Anime Vs. Cartoons, What Is The True Difference?

If any of you readers grew up as a teenager between the late 90's and early 2000's then you have to know what anime is. You were one of the many people in what is known as the Otaku generation. A generation of people who were exposed wholly to anime. Fast forward to now, anime is starting to get a little more back into the public spotlight after it was long forgotten and left the public eye. Now must of you who watch anime must have this situation happen all the time. You're sitting down watching anime on your computer (much as I do in my free time in school and sometimes when I shouldn't) and you hear that comment. "Why you watching some stupid cartoons?" Yes to the untrained eye they mite seem like some little kid's cartoons, but what is it that truly separates anime from just some cartoon. Today I'll be talking about the things that in my opinion stand out. 

Now first and most obvious, anime is originally made in Japan which is it's most distinct quality. But it isn't what makes anime, anime. For instance people confuse Avatar The Last Air Bender for being an anime all the time. This is because it shares the other qualities most commonly seen in anime. To start the art style of an anime is always very high quality. Because it has become such a big part of their culture all anime is put together with such high art talent that everything looks amazing. The bigger the production time and project the even better it will look. On the topic of art, anime always has its own great line up of music tracks. The compositions even lead a lot of us to pull them up on our computer to listen to as we do work. 

Some of the biggest qualities come in the story though. Most anime is made from manga. A manga is a Japanese graphic novel. This is important because it means most anime already have established stories lines that are well fleshed out, meaning is all about bringing those details out in the video form. Which brings up another good point that characterization is a huge part of all animes. Every character no matter how big or small is usually given some way to emotionally connect to the audience to wear you care about them. I've seen an entire episode dedicated to one character who showed up at the beginning gained and emotional connect to the plot and audience and then dies at the end of that episode. Animes also share great, broad genres. There are comedies, sports, slice of life, action, adventure, mystery, if its a genre then there is a hit anime to cover it. 

Now focusing more on the story you see a huge difference in types of stories shown in american animated programs (and even live action) and that of animes. This is because Japan does not share the same sort of censorship that we do. Meaning a lot of radical and new ideas can be created and made over there that couldn't be done here. Usually this translates to seeing more mature themed stories or more complicated story lines, but this is not always true. Also in most cases when an anime is made the idea is pitched to a board of investors from different animation companies, they then decide whether to pick it up or not and who will fund and take the roles of this anime. This group of collaborators is most commonly seen in credits as the project group for the anime. For instance for Sword Art Online (shortened to SAO) they are credited as SAO Project. This highly differs from the American way of creating cartoons especially in the sense that they pull in more resources and talent from different place. 

So this is just a brief description on the differences I see between cartoons and anime. I hope that you enjoyed this article and for those of you reading who may have had a different mind set about anime before or didn't watch it then I hope to have convinced you to give it a try.

Fall TV Lineup Part 2

Last week I began telling you about some of the TV shows starting up again this fall that you should watch out for. This week I've got even more for you.

To start things off lets take a look into Arrow. Going into its 2nd season, Arrow is the television series based off the DC Comics hero Green Arrow. Oliver Queen, after being stranded on a seemingly deserted island, returns to civilization after bing presumed dead. Upon returning he swears that he will find the people who caused him to loose his father and the last five years of his life. To do this he plans to use a list left to him in his father's journal that names all the people who are corrupting his city. Threw this adventures he makes allies and enemies as he digs deeper into the conspiracy and more of his life on the island is revealed. It is a great take on a classic super hero and the 2nd season is primed to be as explosive as ever.

Next is everyone's favorite singing and dancing stars Glee. In case you have been living under a rock the last couple of years let me fill you in. Glee is a show all about high school students who all come from different backgrounds but join together in their school's show choir club, Glee Club. With the 5th season about to begin there are a lot of questions being raised. The biggest being how will they be adapting to the loss of their most beloved and lead male character who's actor died this past summer. Also their are a lot of great cliff hangers like will Blaine and Kurt get married, what's going to happen to Jake and will they be able to take home another Nationals with their club's current condition? You'll just have to watch to find out.

Then we got another super hero show coming out, Marvel Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Based on the secret FBI like society from the Marvel's Avenger universe. The story will focus on agent Phil Coulson from who will be taking on the duty of leading a small team in strange cases. Not to many details have been revealed yet but they plan on having super hero cameos as well as villain cameos and that it will serve to help bridge time gaps in the Marvel movie universe. If it's anywhere near as good as Arrow, then I personally can't wait.

So that will do it for this week's blog. I'm sure I've now given you plenty of shows to watch on your week nights after work this fall. And as for me I hope that you learn to love these shows as much as I have grown to love them.

Fall TV Lineup Part 1

Fall is starting up and television is about to kick into high gear. Many great shows are getting ready to start their new seasons and some new shows are ready to start up. So I thought I’d give a quick rundown of some of the shows you should be watching.

First let’s start with Revolution season 2! Starting from where we left off Miles, Charlie, Rachel and Aaron are trying to stop the missiles from hitting the capital of both the Georgia Federation and The Monroe Republic. But will this mean they have to once again turn off the power? Is the world not ready to go back yet? And what is the plan of the president who we saw a quick shot of at the end of season 1? Revolution brings a great action series to the line up with great production value from the mind of J.J. Abrams

Next is Parenthood, a show about the Braverman family living life in the modern world. It’s a really heartwarming show that focuses on the problems of growing up in the modern age and critically acclaimed for its focus on raising a child with Asperger's syndrome. The series is going into it’s 5th season with the hopeful return of Ray Romano again. Anyone who hasn’t seen this I suggest to watch it because theres always a character in this huge family you can relate to and problems you’ve faced as a teenager or parent.

Now how about we take a nice vacation to Hawaii. Hawaii Five 0 season 4 will be kicking into the high gear coming off of it’s own cliff hanger. What’s going to happen to Steve McGarret as he’s forced to chose whether or not to save his arch rival from this new unknown enemy. And what will happen throughout this exciting season. Hawaii Five 0 brings a great mix of action and comedy with production value that makes it all worth wild.

Well that’s all for this week but come back next week for the continuation of the TV lineup. Just remember how to get back to this page, all you gotta do is “Book Em Danno”.

Percy Jackson Sea of Monsters...... Why?

Recently released into box offices was the 2nd iteration of the Percy Jackson Series, “Percy Jackson Sea of Monsters”. This movie is very questionable however for many reasons which I’ll be discussing today. But to start here’s a trailer for those of you who haven’t seen it.

So the first issue with this is this film is that the time between the first movie, “Percy Jackson and The Lightning Thief”, is a whopping three and a half years. Now this may not seem like a big gap of time for a sequel however this is for a movie that in while it was very anticipated ended up as a huge flop in the public’s eyes. It currently holds a 5.2 rating on iMDb and the sequel currently only holds a 6.2 rating.

On top of that this sequel has a lot of errors both in it’s writing and shooting. First of all there is a huge plot hole error that while the story revolves around the Golden Fleece and it’s power to “heal anyone and anything” Polyphemus still has poor eyesight even though he wears it over his shoulder. There are also very strange changes to the original story that don’t add to the story or help make filming this movie any easier so they don’t really make sense (I will refrain from giving such examples for the sake of spoilers).

Also there are continuity errors throughout the film. First of all during a taxi scene Percy is seen putting his seat belt on but when it is cut open he is holding onto both sides of the cab no longer with his seat belt with no logical time or reasoning for it, just a plain continuity error. Also in a scene where Annabeth runs to Percy to show him something on her tablet you can see the tablet is completely blank. Plus in the D.C. scene there are skyscrapers in the background which are obviously not found in D.C. On top of all of this these are just things found in the short time it’s been released.

So it seems that this movie was done in a complete sense of let’s make money. Not nearly enough thought process was put into this for being a book turn movie and to help revive a series whose launch movie flopped.