There's a little queen of the animated screen

[austin_dern]

An amusing little ``yeah, fanboys are like that'' thing. Last week's Disappointing Futurama was less disappointing than average, as it ran an Anthology-Of-Interest format with stories done in different animation styles: one vaguely 1930s black-and-white cartoons (including a beautiful replica of the old Fleischer stereoptic three-dimensional set thing, one of the few animation things of the 1930s that always impresses whatever eye beholds it), one mid-80s eight-bit video game, and one gloriously-badly-dubbed Japanese animation thing.

Tolerably good fun, even if the targets didn't really need mocking or the jokes weren't generally imaginative (except one connecting gag, that each segment had something of incredible beauty which the characters saw but the animation style prohibited the viewer from possibly seeing). And it was a surprisingly enjoyable kick hearing that ancient Voltron music going again, particularly since I didn't watch the show that much or enthusiastically.

Here's the anime fanboy reaction that amused me: grumbling and sulking that yeah, they did nice pastiches of 80s Voltron and stuff like that (even tossing in some Speed Racer because you apparently have to), but, like, that's not what anime is, it's totally different now. Some counter-reaction argued that yeah, but who in the audience would recognize modern shows, whatever they are?

What I find delightful is that American cartoons aren't black-and-white things with bouncing-hold animation and everything-is-alive designs even down to buildings and fingers, or that video games aren't still trying to compensate for the odd decision of whoever designed the CGA card to make it able to render only the most eye-blindingly useless colors of the spectrum. I don't doubt there are fanboys afraid that the average Futurama viewer might form an outdated impression of anime from this. I'm just entertained by the fear.

Trivia: Annabelle Little, one of the early voices for Betty Boop, broke into show business in the 1925 ``Greenwich Village Follies'', with the stage name of Little Ann Little. She was 4'10" tall and weighed 76 pounds. Source: The Fleischer Story, Leslie Cabarga.

Currently Reading: Logos Run, William C Dietz.

Comments

[bunny-hugger.livejournal.com]

My objection was that the black and white segment had the style and tone all wrong, actually. It rang really false to me, like someone copying a modern retro-kitsch imitation rather than copying the thing itself.

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

The style problems really came from it pulled elements from all over different studios from all the 30s, missing completely that, like, the stereoptic backgrounds really don't get seen with the living-houses-and-fingers stuff. It would have been sharper if it picked one studio and era, but could also have been too insular.

(Which come to think of it was a flaw of the Voltron segment too; why toss in a Speed Racer bit that's a decade-plus away from the target and nowhere near the same genre?)

[bunny-hugger.livejournal.com]

I think the most "off" note, actually, was having too much dialogue.

I should have added that I did appreciate the recreation of the Fleischer turntable set.

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

It was way too much dialogue for an authentically 30s cartoon, yes, and some of the dialogue was decades out of date (``I have to check this comet for anarchists''? I'll buy that for a 1920 cartoon, but Vaguely 1938, not so much).

Maybe I'm just an easy touch for trying to get at the visual style of pre-color cartoons. There've been a modest number of efforts at them and I can't think of one I didn't enjoy, or that didn't get the writers to stretch out of the usual rut and into stranger stories and more gleefully bizarre animation.

[chefmongoose.livejournal.com]

It's possible to riff 1960's Japanese cartoons, 1970's-1980's Japanese cartoons, and 'modern' Japanese cartoons all. Sounds like they just chose one and went with it- based on what the screenwriters and producers knew best. In the way that Venture Brothers does its best riffing on 1979.

[orv.livejournal.com]

I think the other part is when you're parodying something, you highlight what's the most absurd about it. And what's the most absurd about anime is all the cheap limited animation shows redubbed by shrieky community theater rejects that people like me grew up seeing.

You wouldn't make a parody of anime that looked like a Miyazaki film any more than you'd make a parody of 1930s American animation that looked like Snow White.

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

Well, to do a good parody you usually want to exaggerate what defines it, either in its prominence or in its oversights. But that does mean the stuff that doesn't stand out one way or another, doesn't get any jokes made. So when the time comes to mock 80s sitcoms, Family Ties will get some attention; My Sister Sam, not a chance.

I think someone could parody Snow White's animation style, although it would be taken as a parody of the Big Disney Fairy-Tale Movie rather than as 30s animation. (It'd also be quite expensive since they just don't animate like that anymore, but we'll suppose somebody gave Family Guy a blank check and a mission to finally make people laugh at Dopey.)

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

Sure, they're all subjects for riffing. In this case they (mostly) picked circa 1980 Japanese big-robot-action shows and spoofed that; there's just fanboys offended on the presumption that Futurama doesn't know there's any other kind of anime.

[c-eagle.livejournal.com]

I was larfin' my arse arf at that episode, too! ^v^

The overall effect indeed wasn't exactitude, but more of a parody of an image of a parody of impressions of a concept of a parroty..

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

It kind of brought in an Airplane! style spoof where all kinds of things are riffed on (note in the 30s Cartoon segment how many cans of oh-that's-not-Spinach are pulled out). But Airplane! and similar sharp spoofs have a strongly defined core and throw in riffs around that. A broad-genre parody never gets to hit anything as sharply, though it won't leave anyone out either.

[lexomatic.livejournal.com]

::: And it was a surprisingly enjoyable kick hearing that ancient Voltron music going again

The musical cues I recognized were from Battle of the Planets (Hoyt Curtin), Robotech (definitely not Superdimension Fortress Macross -- I compared the two on Hulu), and yes, Voltron; and possibly some other things; but not Star Blazers. How could they feel complete in their parody of the '80s wave of anime without a Wave Motion Cannon reference?

Having all the ground vehicles flying through space -- in an episode of sustained cliché-parody, I didn't recognize its target, unless it was "Vehicle" Voltron (Armored Fleet Dairugger XV) -- but there, only two of its 15 segments look like cars.

But if you're trying to riff on anime and video games, IMHO you can't do better than CN's Megas XLR (2004-05). (Which still doesn't appear on any official video-streaming site, argh, which makes it one of the few shows for which my VHS copies are still useful, except... further googling... cursory examination doesn't show if this DVD (http://www.timesforgottendvd.com/index.php?act=viewProd&productId=1045) is official. 572 minutes over four discs, at 22 minutes is 26 eps.)

I will say that extra spikes and tubercles are a good look for Zoidberg.

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

I didn't notice the absence of Star Blazers, music or riffs, but have to admit to a slightly embarrassing ignorance about these shows. I wasn't particularly into them, and while I did catch them, I didn't make them a priority the way, say, G.I.Joe was or ThunderCats would be.

The flying vehicles in space I took to be a slightly off-topic riff on the Transformers, actually, particularly with the weird way everything could fly except when the Autobots were in car mode except when they were in space or ... some kind of muddle which turned up in the 80s cartoons which I can't remember clearly because I don't imagine they were trying very hard to be consistent about it.

I only caught a few episodes of Megas XLR --- it came and went when I was in Singapore, and I think it may have been up against Dave The Barbarian or Potatoes and Dragons --- although I'd be surprised if that were an official DVD release. Cartoon Network-touched stuff just doesn't enter the market obscure like that.