Manga & Anime THREAD

Post by **gaastra** » January 27th, 2009, 7:55 am

http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/news/20 ... e-worksive conan in special

detective conan/ case closed will crossover with anime classic lupin the 3rd in a tv movie.

Wonder if it will come to america?

Post by **Randall** » January 27th, 2009, 9:01 am

Lupin.

Post by **Darkblade** » January 27th, 2009, 12:27 pm

Holy smoly...Two of my favorite animes in one tv movie, Hope it doesnt fail. Ive always pictured something like this to happen....

GeorgeC · Post by **GeorgeC** » January 27th, 2009, 4:03 pm

I wouldn't count on this movie showing up in North America.

Neither Conan nor Lupin the 3rd are particularly popular in North America.

I'm a big Lupin fan and have almost all the R1 DVDs (excepting the Streamline Pictures Lupin TV episode collection on DVD and their original Cagliostro DVD) but am very aware that Lupin couldn't scream "bloody murder" and get attention in the States.

I really have no idea why. He's a charismatic character, the action's great, and the humor is well-scripted.

He's just maybe a bit too Japanese and not "American-enough" for the audience.

I really don't understand why the character wasn't that popular.

Conan, I kind of have a better idea why he hasn't been popular, but again, the show should have found an audience in the States.

It just hasn't.

Post by **Darkblade** » January 27th, 2009, 4:53 pm

GerogeC- I could be wrong but I think Detective Cocan was aired on CN{as part of the toonami block a few years ago before CN got all junky}. I think it was taken off the air because of issues of the episodes being edited...I could be wrong

Post by **gaastra** » January 27th, 2009, 5:45 pm

Nope the show aired on adult swim at 10 pm as was a hit with teens but the group in charge of adult swim hated the show and even insulted in in the bumpers. When the show got good ratings they buried it to 3am to get rid of it and never aired the last set of episodes they had.

Post by **Ben** » January 27th, 2009, 6:24 pm

Conan? I prefer Leno or Letterman.

GeorgeC · Post by **GeorgeC** » January 28th, 2009, 1:13 am

gaastra wrote:Nope the show aired on adult swim at 10 pm as was a hit with teens but the group in charge of adult swim hated the show and even insulted in in the bumpers. When the show got good ratings they buried it to 3am to get rid of it and never aired the last set of episodes they had.

What you just said does NOT make sense!

Companies don't throw away good money just because the executives hate a show. That's not good business sense. If there's anything anime fans in the US need to develop, it's a sense of humor! The persecution complex and paranoia some fans display is extraordinary. Hello -- magnifying things out of proportion a bit much?

Listen, anime is a niche field in the US and has never had more than a small dedicated audience at best. When DVD sales for anime were at their peak 6-7 years ago, they still had a hard time selling anything like 1% of the total DVD market in the US. They couldn't sell 1% of the market, period. Today, the situation is much worse. Yes, the whole DVD market is down but anime is much further down than most other segments of the home video market in the US.

Also, the audience for anime in general isn't that big. One of the Japanese companies did a study a few years back that estimated the total anime fanbase in the US was around a quarter-million people. Of that amount, less than 25,000 (their estimates) actually bought more than 1 DVD a month! The sales figures tend to back that study.

Contrary to what some conspiracy theorists may think, Cartoon Network programs what they think will get them ratings. CN is in business to earn money -- it is not a nonprofit organization set up to promote any particular brand of animation, period. What dismays a lot of people is how ruthless CN has gotten programming rescheduling in the last few years. The cable network is trying to survive and justify its existence to the rest of the Time-Warner conoglomerate and tinkers with its schedule constantly to get the most money it can from its programming. Yes, it may seem unfair that shows get yanked off the air after running less than half their length BUT it doesn't make much sense to keep a show on the air if it just keeps bleeding viewers at a quick rate. The ratings for some of the anime series were so bad that CN might as well have run a static pattern for a few hours and saved itself some money!

Anime is just not getting good numbers for what Cartoon Network has to pay for the licenses. There hasn't been a huge anime hit since Dragonball Z and that was nearly a decade ago now! Shows like Family Guy -- like it or not -- get higher ratings for CN and do very well in repeats. Most anime shows don't, and a lot of them continue to sink in viewership spite of schedule changes and some repeat showings.

It's not just the licensed dubbed anime that gets the axe. There was an American-produced show called Minoriteam which aired a while back that had one season produced. It was a very different, nasty-looking show with cutting humor based on racial stereotypes but it just didn't attract a large following.

Looking at another network that produces a lot of animation, the South Park creators have tried to develop at least 3-4 other shows for Comedy Central and none of them have survived past a season. Most TV series don't make it past a half-dozen episodes, tops. It's nothing personal -- it's luck, scheduling, and the audience's tastes at the moment...

Post by **gaastra** » January 28th, 2009, 7:51 am

Here's some more info on why the show was removed.

http://forums.toonzone.net/showthread.php?t=140037

The trouble is the show was getting great ratings with kids and teens but not adults. It never should have been on adult swim.

And yes the adult swim cast hated the show. It was picked up by cartoon network, they saw the blood and moved it to adult swim.

The adult swim team thought the show was to kiddie and hated it for that. They insulted it more then once in public and yes they had some bumpers insulting the show at the end.

Were getting off subject here. Sorry folks lets just talk about the lupin/ conan special.

GeorgeC · Post by **GeorgeC** » March 16th, 2009, 11:37 am

Dragonball: (D)Evolution, or I Saw This Trainwreck Coming From 20 Miles Away!

http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/review/ ... -evolution

People have seen the recent Japanese premiere of the film. It's dubbed in Japanese for Japanese audiences so maybe the performances are a bit better. (NOT!)

The original English-language version debuts next month in the US.

It's as bad as people thought... Perhaps worse.

GeorgeC · Post by **GeorgeC** » March 25th, 2009, 12:50 am

Gatchaman dates back to the 1970s... About 1972 in Japan in if I'm not mistaken.

The original edited and dubbed American release (the one most people worldwide saw in English) was called "Battle of the Planets."

A second dub, featuring slightly less edited footage but even lamer new names for the characters, was commissioned by Turner Broadcasting System in the mid-1980s. This dub was called "G-Force" and was re-aired on Cartoon Network in the 1990s.

More information about the series' history and the confusing alterations in the dubs here... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gatchaman Based on what I remember from reading in other sources, the Wiki article is reasonably accurate.

Since then, Harmony Gold licensed the original series from Tatsunoko Productions (the original producers of Gatchman) and in turn granted short-term home video rights to ADV Films to produce and distribute a bilingual uncut home video (DVD) release of the original Science Ninja Team Gatchaman series.

It's that original 105-episode series that is by far the best remembered version of Gatchaman and the one that was condensed and revamped into a 3-part OVA series in the early 1990s. That OVA has also made it onto DVD in the States.

I wouldn't be surprised if the Imagi CGI film picks up on some of the threads from the dubs (character names -- they usually don't keep the Japanese names in the English dubs) as well as the Japanese original series... Expect to see flying turtle mechas and Red Impulse.

Post by **eddievalient** » March 25th, 2009, 1:38 am

This is assuming that Imagi survives long enough to finish this one, and that Astro Boy nets them enough cash to pay for it. Fingers crossed.

GeorgeC · Post by **GeorgeC** » March 25th, 2009, 2:25 am

Point definitely worth noting in capital letters...

One which I've made before here and other places.

The financing problems Imagi had for Astro Boy don't cast a positive shadow on Gatchaman and the other films on its production plate.

One thing people have forgotten is that the schedules for these films have already slipped. Both Astro Boy and Gatchaman are already at least a year or two behind where they're supposed to be in production release.

The global financial crisis has hindered film production worldwide.

In spite of the recent rosy news reports (try saying that four times faster!), we're still not even halfway through the recession yet...

Post by **Bill1978** » March 25th, 2009, 6:52 pm

Not sure if people are aware but according to this article:

http://news.awn.com/index.php?ltype=top ... m_no=26882

Miyazaki's Ponyo On A Cliff By The Sea will be released in the US on August 14.

Post by **Meg** » March 25th, 2009, 7:39 pm

Thanks for the heads up George - I did intend to say 70's but with all the 80's remakes being released recently, I got a little confused! Anyway, that along with the title of the series have been taken care of.

Manga & Anime THREAD

Lupin the 3rd battles detective conan(case closed)

Minor correction on Gatchaman...

Ponyo US Release Dates