot of deflection to this question with "it's not anime so no!", "it would be changed". If it was a frame by frame adaption of the anime with a big enough budget to make it identical, would you watch it?
How would you feel if the characters are played by adults but are still labeled as 17 year olds in the movie? That's what a lot of teen comedy's do and it's apparently okay.
Basically, the consensus seems to be it's okay to sexualise 17 year olds when they're not really 17 year olds (because they're either played by adults or 100% fictional). Same applies to anime.
Subpar Spatula
Banned
I'm OK with that. Those teen comedies aren't being as detailed. There is a difference between alluding to teenagers having sex and having a sexy body to "let's depict her vagina so clearly when she transforms."
KirbYuuYuu
Member
Need I remind you that Kill La Kill was voted for one of the top positions in the AoTY threads, where it's open to everyone. So I'm baffled at how it was well represented it was given what it had.
Edit: you can't depict vaginas in a tv show
Edit: you can't depict vaginas in a tv show
This whole thing you're doing is dumb, but if it literally looked exactly like the anime, which isn't possible at all, not even sure if you watched it, then yes, I would watch it.
Would that really be notably more tasteful if the character was a couple years older?
It's funny that you keep bringing up genitals while those are the one thing anime isn't even allowed to show.
Subpar Spatula
Banned
No, but it would be more understandable if it was a 20-year-old because you can write it off as some guy's jerk off material. The younger the are the weirder the territory.
It's not showing it 100% clearly but when they do the close up of the behind shots you understand what they're going for. Compare it to a Miyazaki film where if there's underwear involved it's really benign and not super detailed.
hosannainexcelsis
Member
You can still do that with Kill la Kill. Imaishi, the director, (who I strongly dislike, by the way) is a pretty perverted guy and includes a lot of crass sexual humor in all his works. He made a show called Panty and Stocking with Garterbelt, after all.
Subpar Spatula
Banned
You're missing the point entirely. At a point you have to think, "why am I watching a 17-year-old girl transform where she's wearing this super revealing outfit... wait did it just zoom in on her vagina being pulled by her outfit?" You can consider that spank bank material but then that might just raise questions. I use Kill la Kill as a reference because it's on the edge of 17 and 18, but there's much more anime out there that use younger students (I say students because a lot of these anime want to reference just how young they are). Erina Nakiri is 16 in Shokegi no Shoma. I just don't get how people can be comfortable watching certain scenes with her and think, "that's a good show to recommend to people" when, if it was live action, you would probably stay away from a show where the 16-year-old character is there for your sex enjoyment instead of being an actual character. Compared to Shameless Season 1 with Karen you can understand what they were going for.
You'll still have to explain to me how Shannon Elizabeth, playing a highschool aged girl, masturbating topless in American Pie is less explicit than kill la kill.
A lot of people turned out to see Transformers and didn't even think of that.
Oh, yeah, I actually thought about that example earlier, too.
Subpar Spatula
Banned
And? I still find wrong doing in that as well. Compared to anime like Kill la Kill Transformers is super, super tame.
Not defending American Pie but I understand what they're going for: male fantasy at a young age. Sure, it came off as misogynistic and dumb, but for a movie where 4 dudes want to lose their virginity before prom it makes sense where the women are their conquests but their hearts get captured instead. It's less explicit because Kill la Kill adds in explicit scenes for no reason. At least American Pie has a reason why there's topless chicks in each movie. What's the reason why for (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0jR5HqMMLDo) (NSFW) flapping boobies, close up us ass, and vagina?
That western comics and geekdom take precedence in the west shouldn't really be a huge surprise. Manga will always be niche because it comes from a different culture with a different language, different story-telling expressions and a different aesthetic. No matter how many fans it has, it'll always be separate and different.
Besides, super geeky nerds in the US aren't suddenly 'cool'. I mean, howling wolf t-shirts? Bronies? The ideal nerd in American media is someone witty, who has a charming cleanliness and doesn't let his hobby dominate his personality. When we think of anime and manga nerds, the prevailing image is something like this: http://youtu.be/d2FGgYp6mdk
Besides, super geeky nerds in the US aren't suddenly 'cool'. I mean, howling wolf t-shirts? Bronies? The ideal nerd in American media is someone witty, who has a charming cleanliness and doesn't let his hobby dominate his personality. When we think of anime and manga nerds, the prevailing image is something like this: http://youtu.be/d2FGgYp6mdk
If they could actually do it, I would watch it. The techniques used would probably be amazing.
I'm not excusing it, I'm saying this isn't a reason that anime fans should exclusively feel shame. This kind of presentation is a problem across media at large and your attempts to paint it as Japanese animation's unique problem are growing increasingly more tortured and desperate.
If they got Shannon Elizabeth to do it yes. Would still be tamer than her masterbation scene.
Both are serving the same point, male titillation.
If you grab up the narrative from American Pie as valid excuse you can do the same with Kill la kill and say that those suits only work that way because life fibers blablabla...
None of that makes the scene itself less or more explicit.
Subpar Spatula
Banned
Yeah, media does make women sexy. What other medium does this to this extent and to young girls so commonly?
This is Rory Mercury from Gate, it came out this year. She's 961. She looks young and wears a gothic loli priest garb. If she doesn't kill people she has a strong urge to bang people (she wants to bang the protagonist). She tries on multiple occasions according to the wiki.
I can pull more examples just from this year. There are plenty.
Not tamer because the masturbation scene has a purpose while close up of Ryuko's body is meaningless because it's not part of the story.
How does life fibers lead to close up of Ryuko's body every transformation? Is her vagina the source of her power? I am legit confused. Isn't it blood being fed to Senketsu? Serving the same point is correct but they are there for different reasons. American Pie is just more valid than random upskirt shots.
An opportunistic camera in Kill La Kill that constantly finds angles up a skirt or down a shirt is different. There's an animator drawing this, there is no accident here. It comes across as voyeuristic and exploitative, like sticking a camera under a dress on the escalator.
Mind you if it happened once or twice and wasn't such a consistent focus of the shows aesthetic it'd be a different story.
Mind you if it happened once or twice and wasn't such a consistent focus of the shows aesthetic it'd be a different story.
hosannainexcelsis
Member
I didn't watch Kill la Kill (past a Japanese stream of the first episode) because I hate Imaishi's style and try to avoid all his works. I'm just trying to explain the reason why it has sexual content and the context behind it.
Also, while I'm not fond of everything in the Soma series, Erina is an actual character.
Subpar Spatula
Banned
Just because he's perverted and made a perverted show doesn't mean people should be so relaxed about it. That's the point. This is why media can't take fans or anime seriously because even the fans don't care about the giant elephant in the room.
I think this is pretty accurate.
Also, thinking on it more, the biggest weakness of the thread's premise is the contention that comic-book culture was hidden away among geeks for decades until it was only recently discovered by the mainstream. It makes sense if you look at Hollywood movies, but that's a very narrow way of approaching it.
American comic books have been part of the pop culture mainstream for years. Back in the 1940s, and for decades afterwards, icons like Superman and Batman were selling close to a million issues a month, each. Superman was a big hit on TV in the 1950s, and Batman followed it in the 1970s. Spiderman was an early cartoon, and had (and still has!) his own nationally-syndicated newspaper strip. This seems like mainstream success to me.
Interestingly enough, in those early days anime was finding an audience of its own on Western TV, unbeknownst to its viewers. Shows like Speed Racer, Gigantor, and Kimba the White Lion were localized for US shores, and delighted children. Even my parents remembered the Gigantor theme song when it re-aired on Toonami briefly.
Even after all-ages anime stopped being disguised as something else, shows that aired on Saturday morning or on weekday afternoons earned enduring success, like Dragonball, Pokemon, and Sailor Moon. Similarly, cartoons of Batman, Spiderman, and X-Men kept those properties alive for kids even as the comic industry began imploding on itself.
The difference between what happened next, however, is in the money. Warner Brothers owned DC for ages, and comic contracts made lucrative characters the property of publishers, not creators. Even before the turn of the millennium, comic characters had seen multiple successes among broader popular culture, and they were in the hands of companies that could make big bets and reap the full rewards of their successes. The progression made business sense.
In the West, anime was in the hands of a scattered handful of companies that were trying to keep up with a boom. The large companies that held the rights to major properties generally weren't interested in making big bets on the West, and those that were got nailed hard when the market went bust in North America. The aftershocks of that are still being felt today. Daryl talks about how manga is growing year on year, but yearly revenue is still less than half of its peak of $200 million in 2007. The anime retail market is no healthier. There is still a lot of uncertainty because of the recent collapse, and no huge players who can throw lots of money at a mainstream push.
And going back to jiji's point, think of the licensing structure. Disney and Warner own the rights to the properties, own film studios, and are already well-integrated with merchandising. They're well-positioned to make tons of money off of every single aspect of a mainstream success. Anime, on the other hand, are largely produced these days in "production committees" consisting of multiple companies, each with their own interests. A broadcaster, an anime studio, a music label, and a manga publisher might all get together and pool their money to make a show, minimizing the risk to each if the property fails. These are ultimately conservative enterprises. The money would be fractured even further if they had to partner with a Western company to handle the distribution or creation of something focused on the Western mainstream.
A Western company could try to buy a license outright and go it alone, but there's no precedent for success, so I don't see why they'd try to probe for that uncertain vein when there are rich supplies of comic and YA properties ripe for the mining.
Sorry but that's just silly pedantry. You think anyone who sees those two scenes side by side will go "oh that cartoon is much more explicit"
Comic books, though they've gotten better about it in recent years. Recent development.
Films and TV do it more often than you probably even think about, it's just not as visually arresting because of the restrictions of the medium.
Subpar Spatula
Banned
Yes. We understand why she's topless and masturbating. No one understands why Ryuko's upskirt shot is done so many times. Well, we do know... the people who made it are probably perverted in some way. This kind of defense is why anime isn't taken seriously. Accept the crap and try to help people avoid it.
Can you list 20 where young teenagers are sexy and are flaunted so obviously? I can do that with anime. Heck, one of the "better" anime of last year was No Game, No Life and the female protagonist... WOW (not in a good way).
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