The New Adventures of ILXor: The Animated Series Poll voting and campaigning thread

Are there a lot of women w lead roles in the creation of anime? Serious question.

Xp

― Οὖτις, Monday, August 12, 2019 1:41 PM (eleven minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

I don't know I just felt like fping you for the generalization which is faintly smacks of japan is fucked up!

Are end title themes allowed? Especially since some series have no opening theme or perfunctory 5 second opening sequences.

― Coelacanth Green (Leee), Monday, August 12, 2019 1:43 PM (thirteen minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

Yeah why not

Five episodes into A Place Further Than the Universe - it's lovely so far! Looking forward to the trip developing.

Never heard of Chapi Chapo until half an hour ago, but it has a disarming style of stop motion movement (lots of jump cuts) and is characterised by almost incessant laughter and the best theme tune ever. Also rendered in a lovely cubist setting.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8R6EB69M2jA

xp lots of women writers and artists, not a ton of directors but more than there used to be in the 90s/00s. the aforementioned A Place Further than the Universe was directed by a woman, as were K-On and Monthly Girls Nozaki-kun from our nominations list, dunno if there are any others on there.

Chapi Chapo theme is immortal; also by noted film composer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/François_de_Roubaix

Chapi Chapo is a freakin' delight, is what it is.

I also posted this in the nominations thread, but you really can't go wrong sifting through the animated shorts they ran on Pinwheel: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinwheel_(TV_series)

Even some American shows have multiple theme songs. I specified the original theme song for Garfield on my ballot because the other one is eh, whereas for Rocko's Modern Life, both theme songs are good (and similar) and I didn't feel like specifying. Might be easiest to just lump all theme songs together under the one show

Theme songs with the same words and melody but a new arrangement (eg Steven Universe) are the same for our purposes.

I love rules.

idk if this should go here since i missed the nominations thread, but here are some 00s/10s anime that i haven't seen mentioned that are pretty great:

uchouten kazoku (eccentric family): this is my pick for anime of a magical bent. it's a super fun show - creatures from japanese folklore coexist with humans in modern-day kyoto, focuses on a family of tanuki dealing with guilt and grief in a really delightfully drawn world operating by its own strange logic. if you've seen tatami galaxy or the night is short, walk on girl, this is by the same writer and it feels of a piece, maybe set in the same universe.

silver spoon: fullmetal alchemist writer does a coming-of-age story set in an agricultural high school. its a very chill slice-of-life that also touches lightly on the economic realities of japanese farmers. kinda feels like it could be some govt-sponsored propaganda to encourage urban youth to repopulate the countryside but in a good way lol

kids on the slope: cowboy bebop/samurai champloo director made an anime set in the 60s about jazz and friendship!

from the new world: dystopian sci-fi set in the future where a small percentage of the population has developed psychic abilities in 2013, totally restructuring human society. an underclass of "monster rats" serves humans, kids discover a secret and face the consequences as adults.

dennou coil: spooky digimon. kids in the near future live in a world where AR tech is used in everyday life. they hang out, mess around at the margins of the code, confront death, and risk losing their souls. honestly better than it sounds, came out in 2007 so it predates black mirror. it has a really interesting tone that i've never really seen done anywhere else before. starts off like a children's show but then starts drifting towards horror. mitsuo iso, who did key animation for neon genesis evangelion and early ghibli, directed this.

princess jellyfish: unemployed neurotic obsessive nerdy women try to grow up and save their boarding house from redevelopment with the help of a stylish, crossdressing manic pixie dream boy (coded cis-male imo, but it's been a while so i may be wrong)

paradise kiss: high-achieving girl feels aimless until she starts hanging out with fashion design kids and starts figuring out what she wants from life. nice soundtrack that happens to include lol franz ferdinand but it works. at a key moment in the show, this shoegazey song starts playing and it's perfect. a couple of decently portrayed overtly queer characters too iirc, esp for its time

march comes in like a lion: teen shogi (japanese chess) prodigy deals with depression, learns how to make friends/maintain relationships with other humans, and eats a lot of delicious food

yona of the dawn: what if there was a shounen (boys' action/adventure) anime but with a female lead?? swords, magic, and dragons

the lost village: horror comedy about trauma that features a giant deranged penguin. all of the characters go by their online handle irl and are terrible. thought this was some stupid, messy fun, but ymmv

kino's journey (2003): a mysterious girl and her talking motorcycle wander a world inspired by calvino's invisible cities. there's a remake too but idk anything about it

natsume yuujinchou: gentle boy who sees spirits tries to help them and slowly opens his heart, mushishi vibes

humanity has declined: post-apocalyptic dark comedy where a girl tries to mediate between humans and fairies

hyouge mono: set in the era of the warring states, this one's a comedy about a man obsessed with tea ceremony/wabi-sabi/art

shouwa genroku rakugo shinjuu: traditional comedic storytellers (rakugoka) try to make it in the 1930s through the 1990s

gankutsuou: sci-fi take on the count of monte cristo + mecha. visually arresting

most of these are like 12-24 eps long.

After doing some digging, I'm going to give nu-She-Ra another go; I watched the first season and didn't care too much to go on, but apparently it gets much better by S2?

I’ve only caught eps here and there when my kids are watching it but it seems v high quality and interesting the stuff I’ve seen

xp great list thanks, i haven't seen any of those & only a few were on my radar already

also Barakamon is one more of my anime favs that i missed in my last post - hotshot calligraphy artist gets sent off to live in a small island village after a public meltdown, has to learn how to get along with people in a close-knit community while finding new inspiration for his art. really nice little slice-of-life character piece.

Would we be better off with a 'recommend me some anime' thread? I don't think any of it's going to bother the poll much with a few exceptions (Eva, Cowboy Bebop, possibly Gatchaman if people feel more bound to the 'saturday morning cartoons'?)

After doing some digging, I'm going to give nu-She-Ra another go; I watched the first season and didn't care too much to go on, but apparently it gets much better by S2?

Also, besides Steven Universe it's by far the queerest American kids' cartoon I've ever seen. There's a few lesbian romances going on that are incredibly obvious if not spelled out as such, and Bow is also explicitly to have two dads who are in a loving long-term relationship.

"Bow is also explicitly shown to have two dads"

steven universe is worth sticking w/ imo.

I most definitely is, I would argue SU is the best TV series of this decade, cartoon or live-actiom. But the first season starts really slow, and the first half of it is mostly just establishing the protagonists and the setting (though there are some hints dropped that will pay out later). The big story arc that defines the rest of the series doesn't kick in until the "Mirror Gem"/"Ocean Gem" two-parter, and the magnitude of the story is only properly revealed in the season 1 finale, which is amazing. So if you're undecided, I'd recommend trying to continue until the end of the first season. If the finale doesn't work for you, the rest of the series won't either, but if it does work, you're probably hooked alredy.

feel like i should rewatch some of my old adult swim faves for this like Sealab and Harvey Birdman but also don't want to find out that they're not funny anymore

i wanted to like steven universe and it's certainly something i would have liked to have had as a child, but it can be too corny at times for me and the overall morals of it are a mess - "it's possible to talk to and work things out with your enemies" is admirable enough for a kids show but when it extends that to even the main villains who lead a genocidal alien empire it doesn't really land at all

Harvey Birdman and Sealab are both still pretty funny, Sealab maybe less pleasant overall, and it falls off pretty hard.

luckily i am certain that space ghost coast to coast still holds up

i would love to watch avatar before i file my ballot but i'm pretty sure i won't have time

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HSxECJNYPuA

I really appreciate all the anime recommends. I have a rare amount of time on my hands this month and will gladly devour what I can before nominating. I’m sure at least a couple of new-to-me shows will sneak onto my ballot.

Still enjoying A Place Further Than the Universe. I loved the episode that was just the battling neuroses of two characters (the stubborn one and the one who doesn’t like other people being considerate towards her). I’ve also never seen an anime that felt so naturalistically contemporary.

I'm not an anime head but in the course of researching nominations I somehow stumbled upon this weird show (The World of Golden Eggs) which made me laugh for the few minutes that I watched it and which it looks like no one has ever discussed in the searchable history of ILX:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dx6ZdoWB-6s

Harvey Birdman was excellent, I really should give it a rewatch. I have the DVD box set somewhere.

i can't stop screaming about how brilliant the big o is. i just got into the second season and it echoes evangelion even more than i remembered? in its own very noir way of course, but still folding into complex inward universes just all of the sudden, like it's no big deal

Oh - i have the Birman dvs somewhere too!

I had to bail on Steven Universe. Gravity Falls got more enjoyable as it went along, but SU was the opposite for me.

I'm watching through S1 of Gravity Falls. Initial episodes made it seem like it'd be a slightly "fractured" (per bullwinkle show) Family Values sitcom. It's better than that.

its interesting how a lot of current shows have that same artwork those 2 shows do, with the very curvey heads/big mouths thing going on.

...or I dunno maybe it is just those 2, haha.

Is Neon Genesis Evangelion worth watching? I know there's not really time now. I watched an episode once and wasn't sure...I'm not big into sci-fi/fantasy, unless it has a strong emotional core that transcends the genre constraints.

yes, it has a very strong emotional core that transcends the genre constraints

i consider it one of the major works of art of the past thirty years but ymmv

I never even finished it but yes, watch it

Be prepared for a lot of screaming.

I'm a few episodes into She-Ra season 2, and my socks are still on my feet. However, I'm pretty sure that Catra is secretly the show's main character.

I watched a couple eps of Gravity Falls, and it's pretty funny, though I'm yet to be hooked.

Eva is classic and is, a little bit, set up to lure in casual mecha fans by appearing to merely be a mecha show with some edgy trimming and mysteries etc. It doesn't necessarily stop being that, but yeah the emotional/psychological stuff develops.

Thanks! I’m good with screaming. I will get around to it then. Though alas, not in time for voting. Finding so much that is highly promising from this list!

omg each episode of Pat and Mat is a perfect demonstration of entropy; I adore it so, so much

its interesting how a lot of current shows have that same artwork those 2 shows do, with the very curvey heads/big mouths thing going on.

Sometimes disparaged as the "CalArts Style", usually by everything-sucks-these-days types on 4Chan and social media.

Gravity Falls suffered some long delays between episodes in its initial run (a very common problem with cartoons lately), but it was a really fun series to follow and discuss as it came out, with all the codes, cryptic clues, spoken or visual hints of the larger plot, etc. A fundamentalist Christian put up a video rant on Youtube about this evil show transmitting "Satanic symbols" to unsuspecting children, which was jokingly considered essential viewing by the fanbase.

I adore Steven Universe, but agree that, while Peridot and Lapis' character arcs were done quite brilliantly, some of the later character "redemptions" definitely felt too convenient and far-fetched. The plot pacing takes sudden leaps at times too.

Guys, I might've had one or two too many last weekend and ordered the GI Joe and Transformers complete series on DVD. That may have happened, who can say, really. But rather than feeling regret and shame in the wake of a grievous lapse of judgment I'm pleasantly surprised to announce that I'm finding GI Joe a goddamn delight. It's no wonder it appealed so heavily when I was age eight because it was clearly created by eight-year-olds. Like Tom Sciolli's revisionist history seems positively restrained the longer I watch this stuff. I don't think I've had such a 'this is nuts but I love it' permagrin plastered across my face since the last time I read Kirby's New Gods material.

I don't think I've had the chance to share this beautiful Yoko Kanno/Maaya Sakamoto opening theme on any other threads. The Record of Lodoss War TV show was pretty bad so I think the song has largely been forgotten

https://youtu.be/9aUfGClzhdI

i'm surprised to see that Gi joe seems like it holds up better than the Transformers cartoon (i'm assuming through omission).

also: the Zim Movie came out on Netflix yesterday! watched it immediately. was not disappointed.

I adore Steven Universe, but agree that, while Peridot and Lapis' character arcs were done quite brilliantly, some of the later character "redemptions" definitely felt too convenient and far-fetched.

Personally I really like how it sticks to its guns and refussd to show violence as the ultimate answer to any conflict, and that there are always other options. Yes, some of the "redemptions" are quite convenient (though the show isn't still over, so we still might sees some repercussions of them), but on the other hand they never come from out of nowhere, it's always estabishled why and how someone might change their minds. Also, it's not like the show has ever said all the deeds of the antagonists are totally forgiven and forgotten, rather than that the antagonists are so powerful that fighting them would be futile, as they would only win, or (in the best case) everyone would die in the fight, with both of those options resulting in massive destruction and collateral damage. So the protagonists trying to come up with a third alternative to that doesn't strike me as bad moral, even if the nuances of guilt and forgiveness are beyond the scope a kids' sci-fi cartoon.

Sorry to be Claymation Guy again but...despite being an Aardman fan I'd never seen Rex The Runt until bow. It is the absolute best! Fine-spirited bonkers meta British surrealism, with a sense of humour well ahead of its time and some of the best callbacks I've seen. If you've ever smiled at Wallace & Gromit, give it a go

I don't love Aardman but always had a real soft spot for Rex the Runt.

So far I've only managed to do Neon Genesis Evangelion out of my 'to-watch' list but it will definitely make my ballot, it's ace.

I think I might have heard the shit things about John K before but forgot them completely until they were raised upthread. I'm torn about what to do but Ren & Stimpy was so ridiculously formative for me that I can't leave it off.

Same. I can’t justify leaving R&S off, but I’ll probably never be able to enjoy his cartoons in the same way. So dropped it down accordingly.

Ditto about Ren and Stimpy. I hadn’t heard anything about the guy until this thread (also, didn’t he get fired in 1992 or something?) and that will make a difference to how I reflect on it, but as an early introduction to surrealist humour (surrealism in general?) it is unparalleled for me.