the whole disagreeing about the Golden Age time frame left me pondering about my stance. I also saw it as a present golden age.
I am no expert, but I have seen my share:
I have watched cartoons in my youth, with kids I ha stepfathered, with nieces/nephews and with a kid of my own.
I have to agree that there has been some awesome shows I’m the past, and I was absolutely blown away when I saw Samurai Jack. So was the golden age then, or the shows before then?
I don’t think that cartoons in general can be compared that easily. Cartoons for kids 2-4 years, surely differ from those for 10-12 years old - and even anime for grown ups. And perhaps there have been different golden ages for the age appropriate cartoons?
I have a 6 year old. The quality shows (if one can say that) today are just miles ahead of the “ slap stick badly drawn doodles” that smaller children where treated to just 20 years ago.
The now a days cartoons for the older children are probably not leagues ahead - if ahead at all. Samurai Jack is still awesome, but the Hannah Barbera stuff not so much....
Imo cartoons are being taken more seriously - and the networks prioritises quality output and differentiate better for age groups. Thusly producing quality for all ages now. This was not the case 20 or even 10 years ago. So the golden age is surely upon us for some age groups, for others it’s a Silver of Bronze Age...
I an hopping to see Arifureta. Finally an Isekai anime where the MC tries to apply real world knowledge into his new world and using magic + techology, he creates an "revolver railgun", railguns are insanely powerful. IRL some prototypes can throw projectiles at 3.5 km/s, much faster than even ultra fast cartidges like 7.92x94mm Patronen barely pass 1200 m/s. Finally someone understood that the best weapon against ridiculous larger creatures is not an fast swinging blade.
And other thing interesting about Arifureta is that there are an explanation to why they called students. Generally people in other world summon students by no other reason. In Arifureta's world, heroes are just god's pawns. Lets be honest, assuming that you are an human in another world and needs help to deal with an monster invasion. Who from this world would you summon?
A ) An professional assassin that knows a lot about "homemade" guns, with proficiency on marksmanship and high inteligence to learn magic from your world faster and will easily work for you in exchange from money, titles and maybe slaves if exists and is seen as tolerable in your world.
B ) An timid, androgynous teenager that likes oversized swords that weights twice all his muscle mass and has no experience on combat or know anything that can improve your long therm offensive capabilities, and is awful even at sword fighting and tries to use rapiers like an scimitar
My eyes rests on Maou-sama, Retry! as far as the current anime season is concerned. Finally an adult in body and mind graces a isekai setting! First one since Gates and Overlord, I reckon. Trust me... you have no idea of how much I grew tired of seeing teenager protagonists plaguing the screen.
People liked the legend of korra? I was under the assumption of it being the prime example of how you destroy a previously good series.
Ok maybe that is not 100% fair but while at first I wasn't the biggest fan of Avatar the last Airbender, I can't deny heck I down. Right respect the series world bending! Especially how they incorporated the whole bending into the world itself and not just have it as a soft magic system that could do anything or seem completely separated from the rest of the world for w/e reason.
Legend of Korra just room all that and *beep* all over that!
My eyes rests on Maou-sama, Retry! as far as the current anime season is concerned. Finally an adult in body and mind graces a isekai setting! First one since Gates and Overlord, I reckon. Trust me... you have no idea of how much I grew tired of seeing teenager protagonists plaguing the screen.
Judging by the name, I assume it has the same power balance issues as the other two? Conflicts in Gate were so absolutely lopsided, it just wasn't fun at all, and based on what I heard about Overlord it wasn't that different either.
Judging by the name, I assume it has the same power balance issues as the other two? Conflicts in Gate were so absolutely lopsided, it just wasn't fun at all, and based on what I heard about Overlord it wasn't that different either.
They're quite different from one another, actually. Maou-sama, Retry! excels in its humour first and foremost involving the stark contrasting personalities (plural) of the protagonist. It's also more light hearted than the other shows.
Though to tell the truth: I really prefer the art style of its manga to the one used in its anime adaption. Which, oddly enough is also my main pet peeve of Gate as well.
The only anime I can say that I have really watched (outside of hentai) was Death Note... not the trashy remake on netflix but the original anime. I liked all the mind games Death Note had.
Do you guys know of any other animes that are physiological master pieces that ?
Serial Experiments Lain for one. That one really goes deep into psychology. The disturbing kind, I mean. Some may also say PSYCHO PASS, though not really a fan of it myself. Texhnolyze and Paranoia Agent are also candidates. Last but not least: Welcome to the N.H.K.
Serial Experiments Lain for one. That one really goes deep into psychology. The disturbing kind, I mean. Some may also say PSYCHO PASS, though not really a fan of it myself. Texhnolyze and Paranoia Agent are also candidates. Last but not least: Welcome to the N.H.K.
Definitely Serial Experiments Lain and Paranoia Agent (haven't seen the others). Lain is a difficult one to get in to, and I understand if people just find it weird. But I can't think of many fictional works that delve as deep into what it means to be human and the nature of communication as Lain does.
The only anime I can say that I have really watched (outside of hentai) was Death Note... not the trashy remake on netflix but the original anime. I liked all the mind games Death Note had.
Do you guys know of any other animes that are physiological master pieces that ?
I'd add Monster, Speed Grapher and Devilman Lady to the recommendations of others, for the psychological aspect.
And just in addition because they're really good, Noir, Witch Hunter Robin, Black Lagoon, Le Chevailer D'eon, Planetes, Basilisk and Ergo Proxy
The only anime I can say that I have really watched (outside of hentai) was Death Note... not the trashy remake on netflix but the original anime. I liked all the mind games Death Note had.
Do you guys know of any other animes that are physiological master pieces that ?
I'd add Monster, Speed Grapher and Devilman Lady to the recommendations of others, for the psychological aspect.
And just in addition because they're really good, Noir, Witch Hunter Robin, Black Lagoon, Le Chevailer D'eon, Planetes Basilisk and Ergo Proxy
I still need to watch Ergo Proxy. I actually have the whole series that I bought once for real cheap. The reason it was cheap turned out to be because it was only in Japanese (which I do prefer), and only with Swedish subtitles that were obviously google translated from some previous translation (which I do not prefer). Trying to watch a series like that under those circumstances were... challenging to say the least.
Hataage! Kemono Michi got an anime adaption?! Hell yes! Not only is the MC a middle aged dude in a isekai setting: he's also a wrestler with neither cheat skills nor magic whatsoever. Finally someone who's breaking the litRPG genre mold. On my watchlist!
Why people complain about the genericness of isekais when shonens are far more generic than isekai?
Asta, Kirito, Ichigo, and 99% of Shonen protagonists would be the human teenager of anime swordsman class(link to a homebrew class for 5e). Non teenagers, non swordsman main characters in any shonen anime are very rare, to the point of seeing MCs using polearms instead of swords in few occasions on Kingdom surprising me. And even those who have a little difference are not that unique; Natsu for eg, still use most of "anime swordsman" tropes despite being a mage, like power of friendship, plot armor, monologue, etc. This is very different than Hajime from Arifureta that managed to defeat far tougher enemies using traps and intelligence, not this boring cliché things.
Kazuma(Konosuba) - Troll teenager - More close to a rogue
Hajime(Arifureta) - Human monster hybrid - More like to a artificer that crafts technology
Tania(Yōjo Senki) - Gunmage that hates God
Diablo - (Isekai Maou to Shoukan Shoujo no Dorei Majutsu) - Demon lord of another world.
Slime(Tensei Shitara Slime Datta Ken) - A Slime that can absorbs things
Sure, Isekai animes could explore different worlds. Even in magic, they coudl use as inspiration Conan, a lot magic setting where magic is very dangerous and often linked to evil demons, could explore a steampunk world, a cyberpunk world, a frostpunk world and a lot of different worlds. I agree that Isekais often use high medieval fantasy with little to no variation, but in therms of protagonists, in what other genre, you have the diversity of seeing anything, from a Lich necromancer to a Slime as a protagonist?
You've got to look deeper into litRPG (that's the fantasy novel/manga subgenre called with videogame elements in it) to find out why the typical sword-wielding, harem-owner, cheat-skil-having, chuunibyou, middle/highschool boy trope has been utterly done to death and back. They're not only prevailing in Japanese manga/light novels and their respective anime adaptions like weed. But also plague the Chinese manhua, Korean manwah and their respective novels and web comics scenes as well.
A close second trope in isekai popularity would be the "I'm the Villianess?!" otome renai scenario, where folks reincarnate into love novels or relationship simulation games and wind themselves up being the story's antagonist surrounded by nothing but death flags. Trust me, that side of litRPG's is huge in both Korea and Japan.
The best example of how to do a uniquely entertaining Isekai setting without succumbing to the above tropes as of now is probably Honzuki no Gekokujou (or more commonly known as Ascendance of a Bookworm): https://youtu.be/9eX3jSR5qQM
Maine is a reincarnated adult woman in a sickly, 5 year old girl's body. Her chronical and incurable sickness is due to a vast amount of magic energies eating her very life away. Not unlike to some sort of magical cancer. The author actually took a merit in other stories and introduced it as a demerit here. And you won't find warriors, mages and thieves here either. All of them got replaces with merchants, craftsmen and clergymen as it focused on the common people. Not heroes, adventurers or the like.
The last story that did focus on commoners the way Honzuki no Gekokujou does it was Spice & Wolf back in 2008.
Though Kemono no Souja Erin from 2009 also came close if not for the depicted wars in it. Still an awesome show in its own right.
So I recently watched the big hero 6 TV series, infinity train, and final space.
Big hero six was ok, had some good and some bad to it. The main villians were nice even if they were obvious.
Final space is what I like to call potential with poor execution. I literally hates the main character nonstop, he was ungodly annoying. But the show would actually have interesting concepts or ideas but I felt the rarely did anything with them. I did love the main antagonist though.
Also infinity train somewhat suffered the same as final space, interesting concepts but barely pushed them anywhere. Infinity train also felt a lot more rushed than dead space though.
Been watching Hakime No Ippo lately and loving it. Its a boxing anime based on a manga written by an actual boxer. I know nothing about boxing, but as someone who used to teach self defense, whenever the characters throw a punch they animate everything the body needs to do to throw a strong punch. They set their weight, feet spaced properly, shifting the hips into the hit, its impressive. The matches are obviously exaggeratted a bit, a anime does, but the groundwork for everything is legit.
Another great thing is the sheer amount of character development. If the character has a name, they will grow as people throughout the show, it doesn't matter how minor the role is, and that's super refreshing. Even the typical one dimensional bullies that every anime has, actually feel like real people here.
There are indeed great isekai stories out there with vastly different campaign settings to them:
We do have Risou no Himo Seikatsu that takes place in a middle eastern fantasy country with dinosaurs as mounts. El-Hazard had a similar idea in 1995 as well. Or The Twelve Kingdoms that is strongly influenced by the Chinese xianxia fantasy genre. And while Gensou Gourmet has a bit of an Victorian era flair to it, this isekai's lack of humans make it nevertheless a unique departure from the norm. Capricorn was like that too, waaay back in 1991. And then there are completely different kind of isekai stories such as Wakusei Closet - being more similar to H.P. Lovecraft's cosmic horror genre than other isekais.
But it's also true that most isekai authors are lazy, using a loose European medieval cookie-cutter setting the majority of times. That usually happens when the targeted audience are teenagers and rather let fanservice do the talking than building up their own worldbuilding. People have to venture into the seinen, josei or shouio targeting audiences to really something different for a change.
The only anime I can say that I have really watched (outside of hentai) was Death Note... not the trashy remake on netflix but the original anime. I liked all the mind games Death Note had.
Do you guys know of any other animes that are physiological master pieces that ?
It's a little late, but I'm quite surprised nobody mentioned Code Geass, which is flagrantly based on Death's Notes style and plot twists, but in a totally different sort of setting (an alternate universe where an evil-er British Empire rules the world, and also there's mecha).
They also got a sponsorship from Pizza Hut in the second season and started doing hilarious pizza-themed fanservice scenes, which may or may not be a plus.
My amusement at "isekai protagonist" complaints knows no bounds. Back in ye old days, we just called them "Tenchis" (although it was El Hazard that was an isekai series, I guess, but that term wasn't in use then). And I guess before that it was the Hikaru Ichijyou, and before that the Yukimura Sanada - the point is, the Japanese thirst for generic interchangeable protagonists has never been quenched.
I've been rewatching Baccano, it's so good. https://myanimelist.net/anime/2251/Baccano
It combines prohibition era gangsters with alchemy and black magic in an amazing way. Asides from the fact that there are immortals that heal back together no matter how badly they're torn apart, all the magic is really subtle. Most of the story keeps jumping to 3 different time periods, an evil alchemist that's already immortal searching for some stolen bottles of the elixir of immortality with his servant and them interacting with the gangsters. The second time period is a few years later aboard a train from Chicago to New York, where 2 gangs begin slaughtering their way across the train while a red monster is killing people from both sides, along with some delinquents caught in the middle. The third timeline is a bit later and focuses on a gang war between some of the groups from the first timeline and a girl's search for her brother who went missing during the events of the first timeline.
It can be a bit confusing since it jumps between those 3 timelines and some of the characters appear in more than one. The first episode is a bit of a jumbled mess of stuff from near the end, but give it a chance and get through it, it gets so good. I love when one of the characters on the train compares the situation to the romance of the three kingdoms and tells one of the delinquents he needs to be like Billy The Kid in Romance of three kingdoms.
It's also an anime you don't have to feel guilty about watching dubbed. The dubbing is extremely well done and since it's all 1930s prohibition era American gangsters, watching it in English is fitting.
Has anyone seen this show called Tigtone? https://www.imdb.com/title/tt8413062/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0
It's billed as a parody of a fantasy adventure story, but it's as much a parody of RPG games. The main character is always writing in his journal or complaining the main quest is boring and he needs a side quest. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n7oPSkiAm0A
It is very poorly animated, but amusing. John DiMaggio (Bender, Smiling Jack, etc) plays a recurring villain.
Comments
https://www.reddit.com/r/StarVStheForcesofEvil/comments/c6lgn8/a_form_i_came_up_with_regarding_older_audiences/
I am no expert, but I have seen my share:
I have watched cartoons in my youth, with kids I ha stepfathered, with nieces/nephews and with a kid of my own.
I have to agree that there has been some awesome shows I’m the past, and I was absolutely blown away when I saw Samurai Jack. So was the golden age then, or the shows before then?
I don’t think that cartoons in general can be compared that easily. Cartoons for kids 2-4 years, surely differ from those for 10-12 years old - and even anime for grown ups. And perhaps there have been different golden ages for the age appropriate cartoons?
I have a 6 year old. The quality shows (if one can say that) today are just miles ahead of the “ slap stick badly drawn doodles” that smaller children where treated to just 20 years ago.
The now a days cartoons for the older children are probably not leagues ahead - if ahead at all. Samurai Jack is still awesome, but the Hannah Barbera stuff not so much....
Imo cartoons are being taken more seriously - and the networks prioritises quality output and differentiate better for age groups. Thusly producing quality for all ages now. This was not the case 20 or even 10 years ago. So the golden age is surely upon us for some age groups, for others it’s a Silver of Bronze Age...
I an hopping to see Arifureta. Finally an Isekai anime where the MC tries to apply real world knowledge into his new world and using magic + techology, he creates an "revolver railgun", railguns are insanely powerful. IRL some prototypes can throw projectiles at 3.5 km/s, much faster than even ultra fast cartidges like 7.92x94mm Patronen barely pass 1200 m/s. Finally someone understood that the best weapon against ridiculous larger creatures is not an fast swinging blade.
And other thing interesting about Arifureta is that there are an explanation to why they called students. Generally people in other world summon students by no other reason. In Arifureta's world, heroes are just god's pawns. Lets be honest, assuming that you are an human in another world and needs help to deal with an monster invasion. Who from this world would you summon?
A ) An professional assassin that knows a lot about "homemade" guns, with proficiency on marksmanship and high inteligence to learn magic from your world faster and will easily work for you in exchange from money, titles and maybe slaves if exists and is seen as tolerable in your world.
B ) An timid, androgynous teenager that likes oversized swords that weights twice all his muscle mass and has no experience on combat or know anything that can improve your long therm offensive capabilities, and is awful even at sword fighting and tries to use rapiers like an scimitar
Ok maybe that is not 100% fair but while at first I wasn't the biggest fan of Avatar the last Airbender, I can't deny heck I down. Right respect the series world bending! Especially how they incorporated the whole bending into the world itself and not just have it as a soft magic system that could do anything or seem completely separated from the rest of the world for w/e reason.
Legend of Korra just room all that and *beep* all over that!
Though to tell the truth: I really prefer the art style of its manga to the one used in its anime adaption. Which, oddly enough is also my main pet peeve of Gate as well.
Do you guys know of any other animes that are physiological master pieces that ?
Definitely Serial Experiments Lain and Paranoia Agent (haven't seen the others). Lain is a difficult one to get in to, and I understand if people just find it weird. But I can't think of many fictional works that delve as deep into what it means to be human and the nature of communication as Lain does.
I'd add Monster, Speed Grapher and Devilman Lady to the recommendations of others, for the psychological aspect.
And just in addition because they're really good, Noir, Witch Hunter Robin, Black Lagoon, Le Chevailer D'eon, Planetes, Basilisk and Ergo Proxy
I still need to watch Ergo Proxy. I actually have the whole series that I bought once for real cheap. The reason it was cheap turned out to be because it was only in Japanese (which I do prefer), and only with Swedish subtitles that were obviously google translated from some previous translation (which I do not prefer). Trying to watch a series like that under those circumstances were... challenging to say the least.
Hataage! Kemono Michi got an anime adaption?! Hell yes! Not only is the MC a middle aged dude in a isekai setting: he's also a wrestler with neither cheat skills nor magic whatsoever. Finally someone who's breaking the litRPG genre mold. On my watchlist!
Asta, Kirito, Ichigo, and 99% of Shonen protagonists would be the human teenager of anime swordsman class(link to a homebrew class for 5e). Non teenagers, non swordsman main characters in any shonen anime are very rare, to the point of seeing MCs using polearms instead of swords in few occasions on Kingdom surprising me. And even those who have a little difference are not that unique; Natsu for eg, still use most of "anime swordsman" tropes despite being a mage, like power of friendship, plot armor, monologue, etc. This is very different than Hajime from Arifureta that managed to defeat far tougher enemies using traps and intelligence, not this boring cliché things.
Now look to Isekai protagonists.
Sure, Isekai animes could explore different worlds. Even in magic, they coudl use as inspiration Conan, a lot magic setting where magic is very dangerous and often linked to evil demons, could explore a steampunk world, a cyberpunk world, a frostpunk world and a lot of different worlds. I agree that Isekais often use high medieval fantasy with little to no variation, but in therms of protagonists, in what other genre, you have the diversity of seeing anything, from a Lich necromancer to a Slime as a protagonist?
A close second trope in isekai popularity would be the "I'm the Villianess?!" otome renai scenario, where folks reincarnate into love novels or relationship simulation games and wind themselves up being the story's antagonist surrounded by nothing but death flags. Trust me, that side of litRPG's is huge in both Korea and Japan.
The best example of how to do a uniquely entertaining Isekai setting without succumbing to the above tropes as of now is probably Honzuki no Gekokujou (or more commonly known as Ascendance of a Bookworm):
Maine is a reincarnated adult woman in a sickly, 5 year old girl's body. Her chronical and incurable sickness is due to a vast amount of magic energies eating her very life away. Not unlike to some sort of magical cancer. The author actually took a merit in other stories and introduced it as a demerit here. And you won't find warriors, mages and thieves here either. All of them got replaces with merchants, craftsmen and clergymen as it focused on the common people. Not heroes, adventurers or the like.
The last story that did focus on commoners the way Honzuki no Gekokujou does it was Spice & Wolf back in 2008.
Though Kemono no Souja Erin from 2009 also came close if not for the depicted wars in it. Still an awesome show in its own right.
Big hero six was ok, had some good and some bad to it. The main villians were nice even if they were obvious.
Final space is what I like to call potential with poor execution. I literally hates the main character nonstop, he was ungodly annoying. But the show would actually have interesting concepts or ideas but I felt the rarely did anything with them. I did love the main antagonist though.
Also infinity train somewhat suffered the same as final space, interesting concepts but barely pushed them anywhere. Infinity train also felt a lot more rushed than dead space though.
Another great thing is the sheer amount of character development. If the character has a name, they will grow as people throughout the show, it doesn't matter how minor the role is, and that's super refreshing. Even the typical one dimensional bullies that every anime has, actually feel like real people here.
We do have Risou no Himo Seikatsu that takes place in a middle eastern fantasy country with dinosaurs as mounts. El-Hazard had a similar idea in 1995 as well. Or The Twelve Kingdoms that is strongly influenced by the Chinese xianxia fantasy genre. And while Gensou Gourmet has a bit of an Victorian era flair to it, this isekai's lack of humans make it nevertheless a unique departure from the norm. Capricorn was like that too, waaay back in 1991. And then there are completely different kind of isekai stories such as Wakusei Closet - being more similar to H.P. Lovecraft's cosmic horror genre than other isekais.
But it's also true that most isekai authors are lazy, using a loose European medieval cookie-cutter setting the majority of times. That usually happens when the targeted audience are teenagers and rather let fanservice do the talking than building up their own worldbuilding. People have to venture into the seinen, josei or shouio targeting audiences to really something different for a change.
It's a little late, but I'm quite surprised nobody mentioned Code Geass, which is flagrantly based on Death's Notes style and plot twists, but in a totally different sort of setting (an alternate universe where an evil-er British Empire rules the world, and also there's mecha).
They also got a sponsorship from Pizza Hut in the second season and started doing hilarious pizza-themed fanservice scenes, which may or may not be a plus.
My amusement at "isekai protagonist" complaints knows no bounds. Back in ye old days, we just called them "Tenchis" (although it was El Hazard that was an isekai series, I guess, but that term wasn't in use then). And I guess before that it was the Hikaru Ichijyou, and before that the Yukimura Sanada - the point is, the Japanese thirst for generic interchangeable protagonists has never been quenched.
https://myanimelist.net/anime/2251/Baccano
It combines prohibition era gangsters with alchemy and black magic in an amazing way. Asides from the fact that there are immortals that heal back together no matter how badly they're torn apart, all the magic is really subtle. Most of the story keeps jumping to 3 different time periods, an evil alchemist that's already immortal searching for some stolen bottles of the elixir of immortality with his servant and them interacting with the gangsters. The second time period is a few years later aboard a train from Chicago to New York, where 2 gangs begin slaughtering their way across the train while a red monster is killing people from both sides, along with some delinquents caught in the middle. The third timeline is a bit later and focuses on a gang war between some of the groups from the first timeline and a girl's search for her brother who went missing during the events of the first timeline.
It can be a bit confusing since it jumps between those 3 timelines and some of the characters appear in more than one. The first episode is a bit of a jumbled mess of stuff from near the end, but give it a chance and get through it, it gets so good. I love when one of the characters on the train compares the situation to the romance of the three kingdoms and tells one of the delinquents he needs to be like Billy The Kid in Romance of three kingdoms.
It's also an anime you don't have to feel guilty about watching dubbed. The dubbing is extremely well done and since it's all 1930s prohibition era American gangsters, watching it in English is fitting.
Ladd Russo is probably my all time favorite psychopath.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt8413062/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0
It's billed as a parody of a fantasy adventure story, but it's as much a parody of RPG games. The main character is always writing in his journal or complaining the main quest is boring and he needs a side quest.
It is very poorly animated, but amusing. John DiMaggio (Bender, Smiling Jack, etc) plays a recurring villain.