Retsgip’s Anime Blog

Darkshaunz orders dessert.

As anime viewers, we love to taste new things. Novelty and fresh ideas are like the melting chocolate laces around a cake slice. The sensation doesn’t last long, but boy do we love them and to that effect, entirely new cakes are a joy to taste if well done (painfully bitter if not). Anime, like other mainstream and cult media forms, have conventions. We follow the archetypical movie/film type genre trend with all the man staple genres and themes. Being anime, we also get the privileges and the enjoyment of certain niches. However, the idea pool seems to drawing blanks, and we just can no longer be entertained by the safe bets of the normal conventions.

Just cos I can.

The Usual Suspects

Harem, Tsundered, Moe are just a few examples of the mainstay anime genres that is available to the anime viewing audience. Although niches to the media form (where the traditional standards involve Romance, Sci-Fi, Fantasy etc.) they have become so common throughout the art form, that its quite hard not to spot elements of the three within the anime of today. Personally, I find all three aspects enjoyable to watch, if done properly, I mean c’mon what guy doesn’t like switiching off his noodle to see a smorgasbord of delicious looking anime ladies strut around a very lucky male lead? The issue does not lie with the fact that its a common occurence, but rather with the fact that we’ve allowed ourselves be too accustomed with the offerings. Is it possible perhaps, that as an audience, we still long for something entirely fresh? I’m talking fresh as in something completely new and bold, not something old masked behind a veil of superior animation production or new characters.

I’m looking at this from a consumer viewpoint, its probrably too much of a commercial angle, but I think a lot of you folks out there get excited when something new comes out (products and otherwise). The elation is magnified when we find that the new thing is something totally awesome. By no accounts am I being unreasonable in my demands, I do support the anime industry by buying all sorts of officially licensed merchandise (mostly eva-sega related merchandise), even own quite a lot of original anime DvDs myself (note that I am part of the lucky bunch somewhat affluent enough to afford them). Point being, there’s a lot of you out there supporting the anime industry and the anime field certainly wouldn’t be as big as it is today without you. Like regular movie-goers, are we becoming a bit jaded even with the solid titles on offer since last year? Not curiously, I think we are. 2006 saw the entry of some innovative and entertaining titles, it also saw the entrance of more constructed, precise and sniping criticisms.

As expected, the better Japanimation companies perform in their writing, animation and pacing, the higher the calibre the criticism that they are prone to receive. So the answer, may lie in delivering titles which have entirely new conventions and and mechanics to satiate our anime passion. Good news is, there are already anime companies looking to deliver material which the anime audience has not tasted, oh and there are already a couple of titles I can think of, the top of my head that is introducing new elements to the anime environment and raising the benchmark for their respective genres. Indeed, it may be time that the Sheriff may not have to deal with the Usual suspects in the downtown station any longer. Lets have a look at some new genres that may be worth looking at for entertainment value, who knows maybe one of these will actually spring up in the future (and you can remember that we called it here first!).

New Genre - World War II

Epic battles in my Pacific sea? Its more likely than you think.

This will look awesome, anime’d.

I miss epic battles in an animated sense, I am still occassionally wowed by some of the spectacular one on one fights delivered in say, Shounen series such as Bleach (especially when they Bankai). Its kind of where you sit back and have a chance to let your mind soak in the gratuitious slaughtering of one anime party to the other. Hang on, those are one on ones most of the time, what I am looking for are animated set pieces involving the Axis Japanese and the allies. They can feature many characters and personalities that existed in the battle. A good example would be the Japanese strike at Pearl Harbour and the Battleship disaster at the Leyte Gulf. Heck, they can even animate the illustrous 40 day battle of Iwo Jima against the American marines if they wanted. Its a great chance to revisit some of history’s defining moments and capture the spectacle that is war.

World War II locations also provide an inherently rich, aesthetical and moving environment of which the events can take place in. Anime has always been about delivering special messages to its audience, whether its about love or protecting something important. World War II anime can deliver this premise and then some, after all, its all about patriotic soldiers defending their homeland and important ones. There’s also a lot of individual stories which can be built up along the way outlining just how soldiers came to term with their positions and situations (dealing with battlefield shock and trauma for instance). The WWII genre can be informative, educational and importantly, entertaining. Who knows? maybe this might start anime off as a real educational tool across the globe (its proven that we respond better to visuals than text). Anime has come a long way and pulling off something like this would not be a technological restraint in any sense, and I do believe that a lot of Japanimation companies already have decent toolsets to make something like this.

New Genre - “Tsunderevy”

C’mon Third Salvo…!

You are all familiar with the term, “Tsundere”. It certainly has become a standard offering across a genre of anime. You’re bound to meet an exquisitively beautiful female lead who will do whatever it takes to play hard to get. Tsundere-esque characters are old hat now, a dime a dozen even. However, Black Lagoon is taking that term and giving it some extra GAR sauce. Instead of using the conventional Tsundere system of having equal parts of “TsunTsun” (Hostile) and “DereDere” (Gentle/Submissive), the team over at Black Lagoon decided they’d give an equally graceful and sexy Revy the Mega-TsunTsun treatment with a teasing amount of dere snuck in here and there. Additionally, Black Lagoon breathed new life into the action genre, but they also introduced a new concept of hard to get ladies in the process. Originally a term coined right here, Tsunderevy was meant to represent the pinnacle of Tsun (So Tsun, she was practically GAR), the effect makes the dere part of Revy so much more engaging and rewarding (as we are teased into wanting more).

The main drawing point of the “Tsunderevy” type character would be her tenacious, ruthless and ultimately masculine properties. She’ll be so loaded up with dark, chaotic and lethal attributes that even the male lead might seriously Die if messes up in front of her. I am speaking not of the regular Tsundere “Blush and Pout” but a “Blush and pump your chest full of .45 calibre bullets”. In a way, “Tsunderevy” types provide audiences with real tough combat vixens drawing blood on a daily basis, yet their sneaked (smuggled even) amounts of “dere” bursts are like the icing on a cake. We all love seeing maidens brandishing tactical weapons, but its squeal-worthy if they even let out one small, forgiving smile. Perhaps the age of Tsundere should take a rest, and we should see where the “Tsunderevy” types may take us in future anime series (I assure you, destruction is guaranteed).

New Genre - Environmental

Leaf her alone.

I am sure you guys have heard of Green buzz-words, such as “Greenhouse gases” and “Global Warming”. This is personally something that I feel strongly about. Even though I have a car, I commute to university via train and bus, not only because its a fuel-cost saving method, but I believe that if you have a good public transport system in your country (and I am aware some of you do not have access to reliable public transport systems), that you should at least try going to where you need to go using Buses and Trains. If you are a public transport regular like myself, than you would know that the inconveniences are actually quite minimal. So my green message aside, I realize and recognize that anime is now global, its a big commercial thing, but its flourishing as an art form. It provides the perfect platform to inform and educate people on how to think “Green”. I mean I don’t go the full way and have recycle bins or live in a wooden shack, but if people did their small part for their environment (like taking a bus!), we’d be alright for the longer term. What better way to spread this message than through the rich, illustrous and colourful world of anime?

The anime types I will be recommending can be something along the lines of people living in a world where environmental negligence has scarred the Earth, and people are suffering. I think its important that the characters put the blame not on some ambiguous evil dark tyrant brooding in the apocalyptic mess, but with some kind of angst against their forefathers who cared not for the environment. The show(s) can also provide a visual narrative as to how the next generations are coping with the depleted ozone layer, increased temperature and also the maddening weather patterns that are occuring worldwide. Perhaps due to this new harsh and alien environment, we get to see what our great grandchildren see, with strange and bizzare weather patterns. So this type of anime requires both artistic license and to some degree, a “Scientific-Prediction” approach to what the future world environmental issues would be.

New Genre - Epic Battlez, In Space.

Stay on Target….Stay on Target….

This shit is Epic.

Yes, you read that right. I am proposing for an anime where they do nothing but have Epic Battlez in Space. This can be along the lines of Karas (a visual splendor itself), where the animation team throws the full force of the budget into say, 3 to 6 episode OVAs and give us nothing but pure space-combat adrenaline. For the mecha fans out there, you are probrably thinking, “But Gundam has delivered a lot of large scale battles in space”. Yes, but the type of Epic Battlez I am referring to is the Star-Wars type of battle. Where basically, you have large fleets of whatever kinds of Starcruisers lined up firing their lazers at each other (for the motherland etc.). The Gundam series and even the Day of Saggitarius episode from Haruhi has proved that Epic Battlez in anime IN SPACE can be totally awesome and “zomg” worthy. After rewatching the opening sequence from Karas episode 1, I remained convinced that if they upped the scale of that to a fleet level, it would make Sci Fi fans everywhere shit bricks.

Let me set the scene for you, a GAR captain aboard a Battlecruiser is sitting down, eyeing the asses of his hot flight deck attendants (his name can be Garoshi Garmaxx). Then suddenly, his fleet radar picks up some weird red bleeping sound heading at like Mach 500 (or whatever speed they travel in space), and he loses a ship in a spectacular blaze. Of course, Captain Garmaxx does not take this kind of faggotry very well and demands where the shot came from. In the dark unforgiving abyss of space, an alien fleet emerges (with tentacles on them and shit), and they start firing more alien pod missiles at his fleet. Captain Garmaxx then WRYYYYYYYYs and then unleashes all his gun batteries and lighting up a quiet parsec of space. Imagine this in full anime’d CG splendor, with hot anime flight deck babes and GAR pilots whizzing around, and huge lazers cutting up steel in a furious glory. The epic scale of these battles would be worthy of remembrance, I know I’d hit it.

New Genre - …., True Story.

This happened in front of me, true story.

Did I just hear a dull sigh wash across? Anime based on true stories, that probrably doesn’t sound too exciting, that would be general riff I’d get if I brought it up to my friends. There’s always the rule of thumb that Anime and Elements of reality are like oil and water, you have to learn to segregate the two or learn to cleverly mesh the two aspects so that the anime doesn’t become too realistic or too fantastical. Hey, we’ve come a long way since Osamu Tezuka, and even he knew how to counterweight the two aspects very well to make the art of anime, legendary in Japan. Some of you will agree with me, some shit that happens in anime is just so out of place that we can’t even excuse the event just because its in anime. This is because we are used to having Realistic frames of reference when looking at events transpiring in anime. Just turn on CNN, Discovery Channel, National Geographic or any current affairs network, and what you see is that some people have some amazing stories to tell, they’ve been part of some pretty crazy shit which we never thought occured outside of a fantastical realm.

The argument against this would be that hollywood already does this kind of thing at least 50 times over every year. I have yet to see a series based on an actual person or event done in anime however. It won’t be those lame re-enactments you see on documentaries when they lack the budget or source film to show the audience, but it will be a decently animated affair touched up and pieced together by the animation companies. Just picture scanning through all the typical offerings every new season, you’ll see the usual shounen, romance and lolicious titles and then you will see this title which is based around something that is done around the story of a real event. You’ll get the feeling of awkwardness as you try and interpret anime and reality being merged together (I heard its a tingly sensation). Good source material can be something like a anime-biography on important people such as world leaders or even a journalist working in a war-torn place (real world events are sometimes more brutal than that of anime world events). Either way, I am sure this approach to a new anime genre would pique the interest of budding anime viewers.

New Genre - Criminology

CSI this, bitches.

It’s always been part of my hopes that we’d get an anime where the bad guy wins. An anime where the bad guy isn’t totally malicious or anything, but he gets away with it. I know you can think of a couple of titles here and there where they do get away with it, but they somehow get brutally eaten by a demon in hell at the end or something. The angle which I am looking at this proposed genre is that, anime audiences can see how a professional thief does what he does in an age where security and suspicion are it’s highest. Part of the anime would attain to not only the physical endurance he has to undergo to do his dirty deed, but also, we can learn about the lead’s (male or female) backstory, why he decides to have a life of crime and also the emotional traumas related to the job, as the thief in question probrably had to steal from “softer” targets like children or the elderly to start with. The crime of theft is as ancient as civilization itself, and it continues to mystify viewers and audiences. Like many of those mentioned above, it would be a pretty cool endeavour to see it in anime.

Right now, the title that everyone is talking about crime-wise would be Death Note. Granted, its a solid and entertaining series, the premise of the show is intertwined with fantastical elements such as Light’s Deathgod companion Ryuk. The main charm, of course, remains the myriad of intellectual skirmishes which Light and L engage in, providing for a crime sleuth lure. The type of anime that I am suggesting, will have elements of intellectual sparring (without the fantasy element), but also hopefully, an inquisitive and curious look into the dark side of a person’s psyche. As an art form, anime provides the perfect “medium” for a concoction of deception, stealth, cunning and speed. The anime doesn’t have to be too geared towards realism, but it must have a strong focus on the thief lead and how he affects the people and places he visits.

New Genre - Xtreme!!! Sports (eg: Free-Running)

Free Running is not usually done in Meido cosplay.

Here at Retsgip anime blog, we totally love our Xtreme Sports in anime. We believe that anime is the true pioneer of Xtreme!!! Sports. For example, Pumpkin Scissors showed that snowboarding can be Xtreme, especially when bandits snowboard whilst firing bolt action rifles, and also in Bleach, when Ichigo showed us all how to properly school a tower in Xtreme Tower Killing. Aside from being regular overused memes here at R.A.B, I do know that everyone here would actually want to watch something like people snowboarding and shooting at other competitors on ESPN (just cause its so non-sequitur and realistically violent). Aight, jokes aside, I do believe that this is a yet untapped field of sports that anime can draw opportunities from. Air Gear showed us that an Xtreme Inline Skating anime can be both bootilicious (sexy!) and entertaining. It doesn’t have to be a parallel to the real world sport, but it can have a bit anime physics to make the experience much more delicious (like Pizza). Specifically, I don’t want to see Skateboarding or Dirtbiking or anything (the real thing is way more adrenaline pumped anyway), but I think Free-Running is the next big Xtreme!!! thing, and would be glorious in anime medium.

Free Running is actually a pretty cool sport. The basis of which is not regular running like you and I know it. The point is actually to run and jump across high places like building roof to building roof. The sport includes conventional running, acrobatic jumping and a lot of barrel rolling (to absorb the shock from jumping from high places). I saw a documentary on it once, and I was instantly wow’ed by the fast pace and simple ingenuity of turning something rather old like running, to an Xciting Xtreme!!! sport. Who said old dogs can’t learn new tricks? Free Running’s fast pace would keep the anime audience interested for sure, and they can have like epic anime Free-Running tournaments. Having all the anime leads and bad guys giving each other steel blazing looks before a competition and powering up their legs (lol?) before the big event can all be part of the magical anime transition. Heck, writers can even put in the obligatory cheeky sexy big-racked female character in the anime just to give us a bit of a “Bouncing” sensation whilst we watch her run (it would be hilariously hot). I’m Xtremely Xcited.

And here comes the dessert I ordered earlier. *smacks lips*

Loving the conventional and standard fare in anime is part of appreciating how far we’ve come as a global anime community. Sometimes, a change of pace is needed, and in fact, absolutely crucial to ensuring the non-stagnation of our industry. I am sure that I’ve only scraped the proverbial tip of the iceberg with my suggestions. There’s just so much other rich and interesting source materials out there that animation companies can leech off. In the meantime, you’ll have to excuse me whilst I fantasize about me being a GAR space fleet captain engaging tentacle monster spaceships whilst secksing my hot flight deck attendants. All cannons to starboard, bitches.

Cheers,

Darkshaunz