Welcome to the Fantasy Zone
This Zone is dedicated to the lesser known elements of anime hosted by the cast of Victory Script.
What weapon is the best?
Who will win in this Death Battle?
Is this costume practical?
You name it, it's all covered here in the Fantasy Zone!
The final scores are in, honestly there isn't really anything to add to the scores, it wasn't exactly a stellar season.
Nodoka does make for an adorable character and somehow avoids being labelled the sick girl, my best hope for her is that she confronts her past head on which thankfully she did.
Chiyu I feel like we've covered before and that would be compelling if her choices weren't so boring, I'm open to a surprise but don't expect anything.
Hinata has so much weeb energy it's impossible not to love her, yet she has very well designed emotions that make her multi dimensional, she gets better writing than most Precures.
Asumi.....who? I'm sorry she's so one note I forgot she was even in the cast.
Hanadera Nodoka - Cure Grace - 8.4/10
Sawaizumi Chiyu - Cure Fontaine - 6.8/10
Hiramitsu Hinata - Cure Sparkle - 9.0/10
Fuurin Asumi - Cure Earth - 4.0/10
Best Dressed Award - All Look Amazing but I'd have to give it to Grace.
I'm here today to give you a challenge, can you criticise your favourite anime?
This test is designed to see if you can accept flaws in your personal top 10 anime.
I'll attempt it with mine and we'll see how I get on.
10. Nisekoi
I often refer to Nisekoi as a better written Love Hina but still like Love Hina, Nisekoi's biggest sin is how crowded the cast gets and how pointless many of the late arrivals get.
9. Jing King of Bandits
There are a couple of stories that took more than one episode, Jing as a concept works better as a situation of the week show. Jing as a character is not suited to long stories, it's a similar problem found in Kino's Journey.
8. Fairy Tail
This one is easy, it gets away with far too much Power of Love and Friendship bullshit.
7. Cowboy Bebop
Within the last couple of years it's showing it's age more and more with less grace, Evangelion suffered the same thing.
6. Ranma 1/2
Is it the length? Nope, just Happosai. This anime would be so much higher if not for Happosai. That and you realise how terrible some of the supporting cast is.
5. Precure
Precure was clearly influenced by many of the Magical Girl shows that came before and during it's 16 years of broadcast to very different returns, Precure at it's worst looks like a pale imitation of a better show, it also has a habit of following it's best seasons with weak seasons. It's current problem is that it's running out of ideas.
4. Lupin the 3rd
Screw it, it's Lupin. That's the logic you need for Lupin the 3rd. It can't be anything else, it's design doesn't support it, so when it tried to do more art house style with practically no gags, it falls flat.
3. Dirty Pair
Dirty Pair has so many iterations that it's hard to keep consistent quality control, there's always going to be one you like and one you hate.
2. Slayers
Has the weakest dub of the top 10 and can easily have stories that do absolutely nothing for the franchise and that's not just the filler talking.
1. Black Lagoon
It's world building is compromised by it's inability to work with it's languages. When needing to use more than one language it can break the story. The Japanese sub draws attention to a character that is bad at English while speaking in Japanese, meanwhile some of Revy's best moments are when actress Megumi Toyoguchi uses English which ultimately gets lost in the dub. I'm also a little bitter about Roberta's ending.
That's my little list, now I challenge you to try and criticise your own top ten. I'm curious to know what you would say about them.
Welcome back to confessions as I look at my mishaps with Dragonballz in my youth.
I Injured Myself Attempting the Kamehameha
Who doesn't want to perform this attack? The stance itself does bear a resemblance to a technique I believe comes from a form of Kenpo and me having some interest in Martial Arts decided to give it a try.
Only I went into the stance so hard I sprained my ankle.
I Discovered Dragonballz Through Ice Cream
What many English speaking nations may not know is Dragonballz existed in many European nations long before an English Dub, one of which was Spain where I had many holidays in my youth. On one visit I discovered Dragonballz Ice Cream, orange candy ice cream with Bubblegum centre. Think large Dippin' Dots with sour Bubblegum in it. I was never allowed to have it, probably because it was the most expensive thing on the list, that moment was my first experience of Dragonballz.
I Thought Yamcha Knew Spirit Bomb
I blame a translation error as well as viewing the episodes in an odd order due to fighting my sister for TV rights, a battle she usually won. What didn't help were the attacks looking similar in design.
I Knew Who Trunks was Before his Introduction
The opening sequence Rock the Dragon, one of the better English Translation songs showed a character that didn't start off with the main cast, it was only when Super Saiyan became a thing that I questioned who he was, having remembered what was mentioned about the last remaining Saiyans in the run up to the Freiza Saga, I deduced that he could only be Vegeta's son, since there's no way they would throw in a new Saiyan with no explanation. When he did appear, I was right.
I Believed Tien's Arm Could Grow Back
Censorship is weird but considering I saw Piccolo do it several episodes back and Tien not really being 100% human, it wouldn't surprise me if he did.
Inspired by Otaku Confessions which can be linked below, I've decided to do my own Confessions and the very first one is based on my first ever encounter with anime.
http://www.theotaku.com/worlds/otakuconfessions
In the early 90s at around 7-8 years old, I loved the Gameboy, it was my first console, although my lack of understanding behind the games lead me to end up with flash carts, a compilation of bootlegged and legit games on one Gameboy Cartridge. One of these had a Ranma 1/2 game called Ranma 1/2 Kakuren Bodesu Match, a puzzle game where you push blocks around to defeat enemies and find special items to complete each stage.
Gameplay footage below
So how did I work out the plot to Ranma 1/2 based on just this game?
It actually comes from another game also on the Gameboy called Catrap.
In that game you play as a Catboy and a Catgirl. The Catboy pushes blocks that go across the screen, the Catgirl pushes blocks one space; based on that information, I worked out that my character was transforming into a girl everytime I hit a bucket and back into a boy everytime I hit a kettle. I even worked out that the girl looking for you at the end of each stage must be the girlfriend and every enemy was trying to separate you from her, pretty much the plot to 90% of Ranma. Only a few years later I finally watched Ranma and linked it to the game I played.
This isn't the only time this sort of thing happened. The next confession will explain this.
Welcome to Genre Savvy, a look at unique animation genres that I'd like to give unique names to. To start with, we're looking at Pink Cadillac shows.
Description
Pink Cadillac shows are stylized animations picking all the best elements of Post World War 20th Century pop culture, anything from 50s diners to skating to beach towns to Beverly Hills. As most of these came from the 80s the so called "Pink Cadillac" comes from the Cadillac Eldorado, a 50s icon looking rather fitting in pink in the 80s Aesthetic.
The main characteristic of this genre is rooted in making the world seem perfect with problems resolved in 20 minutes.
Origins
The earliest examples of these shows start with late 60s cartoon the Archie Show which in it's original form has changed very little; Hanna Barbara and the film Grease further cemented the elements along with Happy Days leading up to the 80s and very briefly in the 90s where this genre was at it's most prominent.
Blueprint
The easiest setting is High School often following a group of trope heavy characters.
For Males: Perfect built jock, Fonzy clone, Short nerd, the fat guy, the skater boys, Obnoxious bully and the crazy one.
For Females: Perfect blonde, her best friend, bookworm, bitchy rival and the one girl who acts normal.
For Adults: Eccentric Teachers, neurotic parents, over stuffy authority figures and anyone you can identify as Pop or Mom without being your parent.
Other Settings: The Diner, surfside towns in California or Florida, Beverly Hills, concerts or if not set in school, Urban jungles where everyone is streetwise.
Examples
Two big offenders are Galaxy High and Gravedale High, despite the space and monster themes, much of the cast takes from the character list. Hero High is also unashamed of taking on all these character tropes.
Girls cartoons get hit pretty hard with this with the likes of JEM, Maxie's World and the notoriously bad Beverly Hills Teens. Fashion dolls easily lend themselves to this style so it comes as no surprise that they have so many, surprisingly not Barbie, missed an audience there.
Some of the more unique takes on it come from the likes of Denver the Last Dinosaur and Rude Dawg and the Dweebs, the latter being made from a surfwear brand and the fact that he does drive a Pink Cadillac. The last examples that take an even stranger form is the Q*bert cartoon which is very blatant for it's inspiration.
What Happened After?
The genre died out in the mid 90s helped by shows like Doug and Hey Arnold taking the usual bland story telling and giving it a modern update effectively killing the genre for the better. Totally Spies and Winx Club along with numerous girls cartoons still use some elements but are modern enough to get away with it and those shows along with Miraculous Ladybug are action shows first, pity DC Super Hero Girls didn't get the memo.
While it's no longer a cartoon staple, it became a juggernaut genre for kiddy sitcoms starting with Saved by the Bell leading up to 90% of Nickelodeon and Disney Channel and somehow becoming a worse genre throughout the last 20 years evolving from Pink Cadillac to Bland School Sitcom.
How does Anime Compare?
Anime's take on it is mostly Shojo, 80s Shojo to be exact.
The trend setters of Fashion Lala, Creamy Mami, Minky Momo and Sweet Mint are often problem solving with magic shows, the fact that some become idols only add to the aesthetic; while much of the content can be seen as bland, it can be excused by employing some more serious elements that don't make the protagonists too Mary Sue.
Sailor Moon would kill off the 80s magical girl in favour of the Magical warrior and it wasn't until the 2000s that we had it comeback in the idol obsession that is shojo anime today in a genre I dub "Everyone is an Idol"
School anime don't follow this as much as Pink Cadillac uses tons of Americana but it has a different problem that has become just as notorious as Isekai. Tune in next time as I look at "There's a School for That"