Anime Pulse

Inspired by a post show conversation with TAG where he brought up Avatar. What are your favourite non-asian animations? You can use films or series.

I have had a love of Animation since the earliest recollections of my life. It's why I am an Anime fan, and why I am here on AP. I can name dozens and dozens of great animated works outside of Asia. But I need to keep it short (plus, this is the second time I had to write this post, due to a malfunction with my computer.)

Walt Disney has long been one of my idols, but I won't focus on his works, since as a pioneer he's "a given" (and also due to the travesty the company is doing to his name since his passing. Too painful to witness.)

Rather, I am reminded of a recent conversation I had with my oldest son, regarding his love of Star Wars, which in his case implies our family's mutual love of Star Wars: The Clone Wars. Not so much the CGI production that began with the 2008 film, which were based on it, but the 2-D cel-animated works produced as a series of shorts from 2003 to 2005 which were used as a filler between Episodes 2 and 3. These were directed by Genndy Tartakovsky and show a depth of love for the material and story greater than any work that came after it. For my kids, SW:TCW is Star Wars, and I cannot disagree.


This leads me into one of my other personal favorite animated series, also directed by Genndy Tatakovsky, Samurai Jack.This was the series that put Tartakovsky on the map for me, at a time when too many western studios were abusing the overly minimalist artwork seemingly forced upon them by their Flash/SVG (scalable vector graphic) tool-sets of the day. But his team took this style and turned it into a moving painted haiku of sorts, with great story-telling to boot. It pays great homage to action film cinematography, in particular the old Spaghetti Westerns and Samurai Chanbara of the past. It is no wonder this series got him the attention from LucasFilm to do The Clone Wars.


Finally, for a third pick, none in any certain order, I will mention the original run of Bat-man: The Animated Series, the ones that first aired in 1992. I love the Film Noir art style and the classically animated cinematography while mixed with more modern scenarios, as if its an alternate timeline form our own. The various DC series that came after were passable, but none matched the greatness of the original seasons of Bat-man:TAS.

(yeah, I know it is not spelled with a hyphen, but our forum is playing word-substitution hijinks again.)