American animation

[gunsmithx]

Posting the exo-squad it seems there isn't really talk about american animation as a whole in here(or maybe there is and i"m too lazy to go past the first page) personally at it's best there are some truely noteworthy things both in movies and TV shows. For TV shows Only some of them really match up, thats all the DCU stuff(justice league, unlimited, superman, batman, beyond, it's spin off, static shock) Disney's Gargoyles, Exo-squad and Avatar, are proabbly the best but you have plenety of good stuff like roughnecks, reboot, and I'm sure of some stuff I can't remember.

 

On the movie side I think it easily matchs up from disney's hayday(mermaid, beauty and the beast, alladin, lion king) to more recent fair like wall-e, meet the robinsons, and the incridibles.

 

I'd say the biggest thing is that there doesn't seem to be much around atm and almost nothing since the DC stuff died off(Only thing I can think off the top of my head is Avatar) movies wise we are getting lots of quality flicks now and even diseny is returning to tradiontial animation(the princess and the frog). I'd really like to see some of that translet into tv shows so instead of the strange crap we have atm.

[Reverend Jax]

Samurai Jack is the shit.

[Silent Bob]

When you talk about "American animation", you kinda have to define exactly what you're talking about. In animation, most of the grunt work for studios (especially those working in television) is handled outside the US. Even shows typically considered American, like the DCU shows or even The Simpsons, are usually animated in Japan or Korea.

 

Disney has animation studios all over the world, in Japan, Australia, France, and many other countries (it used to have a major one here in Orlando but that closed down years ago). They also put together distributing and finance contracts with smaller international animation studios to produce films that weren't necessarily developed entirely under the Disney umbrella (like The Wild, from Canada and Valiant, from the UK). Pixar is one of the only major animation studios that I can think of that is based (as far as I know) entirely in the US.

[gunsmithx]

by that same agrument then you could say the same about alot of japanese animation(alot of grunt work goes to korean studies, several french co productions) the shows I listed are really considered to be american animation and I've never heard anyone say otherwise.

[Lycaon]

Eh, for the most part I am less impressed by American produced animation than I am by its Japanese counterpart.

[Iambaytor]

More times than not "American" aniation (especially the 2D variety) is for mass-production and for the child demographic, it's not hard to understand why someone would go the cheaper route when your audience is a bunch of 8-10 year-old snots that just want bright colors and funny noises.

 

However shows like Reboot, any of the Bruce Timm stuff (or really any of the WB cartoons for that matter), Roughnecks, Invader Zim, any of the Clasky Csupo stuff, Ren and Stimpy, etc. really pushed the limits of animation. Also I don't see the magic of anime's art style. It was done as it is because it was cheap and easy to produce for a country that had just had the everloving fuck nuked out of it 10 years ago, it's extremely simplified animation and even the detailed stuff is rather cartoonish and shoddy looking. I mean I understand it has become the "style" in much the same way that Rocky and Bullwinkle's horribly drawn animation has become a style (for once cheap overseas labor pays off) but neither are really state of the art or even all that good for that matter.

[bishopcruz]

Ok, first off, I think American and Japanese animation have differing strengths. Overall, Anime, as a result of having a much broader set of genre that it can regularly tackle has great flexibility, and the types of stories it can easily tell allow it to work quite well with serialized long running shows, or shorter seasonal stories. This is also a byproduct of most anime being based off of either manga or novels.

 

American animation, as a result of market evolution is pretty much divided into two types: Kid's animation, and Adult Comedy animation. There is clearly a lot less breadth than there is Japan, but by the market focusing on two particular types of shows (and all their sub-genres) it has been able to produce probably the best of those type of shows in the world. The DCAU for example. True a lot of what we get is dreck, but then again, so is a lot of anime.

 

As to some of the other points, I'd define American animation as written, planned, and produced by US companies for a western market, and kinda the reverse for Japanese animation. Studios on both sides of the Pacific farm out animation work to just about everywhere, though Korea is probably the most popular one right now, and the Philippines oddly enough.

 

And just to correct Baytor a bit. The art style of anime wasn't created because it was cheap or easy to animate. The art style came from manga, which borrowed heavily from western classics like Betty Boop and Disney. Now where the lack of funds made itself shown was in the TYPE of animation, a lot of anime does not have much motion, or where a western counterpart might have had 12 frames of animation, an anime would have had 6, and those 6 would likely have represented a lot more motion than their american counterparts. I am still amazed at how well some of the older shows work with such limited animation.

[Reverend Jax]

Yeah, if you want to see where the 'big eye' look of anime came from, look at Astro Boy along side Mickey Mouse.

 

[Reverend Jax]

I've been rewatching Avatar over the past few days and I'm hooked all over again, and I have to say, it is really better than any Anime series I've ever watched. The fights are more exciting than anything I've seen in Naruto or Dragonball, and the characters and story is excellent. It's about as good as Princess Mononoke, but with more humor and it's a series, not a movie. If we have to pit the best of America vs the best of Japan, I wouldn't even side with Cowboy Bebop over Avatar.

[Drifter]

I've been rewatching Avatar over the past few days and I'm hooked all over again, and I have to say, it is really better than any Anime series I've ever watched. The fights are more exciting than anything I've seen in Naruto or Dragonball, and the characters and story is excellent. It's about as good as Princess Mononoke, but with more humor and it's a series, not a movie. If we have to pit the best of America vs the best of Japan, I wouldn't even side with Cowboy Bebop over Avatar.

 

Avatar: The Last Airbender is awesome. Ending was kinda rushed, but still awesome. I'm almost afraid of what M. Night Shamalan is going to do to it in the movies.

[Reverend Jax]

Avatar: The Last Airbender is awesome. Ending was kinda rushed, but still awesome. I'm almost afraid of what M. Night Shamalan is going to do to it in the movies.

 

I typed a big response to that, but I just decided to post it in the Live Action/CGI Anime and Manga movies thread.

 

I don't happen to think the ending was rushed. It was a 90 minute finale to an ending that was 3 seasons in the making. It was exactly the ending the show was moving towards the entire time. I wish there was more, but the ending wasn't rushed.

[gunsmithx]

The last season was very much rushed, the show really needed another book(an air book) because there is alot left hanging(I believe there was some talk of continuting in the universe but who knows, nick seemed to want to flush it down the drain towards the end) there's lots of little things that are left un delt with and I'm not sure we'll ever see it done at this point. that said I loved that show.

[bishopcruz]

Third season wasn't rushed, it just wasted a lot of time in between the awesome. In the end, I felt it wasn't as strong as Season 2, but was very good nonetheless. I dunno if I can say that Avatar is better than any anime though. It is probably one of the best kids' shows of all time though. Took a little while to find its footing but once it did, it was amazing. Also wins because Andrea Romano, the best voice acting director in the business was working on it.