What was the greatest cartoon ever made? I'm sure it is debatable, but it doesn't seem like it was a Japanese cartoon with its limited animation techniques. It had to be an old one from the glory days of animation.
Ladies and gentlemen, I think (and others agree) that the greatest cartoon ever made was undoubtably "One Froggy Evening" a cartoon that was released on Dec. 31, 1955. Many critics have called this the "greatest cartoon ever made."
Some critics and observers regard this cartoon short as the finest ever made. Steven Spielberg, in the PBS Chuck Jones biography Extremes & Inbetweens: A Life In Animation, called One Froggy Evening "the Citizen Kane of animated film."
Here it is for your pleasure; this fabulous film. It is here until someone complains. Enjoy!
One of my favorite blogs on Japan is Pink Tentacle. Pick Tentacle is a blog about Japanese Art, Culture, Science and Technology.
I highly recommend it.
Today, they have an unusual collection of 24 traditional Japanese monsters. Have you ever wondered where the Japanese get their ideas for those silly monsters in the Godzilla movies? I have. Well, the fact of the matter is that Japan has had some very strange (or silly) looking monsters for a long time.
Pick Tentacle has uncovered a collection of 24 of them and made high quality scans for your viewing pleasure! The description reads:
TheBakemono Zukushihandscroll, painted in the Edo period (18th-19th century) by an unknown artist, depicts 24 traditional monsters that once used to spook the people of Japan.
This is an interesting collection as, usually, the only other places you can see these spooks is at a local festival... And speaking of festivals, it's festival season now in Japan so get your notebooks out and jot down these characters now... They all look the same until you know the names...
Odoroshi (おどろし) is a red-faced monster with big eyes, black teeth, and long hair.
Yume-no-seirei ("dream ghost" - 夢の精霊) appears as a thin old man in a white robe.
Yamamba (山姥) is a mountain hag.
I like this last one. There was a while there, about 5 or 6 years ago, when Shibuya girls wore outrageous makeup on their faces and broad white eyeshadow. That fashion was called, "Yamamba" like the mountain hag above.
It is called Electronic Theater and is a class of post-expressionism. This particular item is a very Avante-Garde black and white cartoon called, "Distrust of Romantica" by Hitoshi Suenaga in 2001. Don't watch it more than twice, you'll have nightmares.
-------- Keywords: Distrust of Romantica, Mike in Tokyo Rogers, Hitoshi Suenaga, anime, animation, cartoon, Marketing Japan, Mike Rogers
There is a really great super-new digital artist in Japan named Kousuke Sugimoto and he has been really making some fascinating works.
Japanese director Sugimoto Kousuke started to produce animation in 2004; now he is more involved in making 2D animation music videos for local indie pop/rock bands.
He is quoted as saying, "I wanted to bring different meaning to the black-and-white world from the coloured world, by using bright colors for the other worlds."
Here is a recent work that was discovered by Kousuke Sugimoto on Pink Tentacle:
This video -- directed by Kousuke Sugimoto, with music by Takayuki Manabe -- was created in celebration of the 100th issue of IdN magazine.
This is some fascinating work from his YouTube site:
I love Japan. I love everything about Japan; the people, the history, the architecture, the culture, the girls, the anime... Er, well, no. As an "oldster" (someone over 50) I do have a problem with Japanese anime. In fact, I always have.
Since the very first time I saw Speed Racer and Kimba the White Lion on TV when I was about 13-years-old, I've had a "problem" with Japanese anime; it was too wimpy and too cute for my liking.
Actually, I hated this cartoon
Forgive me, you have to remember that I grew up in 1960's America where is was OK to have violent kids cartoons with lots of killing and guys like Galactus coming to earth to suck its energies and lifeforms completely dry... (It also is a strange sort of commentary about American society when our comic book heroes are all extremely muscular guys who wear skin-tight leotards!) It was this way until the early 1970's when the PC crowd got a hold of TV and made sure there were no more violent cartoons so kids got stuck with crap like the Archies and, well, Japanese anime.
Of course, today's Japanese anime seems to me to be much better than those old days. I first started thinking, "Wow! This is cool!" when I first saw the Japanese cartoon Dr. Slump. That was very bizarre...
Today, I'd like to share with you another Japanese anime that I've found that strikes me as quite bizarre. It's called One Piece and it is a very strange cartoon.
Monkey D. Luffy
One Piece is about a pirate kid named Monkey D. Luffy... There's even Wikipedia entries for this guy and One Piece. I'd go into a big explanation for this but why bother? All you folks need to do is to read on and watch the Youtube video and you'll see real Halloween for yourself. This is one very off-the-wall cartoon....
He is a boy whose body is made of rubber after he ate a devil's fruit and acquired the ability.
Catch that? Read that last sentence again. "He is a boy whose body is made of rubber after he ate a devil's fruit and acquired the ability"!? (emphasis mine)
Hey! I thought that Wikipedia had people checking these things. Is that sentence for real? Or have the Japanese anime lovers actually done that on purpose?
I suspect that this cartoon is so popular in the USA and Japan that this is on purpose. Don't believe me? Watch this 10 minute segment of One Piece for yourself and see. I think you'll agree with me that this is one extremely bizarre cartoon.... Er, I mean "anime".
Anyhow, watch this and check out these characters in this cartoon... I thought drugs were illegal in Japan... I wonder what the creators of this cartoon were smoking!
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Keywords: One Piece, Mike in Tokyo Rogers, Speed Racer, Kimba the White Lion, anime, cartoon, Monkey D. Luffy, Mike Rogers
There's nothing wrong with hating the United States of America. In fact, that's one of the things that make America great. And anime, being the product of a nation that lost a war to America not so long ago, sometimes hates America an awful lot. In fact, a number of anime creations hate America with such hilarious, overwrought gusto that it's hard not to sit back and laugh.
Sakigake! Otokojuku
We've dug up the 12 most obvious and insane cases of America-bashing in anime, and we had only one requirement: they must somehow be commercially available in America. This means we've disqualified a lot of infamous World War II propaganda as well as '80s masterworks like Sakigake!! Otokojuku.
But think of it this way: In order to truly hate America, an anime production must actually be released in America. That way it can drive home its hatred by exploiting America's market and the racist, scheming, genocidal, gun-toting, football-playing, war-declaring, country-invading, base-stealing, hamburger-gobbling, nuke-dropping, pants-pissing psychic assassins who run it.
Some people who watch this cartoon might just laugh it off, but I suspect that the guy who made this has hung around Roppongi more than a few times because I've met guys like this before. And I mean guys like these Japanese and these idiot foreigners.
The very first time I ever went to Roppongi was with two girls who wanted to show me around. We walked up the stairs to the Hard Rock Cafe and there was this US military goon standing at the top of the stairwell. When we got close to him, he said in his crappy Japanese to the girls,
"Issho ni nemashou ka?" (Shall we sleep together tonight?)
The girls were very surprised and looked at me incredulously. His accent was so bad that I thought we had misunderstood and I said to him,
"Pardon me?"
Then he furiously growled to me (with nostrils flaring), "I ain't talking to you, boy!"
I think I melted and slithered back down the stairs to the street below in fear of getting beat up by a 225 pound gorilla.
Needless to say, I don't go to Roppongi for, er, "fun."
Well, heck, no wonder Japan is about to go bankrupt! Yesterday, it was announced that Japanese government debt was past 190% of GDP and that every man, woman and child in the country owed about $83,174 each! I blogged about that here.
But now it has been announced that the Tokyo metropolitan government spent ¥48,000,000 yen on a ten-minute cartoon for their website to attract foreigners. That's over 1/2 a million US dollars! For a cartoon!?
What complete idiots!
Now, I am as much of a fan of anime as the next guy (well, no, not really) but spending that sort of money when the government is so heavily in debt is sheer stupidity or, even worse, criminal.
Heads should roll. This sort of thing really irks me as you always hear these clowns saying that we have a financial problem, but their lame ideas are always increasing taxes... You never ever hear them suggesting that we cut out government waste or "services" (like making cartoons for tourists).
I have a good idea on how to cut the budget, immediately cut the salaries of public employees by half and fire 70% of all assistants to politicians... No more free airfare and Shinkansen train rides either.
Anyway, if you want to see the anime for yourself, it is here (Click "English HQ" at the top left under the anime).
The cartoon is bad, so if you don't want to click around, here's a Japanese language version... It's about on par with Speed Racer from the early 1970's only no action at all!
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Keywords: Anime, cartoon, Marketing Japan, Mike Rogers
Ishiro Honda was the guy, depending on who you talk to, that destroyed Japanese cinema or made Japanese cinema world famous...
I think he helped make Japanese cinema crappy, but then again, when I was a kid, I liked Mothra and Godzilla movies (the early ones that Ishiro Honda directed). I remember watching the classic, "Destroy all Monsters" and being terrified at the scary woman who wanted to take over the earth!
I also recognize that without Ishiro Honda, Japanese pop culture most probably wouldn't be what it is today.
Original Japanese poster for 1968 "Destroy all Monsters!
No matter what you think - good or bad - I do believe that there is an evolutionary line between Honda's work and, say, today's more fantastic Japanese anime or even Hatsune Miku. Honda was definitely influential on Japanese pop culture.
For the first time in America, a book has been published on Japan's foremost director of Fantasy Films: MUSHROOM CLOUDS AND MUSHROOM MEN – The Fantastic Cinema of Ishiro Honda.
Known primarily for directing such classic Japanese monster movies as Rodan, Mothra, Attack of the Mushroom People and the original Godzilla, Honda has been a much-overlooked figure in mainstream international cinema.
MUSHROOM CLOUDS AND MUSHROOM MEN is the first book to cover in English print Honda’s life as well comprehensively evaluates all 25 of his fantasy films. It is also gives objective and critical analysis of Honda's filmmaking methods, themes and relationships with actors and technicians.
The book looks like an interesting read if you want to know who to blame, or thank, for today's Japanese "camp" or Anime.
And for your viewing pleasure, here's the trailer from the 1968 "Destroy All Monsters"
DOUBLE CLICK FOR FULL SCREEN!
DOUBLE CLICK FOR FULL SCREEN! --------
KEYWORDS: Ishiro Honda, Mike Rogers, Godzilla, Hatsune Miku, Mike in Tokyo Rogers, Japanese cinema, Japanese anime, Mothra, Destroy all Monsters, Mushroom Clouds and Mushroom Men, Peter H. Brothers, Marketing Japan, Japan, Tokyo
