New talk! Animation.

So over the weekend I watched a bunch of animation. Not anime (though I watched a little bit of that too) but Western animation courtesy of the good folks at Werner Bros.

The first thing I watched was Batman: Under the Red Hood, which I enjoyed immensely. The movie opens up with the Joker beating Robin (I think the second one? I get so confused with all the robins) with a crowbar. Theeeen blowing him up.

Why is this awesome?

BECAUSE THEY ARE FINALLY MAKING ANIMATION FOR ADULTS.

I loved anime when I was growing up because they--for the most part--are geared to a more mature audience. Back then I really liked it because with animation you are not limited by special effects or stunt doubles or whatever. As long as you can draw it, it can be shown. These days this is less important with the advancement of CG technology, but back in the 90's it was pretty important to me.

And all the while I hoped Western animation would come along, because--and I'm sorry to those of you who like anime--the drawing style of anime bothers the hell out of me. Giant eyes and tiny mouths, and two curved lines for noses. Nine times out of ten all anime faces (especially female faces) use the same model and I get bored. I think a major part of the reason Hayao Miyazaki is so successful is because you can tell by the art that he's directing it.

The other day I was browsing anime and the common denominator of mostly all of them (except the really popular ones like Evangelion, Naruto, Guyver, Ghost in the Shell, etc.) were totally fan service on a plate served up with a side of T&A. For example.

But last night I was feeling the pull of a little anime so I popped in Rin: Daughter of hardwordtospell. It's about a private investigator who comes back to life every time she gets killed. Sounds good, got high ratings so whatever I'll watch an episode or two.

The show was designed for depressed, lonely nerds who don't know how to find porn on the internet. Seriously, animated tits left and right, main character's a busty lesbian, torture scene involving dominatrix style piercings... you get the point.

Aside from that it was a decent anime. It had zombies in the first episode so that's pretty cool.

But back to my original rant! WESTERN animation. Under the Red Hood could have easily been a Hollywood blockbuster with a little more character development, script attention and mass market appeal. Aside from that it was still a VERY good movie and I loved the speech the Red Hood gives at the end of the movie.

Only thing I didn't like about it was that they didn't get Mark Hamill to be the Joker(Mark's best voice work here, in my opinion). They had some guy who did his best Mark Hamill Joker impression.

So after that I got all excited and watched Halo: Legends only to discover it was an anthology of short animations and had all sorts of anime in it (not even the god kind too. The first three had shitty anime with loooots of doubles and triples (doubles/triples meaning using the same frame two or three times in a row to save on animation effort) in use.

After that I tried watching the Superman/Shazam thing only to find it was ANOTHER DAMN ANTHOLOGY. Good animation. I know nothing about the Spectre though so I got bored and went to go find something else to watch.

I lost the point I was trying to make some where along there... Oh, I found it! Western animation is coming along, but if they don't hurry they will be made obsolete by advancing CGI techniques.

-McK