29th August 2005, 8:48 AM
Great Rumbler Wrote:So far dex hasn't done that, and besides he's new so I'll let him go lightly for now.
My nephew Dex has not posed in this thread, when I visit my mom I use his account blah blah blah I explained it in the above post.
GR you have not been through film school so while you can argue the validity of anime's good points to me you cannot continue a debate with me based on the more advanced understandings of film making to include direction, motivation, writing and structure. Yes, there are exceptions to every rule, yes some anime is just damn cool. But it is all, in comparison to any good movie that obeys the guidelines of story telling, convoluted trite bullshit that only makes sense to children who dont have any grasp of what an adult is and how the adult ID is formed. Perhaps, anime is trying to be experimental in that sense, but it comes off as ridiculous hyper-visual krap with little character development.
I have seen most of the things you mentioned and I can tell you that they do fall in to what I described. Serial Experiments: Lain is writen by Chiaki Konaka and directed by Ryutaro Nakamura. Do an IMDB search on them and tell me that they dont fall in to what I described. I have not seen that series but here's what I found:
In fact, the story itself fits what I said perfectly:
Amazon.com video review: In serial experiments lain, things get very weird very quickly, and they stay that way. A schoolgirl commits suicide, but several days later her classmates receive e-mail from the dead girl. One--an introverted 13-year-old called Lain--replies, and her correspondent claims not to be dead, but to have passed into the "wired world." Eventually, Lain must join her. What follows is a story that combines virtual-reality, nanotechnology, a host of other science fiction concepts, and a healthy dose of postmodern paranoia. It would be unfair to reveal much more about the plot, but the phrase "nothing is what it seems" applies to just about everything in this compelling anime.
The beauty of serial experiments lain is the deliberate pace at which the story unfolds. Director Ryutaro Nakamura eschews the hyperkinetic style of many anime, allowing the plot to develop in slow motion and making every single image count. The first episode (a total of four are included) is a masterpiece of shifting moods and slowly building tension. Every detail--from the strange blotchy shadows to the ever-present hum of power lines to the slow tracking shots across the dazed face of Lain herself--helps create an atmosphere of unease, and as the truth is gradually revealed, that unease is amply justified. The art direction is superb, mixing computer graphics with traditional animation and making frequent use of high-contrast images that set deep shadows against a blinding white sky. The first four episodes of serial experiments lain combine the millennial dread of Neon Genesis Evangelion with the subtle menace of The X-Files to create a uniquely disturbing beginning to an imaginative and intelligent story.
So let's recap:
-High visual value
-Little to no character development
-Over the top action sequences and/or plot in place of actual story content
-Me-too cookie-cutter bullshit that is directly comparable to any anime that was ever made and continues the tradition "Isn't this cool?" without actually having a real story progression
And to that, the answer is Yes, it is cool. But is it an amazing story? Should we we put this story in the same levels of the best films ever made? God no, the story barely has any comprehension of outline or scope, it's litteraly a story without a character driven plot. Which is called bad story telling.