Waste of Time Awards - Film and Television

To continue our trend of shocking awards, the second day of the Wasties proves that a movie grossing several trillion dollars is no guarantee it will even end up on my top five.

Thanks to a money-grubbing "Special Edition," "Avatar" was in the running as a 2010 contender for Biggest Waste of Time in Film and Television. Thanks to a director more concerned with visual effects than substance, it also allowed it to be utterly terrible. In fact, given its long run-time and embarrassing writing, this year, it receives "honorable" mention as "Worst in Film and Television."

But no need to dwell on the negatives.

As for the actual winner, the best series of 2010 goes to "Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood." This anime - based on the original manga rather than cobbled together like the first series - was utterly amazing. With excellent characters, action and a plot-line that kept you guessing until the very end, it was everything an anime should be. And for non-anime folk, it's at least watchable.

Perhaps most impressive is the fact that it's only sixty-four episodes. This clocks in at about five hundred less than longer-running series like "Bleach," "Naruto" or "Inuyasha." Being able to stay awake through the entire run is a nice bonus.

It did, however, face some stiff competition:

2) "Family Guy: Something Something Something Dark Side" - As a "Star Wars" spoof, this technically qualifies as a nerd program. This was just a step from taking the first place spot. Pretty much one more good Meg joke would have done it.

And yes, "Family Guy: It's a Trap" was pretty good, but like "Return of the Jedi," it just didn't stack up to the second movie.

3) "The Twilight Saga: Eclipse" - Yes, I see some eye rolls at this one. Unfortunately, my hands were tied. As the only movie of the year that featured violent vampire wars, it was pretty much guaranteed an award. If you can point out another movie where an undead Civil War officer decapitates evil vampires alongside a pack of werewolves, please point it out.

4) "How to Train Your Dragon" - This one edged in at the last moment, since I went most of the year without seeing it. I was impressed with the continuing ability of animated films to not be overly-cutesy when they need to. Let's hope that in two or three years, there will be nothing in these movies for kids at all.

5) "The Sorcerer's Apprentice" - Overall, this was a pretty good movie - one I definitely recommend seeing. Bafflingly, Nicolas Cage didn't do the usual "Nicolas Cage' thing and muck up the movie. I would absolutely love seeing a sequel someday soon.

You may notice that the two big guns - "Avatar" and "Inception" - are absent from the list. What can I say? "Inception" was over-hyped to the point that it was essentially unwatchable. "Avatar" was under-written to the point where it was unwatchable. (Believe me - I tried.)

What do you think? I wouldn't be surprised if people second-guessed my choices. Then again, given how quickly people stopped talking about "Avatar," I wouldn't be surprised if people didn't.

Up next on Friday is the "Alternative Media Category."

Manga Aversion: Length

As a public service, I’ve decided to address the issues that are causing most people to not love things like anime, manga or video games as much as I do. Today’s issue is the length of manga series. Or, to put it another way, why should I read “Bleach” if it probably won’t end before I die?

To be honest, I won’t defend the length. Many of the mangas I read are at about the 500 issue mark and show no signs of stopping. Ever.

What I would say is that length isn’t the problem as much as a few other things:

1) Mindset – As many manga are turned into anime, people expect them to end like all television shows. This is an expectation people don’t hold for American comics. And this is why “Superman” is going into what seems like his sixth century of publication and no one feels the same way.

2) Training Content – When you’re having fun, the time flies by. When you’re, say, training to learn a new technique instead of actually using it in battle, things slow to a crawl. “Training arcs,” or portions of the manga where the characters train to get stronger, take an agonizingly long time to resolve. As was established in “Rocky IV,” training is only interesting in musical montage form.

If it gets too tiresome to handle, I suggest doing what I do and listening to some “Queen” music during the training arcs – though, to be fair, this would improve almost anything.

3) Battle Content – Sadly, when people fight it’s not always better. This is because many manga fights can span ten issues or more. For example, the (possibly) final battle in “Bleach” involved dozens of underling fights before the ultimate bad guy transformed into a stronger form, second stronger form, a god, a butterfly (which totally isn’t a joke – go look if you don’t believe me), a god again and finally a very angry, slightly stronger god.

Obviously, some of the fights need to be pared down a bit – it would occasionally be refreshing to see a decapitation in the battle’s first panel to end things quickly and cleanly.

That’s how I see it anyway. While manga isn’t perfect by any means, I’d put it squarely on the corner of “it’s not as bad as you think” boulevard and “you’re not giving it a fair chance” lane. If you’re not familiar with the neighborhood, you can always “Mapquest” it to get the directions.

So if you’ve got a spare week or so, try reading a manga. The stories are actually quite good compared to a lot of the American comics. This is particularly true for “Marmaduke.” I get it. He’s a big dog. He eats things off the counter. Can we just get it over with?

Anime: Why It's Just as Bad as You Think

Let’s face it. While there’s some excellent anime out there, there’s just as much – if not more – that’s practically unwatchable. I would be remiss to state that anime was good without warning you about a number of problems with the genre. These problems can be neatly summed up as “the reasons most people aren’t watching in the first place.”

It’s not enough to know what’s good. You have to know what’s bad, and exactly how bad it can get. Some things are minor annoyances. Some anime means looking into the Ark of the Covenant afterward just to get some eye relief.

Problem 1: Total Incoherence
Some good series use a lot of difficult words. When things don’t translate exactly right, they tend to keep the Japanese word. You might find it off-putting to hear that someone has to go to Tsubaki Mountain to destroy the Ghubitsu while hounded by Kabu Katsumoto. I realize this is annoying. It’s also the least of your problems.

Some anime series watch more like a mild concussion. “Bobobo” was a particularly nasty offender. While the creators were nice enough to translate it into English, it was obvious after watching a man attack another man with his mustache and fight a giant pancake that something was still lost in the translation.

Specifically, I lost three minutes of my life in that translation.

Problem 2: Endless One-Upping
Ever had a friend that had to top every story you told? That’s tough. Ever had a friend who’s done it for twenty or thirty years? Did he have spiked gold hair and yell a lot?

This is a key flaw even among some of the good fighting series. The bad guy is too tough. The good guy trains to get stronger and beats him. A newer, badder guy appears. The good guy trains again. Not long after, we learn an even badderer guy was pulling the strings.

In the end, what should have been a 12-episode show is stretching into the 300’s and we’re no closer to an outcome. We’re running out of places to put all the corpses of enemies. Our hero is so powerful that he can destroy entire planets with just an angry glance. And yet, the next enemy will shrug off his attack like it was warm breeze. Well…better start training.

Problem 3: Over-the-Top Everything
Any number of famous war strategists over the years stressed the element of surprise. Many tactics involve catching your opponent off guard. As far as I know, none of these men were suggesting you yell the name of your attack loudly while the camera is six inches from your face.

I don’t care if you’re using a “Soul Cutter,” “Iron Reaver Soul Stealer” or even a “Spirit Bomb.” This is a really irritating part of some anime. Maybe the reason your fights last twenty episodes is because your enemies keep seeing your attack coming and dodge it.

Problem 4: Filler Arcs
For those who don’t know, a lot of anime is based on manga – essentially “comics.” This is fine. When it becomes a problem, though, is when a series is going too fast and the manga hasn’t gone far enough to provide it with new material. Think of it as a movie running out of script after an hour, so the characters just stand on camera while new lines are written.

Filler episodes are okay, in small doses. Occasionally, some of the filler material is as good as the rest of the show. Oftentimes, though, it’s pointless and stupid. In the worst cases – ahem, “Naruto,” ahem – the filler lasted several hundred episodes.

At a certain point, you actually forget there’s a main plot amid such episodes as “The Pointless Battle that Doesn’t Affect the Series” and “Hey! Let’s Look Over in These Bushes!”

Problem 5: Non-Epic Battles
I can understand two reincarnated gods doing battle for the souls of everyone on the planet. This is a battle of epic proportions. But conflict isn’t always this good. In fact, it’s much more commonly something like, “The world is doomed…unless we play a children’s card game for some reason!”

“Yu-Gi-Oh” involves saving the world by doing exactly that. (If it’s different, tell me how.) It’s not a good sign of things to come. Inevitably, an anime will come along where champions do battle on the ancient arena known as “Connect Four.”

“I summon my Red Checker in attack mode! Wait! I can’t. You got me here, diagonally! Pretty sneaky, sis…”

The Round-up
Knowing the good and the bad in anime can go a long way in making sure you have a good experience with it. A lot of times, you can avoid some pretty awful stuff just by going with your gut. Specifically, if the show tries to remove the contents of your gut forcefully, it’s probably not for you.

Don’t give up, though. Great anime really is out there. Most of it is looking in the right place. But just as important is knowing where not to look – ever.

Does anything else aggravate you about anime?

Note: This is meant to provide the viewpoint of five first-time anime viewers who walked away thinking all anime was terrible based on one show - it is in no way indicative of the genre as a whole, or based on my own leanings.

Anime: Why It's Not as Bad as You Think

When it comes to anime, most people have an opinion. While it has its followers, a good deal of the populace is unanimous in the decision that it’s terrible. By association, the majority of the populace has labeled those who like it as “weird,” “creepy” and, occasionally, will forgo name-calling of any kind in favor of giving them vigorous wedgies. I’ve personally been on both sides of the stretched elastic.

Of course, everyone is entitled to their own opinion. The problem is that many people haven’t given anime its fair chance. While there is some anime that is poorly-written, poorly-translated or just an affront to all that is good, this shouldn’t turn everyone off from the seven or eight quality shows in a sea of otherwise unwatchable crap.

Hey, I said it wasn’t all bad – I never said most of it wasn’t.

Misconception 1: All Anime Characters Have Swords, Cat Ears or Weird Hair
Many of the anime shows with oddly-dressed characters are…well, odd. Those that portray normal people tend to be a little less weird. And to be fair, Inuyasha has dog ears, so get your facts straight.

I’ll admit that swords are very common. But you also have to consider that it usually makes sense within the setting – a lot of anime happens in feudal times. The only reason you don’t see more swords in most shows is that they happen in modern terms. Believe me. If there was an anime version of “Law and Order: SVU,” I’d be the first to cry foul at a sword-wielding Stabler.

Though, how sweet would that version of the show be?

Misconception 2: All Anime is Poorly-Translated
Not so. In reality, only most anime is poorly-translated. And either way, you have to understand that translation is a universal problem. Whether or not it’s animated, dubbing is never going to fit lip movements exactly. (Think of non-Matthew Broderick “Godzilla” movies.) The same is true, for example, of Mexican soap operas – they just happen to be more hilarious.

Misconception 3: All Anime is Essentially Pornography
This is one of the worst misconceptions, as it’s the least true. The fact is that Japan has censoring standards similar to our own – they couldn’t just put naked people on television. Well, technically, someone could, but only once. The next day, they’d be looking for a new job…or a good lawyer.

Here’s a tip: steer clear on any mention of the words “yaoi” or “hentai.” While I won’t go into great detail about what these are, I can safely say that you won’t watch more than ten seconds without attempting to gouge your eyes out. If you do know what these terms mean, I can only hope the day you found out doesn’t revolve around a friend’s “hilarious” prank.

A friend of mine once tricked me into watching yaoi hentai. I’m still traumatized. But out of the two of us, I’m also the most alive, because I killed him.

Misconception 4: All Anime is “Dragon Ball Z” or “Yu-Gi-Oh”
I’d be lying if I said a lot of anime didn’t go this route. I can name at least a dozen series that fall into a very particular subgenre within anime. This genre is typically referred to as “people screaming during extreme close-ups of fights that destroy planets.”

It’s not a catchy name – it’s just very accurate.

There are a number of good shows that involve fighting. There are even a few that are good where long fights take five or more episodes to resolve. But a good rule of thumb is that if it takes a character more than one episode to finish an attack, you should run. Rest assured, if you get interested in a few years, the same fight will probably be going on.

Misconception 5: You Can Judge all Anime by Watching One
Be fair. If the first and only movie you saw was some low-budget “SyFy” original or (shudder) “Alexander,” you’d probably think all American movies were terrible, too. Your best bet is to find someone who knows anime to ease you into it with something non-threatening. Just hope they aren’t very mean or very “clever,” like the friend I mentioned earlier.

Believe it or not, anime-watchers walk among you – they’re probably even your friends. Just make sure you go to the right person. My advice? Steer clear of people who dress like anime characters or consider one of the characters their “girlfriend.”

The other problem is that many people are judging even good shows by a random episode. If you walk into “Bleach” Episode #92 some random Saturday night on “Adult Swim,” the Vegas odds say you’ll probably be confused. The same could be said of any show. In fact, if you missed the right ten seconds of “The X-Files,” I’m sure you’d never know what was going on again.

The Round-up
Just remember that anime doesn’t have to be your enemy. And while the majority is, unfortunately, about as refreshing as a splash of gravel to the face, it’s definitely not all bad. With the right experiences, such as “Cowboy Bebop,” you could really learn to love it.

Or, in the case of anime-loving boyfriends, you’re at least going to have to tolerate it.

Note: This is meant to be taken as an avid anime watcher's take on the genre - your specific mileage may vary based on the individual show you saw.