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You Are Already Dead.
Apr. 6th, 2014 11:01 amI took the time the other day to sit down and watch the original animated film version of Fist of the North Star.Like many animes of the period, it hasn't had the best of luck in holding up with the passage of time. I still found it very enjoyable, and the trip down memory lane was rather invigorating, knowing that the themes presented here are still in my daily thoughts.
During a slow moment, I scrolled down through the comments section on Youtube. The usual smattering of randomness and bad English was prevalent, although a couple of commenters struck me in a way I was unprepared for. There was venomous contempt for both the story and the localization, which really bothered me on a major level.
In 1986, anime in the United States was virtually unheard of. The phrase hadn't even been heard over here at that time, since everything animated was unceremoniously dumped into the category of "cartoons". Harmony Gold had brought us Macross in the form of Robotech, and a few other series had flown in under the radar like Voltron and Tranzor Z, after the limited success of early pioneers like Speed Racer and Gigantor. The folks of my generartion who would eventually become known as otakus, Japanophiles and other less savory titles had almost no access to the huge cultural movement of animated entertainment. People of the current generation have grown up with unmitigated access to almost every relevant anime and manga series, and the culture has infiltrated and influenced American pop culture on many levels. There was no internet, no Toonami, no dedicated shelf in the bookstore, no home video releases. If we wanted DBZ, we had to visit foreign grocery stores and hope they rented tapes from overseas, or scour the bulletin boards and fan clubs of the day in hopes of obtaining fansubs. Our generation had to work for our anime fix, and it was always worth it at the time since American animation was so abysmal in comparison, both in terms of quality as well as respect for a viewer's intelligence.
The point I was trying to segue into with that rant being, there was something in the 80s called original video animation, or just OVA(or OAV, depending on who you first heard the term from). This was typically a one-shot production, either an original story or an adaptation of an established series. These had considerably higher budgets than regular televised animes, almost on the level of mainstream release films. In the context of manga adaptations, they were usually fan service, depicting events of their series in radically altered and/or condensed form, since a two hour video was insufficient to accurately depict several volumes' worth of plot development, and the target audience of said videos already being familiar with continuity and relevant details omitted from the production.
Without that perspective it isn't possible to judge the film on its story since it has been intentionally left to the viewer to bridge the gaps and also to note the discrepancies in events. In other words, the film wasn't made for those who weren't fans of the series, something American audiences have asked for in book-to-film adaptions for decades, yet here it was done, for fans first and outsiders secondary, and people want to trash it. How I haven't yet come to the point of sociopathy in the face of sheer ignorance is a mystery to me.
During a slow moment, I scrolled down through the comments section on Youtube. The usual smattering of randomness and bad English was prevalent, although a couple of commenters struck me in a way I was unprepared for. There was venomous contempt for both the story and the localization, which really bothered me on a major level.
In 1986, anime in the United States was virtually unheard of. The phrase hadn't even been heard over here at that time, since everything animated was unceremoniously dumped into the category of "cartoons". Harmony Gold had brought us Macross in the form of Robotech, and a few other series had flown in under the radar like Voltron and Tranzor Z, after the limited success of early pioneers like Speed Racer and Gigantor. The folks of my generartion who would eventually become known as otakus, Japanophiles and other less savory titles had almost no access to the huge cultural movement of animated entertainment. People of the current generation have grown up with unmitigated access to almost every relevant anime and manga series, and the culture has infiltrated and influenced American pop culture on many levels. There was no internet, no Toonami, no dedicated shelf in the bookstore, no home video releases. If we wanted DBZ, we had to visit foreign grocery stores and hope they rented tapes from overseas, or scour the bulletin boards and fan clubs of the day in hopes of obtaining fansubs. Our generation had to work for our anime fix, and it was always worth it at the time since American animation was so abysmal in comparison, both in terms of quality as well as respect for a viewer's intelligence.
The point I was trying to segue into with that rant being, there was something in the 80s called original video animation, or just OVA(or OAV, depending on who you first heard the term from). This was typically a one-shot production, either an original story or an adaptation of an established series. These had considerably higher budgets than regular televised animes, almost on the level of mainstream release films. In the context of manga adaptations, they were usually fan service, depicting events of their series in radically altered and/or condensed form, since a two hour video was insufficient to accurately depict several volumes' worth of plot development, and the target audience of said videos already being familiar with continuity and relevant details omitted from the production.
Without that perspective it isn't possible to judge the film on its story since it has been intentionally left to the viewer to bridge the gaps and also to note the discrepancies in events. In other words, the film wasn't made for those who weren't fans of the series, something American audiences have asked for in book-to-film adaptions for decades, yet here it was done, for fans first and outsiders secondary, and people want to trash it. How I haven't yet come to the point of sociopathy in the face of sheer ignorance is a mystery to me.
