When Japan’s animation industry didn’t have its very own Studio Ghibli, animators took cue from Western classics. They tried to get ideas from pre-existing tales and create their own twists in it in order for the stories to appeal to the Japanese audience. One such classic that Japanese animators tried to port to Japan is Jack to Mame no Ki (Jack and the Beanstalk), which was first published in 1734.

Japan’s version of Jack and the Beanstalk is interesting take on the Benjamin Tabart story. After Jack was conned into swapping his family’s only cow for a handful of beans, he plants them and realizes the next day that they yielded a tall, magical vine that rises through the sky. Climbing the beanstalk, Jack discovers an enchanted world ruled by the kind and beautiful Princess Margaret. Margaret has an unusual love interest in the form of Prince Tulip – an unattractive and brash fellow. As the story unfolds it is apparent that the Princess is in fact under a spell cast by an evil witch called Madam Noir. This spell has left the Princess in awe of the vulgar Prince Tulip who she is set to marry. The Prince, as the story reveals, is the witch’s very own son. Upon uncovering the plot, Jack leaps to the defense of the Princess. (more…)

You only have to look at the box office to see that there’s no shortage of Western adaptations of (much better) anime properties. Ghost in the Shell is just the latest anime classic to get brought to Western shores. While that movie was a disappointing (but visually appealing) mess that doesn’t hold a candle to the original, it still got us thinking about the times when Japan flipped the script and tried their own hands at popular Western franchises. Here are five times it happened—and the results were actually pretty good.

The Animatrix

The sole non-comic adaptation on this list, The Animatrix brought some of the biggest names in animation together at the absolute peak of the Matrix’s popularity for an anthology film that still remains impressive today. The film featured direction by Shinichiro Watanabe (Cowboy Bebop), Mahiro Maeda (Gankutsuou: The Counte of Monte Cristo), Peter Chung (Aeon Flux), Takashi Koike (Redline), and Yoshiaki Kawajiri (Ninja Scroll). With such an all-star team behind it, it’s no surprise that the film was a success and helped to lay the foundation for many of these director’s future works, notably Koike and Kawajiri. The two Second Renaissance films in particular do a great job of expanding the Matrix mythos and further explain the circumstances that led to the rise of the robots and creation of the Matrix. (more…)

Have you ever been in this situation?

Random Person : Do you watch anime?
You : Of course!! I can’t live without that stuff
Random Person : So whats your favorite anime?
You : Thats a hard one, Death Note probably, although Shingeki and Mushishi are pretty good too.. How about you?
Random Person : Avatar
You : -.-” Avatar isn’t anime..
Random Person : Well then what is it?
You : 

So what is Avatar? And why is there so much confusion surrounding it? (more…)

All too often, people with intense or expensive hobbies are met with derision by people who insist that these passions are a waste of time. Wouldn’t that time be better spent working at a real job?

In the case of anime fandom, what most outsiders – and, indeed, many fans – don’t realize is that there are plenty of ways to create a profitable career from a love of anime. It just takes some creativity, commitment and a bit of hard work. Here are some of the many careers you can develop as an anime fan:

Animator or Voice Actor?

Of course, the most obvious way to leverage a love of anime into a career is to work in the industry. Anime is one of the biggest exports of Japan, and there’s no sign of its popularity waning. Getting into the industry as a foreigner is a challenge, though, and it’s very competitive. A formal degree in animation can put you ahead of the game and put you on a good trajectory for internship positions, but if that’s out of reach it can be easier to find a job in voice acting, writing subtitles, and other aspects of the anime import business. (more…)

Due to the Anime Expo 2013, the anime world has been abuzz with excitement. One question that’s been on everyone’s lips is “Will Pacific Rim be a hit?” Most arguments in the negative, claim that Hollywood doesn’t know how to do a good ‘Mecha’ show. While it’s true that the giant fighting robot concept was initially Japanese, Hollywood has been known to put its own spin on things and improve upon them. Yea we have some flops every now and again but hey, no one’s perfect. Personally, I think that there is ALOT of potential in a high budget mecha movie and am anxiously looking forward to its release.

With that said, I was given the opportunity to award a prize (see image above) to one lucky winner. To participate, all you have to do is leave a comment saying what you think about the upcoming Pacific Rim movie. On Friday afternoon at 12 (12.07.2013), one of you will be selected with random.org’s ‘True Random Number Generator’ and contacted via the email used to post your comment.

(Note. if no reply is received by midnight then another winner will be chosen)

Good luck!!

So im finally up to date on Hunter x Hunter (2011), and while the series does not look like its anywhere close to an ending, I feel I’ve seen enough to give a fair review. As a remake of the 1999 original series, I knew it was going to be good and I was not disappointed. For the first 70ish episodes it followed the same arcs as the previous version (Hunter Examination arc and Greed Island Arc) and besides a few minor changes in character wordings and character expressions I’d say they were pretty much identical.

What completely caught me off-guard was that like its predecessor, I expected the show to come to a close at the end of the second arc. Instead of  doing so we see a third arc opening up! For those who have seen the original series if you are not the type to re-watch anime you are free to skip to episode 75 and simply think of it as a continuation…

There have been alot of mixed feelings around the internet saying that one version is superior to another and to be completely honest I do prefer the original version. Why? Simply because (more…)

So as usual I’ve been watching naruto shippuden and recently I’ve noticed that I’m no longer simply bearing with each episode.  In fact I’ve found that I have actually been looking forward to each one.

I remember some time back complaining about the filler that started in the middle of the great ninja war arc, while the interruption was indeed annoying the filler was actually pretty good. It could’ve made more money as a movie though, but hey,  I’m not complaining.

As every fan knows, we are back in the ninja war arc and Naruto, along with killer bee are heading towards the front lines. To be more specific, last week was the encounter between Naruto + Killer Bee vs Itachi + Nagato. While it was a pretty cool episode I kinda dislike how soft Itachi is being portrayed at this point. He was kinda better when we all thought he was a cold, unfeeling, yet badass bastard. Sigh, but seeing as his intentions were always good (as we recently found out), I guess seeing this side of him was inevitable. (more…)

Happy Holidays!!

Have you ever found yourself  stuck between and rock and a hard place wondering…. ‘should I drop this show’? Well as you can see from my anime list, while I always try to stick with it to the end sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do. There are many reasons why viewers decide to stop watching particular shows but I’ve compiled them all into 5 main areas.

1. Gotten too repetitive
2. Plot is dragging on and gets boring
3. It was never interesting to begin with
4. Not your cup of tea.
5. You woke up one morning to have found that you had grown old, your back hurts, you’ve spent all your cash on bingo, you’ve  grown a massive beard as well as a beer belly and suddenly the show seems too ‘kiddy’ for your mature taste.

While #5 is a bit of a stretch lets dive into the others and see the best course of action in any of those aforementioned situations.

Número uno, Gotten too repetitive. This is by far the most common factor in the downfall of what began as good shows, it’s extremely common in most multi-season series and to be honest it’s sort of comparable to being friendzoned… ‘The Pit of No Return’. The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya, InuYasha, Pokemon and Rosario + Vampire are some of the most popular culprits of this. But should you drop it? Definitely not. Its true that at the peak of its ‘repetitiveness’ you may find yourself bashing your head against your monitor but more often that not the producers catch themselves and rectify the problem. A rule of thumb is that ‘if the show is long, it can’t be that bad’. Why? Because bad shows don’t make money, therefore they get cancelled pretty quickly, so stick with it, don’t damage your forehead too badly and have some patience… it’ll get better. (unless its pokemon… but is that even anime?) (more…)

Hiya all! Just so you know right away this isn’t a review, tis a rant on internal affairs and whatnot so if you’re really not interested in that, I would suggest reading instead Droid’s Desert Punk Review. Okay, so I’ve been brainstorming alot recently about what to do now that my life has been swamped with… stuff, which unfortunately leaves me only time to eat and KO on my bed. And I have come up with a brilliant solution (inspired by this weeks episode of Bakuman [season 3 ep 5]). To put it simply, ‘blog more efficiently’.

Okay that was a bit vague so ill explain in more detail. Normally when writing and maintaining stuff I would set aside an hour or two and sit, boot up my pc, compose myself, think of all the awesome stuff I saw or thought about this week. Choose one which I think will be interesting, try to remember how my thought pattern was at the time and as soon as the wave hits me, start writing as it comes to mind. The downside to this is that I need at least an hour of uninterrupted time to get something that doesn’t look completely horrible and lately that hour has been hard to come by.

The solution I came up with was this, I recently got myself a new phone (Samsung Galaxy Note II) and thought heyy!!! With all the time I spend during the day either on a bus, or waiting for one thing or the other, I could totally blog! So as of today I shall be changing the internal workings’ to accommodate that. The process will be as follows:

1. In the goal of being more mobile friendly those visiting from phones will see a nice clean mobile friendly layout :). (of course those using pc’s will see the usual site)
2. Revamped, mobile friendly admin [This is mostly for me as only my awesome authors and I have backend access.]
3. Will also do that much needed maintenance on InfinityAnime I’ve been putting off for ages. Will rewrite the entire site in python if I have to (damn spammers made me have to close down registration and whatnot).

While I am doing all this I will definitely not leave you all empty handed so every Monday Wednesday and Friday I shall be posting one of the many posts from The Droid (awesome writer) I have stashed in a folder somewhere. On Sundays I shall be writing about the progress done. And possibly at random intervals during the week if I’m not swamped with this blog’s spr.. autumn cleaning I shall write a post or two.

So yea, that’s the plan. If you read all that then… *references pic below*

The path to becoming a Manga-ka is one of sweat, tears, malnutrition, and lack of sleep

As we approach the Autumn 2012 anime season I found myself with the dreaded question once again. ‘What am i watching this season?’. As you can see from next season’s Animuchart we have quite a few new shows to look forward to as well as a few continuations. Upon seeing that Bakuman season 3 was being released I finally decided to get around to watching the previous two seasons and over the course of the last week I have been constantly doing so. Well, enough of my boring introduction here we go!

Upon doing initial research the first thing I noticed about Bakuman was that it’s created by the awesome team of Tsugumi Ohba and Takeshi Obata. For those who aren’t familiar with the names, they are the ones who created Death Note. Yes, the guys who were behind my all time favorite anime created another masterpiece and I am only now watching it. Sad huh? Also, while one may say that because of that fact I am biased towards the show i’d like to point out that since I came to expect so much from them, I was even tougher on it than I would be with the average anime.

The story revolves around two boys in their teens and their dream to be mangaka (manga artists). Seasons one and two highlights a chronological timeline of their journey beginning at the final year of Junior High and ends at the first year of university. There is a quote ‘The path to becoming a Manga-ka is one of sweat, tears, malnutrition, and lack of sleep’ and throughout Bakuman we are shown exactly that. From day one where they decide to follow their dreams, to the creation of their first ‘hit’ manga. Everything done in their life is portrayed in those two seasons. (more…)