Podcast

Questionable interview with my neighbor Millionaire Mike, Enjoy!!

Anime=Art

When Anime Almost Took Over The WORLD!!!!!!

Take a look back at your childhood what do you remember, maybe playgrounds, summer baseball leagues, jumping on a trampoline, playing catch with your dog Skippy until he broke loose from his leash and ran away (oh Skippy please come back). Those are all wrong, our childhood was full of anime, whether you’d like to believe it or not. (Well maybe)

Remember the movie Matrix, it found critical acclaim around the world, and is deemed by many as one of the most influential scifi movies of our generation. Fun fact, the Wachowski brothers who directed the Matrix, note that the Matrix is highly influenced by the Anime Ghost in a Shell.

Whaaaat!?!?!

Yea, true story mate, back in the late 90’s and early 2000’s anime was hot, hotter than Jay Z (not really but go with me). Anime like Yugioh, Pokemon and Beyblade were taking over our youth. Not that these anime had complex storylines or great character development. Their main selling point was catchy phrases, cool character designs and merchandise (toys, trading cards etc) . Kids loved them and school playgrounds became battle arenas for children wanting to battle their friends for glory. I can attest to this, every kid around me had Pokemon, or Yugioh cards. Bathroom breaks were used to play Beyblade, which resulted in us getting in trouble and going back to class with full bladders.

Like every trend, slowly but surely, it died down, but it never completely vanished. Even today Pokemon and Yugioh cards are still extremely popular, not as much as their glory days, but still going strong.

Picture found: http://i.imgur.com/oCdO57z.jpg

The second wave to hit in 2004 was Naruto, Naruto hit western television waves, it gained instant success and quickly took over Cartoon Networks entire Saturday night prime time slots. It became a gate way to other anime, many other individuals say Naruto was the anime to get them into anime. Naruto was an anime that translated well with western audience, the story was thrilling and character design was something that was relatable (Naruto's blue eyes and blond hair). Its success died down after the infamous 80 episode filler run. If you read my early post Things I Hate about anime you will know what I am talking about.

Picture found at: http://www.funnyjunk.com/channel/

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Now with services like Hulu, Netflix and Crunchyroll anime is becoming more accessible to western audiences. The last huge wave was back in 2013 with Attack on Titan. It gained global critical success faster than any other anime on this post. Marvel even created a one-shot comic which was quite disappointing, but a western adapted movie is in the works for Attack on Titan, how bout that.

Spring Sports!!!

I should really go out and do some exercise, but why would I. When I have all these sports anime to get me into shape. Sports anime range from crazy unbelievable action, to well analyzed thought out shows.

For example, Baby Steps is a story about an honor student who takes an interest in tennis, as an activity to stay in shape. He falls in love with the sport and aims to become a professional. This anime analyzes tennis and each match perfectly. I play tennis and I find it interesting just how much thought is put into this anime. It's much slower paced than the other two anime on my list, but just as good.

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Secondly we have Kuroko no Basket, this anime is crazy over the top, anime fun. The matches are fast paced, and art is great. if you like basket ball give this anime a try.

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Last but not least is Hajime no Ippo, an anime about boxing. The Story revolves around a boy named Ippo, who is bullied at school. One day some bullies are beating him up and he gets help from a local boxer. Ippo decides to join boxing not to get back at the bullies but because he wants to know what it means to be strong. This anime is without a doubt one of my all time favorites, and in my mind a classic. This anime mixes in well thought out fights just like the first anime but it also delivers over the top crazy anime action that we all love. True underdog story with heart and style.

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What I Hate About Anime

My fellow bloggers I’ve asked all of you to join me here today because I want to address the accusations brought against me…….. They are true….

“Crowd Gasp”

Let me finish!!!………

“The room still in a frenzy begins to calm down”

Let me rephrase that, although some accusations are true, others are not…… I do love Anime

Individual in the crowd screams out “I KNEW IT”

I will never deny that, or at least my heart won’t allow me too, but I am not blind to the problems and issues that Anime faces.

Reporter “Such as?”

Fan service, it’s a horrible strategy to gain quick, easy and cheap popularity. By using female or at other times male characters as eye candy. Producers hope to gain increase sales in manga, DVD’s, and mainly merchandise. It’s sickening to see an Anime being devalued, because the producers or author think it would be okay to show a half-naked girl for no good reason, other than to just draw in an audience.

Crowd “good god this is awful”

Maybe something as bad as fan service is fillers, filler episodes are produced when an adapted Anime is catching up to its original source material. I understand why filler episodes are made but when a show is over infested with filler episodes, it becomes cringe worthy. A good example of this would be Naruto, or Bleach. Both Anime are exciting and my personal favorites but when you have almost 50 percent of the anime series filled with unexciting, unoriginal, or out of context fillers episodes, it becomes really annoying. Don’t get me wrong some filler episodes can be really good for example the DBZ driving episode or the Power Naruto filler arc but those cases are rare.

Last but not least is forced comedy, I love to laugh as much as the next guy.
haha.....see.

Anime can do a pretty good job of mixing action with comedy, but when you are in the middle of an intense scene the last thing I want to see is two characters exchanging comedic lines. This tends to happen from time to time and it leaves me wondering “Why, why would you do such a thing”.  It is not one of my biggest pet peeves but it is up there.

So I beg you Holy God of Anime please get rid of all of these hindrances or at the very least, lower the times I have to come across these moments. Thank you everyone that will be all

Crowd explodes in a sea of questions

Hey Liandro what the heck do you think you were doing, I only asked you to do a mic check, not go and rant about God knows what, now you've got the room in a frenzy and the guest speaker hasn’t even gotten on stage yet.