I Am A Japanese School Teacher

[Great Rumbler]

Azrael is an African-American man working as an assistant English teacher in a Japanese school. In late 2004 he decided to chronicle many of the things that happened to him on a website named "I Am A Japanese School Teacher." This is not the Japan you think you know.

In many ways this website reminds me of Acts of Gord, in that it is a collection of often humorous stories, except in this case it deals with precocious Japanese school children and not ignorant gamers. None-the-less it hilarious and well worth the time spent reading it.

http://outpostnine.com/editorials/teacher.html

[Dark Jaguar]

Y'see, Japan's an island no bigger than California, where everything is filtered. There are so few foreigners here, their only impressions of things outside of Japan comes from the media. And to be honest, they don't really give a damn about anything other than America. So yeah, try to imagine a country where the perceptions of you are created by your movies, music, and MTV. And when you stop crying and shaking at the sheer horror of that thought, I'll be here waiting.

I'm still not finished crying at the thought here... but in between sobs let me say my impression of them is everyone is overdramatic and gets into random fights at school using super powers.

[Geno]

I bet they can twirl their swords really, really fast and make a whirlwind or something.

[Darunia]

I wonder if they're all really poorly animated and dubbed with big eyes in real life, too.

[Great Rumbler]

Stereotypical American ignorance of other cultures...'D.

[A Black Falcon]

The point is that all cultures are ignorant of other ones, right? :)

[Great Rumbler]

But they don't have to be.

[Undertow]

I wonder if they're all really poorly animated and dubbed with big eyes in real life, too.

I bet their lives are based around ridiculous subplots, and their personalities range from either extremly introvert/ mysterious -or- extrovert/ hyper.

[Darunia]

Stereotypical American ignorance of other cultures...'D.

My ranking on their crappy animation is being ignorant of other cultures...?

[EdenMaster]

But they don't have to be.

...and when Utopia dawns, then we won't be. Till then, unless I plan on visiting, I could really give a damn about what's happening most anyplace but where <i>I</i> live. Am I being narrowminded? I prefer to think of it as "filtering out knowedge of no value to me".

[A Black Falcon]

That's one definition, but "narrowminded" would be just as true, I'd say... no value to you? That's not true, there is always value in trying to understand other cultures.

[Great Rumbler]

My ranking on their crappy animation is being ignorant of other cultures...?

Actually, I was referring to the other two posts. You're still wrong about anime though, but that's a fight for another day.

[Darunia]

Well, I'm relieved that you weren't ranking on me, but I'm not wrong... by standards of quality, your typical Speed Racers and Lupins and Little Nemos and My Neighbor Totoro's don't hold up to what Disney can produce. The animation is choppy, the dubbings aren't usually too great, and they appear all together thoroughly cartoon-like, whereas in some films like Aladdin or Beauty and the Beast, Disney managed to craft a marginally superior product via better animation and production.

[Great Rumbler]

First of all, the dubbing has nothing to do with the companies that made the anime, that's entirely on the shoulders of American companies.

by standards of quality, your typical Speed Racers and Lupins and Little Nemos and My Neighbor Totoro's don't hold up to what Disney can produce.

Speed Racer and Lupin are TV series which mean production values are lower and they came out in the 60's and 70's. Little Nemo I haven't seen, but My Neighbor Totoro looks good though slighlty below American production at the time. You DO have to take into account that animated Japanese movies cost about $15-$20 million [Spirited Away cost $17 million] while animated American movies cost between $25-$140 million [Treasure Planet being the most costly I could find, and Beauty and the Beats being the least]. So, Japanese anime will not be able to match American animation is you look purely at the technical aspects [use of still shots, frame-rate, ect.], but I've seen Japanese animes that have come really close.

they appear all together thoroughly cartoon-like

If you only look at what's on the surface [i.e. what's most popular] I can see why you'd think that. But if you look deeper into what's not so popular you'll find that's not always the case. Watch either of the three Patlabor movies [though the first has a few cartoony moments], Jin-Roh: The Wolf Brigade, Ghost in the Shell 1 and 2, Milennium Actress, Haibane Renmei, Texhnolyze, any of the Mobile Suit Gundam series [not Gundam Wing or G Gundam] or any movies by Hayao Miyazaki [in particular Princess Mononoke, Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind, and Porco Rosso].

[Dark Jaguar]

You COULD give a damn? Don't you mean you couldn't give a damn EM?

[Dark Jaguar]

http://katamarisimpson.ytmnd.com/

http://eightbitkatamaridamacy.ytmnd.com/

[Great Rumbler]

:D

[Dark Jaguar]

HOLY! I mean, I just posted that TWO SECONDS ago! I should have known your katamari sense was that strong...

[Great Rumbler]

That was actually in response to your older post.

[Dark Jaguar]

Okay, now respond to the one AFTER that one.

[Great Rumbler]

The response I made works well for both.

[Dark Jaguar]

:D

[geoboy]

Well, I'm relieved that you weren't ranking on me, but I'm not wrong... by standards of quality, your typical Speed Racers and Lupins and Little Nemos and My Neighbor Totoro's don't hold up to what Disney can produce. The animation is choppy, the dubbings aren't usually too great, and they appear all together thoroughly cartoon-like, whereas in some films like Aladdin or Beauty and the Beast, Disney managed to craft a marginally superior product via better animation and production.

I am by no means some anime phreak (in fact, you could even say I don't care for it much), but even I can see how wrong you are. Anime can be extremely beautiful and well drawn, animated, and colored. After all, it's just a style. Some studios do a better job than others. You can't compare one style to only the North American style as produced by Disney. There are plenty of shitty looking American cartoons as well (even Disney has their fair share, such as their straight-to-DVD craptoons). Turn on the TV on Saturday morning and you'll see half of the cartoons look like they were made with Macromedia Flash and the other half are the cheap imported animes.

So you favor one artistic style over the other. Good for you. That doesn't make one superior and the other trash, or your opinion fact. You should really have a more artistically open mind. Why? Because it won't make you look like a pompously ignorant Goron. Oh right, this is Darunia I'm talking to. :P