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Gamerforlife wrote:Anime here in the states seems mostly the realm of kids and teenagers these days. It's all silly stuff like card battle this, DBZ rip off that. That's why I don't bother with anime anymore. It's just hard to find any mature stuff without some effort. Plus, buying anime is way too expensive. I still have a lot of stuff from my anime days though. Cowboy Bebop, Record of Lodoss War, Slayers, some Miyazaki stuff, Rurouni Kenshin. I think I have most of the well known, classic stuff in anime. I just don't care for the stuff that is popular now and days. I am so sick of hearing about Naruto and all those card battle shows.

As far as video games go, Japanese game development is REALLY falling behind. Some prominent developers have even admitted this, like Keiji Inafune. I think Japan is too traditional and there's littled appreciated for innovation or risks in video games. Just look at how samey all their rpgs are. I find it interesting that Japan is falling behind Western based game companies, considering that gaming started in the West and then Japan basically took it from us and then became the center for all things gaming. Now we come full circle

Well, the problem with card battle shows and Naruto - and a lot of other anime out there - is that they are based on one thing and one thing only: Merchandise Opportunity. In shows like Bakugan and Chaotic, it's blatant - the merchandise is right there in the show. With shows like Naruto and Bleach, it's still pretty obvious - the large cast of characters makes it prime fodder for video games (especially fighting games) and figure sales. Figure sales are also, I believe, the primary purpose of K-On and other Moe-centric shows.

Not all shows have degenerated to 30 minute commercials, but you just have to have a very discerning eye. I believe the reason so many shows have become over-merchandised crap is because of rampant piracy. No one buys the shows anymore, so they can't make a whole lot of money of DVD sales - they have to resort to making money off of something that can't be pirated.

As for games, I don't think a lack of innovation is the problem. If you look at some of the most praised recent Japanese games, like New Super Mario Bros Wii and Demon's Souls, you'd see that they don't create new ideas - they just improve upon classic ideas very successfully. After all, if there is one thing that people hate and will always hate, it's something new.

Besides that, I fail to see how the West is really innovative, either. Video Games in general are pretty standard, with only the occasional Flower and Portal springing up.

weasels wrote:Great teacher onizuka

Find the GTO live action TV series. Its a little different and not as crazy, but it is still good. The live action movie was pretty meh though.

Allow me to quote this from The Gaming Overthinker

"VIDEO GAMES CAME FROM JAPAN"

the7k wrote:

Gamerforlife wrote:Anime here in the states seems mostly the realm of kids and teenagers these days. It's all silly stuff like card battle this, DBZ rip off that. That's why I don't bother with anime anymore. It's just hard to find any mature stuff without some effort. Plus, buying anime is way too expensive. I still have a lot of stuff from my anime days though. Cowboy Bebop, Record of Lodoss War, Slayers, some Miyazaki stuff, Rurouni Kenshin. I think I have most of the well known, classic stuff in anime. I just don't care for the stuff that is popular now and days. I am so sick of hearing about Naruto and all those card battle shows.

As far as video games go, Japanese game development is REALLY falling behind. Some prominent developers have even admitted this, like Keiji Inafune. I think Japan is too traditional and there's littled appreciated for innovation or risks in video games. Just look at how samey all their rpgs are. I find it interesting that Japan is falling behind Western based game companies, considering that gaming started in the West and then Japan basically took it from us and then became the center for all things gaming. Now we come full circle

Well, the problem with card battle shows and Naruto - and a lot of other anime out there - is that they are based on one thing and one thing only: Merchandise Opportunity. In shows like Bakugan and Chaotic, it's blatant - the merchandise is right there in the show. With shows like Naruto and Bleach, it's still pretty obvious - the large cast of characters makes it prime fodder for video games (especially fighting games) and figure sales. Figure sales are also, I believe, the primary purpose of K-On and other Moe-centric shows.

Not all shows have degenerated to 30 minute commercials, but you just have to have a very discerning eye. I believe the reason so many shows have become over-merchandised crap is because of rampant piracy. No one buys the shows anymore, so they can't make a whole lot of money of DVD sales - they have to resort to making money off of something that can't be pirated.

Yeah, I guess I'm not the target audience anymore. I got into anime for the great stories and amazing animation. Visually, most of the popular anime today doesn't impress me(but then again, most of them are not OAVs) and the stories are just, who are we fighting this episode? There's actually little in animation that grabs me these days. No more Justice League Unlimited and Bruce Timm is only involved in straight to video movies now. No more Disney's Gargoyles. It's really just Family Guy, Futurama, South Park and occasionally Robot Chicken that I watch now. I hear Metacolypse is good though(that Dethklok show)

TheyCallMeTheSwede wrote:Allow me to quote this from The Gaming Overthinker

"VIDEO GAMES CAME FROM JAPAN"

Video games come from all over the place and Japan was not the first, the US was. So video games come from the US.

Octopod wrote:

TheyCallMeTheSwede wrote:Allow me to quote this from The Gaming Overthinker

"VIDEO GAMES CAME FROM JAPAN"

Video games come from all over the place and Japan was not the first, the US was. So video games come from the US.

I thought that maybe there was a joke in Octopod's post that I missed, because video games definitely started here. I think a lot of people don't know that because Japan dominated the gaming scene for so long

Gamerforlife wrote:

Octopod wrote:

TheyCallMeTheSwede wrote:Allow me to quote this from The Gaming Overthinker

"VIDEO GAMES CAME FROM JAPAN"

Video games come from all over the place and Japan was not the first, the US was. So video games come from the US.

I thought that maybe there was a joke in Octopod's post that I missed, because video games definitely started here. I think a lot of people don't know that because Japan dominated the gaming scene for so long

Octopod is correct. They might have started their flourish in Japan, but they definitely started in the US, even if you count Computer Space as the 'first' video game since it was the first arcade machine and discount the things that came before.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_games

While video games didn't originate from Japan, the fall of Atari in the Video Game Crash of 1983 pretty much killed the idea of Western Video Games for a long time. Video Games as we know them today may as well have come from Japan.

In fact, the only Western genres of video games that really stuck around didn't even come from console gaming, they came from Computer Gaming. First-Person Shooters, Real-Time Strategies, Text-Based Adventures and Western Role Playing Games are all things that are pretty independent from the early days of American gaming.

So, I'd say that while saying video games originated in America is technically correct, it's kinda missing the point. Atari, Colecovision, Odyssey and the rest of the 1st/2nd generation are kinda like the City of Atlantis from where I'm sitting.

I dont know, but Cowboy Bebop is awesome!

the7k wrote:While video games didn't originate from Japan, the fall of Atari in the Video Game Crash of 1983 pretty much killed the idea of Western Video Games for a long time. Video Games as we know them today may as well have come from Japan.

In fact, the only Western genres of video games that really stuck around didn't even come from console gaming, they came from Computer Gaming. First-Person Shooters, Real-Time Strategies, Text-Based Adventures and Western Role Playing Games are all things that are pretty independent from the early days of American gaming.

So, I'd say that while saying video games originated in America is technically correct, it's kinda missing the point. Atari, Colecovision, Odyssey and the rest of the 1st/2nd generation are kinda like the City of Atlantis from where I'm sitting.

Exactly, computer games continued to thrive in the US, there was a console crash in the US, not a video game crash. Japanese games for the most part stuck to the arcade style model of video game. Regardless, video games come from the US. That is all I was saying