Heya

[wave]

So that particular one - Ghost in the Shell: the Stand Alone Complex - is known for high-fidelity art, smooth integration of 3-D effects, & realistic animation

Visually, anyway

Which is why I snagged it as an example of high-fidelity motion to see if that's what you like in animation (some Western animation is also really interested in high-fidelity motion)

I'm looking at it (and tabbing back to chat and do other things, so it's slow).

Random fun fact relating to this one: it premiered in the USA through the Starz network, who also paid for & hired the voice actors.

I'm 2m in and haven't had a good look at anything yet because it's all stylised credits and then architectural stuff, but I think it's about to change.

Blarg, I thought I snagged a Youtube link to further in

I'm sorry

In any event, lemme know if that's the kind of animation fidelity you like so that I can try and contemplate what short cuts/conventions are annoying and/or unique to the 'genre'.

Like, chibi is pretty much Just Anime

So far it's unobjectionable. [grin] The "everyone stands still and the mouths move" thing is distracting, but as I said before I know that's not an anime thing.

It's seriously creepy when peoples' upper faces don't move while they talk.

@BESW If it makes you feel better some of it is actually cyberbrain communication

Telepathy via instant messaging

@Lord_Gareth Yes, but then their mouths aren't moving too and I get it.

I'm around 4:30 to 5:00 in the meeting room conference thingie, and everyone's lower faces are animated when they talk but their upper faces are static. [shudder]

Again, I know Western animation is just as guilty of that as Eastern.

Yeah it's just Generally Annoying

The more realistic the art style, the creepier it is.

@BESW Clearly we need to do a psychological thriller as a live-action movie where the (real) people on-screen begin displaying animation traits

The effects budget would be awful

But the Uncanny Valley assault would be glorious

Take a still shot of the scene, then film the actors talking, and digitally impose the moving mouths over the still image?

@BESW I love you so much right now.

And the main character is a film student that doesn't understand why his/her life is developing these disturbing traits that only they can see.

Lots of still closeup shots of the actor's upper face with voiceover.

@Lord_Gareth Uhm, high fidelty? I have like the impression that guy at the beginning detaches from the groud without properly jumping and "flies" trough acrobatic jumps moving (related to the background) faster than his movements suggest. Maybe I'm expecting too much from something I've always wanted to watch but never did.

@Zachiel So far I'm assuming that's deliberate because of something Matrixy that hasn't been explained yet.

@Zachiel Not high-fidelity physics

However, Cybernetics - to the point where some people are 'full prosthetic'; human brains in android bodies

The Major being one

This is.... close to another of my problems with anime.

Which is perfectly fair

Not so much "not liking" it as feeling like it requires a lot more effort and energy to appreciate than I usually want to put into my entertainment.

And I won't poke into it because I know what those are

I think I've seen some good animation in Trigun (the animation team shot things to see how they behave when exposed to gunfire, then found as many ways as possible to get gunfights in the anime XD), but sometimes character animation is very cartoonish.

aaaand I leave you to your conversation now

Even aside from cultural references I don't get, there's a whole new library of visual shorthand and storytelling conventions that I have to consciously process.

Like the pervert nosebleed

Especially with science fiction or fantasy, where I'm constantly wondering "Is that an anime thing I'm unfamiliar with, or is that supposed to be a Weird Thing in this setting?"

[notsureif.gif]

IIRC there's a listing of some of those

So while I have no objection to learning these things, it's not a priority in my life and my ignorance makes the anime experience cumbersome.

There is also the fact that nearly every anime fan I've ever met, upon learning that I don't watch anime, ties me to a chair and force-feeds me Miyazaki.

He does good stuff but not forr your set of objections

For what it's worth, I was disappointed that The Secret World of Arrietty adhered so closely to the novel. I wanted to see an actual Japanese adaptation, and what I got was a faithful and loving recreation.

@BESW If only he'd done that for Howl's

Princess Mononoke was distressingly confusing as my first exposure to anime.

Ouch, as your first?

Geez

And Spirited Away was not introduced to me properly; I recently re-watched it and "got it" a lot more.

(The first time, I kept expecting it to make logical sense, rather than moral sense.)

Was it fun after that?

On the more recent viewing, I liked it.

Not one of my favourite films ever or anything like that, but I enjoyed it.

However, it didn't make me curious about looking further into the anime experience.

Oh, the other thing I remember being "forced" to watch was a weird TV series that was billed to me as "an anime about a D&D party."

I don't remember much about it except that it was my first exposure to the fact that Japanese fiction uses Christianity much the same way American fiction uses various Eastern philosophies.

This was around the same time a friend took me out to dinner for the express purpose to telling me about DBZ.

@BESW Wait, wait - Record of Lodoss War?

I have no idea. I might recognise a screen shot.

I don't have any, I didn't really like it

I think one of the "PCs" was a "nun."

But Record of Lodoss War is literally someone's D&D campaign turned into a show

And then there's...I wanna say Lina Inverse but that might just be the character's name. Same thing, different campaign.

They have street cred in the RPG community but overall kinda mediocre

Bleck. I've never found much personal gain or enjoyment from stories based on peoples' campaigns in any medium.

@BESW Preach it.

[looks askance at Ol' Hourglass Eyes]

Okay, so - based on what you've said, I feel like you may enjoy Cazador. With that in mind, if your general issue is most strongly Japanese Storytelling Problems then I can chalk a tally mark in that column and just keep my eyes peeled for 'anime-inspired' Western shows like Avatar: the Last Airbender.

If I run across Cazador, I'll give it a shot.

It was on Netflix for awhile!

And Ghost in the Shell has been on my "If I ever come down with a week-long fever again" list for a while.

There was another one that I think avoided most of the difficulties you mentioned but damn if I can - oh yeah, that's the name

(Last time, I marathoned Buffy.)

Chevalier d'Eon

Which has got to be the single-most badass retelling of the French revolution and surrounding events ever.

I do admit to being suspicious of "amnesia, a troubled past, and supernatural powers" as a starting point for the main character in Cazador.

She's a main character, not the.

The bounty hunter who's 'captured' her is more arguably the main character

Miss Amnesia is pulling double duty as the McGuffin

I've been burned by that plot too many times across too many mediums to go in with wide-eyed optimism.

Fair enough.

...But the show's recurring in-episode theme song is a jingle for a taco store!

And it's adorable

Heheh.

It is the cutest thing I've heard since Pinkie Pie said the word 'Cherrychunga'

And the two lead characters sing it all the time

They get it stuck in their heads after posing as delivery girls in an early episode

(The French Revolution one turns Marie Antoinette into a necromancer and it's believable and frightening)

(Also she employs the heroes)

I think I ran that campaign once. But it was set in fantasy Renaissance Italy.

Honestly, Chevalier I had doubts about but my wife wanted to give it a try

I was taken with its characterization, attention to historical detail, and lovely fluid combat

And the supernatural elements don't overshadow the 'mundane' ones

I guess I look at anime sort of the way I do fanfic:

There's some great works out there, and I've seen some of them, and I'm glad I did. But they weren't awesome enough to justify wading back in and looking for more.

(And nobody else's tastes are enough like mine that I've been able to trust their recommendations.)

So I'll put your recommendations on my list of things to keep an eye out for.

Now, as a more general question - how are you on Japanese horror?

The Ring etc?

Gratefully ignorant.

I'm not big on horror in general, regardless of culture or medium.

Horror at all or 'horror' in the sense of slasher flicks and monster movies?

Mmeh? There are things that I think might be called horror which I like, but by and large I'm not interested.

Well, like, psychological horror tends to be the odd man out of the genre.

I mean, Lovecraft's ideas are interesting but I don't read his stuff much.

Stuff like The Number 23, Phone Booth, or Cry_Wolf

Of those, I've seen Phone Booth. Under duress. Bleck.

I liked Phone Booth but I recognize its niche appeal

(The Silence of the Lambs is also iconic of the genre)

Haven't watched it, don't intend to.

Mm. The Number 23 may be worth checking out; it depicts an ordinary man's descent into madness after he finds a book with shocking similarities to his own life.

It's also one of Jim Carrie's best serious roles, up there with his role in The Majestic

Pi was just the wrong side of the street for my comfort zone.

Not familiar, I'm afraid

It's about a guy who discovers a number which drives him mad and makes Hassidic Jews try to kill him.

Cry_Wolf is notable for being one of the only PG 13 horror movies to be worth watching ever. The plot is wonderfully deceptive in its tone; it seems simple and then turns very complicated.

At one point he encounters his own brain on a subway platform and pokes it with a pencil.

Huh.

I don't like gore or blood for its own sake, I hate jump scares and manipulative musical scores, and I don't like watching realistic depictions of people suffering.

That scratches out most horror for me.

Cry_Wolf still passes your tests! Honestly it's not a movie that goes for fright or even dread in the traditional sense, instead building up a sense that you, the viewer, do not actually know what's happening when you thought that you did.

When the climax goes down it seems like it turned simple again.

And then lolno

Rare Exports was pretty good.

[Writes the name down]

It's two short films and then a movie that's out of continuity with them but has a similar premise.

The short films are spectacular; the film stretches the premise a little thin, but is still good.

Hi

I'm not normally big on gore-fest horror or slashers. Some few have interested me despite this, but I wouldn't suggest them to others; they snagged me based on stuff I'm personally interested in.

If Event Horizon hadn't gone so gory I would've liked it a lot better.

@Stizzle84 [wave] This isn't the main chat.

I know

I saw your name and joined

Like, say, Jeeper's Creepers. Normally the kind of horror movie I avoid but I'm a sucker for predatory demonic entities.

I also watched Cabin in the Woods because I couldn't not watch it, and was pleasantly surprised on every level - especially on how well the plot works if you play it straight instead of embracing the meta-element

I like Kolchak and old-school Doctor Who style horror.

Can you describe it for me?

They don't have the budget to do much in the way of special effects or gore, so they focus on ideas.

@BESW Like the Weeping Angels

The rakshasa in Kolchak looks like a moth-eaten rug with a halloween mask.

So they play up the idea that it can change shape: it appears as whoever you most trust.

So you'd also like films like The Thing, where the monster is essentially just a vehicle for the real terror - paranoia

A policeman gets lured into a dark alley by his own mother, who then begins to rip him apart.

His partner follows, and sees the retired police chief eating his friend.

Even the cannibalism shots aren't gory, because it's not the gore that's the point.

@Lord_Gareth I really really want to watch that film.

But it scares the living bejeezus out of me.

Body horror is another thing that often breaks a film for me.

[Nods] It gets me deep too

The scene in Wrath of Khan with the ear parasites? I think I was 14 when I saw that, and it wigged me straight out of the room. Literally.

I couldn't watch Men in Black until college because of the skin suits.

The opening to Star Trek: First Contact still gets me, with the drill going into Picard's eye

Auk.

Are you familiar with (or even aware of) Sapphire and Steel?

Sadly no

It was made by ITV (BBC's rival broadcaster) to compete with Doctor Who in 1979.

They got some really great actors and a budget that would make Doctor Who look well-funded.

The conceit is that Sapphire and Steel are a pair of agents whose job it is to prevent Things From Outside Time from breaking through and destroying creation.

Sapphire and Steel are inhuman--although exactly what they are is never made clear--with minor powers like telepathy and the ability to learn the past and future of things (and people) they touch.

Things From Outside Time try to break in by creating hiccoughs in time, like Matrix glitches.

So the special effects are mostly really basic jump-cuts and fades.

S&S combat these Things mostly by making very intense faces in close-up shots.

But because the actors are David McCallum and Joanna Lumley, it works.

The tension of the show comes from the inhumanity of S&S, as much as it does from the Things they fight.

It's slow--oh, so very slow--but if you can manage to sit through it the show is very good and creepy.

ITV has made two additional shows to compete with Doctor Who, one in the 80s and one in the 2000s. Neither was very good, but Primeval is so bad it's good.

(it, um, may also trigger allergic reactions in people sensitive to the 70s.)

@Lord_Gareth I just ran across a reference to Marvel Anime. Opinions?