User:Angel Emfrbl/Animefan

Lets get something out of the way here:


 * 1) Gen anime fans - anyone pre late 90s who like the style before it became reconnised a lot.
 * 2) Gen anime fans - anyone who were fans when it was first coming over 1998-2004.
 * 3) Gen anime fans - anyone who was a fan during the "trendy" stage of 2004-2007
 * 4) Gen anime fans - anyone who hasn't moved on now anime has stopped being "trendy" and now is just another area of interest.

I fall into group one. I didn't know I was a anime fan, I can remember the days of not knowing what it was and all of the Japanese animations I saw as a child (exception:Thunder Prince ¬_¬' ) I enjoyed. I watched "Monkey" as a child in its second showing on the UK (man there was a big gap between no.1 showing and no.2 showing) when Sky was becoming more widely avaible as a TV saterlite service. Dragonball was never shown in my country but "Cities of Gold" was and takes my heart away as the show that I hold responisible for making me a anime fan. Incidently Cites of Gold is a smashing series and anyone who hasn't seen it should. I could tell you more if I could remember half the series now after a decade of not remembering but I can tell you its a dam good show. Too serious perhaps, it lacks the humour anime in the last decade has adopted, but thats okay.

See the trouble with Gen.1 anime fans is we have difficulty dealing with gen.3 and 4 fans because we were the anime fans who didn't see anything past seriousness of shows. There simply was no "anime humour" or very little of it. You just didn't play funny. I smile tough as this has its highlights, I can watch serious shows for anime and not be bored thanks to it. Most of the Gen.1 and 2 fans are now in the 20-30 age rating, gen 3 and 4 are under 20, 50% around the 13 years of age range. After 13 your either a fan for life or grown out of it by the age of 15. Gen.1 fans like the older shows and would happily accept anything you give us from that era both in series and merchandise, for a lot of us the old stuff is like a cult thing. We're long past fan worship, we're into "way of life" stage by now.

There is not much else to say about it... Other then thats just how things are. Thats not to say we don't like new stuff or won't get along with gens 3 and 4, its just we're a little impatient towards them because of the "gaps". Gen.2 - Gen.4 fans tend to accept yaoi and yuri easier then gen.1 fans... Why, I don't know. :-/

As I said, I didn't know what anime was when I was watching it and the first time I even heard the word "manga" was at highschool. Until then they were just another show but I like them. I got introduced to anime at the time of Sky opening itself up and watching Sailor Moon and Pokemon, taking an intereast in it all. First time I heard words that familiarised me with what I had watched and been watching since childhood. Accepted I was a fan back in 2002 when I had a lot of illness just before christmas and here I am... 6 years later.

I will never say I am souly a OP fan, I am always an anime fan before OP fan. My reason for taking to OP is to have one major long series to look forward to while I watch other anime shows beause their always much shorter. Buy now I can say "Every anime has its flaws and its up to taste." I don't like Dragonball Z for the fights and dumb storyline that wasn't in DB... DB was ruined by not being shown in order before DBZ. I don't like Naruto because I see it as a worst version of DB. I don't like Bleach because you have to stop and think about everything and it seems too uness. complex.

CLAMP shows are too fan-candyish and I feel like I watching a in fashion ad all the time rather then a show. The pace is slow, the storie pathetically, romantically boring. I'll watch romance even though I hate it if you control it right - no slow moments of "I love you Fred!" and no kissing scenes that are uneeded. Just two people, they have a story together and at the end they KISS. If they love each other for more then 50% of the story live length, I'll throw up by the end. I like to see the build up and reason why they love each other. And then nothing sloppyily done just to set up X character to kiss Y character.

Thankfully there are plenty of good anime to kill the bad, Tenchi Muyou is always one of the betters, Outlaw Star also is a must. Sailor Moon a "Just do it"and DB a "watch it once". Slayers, Louie the Rune Soldier both must be seen and you'll be a really lousey fan if you never see "Dragon-half" because had the creatators not been put in jail for drugs that would have been the best anime of all time!

Adding to that...
It struck me when I said DBZ had a strong fandom in the same sentance that I insulted Naruto that the gen.3 and 4 fans for anime seem to think everyone must like Sailor Moon and Dragonball. Even Gen.2 did not dare tell anyone that they must enjoy these two shows. I've watched both, DB was better then DBZ but was ruined as I said by DBZ being shown in the UK before DB and Sailor Moon has become nothing special since everyone else has copied that show to DEATH. I can write better then Sailor Moon, I am writing a Novel. Trouble is I can't write how everyone else wants because I only write for me otherwise I'd sit there and write a boy and girl manga myself to show you I can do better.

Okay let me get this straight... There is something Gen. 3 and 4 fans need to know that 80% of Gen.2 managed to accept in the end but sadly 20% still DIDN'T and make up this horrible end of anime fans I just don't want to speak too if the words "DBZ" crop up in a conversation with the words "That was a great show".


 * 1) Out of sequence. Because DBZ was shown before DB, we in the UK only saw the crappy intro were Radiz came in and gave a expla on who he is.
 * 2) Bad Writing. I don’t know… People change into huge monkey monsters in the moonlight is not a great opening story for a show. Nor is the words “What, you forgot, you must have bumped your head!” when your brother didn’t kill everyone on the Earth. Get it, this is bad story writing.  It wouldn’t have been so bad, but we were stuffed it in one episode within the span of 3 mins, trying to accept dumb idea after another was introduced without a gap between wasn’t a good idea.  Gettit: transforming in the moonlight and clichéd “bump your head and forget” is BAD writing.  There was little humanity or heart in DBZ and few times did the characters have any personnelity building moments outside of Picclo, Trunks, Vegeta and Gohan.  Everyone else was the same at the start as they were at the end more or less.  Incidentally, I love how Vegata and Bulma were paired up and how Vegeta reacted to his teenage son.  That was good writing… Why couldn’t the whole of DBZ have been like this???  :-/
 * 3) Fights. Especially around filler time when the anime caught up with the manga.  DBZ fights were long, all about big rays of special effects and talking for nearly whole eps every now and again.  The fights were the same animation over and over again often with too much genericness.  By the end of Vegeta’s departure from Earth I could care less for any characters I just wanting it to stop.  Between fights in DBZ there was little storyline which I adore and love and it was all about training.  You knew full dam well the hero was going to win and he only had to do half as much training as the others so their efforts were pointless fluff.  It’s a shame because their interactions outside of training and fighting when the show did allow it was better then the fighting and training combined was.  I never want to see a minute per episode fight again.  Even OP’s fight, though long and panned out never go this bad and are 50% about storyline and not just beating everyone up.  Essentially, its all about rising your power level up higher then your foes… There is little point in training, for the most part, the only important thing he learnt was the spirit bomb.  He used it three times… But I only count one as being worth while.
 * 4) Villians. Oh who is you favourite DB character, the big muscle bound guy with a power rating higher then Mt. Everest or the other big muscle guy with a power level twice the size of Mt. Everest.  Boring.  The only villains who didn’t follow this track were the three androids who should have had a bigger part then they did.  Poor guys should have had more time then they did, best villains in the show didn’t even get to do much except dislocate Vegeta’s arm and fight him.  Incidentally, Vegeta’s bit with android 18 was the only fight he took part in I enjoyed other then Trunks cutting Freiza in half.  One she owned him, second he introduced the fact he could become Super now and his story I actually felt some care for this character and 3 they weren’t big muscle bound guys.  Okay, the third android was, but he was a gentle giant who you couldn’t possibly dislike and he should have survived longer in the series then he did.  He was one of only two heroes (Trunks being the other hero because I’m a girl and he was cute and it would be wrong of me not to like someone with one of the better background stories).  I mean, you see Adnroid 18 smashing buildings because no.17 killed the boy she thought was cute… Its that kind of character building that makes them not generic.
 * 5) Design. Every single dam villain had a similar set of armour.  Big, Padded like the Saiens or however you spell their races name.  Half the cast at some point who weren’t villains also got to wear it too.  And as I said, every villain just about was a big muscle bound guy.  The only ones who weren’t were the Androids and Friezer but Friezer was ruined by bad writing.  Cell was the worst, take Frieza, turn him green and make him a little bug-like.  For Heaven’s sake…
 * 6) Special Effects. Every time there is a big laser cannon fired the screen goes blinding white.  This is horrible to watch and it hurts my eyes.  Often this is combined with blurring effect which only serves to hurt them even more.  And why does everything have to be white, orange or yellow?  Why can’t we have a large dark blue beam for a change, or a nice green one.  Why does everything have to be bright and yellow?
 * 7) Dialogue. Oh for God’s sake.  You don’t need to brag about how you’re going to destroy the world, just destroy it.  Bragging about it only gives the hero time to re-cooperate and is not helpful to your cause if you’re the one winning the fight.  Just hit him with the biggest thing you have and have done with it.  If it doesn’t kill him you never stood a chance in the first place and if it does it saves all that time wasted in between.  As mentioned, the dialogue when story was due to progress was lame.  It could have been handled better to stop me cringing when time came to accept the stupid plot device such as Goku bumping his head and forgetting his mission.  And there really is no need to shout your lungs off while your doing that horrible yellow and white power up thingy, we know your raising your power level…Come to think of it… How comes the villains let the heroes get stronger in the MIDDLE of the fight, just attack him, he isn’t doing anything, hit him before he can jack himself up  fifty noughts.
 * 8) Douchebags. Goku… Why did you let Vegeta live?  He just tried to destroy you world, killed your friends, beat up your son and did a lot of harm.  Admire his strength?  Why…?  He didn’t do anything to be worthy of admiring.  It would have also save half your problems if you hadn’t have given Frieza a chance to live also, but that wasn’t important, Trunks did the thing you weren’t able to do anyway.  The series was full of idiots, that’s the other reason why I like Trunks, the only dumb thing he did was not realise he was getting buffer but slowing himself down when he was powering up.  Unfortuntly those that were tactically “smart” never got to show they were and those that were smart outside of that weren’t fighters.  I don't mind one or two of them, but a whole cast... ¬_¬'

The other big anime name everyone is supposed to watch is Sailor Moon, who is still as popular now as it was then. Basically, I have fewer complaints and not because it’s a girls show and I’m a girl, but basically because there is a lot less to the show to criticise.


 * 1) Quality of animation: consistent for the most part, but at some points it gets a lot better then other. Because of its length, there is now way to judge it, but still at no one point did it take a step back like DBGT did.
 * 2) Repeativeness. It was the uppermost problem with this show… Every episode has animation frames wasted on the cast transforming.  Why did they do this?  To save money, its cheaper to repeat scenes then create new ones.
 * 3) Designs. I know the character say they don’t recognise everyone when Venus shows up, but this I found hard to swallow.  They have the same face, voice and all they did was change their uniforms.  How can they look any different?  Esp. since their school uniform is a sailor suit, it can’t be that hard to spot them in a crowd… I groan as this is just laziness… There were also a lot of badly dressed villains and extremely huge amounts of repeated designs.  HOWEVER, unlike DBZ, instead of one design being repeated there were about 8.  Not too bad, only the Sailor Soldiers were a problem.
 * 4) Romance. Its not it exists in the show, but exploited to the brim.  We have every kind of pairing in one show, lesbos, gays, straights, other…  I know S. Moon was suppose to promote love on all grounds and Japan has no problems with all these relationship types… But I just don’t know what to make with how many there are rubbed into your face of each type.  Essentially, I live by “love in a show only when needed” when it comes to relationships straight or otherwise, but you just can’t hide the fact everyone seems to be in some sort of relationship.  If their not, their tarting around trying to be in a relationship.  Maybe I’m over exaggerating it…  But at least they weren’t kissing in every episode like some shows, they just stood next to each other and said they love each other.  I’ll give it credit, while it rubbed it in your face, it never blinded you with it.
 * 5) Filler. Lots and lots of filler.  Essentially, every season of S.Moon should have been at the most 6 episodes, two for induction, two for a fight or two, two to finish.   At the most I’d extend it to 8.
 * 6) Story. I loved the background storyline!  The only stuff about the storyline I hated was the in between the start where and finish of every season.  It has a excellent storyline that is lost in the masses of fluff that contain fight scenes, huge amounts of nothing… Seriously, most of the character building could have been crammed into those 8 episodes.   You only need that much building in a show where you’re going to put a lot of effort into those fluffed up moments.  Saying that, though the story is interesting, it also gets confusing in places… Like the last series.  And why does the final show down with the main villain always end in all the Sailor Soldiers dying?  Serious, they can’t be there just for cannon fodder can they?  O.o

Overall, I DID like the Sailor Moon series and these were the only faults, most are minor in comparison to DB. The stuff is minor and had it only be at the most 15 episodes per season, it wouldn’t have hurt to much to watch. You can build characters up as you go along, you don’t need a whole episode to it. Take OP, Usopp’s suffering at Water 7 was extended over quite a few chapters. He was determined to save the Going Merry, got beaten up by the Franky Family, while he was resting Luffy came to the decision to leave Merry behind, Usopp couldn’t handle it, the pair fought and Usopp was dumped from the crew. Such heavy character building cannot be squeezed into one episode, which Sailor Moon seems convinced to do. One could argue its nice to get it over and done with, but part of the reason why it fails to impress me is that once you’ve squeezed everything into one episode… What happens later? A lot of problems occurred because there was nothing left to write about because things happened all in one hit. If Sailor Moon had solved this problem, I would have forgotten about the bad points to the show. The best part is that there are many hours of research one could dive into behind the show, its storyline is in-depth and solid. You also don’t have to watch the show completely, if you miss some bits in the middle, you can STILL pick it up at the end and not have to give a dam who is who and what they do nor what the storyline is even.