Jman

Freindship Squad, hell, a LOT of Western animated shows have this problems. Both the preachiness and the general conceit about asking us to feel empathy for characters that have none of it themselves. Sorry, but if your characters are obnoxious jackasses that laugh at a guy getting mugged, I don’t give a flying fuck about their image problems.

Western animators and fans of animation (not necessarily weebs, just people who recognize animation as a medium) need to have a very long talk about what is expected of them. The Liberator ended up looking a lot better and that’s rotoscoping.

Took a while to get people on board with plant based meats, and this actually tastes like meat...because it is. I’m optimistic things will turn around, even if I probably won’t see a Star Trek style replicator in my lifetime.

If they can keep bringing the price down and cutting down on the carbon footprint, well...let me just say investing in this over plant based substitute companies is my advice.

https://www.crunchyroll.com/anime-news/2020/11/09-1/japan-box-office-demon-slayers-overwhelming-domination-has-continued-for-4-consecutive-weeks Essentially it’s winning the box office by default.

You mean the unfunny American animated show did poorly on a block filled with adult anime? I’m stunned. Look, sometimes writers need to find the right outlet for their work. I’ve said it before but Tim & Eric found their sweet spot in advertising and writing for stuff like Steve Brule (that and Moonbase 8 is what Space Force should have been), but Tom Goes to the Mayor assuredly did not play to those strengths on an animation block. Maybe that’s the case here, that this guy shouldn’t be doing anime parodies on an anime block conditioned to view American anime parodies, with very few exceptions (Megas XLR, we miss you) as complete dreck.

https://www.animenewsnetwork.com/feature/2020-11-09/why-does-the-crunchyroll-original-series-ex-arm-look-so-awful/.166117 An article on why the show looks like crap, namely, no one involved has any experience with animation.

Just...look at it. Look at it. I feel sorry for bashing Polygon Pictures every five seconds now.

Free Episode 1.

I’m sensing a theme so far - Mando vs Monsters. When do we get Mando fighting a Zillo Beast?

Ouch. As someone who thought Pop Team could be really funny in small doses and significantly softened on Tim and Eric (Moonbase 8 looks hilarious), this...this ain’t it. The closest comparison I can think of is Magical Girl Friendship Squad, a horrifically unfunny parody of magical girls written by people who hate anime and have very little knowledge of it.

They must have seen SyFy’s awful Magical Girl Friendship Squad and went “how can we out-fail that?” Look, I get it. Budgets are tight, dubs pacing has slowed, and this avoids both of those problems in a way SSSS.GRIDMAN wouldn’t. But still. Guess we’ll see how the ratings did.

Toonami will probably try to get it.

Demon Slayer 1. Finally starting this.

This is particularly notable since the original manga was never completed on account of the author’s untimely death in 2006. Also keep in mind the sheer scale and insanity of the original manga (think Go Nagai meets Jack Kirby) was Gurren Lagann’s direct inspiration, being a homage to Getter.

I sometimes wonder if Sealab and Adult Swim hanging the “we’re the only game in town!” card over anime fans for a decade has come to royally bite them in the ass over the past few years.

I have a significant distrust of Western animated writers for a while now. It’s always the most surface level parody made by people who despise anime and want it either destroyed or bent to their morals and standards. And it always looks like crap. Whiny, butthurt Twitter trolls trying to weave their way into streaming services and usurp the stuff they despise with their own crap, then shout “Racist!” And “homophobe!” when it inevitably flops on its face. Case in point - It is the wrong show, for the wrong block, at the wrong time.

If you buy Crunchyroll, it’s presumably for infrastructure and licenses. No sense throwing the former out. That’s my hope anyway.

They wouldn’t. They would however, ditch FUNiNow as an app in favor of using the Crunchyroll brand and infrastructure for all their anime streaming.

https://www.animenewsnetwork.com/news/2020-10-30/nikkei-sony-nears-acquisition-of-crunchyroll/.164843 Why is this in the Toonami thread? Well because a lot of Toonami’s upcoming originals are Crunchyroll collaborations. If CR falls into Sony’s hands, and becomes the distribution arm replacing FUNiNow, you could see most of those originals vanish into thin freaking air. Not to mention such a move would cause Sony and Netflix to essentially become the two major players for anime in the US, leaving Toonami whatever scraps are left as the remaining notable distributors (Viz, Sentai, and Right Stuff) ally with one of the two respective power players in an attempt to keep themselves in business. This could fundamentally change the balance of power in a rapidly growing sector of the streaming market, and Toonami is the most likely to be left in the cold.

When you get down to it, Fire Force’s biggest sin is that it is not a terrible series by any stretch (likable lead, fairly strong supporting cast, relatively original premise) but there are too many flaws for it to be considered a great series (several unlikable characters we’re expected to sympathize with, Tamaki’s antics simply don’t fit the tone of half the scenes she’s in so the fanservice is jarring rather than welcome). And sometimes that’s more frustrating than a series you know is dogshit, because you just need to fix a few things, in this case pacing and tone.

Get ready for the Twitter Puritans to come out in force.

Or... I’d take the Quantum Leap anime, mostly on account of Scott Bakula still being alive. Where was I? Right, Polygon sucks.

https://deadline.com/2020/10/unicorn-warriors-eternal-hbo-max-cartoon-network-genndy-tartakovsky-1234604548/ Distinctly unlike Primal, this is set to be a family series.