US animation that has FAILED.

This is a list of US animation that attempts to break the barrier of the kid/teen demographic, usually by featuring more sex, violence, or "coolness" in some way. In most cases, these fail to gain any respect, yet at some point someone must have said "this will raise the bar for US animation and usher in a new era of mature, sophisticated animated films and series that can be enjoyed by the masses in an uninhibited form of creative expression that knows no bounds."

-Invasion America, short lived miniseries by Steven Spielberg, used typical WB animation but attempted to be more mature than the average saturday morning cartoon by having a somewhat serious storyline and an occasional risque comment. Nobody cared because it still looked and felt like an average WB cartoon, and wasn't particularly groundbreaking.

-Heavy Metal 2000, attempted to revive the cult hit Heavy Metal while adapting a story from its magazine. Rather than provide unique stories from multiple authors, it became a typical "testosterone-driven female kills and maims in a world full of sex and violence." Little character development or backstory (for example, her tight red outfit and cool sword simply appear with little explanation). Suffers from "trying to be hardcore" syndrome.

-Sin: the movie, based off the game, attempts to deliver an interesting and somewhat epic story in the style of anime. It actually has an interesting feminine character, and at least a little plot. But mostly its an excuse for tons of action scenes, and still suffers from "tries to be hardcore" syndrome. It also has a poor resolution, as the main villainess simply falls off camera, whispering "I'll be back if they ever make a sequel." Another strange note is the subtitles for the Japanese version have completely different dialogue in some places.

-Anastasia: Could have been a serious and dramatic period piece. Actually it was, but it was incredibly superficial and didn't address important historical issues such as death. It tries to be epic, but since it tones down and kiddifies the truth, and ends up being more like a Disney movie than anything else.

-Titan A.E: While not an adult movie, the previews at least implied it could have been en epic, serious sci-fi movie. Instead it turned into a WB style teen movie with limited plot or depth. Typical mindless unsympathetic villains, no real drama or emotion attached to the loss of Earth, and annoying attempts to be hip and cool through the middle. The amount of money spent on this and Anastasia caused the sutdio to go bankrupt.

-Final Fantasy: the Spirits within: Expectations included: Epic sci-fi movie, epic plot in the style of FF games, and a groundbreaking CGI movie that could revolutionize animated movies in the US for an older audience. Instead, it aspired to be a B-grade hollywood movie.

-The Animatrix: Eh. Some parts were cool. Not all of them were that great. Might have carried the "adult animation" genre forward, or widened its audience, but not significantly.

Movies I haven't viewed: Lady Death, Van Hellsing: The London Assignment, and Chronicles of Riddick: Dark Fury.

Conclusion: The animation market wants to expand to an older audience. It tries to breakthrough into the mainstream, in hopes that ones of its features will be immensely popular, create a fanbase, and make lots of money for its producers. But it hasn't, due to the following challenges:

-Hardcoreness. The assumption that "more mature" means more sex and violence, and that a huge teen/adult male audience will flock to it. The faultiness here is that bad action movies already exist. Good ones at least have a plot and likeable characters.

-Broadening genres. Besides action and sci-fi, there isn't much. Perhaps they feel there isn't room to cater to more niche audiences, such as a female oriented drama, comedy, or satire.

-Licensing. Most of these are licensed to tap into some preexisting fanbase. One would assume this means "built in audience," but it also means "limited audience." You're taking "people who like watching X movie" and taking only a small percentage of those who'd watch an animated feature based on it. There are plenty of other sources to tap into, especially comics like in Japan. But hollywood would much rather spend money on a live action adaptation of a comic due to its broader appeal. The challenge is making an animated feature as good or better than a live action equivalent (Batman: Mask of the Phantasm vs Batman & Robin). Also, there are hundreds of independant comics that can be adapted, just look at any comics catalog. But companies are probably too scared to put any "risk" into telling a story with views that don't have mass market appeal.

-Perception of characters. We still use archetypes such as the muscleclad superhero and superheroine. There haven't been too many "normal" characters with interesting backstories, and I think part of this is fear of looking "weak." If you had a truly feminine girl with quirks and shyness, or a timid guy, then you wouldn't have an invincible flawless herop character. I think some people are afraid of showing a character who isn't perfect, or can't defeat the bad guys with one hand. There needs to be flaws and quirks and interesting backstories and personalities and little details, rather than assuming peole will like "generic invincible girl/guy."

-Curves. For some reason, people cannot draw curves. Ever see an ad or artbook that attempts to mimic the "anime" style? There's always something not quite right about it. I believe it has to do with social perception in different cultures, such as "we're tough and unyielding, so we have square jaws" vs "pretty cherry blossoms and kittens = soft pillowy cuddly girls that are excessively cute." Or, they think if females aren't presented as hard and strong, it makes them automatically look weak. But everything needs some amount of femininity to make it more believable. I think this conflict between "should I draw her like a soft harmless animal" or "should she act and talk like a guy" is what subtly seperates curved characters from WB geometric faced characters.

-Lack of funds. If it takes money to make money, how can you work on a more "independant" film if you don't expect it to break through the mass market? You create something cheap, with mass appeal, that has the potential to be wildly popular, so that you can gain capital and hopefully make that more unique, thought provoking epic you dreamed of. But step A never happens. Because the cheap mass market idea os too obivous, too superficial. And if you're going to do that, why make an action movie? Why not make animated porn?

Answer: Because you can only draw chicks that look like guys.

Disclaimer: The above opinion happens to be biased. And an opinion.

The best thing the American animation industry can do for now is do exactly what the Japanese animation industry started out doing (and in many cases continues to do), animating comic books.

By comic books I mean more of the graphic novel sort, like most of the stuff on Vertigo. There's already an audience right there and making movies from comics has become a big thing lately. They've just been tossing away a perfectly good opportunity by doing live action films. As much as I adore hearing about Natalie Portman's bald head every ten seconds I think V for Vendetta would make a better animated work. There's already a sophisticated art style that could easily translate, a good plot, and a fan base. These are things western animators have been trying to forge out of nothing for the past five years. Yes, Japanese animation is great by now, but remember Astro Boy? They didn't just sit around and say "Hey I think it'd be a pretty cool idea if we made cartoons for growed ups now." like the western artists have been doing. It drifted that way over half a century. If we're able to bring people in on these comic adaptations in live action, they'll be more than willing to accept them animated, and eventually the American market will probably be pretty comfortable with adult themes in animation and animators will be able to make their own stories without feeling presured into making them PG or under.

Justice League is pretty kick ass. I also enjoyed Clone Wars.

Anastasia rocked. It showed clearly that imperialistic dictatoriship doesn't mean that the ruler is a cold-hearted bastard, but a kind and loving father and that an evil wizard sparked the people's revolt, not the fact that they hardly had any money, food or rights.

It's pro-imperialistic, really. In reality, had I ever encountered Anastasia, I would've strangled her slowly and I'm not even a communist! The Romanov family deserved EVERYTHING done to them and the world is a better place with them gone.

>>83

Not to mention that Rasputin hardly had ANYTHING to do with the revolt. Hell, he was too busy fucking the Tsar's wife to do it.

What really weirds me out are the adults that see cartoons as a "sacred" artform not to be defiled by more violent/harsh themes. They see them as a medium of eternal innocence.

>>85
that's why the made single-frame naughty images amirite?
"Boy Home on the Range is a lot better than I expected, I really like the performance OMG TUBGIRL that Roseanne Barr is delivering in this film."

>>83
You wouldn't have raepd teh loli? PEDOBEAR IS SAD!

age

88get

Not sure if this has been adressed, but I'm to lazy to read 88 posts.

Lady Death pretty much sucked. Looked dated, and the story just felt really rushed at times. The animation wasn't exceptional, but I guess they thought adding a lot of cleavage would distract people from noticing that.

TEEN TITANS and naruto SUBBED i like it plain old japanese what the us did to it is ruined it

I guess I must agree with >>90, but he is also why I don't like world4ch.

the way I see it the failure of most US 2D animation simply lies in story/bad writers and character design, we can forget originality it died last decade. That and some people need to get the idea that cartoons are for kids/teenagers out of their head, I would have thought that went away afer Spawn came in some years back.

on that note why aren't there ANY animaniacs DVD? I loved that show

>>89

I've heard similar.  I also was disappointed that there wouldn't even be a *cameo* for Evil Ernie.

>>89

I've heard similar.  I also was disappointed that there wouldn't even be a *cameo* for Evil Ernie.

>>55
That's the way I see it, too!!! American-made "anime" is possible but it would require a team of dedicated artists that:
1.) Know what they're doing
2.) Know how to draw anime
3.) Are not controlled by a corporation that only thinks in money!

And before you mention it, yes! I know its hard to make animation without a big studio.

I personally liked some of the movies mentioned on the the first article of this thread, and I like shows like Totally Spies and Teen Titans. But i also understand must of these shows are made out of fashion and not love and that is what kills the magic.

If it werent for the musicals, I would be a bigger fan of Disney Animation because I love how they draw and animate their movies.

Alot of MTV cartoons were really intelligent and ownage. Daria and Clone High come to mind.

Some Cartoon Network cartoons also have a really high bar. Fostor's Home For Imaginary Pets has alot of humor that would fly over the intended audience. Such like the episode which had Big Lebowski refrences abound. I'm pretty sure no kid would know what the hell The Big Lebowski is.

My opinion is that in the West animation has generally declined(with occasional bright spots) since it started appearing on television. Right at that point there was a critical crossroads; either companies would bank on animated shows as being great successes, as they have in Japan, or they would be offered up only if they could be done cheaply - remember that here we only use advertising to support TV, wheras in Japan TV licensing exists. Anyway, in the 60s, they went from Astro Boy to giant robots, and in the 70s got Lupin III. The U.S. got Yogi Bear and the Jetsons. Another crucial difference is that comics could not be used as source material(except for superheroes, which predictably have been the source of many of our most successful animated shows) in the U.S. following the great comic paranoia of the 50s which destroyed almost the entire industry along with its excesses. I mentioned Lupin; Wikipedia says that the style of the original manga came in part from early MAD comics. And MAD shifted to the magazine format to get away from the censorship. See the connections here? A major chunk of our culture got trashed back in that era and we're still trying to recover today. Our animation today is still automatically biased towards Hanna-Barbera-esque blatant cost-cutting techniques rather than on making prestigious flagship animated shows. The animated movie market has to suffer correspondingly, since movies exist at the top of the economic food chain and have bigger barriers to entry - so their existence is very frequently justified by the success of the TV show. And as long as TV remains fiscally conservative we will only see animation done on lower and lower budgets here, or else done in the Pixar mass-appeal mode, unless Internet-based distribution can build up enough of an economic basis for this to change.

Basically, we have to be wasting more money to support creativity. Most anime, after all, ends up taking a loss.

On the subject or reaching to muliple audiences, I think Rocko's Modern Life did that very well with suggestive jokes that went over me as a kid, but I understood easily when I watched it again as an adult.

Chalk up boondocks as a failure so far. The Samuel L Jackson guest episode shows what should be possible, but hasn't been attempted in any past shows. If it continues along the storytelling method seen there it will succeed, but after that episode with the ho, and the pilot, I ain't holding out much hope.
The only reason it's even so popular is because college kids are fucking stupid and tasteless.

>>99
Fails for implying failure. Boondocks had the highest ratings for a premier episode for the Adult Swim lineup, and has had consistently stayed at the top 3 of the AS ratings.
Failures should be deemed by facts, not your opinion.

Highest ratings on the premier of anything means two things, jack and shit, and jack left town.  People watch the premier to determine if they like the show or not.  This implies that the people do like the show watched it, and the people that don't like the show watched it.  It's the ratings in the following episodes that mean anything.

>>101
Someone isn't from marketing 101!

>>102
But he was 101get!

>>103
that alone wins on so many levels.

>>100
I think the Boondocks are doing great. Those that think otherwise just fail to see the humor and irony within the show.

In the Boondocks thread #54 wrote sumthin pretty interesting...and harsh :p

Every US animation fails.




Well, maybe except for those Disney and WB ones...

Animatrix was pretty much done by real anime-tors, eg, the creators of ninja scroll, cowboy bebop, perfect blue, aeon flux and the list continues. It was co produced by the Wachowskis and american studios. It is 100% authentic anime.
And the same goes for spirits within, Square enix japan and usa worked on it. And although it has the hyper real look, it is still falls under the anime field.

Sin was an american effort anime movie, I dont know much about it though....Not much interest really.

The riddick animation is by the creators of Aeon flux, so it is anime.
As for the rest I dunno. And yeah boondocks, thats some wicked shit.

It what has plagued american animation is the oriniginal animators that started to do animation where artist first and only writers second. Many are guilty for sacrafising story and substances for cheap laughs. Many just simply ignore what makes a goods only a hand even attempt to do so. Show for children doesn't mean crap by default look at movie Chronicles of Naria that was a kid movie but it great to watch but the problem with cartoons for kids is that kids are stupid by nature and they need to be protected. This destroys must attempts to created goods story. Also many cartoons aimed at adult to have  don't have good stories because they are trying to hard to be funny.

Probally the best thing to do to  get animation to wider audiance is have a big broadcast buy the writes to a popular novel have streche it out into a tv seriouse. Then once the script is written send to Japanese animation studio then have turn it into anime play it in primetime.

Phantom 2040 ;'(

>>108
... I really hope english is your second language.
And your point about (what I gathered at least) writers making cheap laughs has more to do with our culture. Western culture revolves around humour. We don't notice this, it just seems natural. Japanese cuture is centered around making people bawl their fucking eyes out. They fail at humour, but they can tell one hell of a sob story.

This is a (but not -the-) big difference between our and their animation. When someone pitches a cartoon idea, the question they're going to be asked is, "how is this going to be funny?" And then spend pointless hours arguing over jokes.

When someone pitches an anime idea, the question changes to, "how is this going to touch the audience? How can we get them to relate to the actions and characters?" Then they spend pointless hours arguing over their formulas and carbon-copied techniques.

Reading "I am a Japanese School Teacher," this is also evident in graduation ceremonies. Think back to your being put through other people's highschool graduations. They speaker would alway try and throw a couple of jokes in.
This is different in Japan.
"So graduation is more or less designed for crying. They call the students names and hand out certificates, but as they do so they play some sad violin music in the background. I'm really not making this up."


Oddly enough, the preceding paragraph.
"This is one crying culture I have to say. It seems like every TV show is built upon making the viewer cry at some point. They love showing touching human drama stories on the variety shows, and then as soon as the story is finished, they cut to the celebrities who were watching, and make sure to get them crying on camera. Some shows don't even wait - they do a picture in picture of the celebrity watching, so you can see them crying as the story unfolds. There's a show that comes on Monday evenings starring one of the members from SMAP (Goro, if you are familiar with them) that brings on little kids (elementary schoolers) and tells them ghost stories designed to freak the holy shit out of them. Every episode has them at recoiling in horror at least twice, and crying over some touching ghost story. ...How much is this fucking them up? Seriously. I oftentimes wonder how the men and women of this country get to be so fucked up, but then I see shows like this and I don't wonder so much anymore."

>>110
The picture-in-picture thing sounds like the crying equivalent of a laugh-track or live studio audience.

Ok after reading most* the posts here, I have a few things to say.

Right now, I'm 18 (male) and in a college that is devoted to 3D animation and graphics (expression.edu). I don't consider myself a normal person, I have split personality disorder, and I listen to lots of heavy metal and don't have much of a social life to speak of. Now that you know about me let me say some things.

"US animation that has FAILED." - I will have to agree to a point, only recent US animations. There has not been a single "real" animation that I have liked in a good while. When I said "real" I mean, one that’s not a comedy. Family Guy is funny, South part is funny, Simpson’s are good, but none of those are very serious, most of them just poke fun at the current pop culture. They have solid plots and great characters. But they lack any kind of atmosphere. I'll try and explain as best I can...
When I open up an Aliens comic I get a sense of atmosphere, I know that stuff is gonna happen and it hold a different kind of seriousness to it. As where-in I watch a Family Guy ep, I never feel like I care what’s gonna happen to the characters or the plot. I mean its funny sure, but I'm not getting any connection with the enumeration as I would if I watched a old X-Man or even a Thundercats ep. Although some of that might be connected with me having seen those as a child and me watching family guy as a adult.

I've watched some "anime" from Japan, most I dislike, but the crazier ones I dig (Elfenlied). A lot of people where talking about cultures. The thing I see happening is that the people who control the media in the US are a bunch of pussys (No joke intended). It makes me hurt that I see a good independent comic, well drawn and good plots ect ect. But I know it will never get anywhere. Due to television the comic industry has suffered big time. People just don't read comics, they would rather just put in a DVD and space out. I'm not saying that’s a bad thing, I do it all the time. I'm just saying that I know that I'll never see the same dedication and love that I would if I read a comic. Because I know that the DVD I watch will have been put though hundreds if not thousands of tests and committees and re-written and all that other junk, until its just a other DVD just like all the others. (I'm not say that all DVDs and Movies are pointless and the same thing, I'm just trying to show my point as best I can.) There’s been some acceptations of this that I've liked, one of my favorites being FireFly (aka Serenity). Good job to the Sci-Fi channel.

Holy crap I've gone off topic, I feel that it’s simply an issue of money and time. Two things that the west will always have a problem with. It is simply cheaper to make a whole series of Family Guy then it is to make a few eps of a show like Tundercats. If needed Family Guy could crank out a one ep in less the 4 days, tops. I would imagine that it took the makers of thundercats a lot longer (per ep). And the time paid to those people ect ect. Family guys people would get paid less then the thundercats people (if they where paid the same) because of the hours worked. Now that creates a problem. The people at the top of the cooperate ladder care about two things. Making money and keeping there jobs. If they don't do one of those two things right, they don't do the other. And that puts them in a tight spot. They just try to make money. And they no longer see the art, they see the $ signs. All they want to know is if THE MASS will like and buy into it. Now that makes an other problem, because what THE MASS is currently into is the ghetto (sp?) style. Although they have there own art and stuff, I don't see ANY animation. So, that being said, if THE MASS doesn’t see animation THE MASS won't want to see animation and wont buy into animation, therefore the people on the top wont make animations because they wont make money. The mass of people I talk about is just American pop cultures people. Mostly teens and young adults.

Most of this probably doesn’t make sense to anyone but me. But if you do get anything out of this, know that its YOU and YOUR friends that effect weather or not "US animation FAILS". Goodnight and good luck. This is my oppontion.

Many have suggested that animating American comic books could be used to help improve american animation and help bring about seriouse cartoons for adults. But American comic have had major problems themeselves and have faced a large decline in sales. It would be much wiser to use popular fiction instead of comics. More people have read the latest Ann Rice novel then the latest issue of spiderman.

Well I wouldn't go as far as to say it has failed, but it's not all that good. Simpsons, Family Guy etc are okay. But it's only when they try and rip-off Anime it fails, and no-one needs to be told why...

The simpsons can pull on your heart strings sometimes

>>112
Yes, U.S. animation is driven by businessmen who only see the profit and not the art. But so is anime. Anime is also produced for profit by large corporations. Anime is also commercialized and artificially tailored to target demographics. Anime only seems more niche because "the mass" in Japan likes different things, but it's still "the mass".

>>113
but then there isn't any connection. novel publishers aren't going to want to touch animation either, they're going to say "why can't you make a live action film out of this?"

>>90

Teen Titans was made by an all American crew, dumbfuck. And sage for immense fail.

Shitcock, I forgot to sage

I don't understand why US television and film is so damn high quality, with attention to detail and characterization, especially CSI style shows and dramas, yet in all this time no US company has made an anime that realistically portrays life.