Cartoons and Animation

[BouncyCaitian Redux]

Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex is good and chewy cyberpunk anime that I highly recommend.

Macross Zero: A sort of pre-story of the famous Macross Saga. The animation is not to be believed. the dogfights look almost real.

[Xzengrim]

Animation? Sw333t! I will now say some things, which are my personal favorites:

Hellsing, Cowboy Bebop, Trigun, Angel Sanctuary, Vampire Hunter D, X, Outlaw Star, Princess Mononoke, Bubblegum Crisis...and maybe ... um... FLCL. That sounds about right.

Of course, we must also give props to Samurai Jack, Invader Zim, Family Guy, and Aeon Flux. As long as we're talking animation, I'm also going to mention Storm Thorganson's animated peices from "The Wall". Hammers aaack! Look what those flowers are doing!!

That, and goths have cool fashions, even if you don't want to be a goth. I have a black trenchcoat, and mirror-shades... and a top hat. Not really sure why that made sense... but it did at the time. So did wrapping my fingers in electrical tape. Come to think of it... I don't think I'm a goth. I think I'm an insane person who just happens to own a large black coat.

[Xzengrim]

Actually... as long as we're still at least semi-talking about goths, I think that the following is pretty important: Goth is not Goth.

Goths are not interested in fashions or art the is truly Gothic. What they really are are Romanticists, in specific admirers of the New Romantic art period from the end of the 1870's. Art and literature around that time was big into stressing the depressing ennui of life, and the dark wonder that clustered around the natural and the mysterious. Paintings and such often featured moody and foreboding ruins... which were inspired by the ruins of the Goth culture, which dot upper Europe and parts of Britain. They like Romanticism (which used Gothic ruins as a backdrop), not Gothic art. In fact, the Romans chose the word Gothic to represent fashion that looked like that because to them, the word "Gothic" meant backwards, ugly, and primitive. Goth means dumb. The Goths were a barbarian tribe who preserved the last traditionalist aspects of the Roman Empire in Northern Europe after the rest of it fell in the Mediterranean. Bram Stoker and his ilk only saw their ruins and thought they looked dramatic enough to include in a book. The Goths were nowhere involved, it was all New Romanticists.

Of course, most Goths are completely unaware of this, because their order seems to be nothing more than a mass marketed fashion appeal in the mall. Be sure to tell them: Goth means dumbass. I swear, I'm not making any of that up!! ...I do like their clothes though.

[Raemonde]

Here here, well spoken, Bruce.

[Makdaam]

I love watching old cartoons or the newer ones, but targeted at adults (Futurama/Family Guy etc.) And I will surely NOT allow my future child to watch a cartoon with fluffy cuddly sweet teddybears :\

And there's nothing better than a coyote standing in a shadow of an anvil (made by ACME) and I don't have to mention that the shadow is getting larger and larger, do I? :>

American cartoons used to be good, but then some idiot mothers decided that cartoon violece was wrong. They started boycotting Looney Tunes! Loony Tunes! Buggs and Elmer, who doesn't like Buggs Bunny? What I don't get is why they would boycot it. Didn't half of them grow up with them?

Well, it's quite obvious that eventually it's going to be EC10 rated.... :\ like everything

Fortunately I live in a fine country that has just (in 1980s) delegalized any censorship in public media, so teorethically I can watch what I want, but then again those bastards have both the broadcast rights to the "Professional Leon" in the de-brutalised version :\ (He trains the girl only in sniping, the pistol and other training scenes are cut out)