pardon me- long passion-inflamed post coming! :D
I agree. But you did mention you don't like basketball but like anime, and that was what my original post eluded to. My second post simply answered your question, and this post points out why I'm involved in this thread at all.
"alluded," FYI.
john, i share some of your sentiment about anime, just not as extremely as you do. the japanese are such a weirdly narcissistic culture in many ways and a lot of that shows in their anime, for better or worse. still, you're doing yourself a disservice if you haven't checked out certain stuff, like miyazaki's "castle in the sky," "princess mononoke," and "spirited away."
at the peak of miyazaki's game, there is no better animation / storylines in the history of animation. not disney, groening, linklater, bakshi, bluth, or anyone else's work i've ever seen. spirited away also won an academy award, if that means anything to you. but to be specific, miyazaki's work is rich and rife with childlike flights of imagination married to themes of mythology and subtle commentary on the nature of man. quality is similar to disney, but without the canned, hokey and predictable nature that disney's films fell in to, especially after walt passed away. no, miyazaki's work is deeply satisfying on many levels... not unlike the simpsons that you mention. (well, at least seasons 1-9, before it became a weak parody of itself)
@steve and dan,
i'm glad that you guys liked death note. i was a little let down by the ending, but overall was thrilled by the quality of storyline and art. i wish more modern manga was remotely of that quality, because wading through reams of school-girl / school-boy-themed self-important rubbish to find something equally good is... tough.
anyway, thanks for the recommendations of mirai nikki, kuroko no basket and poppy hill!
i desperately need to free up space on this HDD so i can start DL'ing again.
re: manga,
the most recent stuff i found that was of top quality was osama tezuka's old stuff, like his series on the life of buddha and the other one about adolf hitler's secret jewish heritage.
recently i've found that the best graphic storytelling has been from europe... they call them "bandes dessinees" (drawn strips). at best, the subject matter deals with fascinating real-world issues from history, such as the one about the female chinese spy in pre-red hong kong ("white tigress"), the one about nero drusus of early rome ("the eagles of rome"), the tolkienesque / richard adams-esque ("watership down") mythology about a group of medieval mice functioning in a world of hostile predators ("mouse guard"), an alternate story to anne frank's ("a jew in communist prague")...
graphic-storytelling has never been more excellent IMO. i'm proud of how very far these guys and gals have come the last decade or two. the work is both educational, gripping, and outright fascinating, like the best of contemporary literature. just that, again, there's an ocean of mediocre crap to wade through in order to get to the really brilliant stuff.
side-note on films and japan: not too long ago i watched "what's up tiger lily?" for the first time in ages. oh my gosh... that film has aged remarkably well! still hilarious after 45 years, and still a pretty rare format for feature-length films- replacing the audio on an old film to make a brand new story and dialogue. riff-trax and the LA connection do that very well with shorter material even today, but feature-length releases are still quite rare IME. i did hear that "kung fu shuffle" does that format to perfection, but i haven't seen it yet.
@bill,
if you're following- i finally got myself a paperback copy of "dangerously funny" and have been enjoying the read, so far. that's the one about the smothers brothers and their show, of course. good fun so far, and youtube has proven an excellent resource to look up specific bits and specific songs as they're mentioned, like "tom dooley" by the kingston trio. never realised what a fabulous vocal performance that was until now!
