The Anime Thread

[MichaelTDoyle]

Haibane Renmei–very spiritual and beautiful

 

[The_Augustinian]

Has anyone seen Trinity Blood?

Just one episode, set at the Vatican…weird stuff. The pope is a little boy (the youngest pope (John XII) was around eighteen when he was elected, although some scholars say that Benedict IX was twelve when he took the chair of Peter) and the nuns wear rather form-fitting habits. Oh yeah, and the priests fight vampires, or something.

Alas, that is the nature of the genre…

 

[Ahimsa]

Akira centers on the demand for the responsible wielding of the evolutionary power of the human mind. It is critical of a technologically advanced, scientifically prolific world devoid of moral channels, a culture where the spiritual and ethical vacuum creates citizens addicted to power, sex, and pharmaceuticals.

Tetsuo, the fallen angel representing mankind’s intellectual hubris, with an iron-man heart. Akira, humanity’s evolutionary potential and promise, embodiment of ocean-wide compassion and diamond-like wisdom.

 

[Liberalsaved]

Akira centers on the demand for the responsible wielding of the evolutionary power of the human mind. It is critical of a technologically advanced, scientifically prolific world devoid of moral channels, a culture where the spiritual and ethical vacuum creates citizens addicted to power, sex, and pharmaceuticals.

Tetsuo, the fallen angel representing mankind’s intellectual hubris, with an iron-man heart. Akira, humanity’s evolutionary potential and promise, embodiment of ocean-wide compassion and diamond-like wisdom.

It’s also confusing, convoluted, too obsessed with visuals and devoid of character depth. Thumbs down.

 

[Liberalsaved]

I guess you are correct, but I will add that in the Pokemon anime, the writers had hundreds of episodes so Ash can demonstrate his religiousness (if he has any). It is safe to say that Ash is an atheist. So do you watch Pokemon?

I’ve seen enough to know I don’t like it. Which is beside the point, but still.

 

[empacae]

Anime huh?

Starblazers has got to be my number 1 fave (called Battleship Yamato in Japan)

Then when I was a kid it was Astro Boy and Battle of the Planets (G-Force)

And my recent fave would be Anamatrix.

Don’t know about religious content in these but decently written. Oh and Spirited Away was great too.

emp.

 

[threej_lc]

Although I found the backgroun information given above fascinating, and sympathize with the poster’s annoyance at the historical inaccuracy…

I have to say Kenshin is the greatest anime of all time, hands down. Its so incredibly Catholic! I am currently a seminarian, and seeing the priesthood portrayed allegorically by Kenshin was a big part of the discernment process that brought me here.

And as was mentioned above, Naruto is the best ninja anime. I’m also a big fan of Bleach and Oh My Goddess, although each has some questional parts.

Josh

 

[The_Augustinian]

TRIGUN. Unquestionably the best, it features a lot of Christian ideas and, unles I’m very much mistaken, may borrow from GK Chesterton. Eminently quotable, too.

All right, now I’m curious. What’s Chestertonian about Trigun?

 

[Dancelittleewok]

It’s also confusing, convoluted, too obsessed with visuals and devoid of character depth. Thumbs down.

I agree with you on this one.

 

[faqcorner]

• Card Captors Sakura [CCS] (…)
• Tsubasa Chronicles (complete crossover with all of CLAMP’s productions…)
• a bit of xxxholic (…crosses over with Tsubasa and CCS…)
• Yu-Gi-Oh! (Season 1, from japan, that never came to US.) (violent, but funny to at least me at parts >.>)
• Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Monsters (This series is the first of the Yugioh to come to USA) (Didn’t like this season too much)
• Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Monsters Generation X [Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Monsters GX / Yu-Gi-Oh! GX] (better than the first Duel Monsters one)
• Naruto (used to, not anymore)
• Bleach (same, don’t really look into this too often)
• D. Gray-man (hell load of Christian Imagry “AN IMAGINARY END TO THE 19TH CENTURY” Basicly the church…yes the CATHOLIC church is fighting some enemies…but changes history at some parts about Noah, but other than that, pretty good )
• Yu-Gi-Oh! 5D’s (just came out ~…yes, this week… /me subbing it ^^)
• Rockman.EXE Stream (aka: MegaMan NT Warrior, but…this series never came…)
• Rockman.EXE Axess (came here)
• Rockman.EXE Beast
• Ryuusei no Rockman (yes, came here as “MegaMan Star Force”)
• Ryuusei no Rockman: Tribe (dunno, though almost finished in japan…)
• Jigoku Shoujo + 2nd season (I’ll leave someone else to comment on this >.>)
• Digimon (forgot which season, mostly original, though that was a LONG LONG LONG time ago…)
• AIR (something about angels, haven’t looked much…)
• Zombie-Loan (going to look into, from my browsing around it seems to be a bit related to Christianity in general, but not reallly)
• .Hack//GU Trilogy
• .hack//DUSK (aka: .hack//The Legend of the Twilight Bracelet)
• .hack//SIGN (so so -_-/…)
• Yotsunoha (going to look into)
• Sola (also going to look into)
• School Days (only a bit, I wouldn’t recommend others to, unless they like horror ones…the first few are just ecchi a bit - only a bit, and then after awhile, it starts to turn into why it’s called a horror anime >.>)
• Tsubasa Tokyo Revelations (same anime as Tsubasa Chronicles)

I think that’s all right now, I’m going to get into some more, cause I want to subtitle them with my group…so my list is almost always growing…

• Note: If you haven’t noticed, LOTS… I mean LOTS of the anime actually have Christian references all over, though some are enmbeded, and some aren’t…the ones that come to USA…however, the licensing companies just edit it out (they replaced a cross with a pole…)

 

[Sabda]

I’m surprised the Avatar, The Last Airbender hasn’t been mentioned. We have gotten hooked on this one. Unfortunately with the writer’s strike they haven’t playing it whole lot this season. We have been going though withdrawel over here. Going to have to start buying the series.

 

[faqcorner]

I’m surprised the Avatar, The Last Airbender hasn’t been mentioned. We have gotten hooked on this one. Unfortunately with the writer’s strike they haven’t playing it whole lot this season. We have been going though withdrawel over here. Going to have to start buying the series.

errr…

Avatar the last airbender, although using some of the styles of anime, is NOT anime. it’s just an attempt by the american companies to imitate anime. however it is not anime.

 

[Nevarlander]

errr…

Avatar the last airbender, although using some of the styles of anime, is NOT anime. it’s just an attempt by the american companies to imitate anime. however it is not anime.

It’s pretty obvious Avatar and Kappa Mikey aren’t Japanese.

Speaking of Avatar: I’ve been observing it from the outside and Katara and Aang and Zuko’s drama doesn’t actually seem that interesting. I’m told I can skip the entire first season and not have missed much when the interesting characters like Azula and Toph come in and Sokka starts to come into his own. Is this true?

I’m not normally one for action anime: the closest I get is Loveless with its magic battles, and that only interests me because it’s pretty and the characters are so very strange (even if it is a shota show - the shotacon aspects are far better done in the manga). Is Avatar still good to watch?

 

[Sabda]

It’s pretty obvious Avatar and Kappa Mikey aren’t Japanese.

Speaking of Avatar: I’ve been observing it from the outside and Katara and Aang and Zuko’s drama doesn’t actually seem that interesting. I’m told I can skip the entire first season and not have missed much when the interesting characters like Azula and Toph come in and Sokka starts to come into his own. Is this true?

I’m not normally one for action anime: the closest I get is Loveless with its magic battles, and that only interests me because it’s pretty and the characters are so very strange (even if it is a shota show - the shotacon aspects are far better done in the manga). Is Avatar still good to watch?

Well people were referring to it as Anime so .

Avatar does start getting good once you get into the second book “Earth”. In this third book, “Fire”, Zuko (Azula’s brother) is the one who has really started to come into his own. The characters have really matured in this third book. So, yes it does get better as the series progresses.

 

[faqcorner]

It’s pretty obvious Avatar and Kappa Mikey aren’t Japanese.

Speaking of Avatar: I’ve been observing it from the outside and Katara and Aang and Zuko’s drama doesn’t actually seem that interesting. I’m told I can skip the entire first season and not have missed much when the interesting characters like Azula and Toph come in and Sokka starts to come into his own. Is this true?

I’m not normally one for action anime: the closest I get is Loveless with its magic battles, and that only interests me because it’s pretty and the characters are so very strange (even if it is a shota show - the shotacon aspects are far better done in the manga). Is Avatar still good to watch?

they aren’t anime, I don’t follow it, too stupid to me anyways, though I read summaries to make sure about info

Well people were referring to it as Anime so .

Avatar does start getting good once you get into the second book “Earth”. In this third book, “Fire”, Zuko (Azula’s brother) is the one who has really started to come into his own. The characters have really matured in this third book. So, yes it does get better as the series progresses.

oh? how about this food for thought?

Name of Show: “Avatar: The Last Airbender”

picking it apart:

Avatar - In Hindu philosophy, an avatar (also spelled as avatara), most commonly refers to the incarnation (bodily manifestation) of a divine being (deva), or the Supreme Being (God) onto planet Earth. - wikipedia

Other stuff:

Avatar: The Last Airbender (also known as Avatar: The Legend of Aang in several countries) is an award-winning American animated television series that currently airs on the Nickelodeon television network.

Set in an Asian-influenced world of martial arts and elemental manipulation, the series follows the adventures of the latest of a long line of Avatars, Aang, and his friends in a quest to save the world from the ruthless Fire Nation. The series is shown as a book series, with each episode serving as a “chapter” and each individual season as a “book.”

Avatar: The Last Airbender is co-created/produced by Michael Dante DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko at Nickelodeon Animation Studios in Burbank, California.

According to co-creator Bryan Konietzko, the concept of the program was initially conceived in Spring 2002, when he took an old sketch of his—a balding, middle-aged man—and turned the character into a child. Bryan then did a drawing in which the boy was shepherding bison through the sky. At the time, Mike DiMartino was studying a documentary about explorers who were trapped in the South Pole. The various aspects all seemed to gradually come together. The two thought:

Bold part: names != Japanese, location != Japan

Opening theme Full Opening

Note: I know it isn’t like it, but the same intro through all the seasons is bad.
No song.
I don’t like technomusic (Naruto dub = horrible)
No creativity

Original channel Nickelodeon
Original airing February 21, 2005

^ Nickelodeon != Japanese

Anime

Avatar is not considered an anime because of its American origin*; one review has commented that “Avatar blurs the line between anime and (US) domestic cartoons until it becomes irrelevant.”[40]** In addition, Avatar has many features of anime such as having a different color palette from other animated shows.[41]

Avatar creators Bryan Konietzko and Michael Dante DiMartino confirmed a particular anime influence in a magazine interview:

The best anime balances great action sequences with humor and emotion, something we try to do on Avatar. **We love all the films of Hayao Miyazaki, especially Spirited Away and Princess Mononoke. Both movies deal with spirituality and the environment in an entertaining way. Also, there's a lot of great animation."[39]***

**
According to an interview with the artists involved in creating Avatar, Appa’s design was based on the Catbus in My Neighbor Totoro, due to the peculiar task of creating a mammal with six legs.[42]

**Avatar also draws inspiration from the anime works of Shinichiro Watanabe’s Cowboy Bebop and Samurai Champloo, as well as FLCL (Fooly Cooly) of Gainax. ******Other various studios from which inspiration was drawn include Studio 4 °C, Production I.G., and Studio Ghibli.[43] Bryan has commented that some of his most cherished Watanabe fight scenes were the fight between Bebop’s Spike Spiegel and a drug smuggler in “Asteroid Blues,” as well as the duel between Mugen and a blind female Jojutsu-user in the Champloo episode “Elegy of Entrapment (Verse 2).” Avatar director Giancarlo Volpe also claims the staff “were all ordered to buy Fooly Cooly and watch every single episode of it.”[44]

• = Not an anime
  ** = 1 review != all review, and doesn’t reflect the fansubbers, the people who subtitle the anime, and most of the people that are into anime
  *** = This is bad compared to Spirited away. Period. No discussion. [no NOT the frickin dub, the actual one + subs]
  **** = Samurai Champloo? HECK NO. I watched it, nothing related comes to mind. and no. has NOTHING to do with each other

Anime-influenced animation

Anime INFLUENCED animation. NOT AN ANIME.

have a good day, I’m an anime nerd, anime subtitler, anime watcher, and an anime reviewer. I know what I’m talking about.

 

[Nevarlander]

Do we really have to nerd rage about “anime” versus “animesque”?

Anyway, Avatar sounds like an epic show. Is it more or less awesome than Bleach? Because I do like the manga of Bleach.

 

[faqcorner]

Do we really have to nerd rage about “anime” versus “animesque”?

Anyway, Avatar sounds like an epic show. Is it more or less awesome than Bleach? Because I do like the manga of Bleach.

I’m not saying that avatar the last airbender was bad. I’m merely stating that it’s not an anime.

 

[Hastrman]

Do we really have to nerd rage about “anime” versus “animesque”?

Anyway, Avatar sounds like an epic show. Is it more or less awesome than Bleach? Because I do like the manga of Bleach.

It is less awesome than the manga of Bleach, probably slightly less so than the anime of Bleach (which seems to have been phoned in from beginning to end, from animation to English dub). Shonen Jump anime adaptations, I’ve noticed, are quite uneven, in terms of production quality; Naruto, Steam Detectives, and Black Cat are gorgeous (the last is better than the manga, art and writing-wise), while Bleach, One Piece, and Death Note look awful.

Avatar does however have something Bleach lacks: real martial arts (the fighting in Bleach frankly leaves me a bit cold, even in the manga). Yes they use them to make elemental magic, but the firebenders do Shaolin Long Fist, the earthbenders do Huhng Family Fist, the airbenders do Ba Gua Zhang (Eight Trigrams Palm–like the Hyuga clan in Naruto), and the waterbenders do Tai Ji Quan (Great Principle Fist, i.e. Tai Chi).

Amusingly, although most of the show is Buddhist, or rather white peoples’ understanding of Buddhism (real Buddhism doesn’t care anymore about the environment, considered solely as such, than Christianity does), the two “bad” nations (that have tried to take over the world in the past) do martial arts from Buddhist traditions, while the two passive/nice/good nations do martial arts from Taoism. Whose monastery at Wudang was a major rival of the Buddhist Shaolin monastery!

 

[Hastrman]

I’m not saying that avatar the last airbender was bad. I’m merely stating that it’s not an anime.

In Japanese it is, though.

Of course, so’s Tom and Jerry.



Kya ha ha ha.

Linguistic points aside, you ever see “Chronicles of the Cursed Sword,” “Blazin’ Barrels,” both Korean manhwa, or any of Tokyopop’s American series in the “manga” section? By that standard, Avatar is indeed an anime.

 

[patrick457]

I figured that this would be a good place to post this. This is more of a free-for-all thread than anything else, but I guess it’s guided by these general questions:

1. What are some of your favorite anime?

1. Anything by Studio Ghibli (which is almost a given anyway)
   2, 3 and 4. Superbook and the Flying House and In The Beginning - The Bible Stories
2. Shaman King

1. Are there any anime that you find conducive to Catholic values?

As I do not generally watch anime (only at times do I watch it), I can’t answer this question.

1. What annoys you about the portrayal of religion and the Western world in anime?

Basically stereotypes (not present in all anime, of course) which depict foreigners as buffoons that are incapable of Japanese, or if capable, speaks it in a rather odd and goofy manner.

As for religion, no complaints for the present though I’d really like to know the reason as to why a lot of anime characters get crucified (or at least hung cruciform) in some way or another?

Plus, churches in anime look almost the same; there’s a statue of Mary or a Crucifix or an Altar, perhaps a stained glass window or so and that’s it. If they ever make an anime based in America, I’d check if the churches look like warehouses and if there’s a priest wearing rainbow vestments while doing some New Age stuff.

1. So forth.

Not really about anime, but I’d like to share it nonetheless.

I’d read this manga once in the bookstore entitled ‘Jesus’ (by Yoshikazu Yasuhiko, who also made a manga about Joan of Arc), which is mostly the life of Jesus as viewed from the eyes of the Good Thief (a young man named Joshua). One troubling aspect of this manga is that it suggests the Resurrection was a falsified event.

NOTE: SPOILERS BELOW.

Joshua survives the breaking of his legs, having been rescued by Barabbas (whom Joshua works as a ‘spy’ to check on Jesus, in a sense).

He, having heard Jesus’ words on how He will rise up again on the third day went to the Tomb assisted by some men and was devastated to see Jesus lying inside, still dead. He then had the others move Jesus’ body while he wrapped Himself in the burial shroud, thus making him the ‘young man in the white garment’ that the women saw inside the Sepulchre, proclaiming Jesus’ Resurrection.

The manga then ends with the words of Mark 16: 8:

And they went out quickly, and fled from the sepulchre; for they trembled and were amazed: neither said they any thing to any man; for they were afraid.