Your mama
Why Are Media Outlets Targeting YouTubers?
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Lohrenswald
世界的 bottom ranked physicist
Better than disney
Farm Boy
run boy run
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Hard to hold that up if you've watched Grave of the Fireflies or similar. Dragon Ball is 90% constipation, 5% vapid, 3% orgasms, and 2% plot.
Lexicus
Deity
You should check out Samurai Champloo, you might like it
Your mama's better than Dis... oh wait...
Now that I think about it... "Lone Wolf and Cub" was pretty good.
Well I liked Afro Samurai... but I don't know if that counts as anime. The AniMatrix was awesome too... but again, same problem.
Lexicus
Deity
I've never heard anyone argue that Afro Samurai doesn't count as anime. Why wouldn't either of these things count as anime?
Doesn't it have to be Japanese-made?...I don't know the parameters of what counts as Amime... STOP YELLING AT ME!!! 
Lexicus
Deity
Doesn't it have to be Japanese-made?...I don't know the parameters of what counts as Amime... STOP YELLING AT ME!!!
*shrugs* No idea. Samurai Champloo is Japanese-made though so it's in the clear there
If you liked Afro Samurai you should like Champloo. That's an anglicization of a Japanese term that means remix, and the show has a purposely-anachronistic blend of a few eras in Japanese history, and modern hip-hop culture to boot! There's an episode where the sons of a dojo master who was forced by the local lord to kill himself engage in a graffiti-tagging battle.
schlaufuchs
Break My Heart
The original Dragon Ball is great until the end when it starts obviously wasting time like Z does. Z is good for stretches, but largely drowns in its own filler and low-budget animation.
Anime is a pulpy medium, meaning there is significantly less oversight as compared to, say, network TV. The product isn't being run through dozens of producers, advertisers and studio heads, heavily scrutinized for message and content and being thereby watered down. Directors, producers, art directors, etc. have a lot more freedom to take risks and try something different than you'd see on American television outside of maybe FX or HBO, and now Netflix/amazon. Studios are more willing to take risks on weird ideas and niche concepts. There is a lot of trash. A TON of trash. But if you sift around enough what you'll find is some of the most beautiful, interesting, innovative stuff out there. Both in terms of plotting and world ideas, as well as in terms of artistic direction and visual storytelling. The art coming out of some of these studios is absolutely stunning.
Lohrenswald
世界的 bottom ranked physicist
maybe slightly more willing but not very
I believe mostly because stiff competition makes them want to play safe
Farm Boy
run boy run
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I agree Owen. It's kind of fun, especially if you don't follow the genre very closely, to turn on some friend-recommended stuff. You never know entirely what you're going to get. One day you weep through bombings, the next there are vegetable based cooking superheroes, then Vageeta just can't get his bowls to move, then you get an awkward bone from zombies. All over the place! I don't turn it on when my son's still awake. Disney is, for the most part, safer about that. But someday we ought to be able to, because it has already begun.
schlaufuchs
Break My Heart
Well I'd say it's more the priorities are slightly different. In the US the focus is on selling a product to advertisers, so the focus is on achieving broad appeal to a wide array of demographics. The general production format is far more of an "art by committee" orientation, resulting in television that is, on the whole, rather milquetoast. Anime is a niche genre, and their money tends to be made on Blu-ray and toy/games sales. As such they tend to focus in on a much smaller, more focused demographic. And generally as long as you as a director/writer/producer are hitting the key expectations for that demographic (fan service, a diverse and interesting cast that plays well to toy products, heavy action for boy-oriented stories, romance/drama for girl-oriented stories), you're free to do more or less whatever you want. That's what I'm talking about when I mean innovation. They have shows about rugby teams, shows about professional shogi players, shows about cooking, shows about boring office work, shows about being in a high school concert band, high concept sci-fi shows, high concept fantasy shows, shows about making shows. They have shows about depression, shows about isolation, shows about romance that deal with romance outside the traditional "will-they won't they"/contrived misunderstanding/love triangle story beats you usually get. They have shows about obsession, shows about economics, shows about passion, inspiration and artistic expression.
I'd say a good comp is with HBO or Showtime. HBO is similar in that the channel's focus isn't to sell a product to advertisers. It's to sell a product to subscribers. The relative advantage of the network is that they aren't subject to censorship laws regarding sex, nudity and language like cable/network tv is. As such viewers expect shows with profligate nudity and violence because that's what they're paying for. So as long as you as a writer hit those expectations, you're essentially free to tell whatever stories you want. You can have shows about a middle class divorcée pot dealer, you can have high-concept adaptations of fantasy novels like Game of Thrones, or sci-fi stories like Westworld. You can have violent gangster shows like The Sopranos or The Wire. You can have high-budget historical dramas like Rome. These aren't the sorts of shows you would see on network tv, which is far more beholden to broadly appealing genre conventions which are all, more or less, the same conventional police procedurals and family sitcoms.
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Lohrenswald
世界的 bottom ranked physicist
this comma-mistake is pretty funny I thought
anyways, I think I see what you mean, and I suppose you're right to a fairly great extent
on the other hand probably the majority of animes have for the main characeter a brown haired self-insert image character for dorky tweens, so it's a mixed bag lol
I might also be mistaken on this but I feel like anime now experiments less than in the 90's
schlaufuchs
Break My Heart
Yeah, that's the sort of thing I mean. If you can look past things like every show featuring a brown-haired tween-insert character, there's a lot of good to find in the genre, especially in terms of visual storytelling, editing, and color. But as I said at the start, I don't think of anime as some master race of superior storytelling where everything is an inspired piece of high art or anything like that. There is a lot of trash. But every once in awhile you come across something like a Kids on the Slope or Shirobako or Shouwa Genroku Rakugo Shinjuu that just totally nails it across the board. Or even shows like Shokugeki or Maoyu which, while undeniably flawed, have a great deal of interesting things to say if you're willing to stick with it through their more idiotic moments. And it's those sorts of shows which, in my opinion, make the effort of sifting through the trash worth it.
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Yeah, mostly speculation at this point which is why I am trying to avoid outright accusing the WSJ of anything.
