[0:00] You ever wish you could be someone else?
[0:02] Most of us go through a phase like that
[0:04] at some point in our lives. Be we
[0:06] teenagers, adults, or entire country's
[0:09] animation industries. But today, we're
[0:11] going to be looking back on one
[0:13] particularly tender year from my youth
[0:15] when Oh, sorry. That's um that notes for
[0:18] my therapist. Today we're going to be
[0:21] looking at the
[0:25] 28y yearlong phase in which American
[0:28] cartoons have been trying to be anime,
[0:31] where they've succeeded, where they've
[0:33] failed horribly, and what the attempts
[0:35] themselves say about America's evolving
[0:38] feelings [music] toward its favorite
[0:40] cultural import. But before we dive into
[0:43] that, we'll be looking at one particular
[0:45] American company that's been doing
[0:47] amazing things with anime lately.
[0:50] Today's sponsor, Star Forge Systems, who
[0:53] make powerful gaming PCs with anime
[0:56] collabs that look as good as they run.
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[1:11] to fantastical worlds or get your blood
[1:14] pumping with raw shownen hype. This
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[1:20] unrivaled power of gag manga supremacy.
[1:24] Also, if your gaming room is on the
[1:26] cuter side or your anime collections
[1:28] more waifu focused, it's the perfect
[1:30] piece to tie the whole setup together.
[1:32] And with swappable plate lights and a
[1:35] wide selection of matching desk mats and
[1:37] wall art to complement it, including a
[1:39] poster for the in universe anime Udon
[1:41] Mirage, you can mix and match to make
[1:44] something that's perfect just for you.
[1:46] And they sell the cases standalone in
[1:48] case you want to build an even more
[1:50] custom rig than that. though you would
[1:52] be hardpressed to beat their prices in
[1:55] the current component market, even
[1:56] without accounting for all the extra
[1:58] goodies they pack in their PC bundles.
[2:01] Regardless of how you want it, all you
[2:03] got to do is click the link in the
[2:04] doobly-doo to get the most beautiful PC
[2:07] you'll ever own today. Pokemon caused a
[2:11] seismic shift in the American media
[2:13] landscape when it hit in fall 1998. As
[2:17] the first anime to well and truly
[2:19] eclipse everything the West had to offer
[2:21] on its own televised turf, the onetwo
[2:24] punch of Power Rangers and Pikachu sent
[2:27] execs scrambling to pick up some
[2:29] lucrative licenses of their own and
[2:31] develop some homegrown IP that could
[2:34] compete in this brave new Saturday
[2:36] morning metag game. But our story
[2:39] doesn't quite start there. While
[2:41] mainstream and elite America remained
[2:43] blissfully unaware of the soft power
[2:46] nuke headed their way in the late '9s,
[2:48] the people actually making cartoons knew
[2:51] what was up a long time before then. As
[2:54] Disney was still desperately clawing its
[2:56] way out of the dark age, Japan was
[2:58] pumping out films like Laputa, Akira,
[3:01] and Toro, whose narrative nuance and
[3:03] technical acumen would put most of the
[3:06] Renaissance era to shame. And many of
[3:09] the most passionate western animators of
[3:11] the day were watching those works,
[3:14] learning whatever they could from them.
[3:16] Thanks to imports like Samurai Pizza
[3:18] Cats Starblazers Rootech and
[3:20] Speedrazer, many future animators of the
[3:23] day also found themselves enamored with
[3:26] anime from a very early age. And as they
[3:29] grew up, renting the likes of Bubblegum
[3:31] Crisis and Ninja Scroll from Blockbuster
[3:34] helped keep that passion burning. Add to
[3:36] that the vast number of cartoons from
[3:39] the 70s, 80s, and 90s that were
[3:42] outsourced to Japan, and you'd be
[3:44] hardressed to find a show that wasn't
[3:46] influenced by anime in some way, even
[3:49] back then. Some more obvious than
[3:51] others, like Frankenstein Jr., which
[3:54] explicitly shouted out Gigantor aka
[3:57] Tetsugen 28GO go as one of its
[3:59] inspirations or the blatantly Japanese
[4:02] mech designs of the Transformers not to
[4:04] mention the halfozen Japan exclusive
[4:06] sequels that dramatically expand on the
[4:08] continuity of Generation 1 or Inspector
[4:11] Gadget who literally only exists because
[4:14] Dee couldn't secure the western rights
[4:16] to the futuristic spin-off of Lupon III
[4:19] they were working on. Speaking of Lupon,
[4:21] the great mouse detective famously
[4:23] lifted its entire climactic clock tower
[4:26] fight directly from Castle of
[4:28] Kagglostro, which would not be the last
[4:31] time that Disney cribbed Miyazaki's
[4:33] notes. The creators of Tail Spin were
[4:35] said to have shown Nasica and Laputa to
[4:38] every new animator they hired without
[4:40] even putting subtitles on just to set
[4:43] the standard for the show's flying
[4:45] scenes. But ultimately, all of those
[4:48] examples amount to blending some anime
[4:51] elements into conventional American
[4:53] cartoons. For 1992's Batman the Animated
[4:57] Series, creators Bruce Tim and Eric
[5:00] Rodomsky made a conscious effort to
[5:02] emulate the cinematic storyboarding and
[5:05] intense [music]
[5:05] atmosphere of Japanese animation. in the
[5:08] process creating quite possibly the
[5:11] first ever Wilhelm screamification of
[5:13] the Akira slide and setting a new more
[5:16] animeque standard for basically every
[5:19] action cartoon of the preceding decades
[5:23] especially the ones about superheroes.
[5:25] That was true both of the DC animated
[5:28] universe that would eventually spring
[5:30] out of Tim's Batman and Superman shows
[5:33] and many Marvel cartoons throughout the
[5:36] '9s and [music] 2000s, starting with the
[5:38] classic Fox Kids run of X-Men and
[5:41] Spider-Man. Batman Beyond leaned even
[5:44] harder into those cyberpunk anime
[5:46] influences to create a monster of the
[5:48] week vehicle that feels an awful lot
[5:51] like Bubblegum Crisis for 12year-olds.
[5:54] And I mean that as the highest
[5:56] compliment. Well, maybe the second
[5:58] highest. As forms of flattery go, it's
[6:01] hard to beat The Big O, an entire anime
[6:05] from former Batman subcontractor
[6:08] Sunrise, which was literally conceived
[6:10] as Batman the animated series. If the
[6:14] Batmobile was a super robot, it's
[6:17] [ __ ] awesome. You should watch it. Of
[6:19] course, there were other anime inspired
[6:21] '90s classics that emerged before or
[6:24] alongside Pokémon. 1993's Exo Squad
[6:27] sought to emulate the mature serialized
[6:30] storytelling of Gundam and space
[6:32] battleship Yamato with its morally gray
[6:34] war story about a slave revolt gone too
[6:38] far. Hope I won't have to say that
[6:41] sentence again in this video. One of my
[6:43] personal faves growing up was 97's
[6:45] Mummies Alive, whose elaborate
[6:47] transformation sequences were clearly
[6:50] inspired by Super Senti and Sailor Moon.
[6:52] And on that note, The Powerpuff Girls
[6:55] was designed from the outset as a medley
[6:58] of high octane shownen battle action and
[7:00] cutesy magical girl aesthetics. Though
[7:03] that wasn't actually the first time that
[7:05] Craig McCracken showed his love for
[7:07] anime on Cartoon Network. One year
[7:10] before Powerpuff Girls debut, he
[7:12] storyboarded Mach 5, an episode of
[7:15] Dexter's Laboratory that masterfully
[7:17] spoofs Speedraer with a pitch-perfect
[7:20] parody of its idiosyncratic dub and a
[7:23] loving homage to its distinctive style
[7:25] of animation. The episode was also
[7:27] co-directed by two notable anime lovers
[7:30] in Rob Renzetti, who would go on to make
[7:32] his own maho shojo take on Astro Boy
[7:36] with My Life as a Teenage Robot, and
[7:38] Dexter's own creator, Gendi Tardikovski,
[7:41] who actually [music] got his start
[7:43] animating on Batman and would go on to
[7:46] do more than almost any other western
[7:48] animator to make cartoons more like
[7:52] anime. From the shownen Chonbara
[7:54] stylings of Samurai Jack in Clone Wars
[7:57] to the tragically short-lived super
[8:00] robot cult classic Symbionic Titan. And
[8:03] of course, we can't forget the
[8:05] worldclass waifu engineering that gave
[8:07] us Mavis Dracula. But before we can get
[8:10] into any of those, we've got to take a
[8:12] quick detour with the Mach 5 into the
[8:15] world of anime parodies, as they'll
[8:17] better help us understand where
[8:19] America's head was at with all these
[8:21] weird Chinese cartoons taking over the
[8:24] airwaves. Besides Mr. Sparkle, a riff on
[8:27] weird Japanese advertising from the
[8:29] Simpsons episode in [music] Marge We
[8:31] Trust that came out earlier that same
[8:33] year. I believe that 97 Dexter's Lab
[8:37] episode is the very first example of an
[8:40] American cartoon riffing on Japanese
[8:42] tropes, but it would be far from the
[8:45] last. As Poke Mania and the anime boom
[8:48] took hold of the nation's youth,
[8:50] American artists started lining up to
[8:52] offer their own commentary and criticism
[8:55] on the whole phenomenon, which often
[8:57] came off as a wee bit salty, if I'm
[9:01] being honest.
[9:01] >> Your clown is weak and silly WHERE MINE
[9:03] IS STRONG. WELL, YOU have sacrificed
[9:06] story content for mindless violence and
[9:08] lack of [music] structure. My clown has
[9:09] won and you can too if you go to THE
[9:12] STORE AND BUY OUR TOYS. BUY OUR TOYS.
[9:15] BUY OUR TOYS.
[9:16] >> WITH VERY few exceptions, like that one
[9:19] Angry Beavers episode, there was little
[9:21] ball knowledge to be found in any of
[9:23] these post Pokémon parodies, which
[9:25] artlessly mashed up the same three or
[9:28] four anime the creators were all aware
[9:30] of while regurgitating all the same
[9:32] tired talking points. Just look at their
[9:36] cartoon so full of imitatable violence.
[9:39] They're abusing those cartoon animals.
[9:42] They give you seizures.
[9:45] The dubs, they talk so weird and they
[9:48] try so hard to sell you stuff. American
[9:53] media would never on occasion one of
[9:56] these would deliver a solid original gag
[9:58] or two.
[10:00] MATRIX, STOP TRYING to hit HIM AND HIT
[10:04] HIM.
[10:05] >> SORRY, BOB.
[10:09] But for the most part, if you've seen
[10:11] the South Park episode Chin Pokemon,
[10:13] you've already caught them all. That
[10:15] reboot made for TV movie even called its
[10:18] monsters ponsu or trouser snakes, which
[10:22] is literally the exact same joke as Chin
[10:26] Pokemon, just worse. As the years went
[10:29] on though, more cartoons began to
[10:31] acknowledge that anime actually was kind
[10:34] of cool and kids might have good reasons
[10:37] to like it, leading to more balanced and
[10:39] entertaining parodies overall. And even
[10:42] some of the less flattering ones were
[10:44] clearly being made by people who
[10:46] actually watched anime, perhaps even too
[10:49] much anime. Just 5 years after Chin
[10:52] Pokémon, even as their comedy central
[10:55] contemporaries at drawn together were
[10:57] busy subjecting the world to lingling
[11:00] and every lowhanging fruity joke you can
[11:03] think of about a JRPG protagonist. South
[11:06] Park came back around with a genuine
[11:09] love letter to bloody action anime like
[11:12] Ninja Scroll and Fist of the North Star.
[11:14] so clearly brimming with passion for its
[11:17] inspiration that Matt and Trey wrote and
[11:20] performed their own anime OP full of
[11:24] Japanese dick and ball jokes naturally.
[11:26] And in the years since the show's anime
[11:28] references have only gotten more
[11:30] specific and accurate to the subculture.
[11:33] Even back at the turn of the millennium,
[11:35] you could see hints that Stone and
[11:37] Parker were at least a little weebi. But
[11:40] nowadays, they really wear it on their
[11:42] sleeves. And that's kind of true across
[11:45] the board in cartoons for kids and
[11:47] adults alike. Across the 2010s and 20s,
[11:51] we got Regular Show doing whole TV
[11:53] specials based on Ava and Gundam.
[11:56] Gravity Falls turning Toki Mechi
[11:59] Memorial into horror a couple years
[12:01] before DDLC. Bob's Burgers using Ttoro
[12:04] as a metaphor for Bob's whimsical
[12:07] approach to cooking. The animemaniacs
[12:10] fending off it circuses. shows like
[12:13] Gumball and even The Simpsons
[12:15] contracting real Japanese studios to do
[12:19] their anime spoofs justice. And of
[12:22] course, we can't forget all the
[12:23] brilliant independent animators across
[12:26] the internet making fun of and paying
[12:28] tribute to all the anime that have
[12:30] inspired them. Far too many to name even
[12:33] a fraction. And yet somehow out of all
[12:36] of them, not a single one manages to be
[12:40] conceptually funnier than that time
[12:43] Warner Brothers unironically turned the
[12:46] Looney Tunes into an anime type thing.
[12:49] No piece of media from the mid 2000s
[12:52] better demonstrates the sheer state of
[12:55] panic that the anime boom induced in
[12:57] American TV execs than Lunatics
[13:00] Unleashed. A gritty post-apocalyptic
[13:03] sequel to Merry Melodys in which the
[13:05] teenager with attitude descendants of
[13:08] Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, and so on, use
[13:11] their aliengifted superpowers to save
[13:14] the world because apparently Duck
[13:17] Dodgers just wasn't hitting that tween
[13:20] demographic hard enough. [music]
[13:21] But while Lunatics is very much the
[13:24] perfect punchline to every joke about
[13:26] Americans making anime, it's not really
[13:30] representative of the broader endeavor.
[13:32] Sam Register, the president of Warner
[13:34] Brothers Animation, has singled it out
[13:36] as a prime example of what not to do.
[13:39] And while he did say that mainly in
[13:41] regards to the then new Looney Tunes
[13:44] show, he has also produced many anime
[13:47] inspired cartoons throughout his decades
[13:49] in the industry that do not do any of
[13:52] the terrible things Lunatics does. And
[13:56] it's not just him. I remember a lot of
[13:59] these shows being painfully cringy for a
[14:02] young me in search of real anime back in
[14:04] the day. But looking back, most of the
[14:06] cartoons to come out of this movement
[14:08] were pretty good and even great. And
[14:11] they got there almost immediately.
[14:14] Powerpuff Girls and Batman Beyond were a
[14:17] little too early to have been made in
[14:19] direct response to the anime boom, but
[14:21] they arrived just in time to surf the
[14:24] wave. And they both absolutely 2000's
[14:27] X-Men Evolution is notable for putting a
[14:30] greater emphasis on teen drama than the
[14:32] '90s version and taking a notably more
[14:36] anime stylistic direction that must have
[14:39] been very comfortable for Madhouse and
[14:41] MOO animation to work on. Though it does
[14:44] still feel like an action cartoon at its
[14:46] core. Samurai Jack hit in 2001 and it
[14:50] still feels ahead of its time. a quiet,
[14:52] slow-paced, contemplative series that
[14:55] lets its decidedly anime style action
[14:58] speak more and louder than its
[15:00] characters most of the time while
[15:02] respecting its audience's intelligence
[15:04] at every turn. But one show which often
[15:07] gets lumped in with the early anime
[15:09] likes that really ought to be questioned
[15:12] more is Jackiechan Adventures. While its
[15:15] martial arts, action, chi-based magic
[15:18] system, and mcguffin hunting plot
[15:20] structure do bear some very obvious
[15:22] similarities to Dragon Ball, that's
[15:24] mainly because it taps into the same
[15:26] sources as Toriyama did of Wuja and Kung
[15:30] Fu Cinema. Personally, I think it more
[15:32] belongs in a separate lineage of kung fu
[15:35] cartoons with Shaolin Showdown, Jake
[15:38] Long, and Juniper Lee. But maybe that's
[15:40] a distinction without difference. I
[15:42] don't know. 2003 is when anime likes
[15:44] really started taking off and they
[15:47] started with a bang. Fresh off of
[15:49] working on Batman Beyond, producer and
[15:51] character designer Glenn Murakami was
[15:53] given free reign to put his own stamp on
[15:56] a DC Comics property separate from the
[15:59] Timoverse that was then developing. And
[16:01] the result was a show whose cancellation
[16:03] we still gripe about two decades later.
[16:09] [music and singing]
[16:11] Teen Titans
[16:12] >> Bang and JRock opening aside, Teen
[16:15] Titans wasn't quite anime. The comedy
[16:18] was a bit too cartoony, the episodes a
[16:21] bit too episodic. But what it was was a
[16:24] damn good show that stood out from every
[16:27] other cartoon and anime on the air with
[16:30] a distinctive style that represented the
[16:32] best of both worlds. It could be
[16:34] gutbustingly funny one minute and
[16:37] devastatingly dramatic the next. The
[16:39] fight scenes always hit hard and its
[16:41] interpretation of the Titans would go on
[16:44] to be arguably the definitive version of
[16:46] the team as a whole and each of the
[16:49] individual characters even over the
[16:51] comics they started in. This is the show
[16:54] that made Robin the Boy Wonder genuinely
[16:57] unambiguously cool. Something Teen
[17:00] Titans Go has been trying to undo ever
[17:03] since. And it's also almost certainly
[17:06] the show that convinced Warner Bros.
[17:07] they could get away with lunatics. So, I
[17:10] can't even say he doesn't deserve that
[17:12] on some level. Though, of course, it
[17:14] wasn't just WB who thought their IP
[17:17] could benefit from an anime style
[17:19] refresh. Some legacy series were a
[17:21] little more subtle about it, huing
[17:23] closer to the DCAU style, while others
[17:26] just said, "Ah, [ __ ] it. Let's hire
[17:28] Gonzo." And then you have the
[17:30] Transformers, which basically let the
[17:32] Japanese side run the entire brand for
[17:35] half a decade before Teen Titansifying
[17:37] the next fully American iteration. And
[17:40] while individually, a lot of these shows
[17:42] were decent or even good, their
[17:45] collective existence is, I think, what
[17:48] really put the stink of corporate
[17:50] desperation on this whole wave of anime
[17:54] cartoons. networks would also try to
[17:57] satisfy our bottomless demand for punchy
[17:59] cartoons by importing and commissioning
[18:02] anime inspired works from other regions
[18:05] like Cubix's from Korea, the
[18:07] Italian-made Winkx Club or France's
[18:09] Witch and Code Leoko and Skyland and
[18:13] Oban Star Racers, Totally Spies, Martin
[18:16] Mystery, Team Galaxy. The French made a
[18:18] lot of these sort of things back in the
[18:20] day and they still do. But it feels a
[18:23] little wrong to cover French and
[18:25] European animation here. And not just
[18:28] because I'm going to be AB testing
[18:30] America does anime for the video title.
[18:32] Europe and France in particular have a
[18:35] long history of working with the
[18:37] Japanese on full-blown anime
[18:40] co-productions dating way back to the
[18:42] early8s which has resulted in quite a
[18:45] bit of cross-pollination of both
[18:47] techniques and [music] talents between
[18:49] their industries. As such, many of these
[18:51] shows have an authentic anime feel about
[18:54] them that their American contemporaries
[18:57] would struggle to match for years, even
[18:59] decades to come. I mean, Oon Star Racers
[19:02] straight up has an MAL page, so I mostly
[19:05] just think of these shows as anime. That
[19:09] is what the French already call it,
[19:11] after all. That's where Japan got the
[19:14] word. At the same time though, nothing
[19:16] from that era quite embodies the greasy
[19:20] hello fellow kidsiness of fake mid2000s
[19:24] anime in my mind at least quite so
[19:26] thoroughly as the marathon media trilogy
[19:30] with their way too wacky animation and
[19:32] decidedly western episodic approach to
[19:35] storytelling. They all sit right at the
[19:38] bottom of the uncannime valley. And yet,
[19:41] I do owe at least half of my fetishes to
[19:44] Totally Spies. So, maybe it is a real
[19:46] anime after all. It's hard to say.
[19:48] Perhaps the problem lies with them being
[19:50] Canadian co-productions. We did have our
[19:53] hand in quite a few of these sorts of
[19:54] things in the mid 2000s, too. Some
[19:56] pretty good, some my life me.
[19:59] >> Besides, I'm not PMP pom girl material.
[20:02] I'm going back to skateboarding where I
[20:05] belong.
[20:09] I don't [music] want to talk about that
[20:11] one though. So, let's get back to
[20:13] America in the early as 2004 saw the
[20:17] release of Megas XLR, an actual
[20:20] deconstruction of Mecca anime tropes
[20:22] about a schlubby burnout from New Jersey
[20:24] who installs his hot rod as the head of
[20:27] a giant future robot that he finds
[20:29] buried in a junkyard and uses it, plus
[20:31] his gaming skills to protect the Jersey
[20:34] shore from time traveling aliens and
[20:37] other space goons, but not himself, who
[20:39] accidentally blows up at least half the
[20:41] city like every other episode. It's
[20:44] fantastic. One of the best things
[20:46] Cartoon Network ever cancelled and the
[20:49] first dedicated anime parody show that
[20:52] really made me think, damn, these guys
[20:55] get it. Seriously, if there is one thing
[20:57] that you take away from this video, it
[21:00] should be watch Megas XLR. 2004 also
[21:04] gave us Super Robot Monkey Team
[21:06] Hyperforce Go, which I didn't actually
[21:08] watch cuz none of our Canadian channels
[21:10] got it. And Hi Highi Puffy Ammy Yumi, a
[21:13] cutesy comedy about the real life J-Rock
[21:16] band behind that banging [music] Teen
[21:18] Titans OP, who tragically had to change
[21:21] their original name, Puffy, for fear of
[21:23] legal trouble with America's third most
[21:26] famous pedophile. which makes a great
[21:28] segue into 2005 and one of the first
[21:31] American anime that really got it. Well,
[21:35] technically that episode of the Boondocs
[21:37] is about R. Kelly, but it still very
[21:39] much applies. In writing terms, the
[21:41] Adult Swim adaptation of Aaron McGrder's
[21:43] transgressively progressive manga style
[21:46] newspaper comic is very much in line
[21:48] with other adult cartoons of the era.
[21:51] maybe a touch more slice of lifey, but
[21:53] in terms of how it looks, how it moves,
[21:57] how it feels, the rhythm of its editing,
[21:59] and especially its action scenes, it is
[22:02] anime through [music] and through.
[22:04] McGrder and his co-director LeShawn
[22:07] Thomas were some of the earliest members
[22:09] of the anime generation to break into
[22:12] the business, going from mainlining
[22:14] Cowboy Bebop on Adult Swim to airing
[22:16] alongside Samurai Shampoo just a couple
[22:20] years later. And their excitement about
[22:22] that whole situation bleeds through in
[22:25] every episode. Literally everyone. You
[22:28] can tell they were watching Shampoo
[22:30] while they storyboarded the OP. Now, as
[22:32] an adultoriented sitcom with deep
[22:35] America ccentric political undertones, I
[22:37] expect a lot of folks will probably
[22:39] argue that this one especially shouldn't
[22:42] count as anime. But that never stopped
[22:44] King of the Hill and it doesn't even
[22:46] look like anime. That wasn't the only
[22:49] anime style hit that CN had on their
[22:51] hands that year either as just a few
[22:53] weeks after the Boondocks, Ben 10 would
[22:56] make its debut on their endofyear sneak
[22:59] peek week, going on to be one of the
[23:01] most enduring franchises in their entire
[23:04] catalog with 22 seasons and nearly 300
[23:07] episodes spanning multiple sequels and
[23:09] reboots. Of those, the most anime of the
[23:12] bunch is probably Alien Force, which
[23:14] follows Ben as a teenager dealing with
[23:17] teenager stuff, plus morphing into
[23:19] aliens to fight other aliens. At least
[23:21] according to my friends who actually
[23:23] watched Ben 10. Personally, I never got
[23:26] that into it. The original series was
[23:28] more of a cartoon anime hybrid like Teen
[23:31] Titans. And you know, I already had Teen
[23:33] Titans, so I didn't feel too compelled
[23:35] to keep up with that, especially
[23:37] considering the other thing 2005 had to
[23:40] offer.
[23:53] >> [groaning]
[23:57] >> Whether or not you call it an anime, and
[23:59] I absolutely do, Avatar the Last
[24:01] Airbender is a perfect TV show. It too
[24:05] has a bit of that cartoon hybrid feel
[24:08] early on. Not necessarily in how it's
[24:11] scripted or animated 90% of the time,
[24:13] but rather in the very Nicunes tone of
[24:16] its humor. Its hero, Ang, is a goofy
[24:19] little guy whose main goal in life is
[24:21] doing a bunch of goofy things in a world
[24:23] full of weird and cuddly magical animals
[24:26] that he can have goofy little rides on.
[24:28] Potty humor abounds, and it is not
[24:30] unheard of for characters to get slimed.
[24:33] You might think that this would clash
[24:35] with the more serious tone of a shownen
[24:37] style magic martial arts adventure about
[24:40] taking down an evil genocidal empire,
[24:43] and you would be right. But that is
[24:46] precisely the point. Avatar uses the
[24:49] tension between its two identities of
[24:51] cartoon and anime to reflect the tension
[24:54] between the childlike whims of its hero
[24:57] and the very adult responsibilities that
[25:00] he's destined to fulfill. And as he
[25:02] accepts that destiny and begins to grow
[25:04] up, so too does the show with him,
[25:07] getting darker and more serious with
[25:10] each passing season, casting away a lot
[25:12] of the more goofy humor, though never
[25:15] fully abandoning that naive sense of
[25:19] whimsy, joy, and hope. It's a work that
[25:22] could have only emerged out of this very
[25:24] specific moment in the evolution of
[25:27] American animation and that only works
[25:30] as well as it does because its nature is
[25:32] so in line with what it has to say. And
[25:35] while it has stayed incredibly relevant
[25:38] to this day, in fact, I'll be dropping a
[25:40] whole video about its latest attempt to
[25:42] stay relevant on the 30th. There was
[25:44] something really special about living
[25:46] through that moment. It honestly felt
[25:48] like western animation was on the cusp
[25:51] of finally catching up to anime, of
[25:54] finally telling stories that would
[25:57] matter to me again on a much grander
[25:59] scale. Sadly, history is not simply a
[26:02] forward march of progress. And one year
[26:05] after Avatar debuted, Nickelodeon proved
[26:07] they'd learned absolutely nothing from
[26:09] it with Kappa Mikey, the tale of a
[26:12] failed American actor who becomes the
[26:14] star of Japan's most popular tokusatu
[26:17] series by winning a scratchoff contest.
[26:20] With the main gimmick being that he
[26:21] looks like he stepped out of a typical
[26:23] mid2000s flash cartoon, while all of the
[26:26] Japanese characters look like they
[26:27] stepped out of a typical mid2000s flash
[26:30] hentai quiz. As a child, this was the
[26:33] show that made me write off almost
[26:35] everything like it except Avatar and
[26:38] Teen Titans as cringy and out of touch.
[26:41] But looking back on it now as an adult,
[26:44] I think I actually hate it more. The
[26:46] sound designer's use of whip cracks
[26:48] could give Johnny Test a run for his
[26:50] money. Maybe one in 30 jokes is actually
[26:53] funny. And while the background artists
[26:55] and animators clearly know at least a
[26:57] little anime and Japanese culture ball,
[26:59] none of them bothered to pass it on to
[27:01] the writer room, who, let me put it this
[27:04] way, the show's title is a pun on
[27:06] Kapamaki Sushi, meant to echo Mikey's
[27:08] status as a fish out of water in Tokyo,
[27:11] which would be very clever if Kapamaki
[27:15] had any fish in it. If this show was
[27:18] about some schlub moving to New York,
[27:20] the only thing that would have to change
[27:22] is its art style. The one unambiguously
[27:26] good thing to come out of Kappa Mikey is
[27:28] its theme song performed by Beat
[27:30] Crusaders, who also gave us the only
[27:33] good thing about Bleach's Bount arc and
[27:35] hit in the USA from Beck Mongolian Chop
[27:38] Squad. But sadly, the rest of the show's
[27:40] vibe sits somewhere between Gwen
[27:43] Stefani's Harajuku Girls and that
[27:45] Kirsten Dun cover of Turning Japanese.
[27:48] Okay, done roasting it now. Sorry, I
[27:50] just I had to get that out of my system.
[27:52] The next few years would be relatively
[27:55] quiet on the American anime front,
[27:57] mostly seeing continuations of the shows
[27:59] we've already touched on. But by 2010,
[28:02] the industry seemed to have learned its
[28:04] lessons from the big hits of 2005, and
[28:06] the scene exploded. In one year, Young
[28:09] Justice gave us a more condensed
[28:11] serialized narrative than Teen Titans.
[28:13] [music] Generator Rex gave us even
[28:16] cooler morphing powers than Ben 10.
[28:18] Symbionic Titan gave us a Mecca story
[28:21] just as good as Megas XLR, as well as
[28:23] Tardikovsky's most mature work to date.
[28:26] Stan Lee took a trip to Japan to make
[28:28] his own anime with Studio Bones and
[28:30] Mystery Incorporated took the Scooby-Doo
[28:33] franchise in a bold new continuitydriven
[28:36] direction that is still, for my money,
[28:38] the best take on the meddling teens to
[28:41] date. And the shows just kept stacking
[28:43] up from there. From Thundercats 2011 to
[28:46] Kora in 2012 to the point that
[28:48] individual releases kind of stopped
[28:51] being notable. By 2013, even
[28:54] internet-based indie animators were
[28:56] getting in on the fun with Rooster Tease
[28:58] Rouia telling a high octane tale of
[29:00] magically empowered battle waifuss
[29:02] [music] fighting to stop a villainous
[29:04] slave revolt gone too far. Son of a
[29:06] [ __ ] America. These days, some of the
[29:08] hottest cartoons on the biggest networks
[29:11] are isekai and magical girl stories. The
[29:14] biggest movie of the now is a
[29:16] Symphfoggeear clone. And we can't forget
[29:18] about all the other streaming originals
[29:20] that call them anime or not are pretty
[29:23] [ __ ] badass. Not to mention all the
[29:25] great indie cartoons with obviously
[29:28] anime influences, some of which have
[29:30] gotten shockingly big in Japan. Well,
[29:33] maybe it's not that shocking. Many of
[29:35] the titles we've just been talking about
[29:37] have Japanese-made anime of their own.
[29:40] Enough that I could make a whole
[29:41] separate video just about those. and
[29:43] also the entire Japan exclusive season
[29:46] of Lilo and Stitch in which experiment
[29:48] 626 abandons his ohana to go live with a
[29:51] brand new Kazoku in Okinawa. See, it's
[29:54] not just America that ruins things. In
[29:56] fact, I'd say most of the things that
[29:59] we've just gotten through talking about
[30:01] show quite the opposite. From Mega XLR
[30:04] to Neo Yokio, Avatar to the Dragon
[30:06] Prince, Samurai Jack to Blue-Eyed
[30:09] Samurai, almost none of them have been
[30:11] making anime worse. They've just been
[30:14] making cartoons better, moving past the
[30:17] corporate roadblocks and cultural stigma
[30:19] that have held the medium of animation
[30:22] back in the West for so long by
[30:24] following in the footsteps of artists
[30:26] who figured that [ __ ] out in the 70s and
[30:28] 80s, without which we simply would not
[30:31] have all of the vibrantly creative and
[30:34] expressive cartoons and American anime
[30:37] that are getting written off for tax
[30:39] purposes today. I'm Jeff Thu,
[30:42] professional anime identifier, saying no
[30:45] to Kappa Mikey, but yes to King of the
[30:47] Hill. Only the first six seasons though.