Greetings Dramatards

I've been binging a lot of Anime which had specifically aired in South Africa on the Anime specific infamous channel Animax which had aired on DSTV in many Southern African channels from the mid 2000s to the early 2010s, before it was shitcanned by the producers during the era in which greedy executives thought about replacing much of their Broadcasting roster, with Reality TV nonsense.

During the Reality TV nonsense era, we got bullshit on the famous Documentary Channels (Trademark/Copyright ) which was so nicknamed by Safricans for being clustered together sequentially on the DSTV channels (Usually from channels 65, 66, 67, 68 & 69).

They were Discovery Channel, National Geographic Channel, Animal Planet, the History Channel, and so on. They were relatively popular for at the time you got tune into one of these 4/5 channels at any point in time, morning to midnight, and there would be something worthy of your time airing The History Channel got nicknamed the Hitler Channel because of the channel's apparent obsession with WW2, but it was still vary popular with africans like @Murdervann, though others got very tired from the near exclusive focus on WW2 era, and usually from viewpoints from the Allied side (it was made in Burgerland/Bongland usually).

Little did we know how much we would yearn back to to the Hitler Channel days - cuz then the Reality TV menace era attacked! No longer was documentaries the norm when you tuned into the Documentary squad of channels, instead it was the most low brow, common as grass, lowest common denominator Reality TV slop.

The worst offender would be the infamous History Channel, which would rebrand large sections of it's runtime as "HISTORY MADE EVERYDAY" They would air crap like Ice Road Truckers and fricking Ancient Aliens - holy frick what a fall.

(remember this meme guy)

And the WORST of all was that apparently fricking normies liked this shit - cuz the TV brands claimed that they were making gangbusters, and that ratings was higher than ever - which was contrary to literally every Boer boomer whom i talked to regarding the fall of the documentary channels, and ESPECIALLY THE disgrace of the Hitler Channel, which even the detractors now missed, and in hindsight declaimed was much better than this reality TV brokenshit dogshit

It was in this point in my life when i realized that large sectors of the populations of society - just have really really really REALLY dogshit taste

The reality TV nonsense also began to spread to other channels, with soooooooooo many fricking macho Auction nonsense, like these posers who pretended to the camera that they were cool, while buying shit from Shipping containers. But the true dark age came, when inevitably also Animax, the anime channel would be desecrated.

It came in waves - 1st only parts of airtime was now dedicated to weird Yank nonsense shows, like Kenny-vs-Spenny (the worst travesty ever to be broadcasted upon mine eyes ), that Octagon survival mindrape show, and some were good like the Ninja Warrior where magnificent athletes performed spectacular feats of fitness, but it wasn't fricking anime!

Rest in Peace Animax

Now I've been intending on watching every single Anime show ever aired upon Animax in it's half decade of running, so that I might make a megapost Longpost about Animax and the drama following it being soft-cockblocked by executive harpies, and have a short blurb at the end of the Longpost, where I placed may review/recommendation on every show aired.

Of course this project started January, and it's now October..... please forgive me Dramatards, but anime takes a lot of endurance to finish.

Now you guys know how many dramatards absolutely despise anime to a self-destructive irrational extent?! How on every single Weekly-Anime-Watch post on rdrama.net is filled with people expressing their violent fantasies to keelhaul all anime fans?? Well I'm here to tell you guys.................that they are absolutely right, anime as a medium is fricking brokenshit

I've talked about it before, but I despise the cultural chauvinism of Japs, just as much as I despise the wokeism of westoid liberals, I think it to be two sides of the same coin - the same emotion but inverted. Wokes place their culture beneath others, while cultural chauvinists place theirs above everything.

There's a great deal of reasons to hate Anime and anime fandoms, like the proliferation of p-do-bait by anime and fans, the uncritical acceptance of bad writing by fools.

For me the root cause of much of what I despise in anime can be summed up in Japanese cultural Chavinism. There is much to admire in Japanese society, their discipline in keeping public spaces clean, the adoration of international audiences when they clean stadiums after Olympics, their politeness and industriousness.

But I'm not a filthy weeb, and I've also seen much of how their self-blinding of their culture can also hobble them. Much of their modern societal problems like the low birthrate and stagnating economy, can be likened to a lumbering ship, with a rudder too small to change course compared to speedboats. It's like they are shackled and chained by their culture and adherence to tradition.

This I believe can be reflected in their writing of Anime - especially the negative parts. The repulsive incestuousness of tropes and cliches. It's like mobile games constantly in a war on the PlayStore on Android, where their gacha games try to plagiarize each other. The constant fricking repeated character archtypes. Like holy frick, the actual fact that there are recognizable archtypes which can be summed up into one word like Tsundere's are an indication of the sheer SHALLOWNESS and repetativeness of Japanese character writing, NOT a fricking strength as weebs lead themselves to believe.

https://the-dere-types.fandom.com/wiki/Tsundere

The insular nature of the Japanese Manga and Anime industry can be felt just as strongly as that of modern Hollyweird. In the same fricking way in which the cultural Zeigheist of fricking modern contemporary California and San Francisco, bleeds into modern High Profile shows like Rangs of Power, Witcher, Willow, and Wheel of Time, by incorporating Modern Contemporary politics and values, even into the fictional societies divorced from the modern world by hundreds of years, and continents, the reflection is so self serving and navel-gazing, that the Woke yanks are incapable of envisioning societies other than their own - which is why the woke slop is so meanderingly undistinctive.

So too is the navel-gazing in the Jap Anime industry's isolation from other cultures felt. I often laugh at other chuds telling me that at least the modern Gayming landscape and Anime industry will be SAVED by the more conservatively-minded japanese society and Anime-industry! And I'm like: lol, lmoa.

The Japs insular nature is every bit as abrasive for me as that of Hollyweird. They hobble themselves, with their incapacity to even know about cultures and histories and stories other than their own. And it's not just shit like regurgitated genres, like the perpetual trendchasing Isekai slop deluge currently in modern anime, which even Weebs will decry as being painfully derivative.

Take for example their perpetual obsession with their Samurai and Sengoku periods. It's all so There is seldom ever swords or weapons or cowtools or costumes from a non-Japanese inspired historic nation. Whenever Japanese shows take fricking place in the past or some magical other realm, it is often just Japan but in the past. Never a variation of Chinese of Indian, or philipino or Vietnamese or Korea historically-inspired settings or weapons or costumes or cultures. Always the same fricking katana sword, never even the myriad of different weaponry like spears and firearms which real-historic samurai used - it's like a human centipede of regurgitated cliches and copycats.

Oh and don't forget the massive infantile nature of Japs in the anime industry. Many Anime, even the very violent ones, have this peculiar obsession for taking place in Schools! Doesn't matter if they are violent horrors, clearly not intended to be watched by todlers, there will be a fricking high school in their somewhere It's so pervasive - do the Japanese just not have any other universal experience they can shorthand for their fellow Japs?? Is Highschool just the last moment of happiness Jap animators experienced before they became wageslaves for the rest of their miserable existence????

I've often found that the best Anime had to offer was when the Japanese went out of their comfort zones, when they explicitly tried to incorporate cultures or histories not of their own, when they suspended their cultural Chauvinism for just a moment, and reflected onto other cultures - because I believe the products they created was superior to both mother cultures.

Shows like Black Lagoon, taking inspiration from a myriad of Pacific and international influences, Vinland Saga Season 1, where the author went to great degrees to research a history outside of his own. Even famous anime like Death Note which even non-Anime fans are aware of, and has been watched by people whom have never watched any other anime in their lives, wear their non-jap influence on its sleave.

It reminds me a lot of Seven Samurai - A movie which is very dear to me.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seven_Samurai

Basically a bunch of brokenshit poor rice farmers are being extorted by bandits, during a very unstable era, where there is no national law-and-order from the shogunate, and these poorcel poors are basically boned. Because their harvest semi-failed, and they literally cannot meat their annual extortion tribute, without literally suicidaly starving themselves in the coming winter.

In a last ditch effort, caught between the devil and the deep blue sea, some farmers volunteer to go to the nearby big cities and requisition the services of samurai to defend them against the bandits. But the issue is as we've mentioned, they are brokenshit poor, and literally cannot pay with anything more than rice - but our protagonist rice farmers are still determined to go and find at least a couple of benevolent ronins......

https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20181029-the-100-greatest-foreign-language-films

The movie Seven Samurai was released in 1954 and MANY people at the time, and since, have stated that the film had obvious Western influence, as in it being influenced by yank Western Cowboy movies

https://www.bfi.org.uk/features/seven-samurai-akira-kurosawa-classic-status

The film was not expected to be a success, and was a truly risky venture.

====Donald Richie, in his book The Films of Akira Kurosawa (published in 1965), reported the director's exasperated response to such attacks: "You try to give a film a little pictorial scope and the journ*lists jump on you for spending too much money. That is what I really hate about them – they are only an extended form of advertising." Kurosawa also pointed out that the expenditure on Seven Samurai was but a fraction of the means available to directors in the west, claiming that Japanese films were made too cheaply.====

REMEMBER YOU NEVER HATE FRICKING JOURNOS ENOUGH

====Most reviews drew attention to the influence of the western on Kurosawa, particularly the films of John Ford, with Monthly Film Bulletin surmising, "If all this attests to the way Kurosawa has assimilated the influence of Western directors for his own purposes, it also explains, perhaps, the detached attitude of Seven Samurai. ====

==== claiming this "extraordinary film, which matches his first [Rashomon] for cinema brilliance… bears cultural comparison with our own popular western High Noon. That is to say, it is a solid, naturalistic, he-man outdoor action film, wherein the qualities of human strength and weakness are discovered in a crisis taut with peril. And although the occurrence of this crisis is set in the sixteenth century in a village in Japan, it could be transposed without surrendering a basic element to the nineteenth century and a town on our own frontier."====

Many yank cowboy movies had the elements of Frontiersmenship and the ruthlessness that the uncivilized world had upon mankind. Often yank cowboy stories are about lone benevolent heroic men having to step up against dangers like intruder bandits whom were terrorizing the helpless in frontier-towns, when law-enforcement or higher security was too far located from civilized coastal cities. Many themes between these distinctly American media, and Seven Samurai was shared in the storytelling.

Considering the incredible cultural influence Yanks had upon Japan pre- and ESPECIALLY post-WW2, it was only natural that artistic directors like Akira Kurosawa, would loan story elements and thematic building blocks from the best of a foreign culture. I mean holy shit, modern anime as we know it literally developed as an imitation to Disney cartoons!

The very earliest anime from 1950s-1960s looked distinctly western when compared to the later forms in which the anime medium would develop in the 1970s-1990s!

https://wallflyer.wordpress.com/2017/01/21/goku-astro-boy-and-mickey-mouse-character-design/

Speaking of cross-cultural pollination: 6 years later, ANOTHER of my most favorite movies of all time (and perhaps one of the best in history) would be released. The Magnificent Seven! (1960)!!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Magnificent_Seven

It became both a critical and commercial success and has been appraised as one of the greatest films of the Western genre. Where this time, the movie copied the broad basic plot of the Seven Samurai, but westernized it - in the same way in which 4Kids westernized Riceballz into Jelly Donuts

But no really, the movie changes many cultural things, to the extent that character inspirations and personalities change - but the core remains the same: 7 men willing to show up when the call to aid comes from a Mexican village of Maize farmers.

I personally believe that in the same way restrictions had forced innovation in many Media projects like movies which were constantly having production issues like Jaws, or Games barely limping past releasing like the Bloodlines game in 2004 - so too does having a separate cultural influence have imposed a type of restriction which jumpstarts a type of writing innovation.

So had movies like Seven Samurai become the most influential film ever to hail from Japland.

BASILISK (2005) REVIEW:

I never had the opportunity to actually watch all of the shows which had Aired on Animax, between 2005 - 2012, because many of the shows literally only showed between midnight and 6 in the morning, these were the really HARDCORE and EDGY shows like Deathnote, and had a 16-Age-Rating!!

Deathnote back in 2006-2008 only ever aired after 10PM on Saturdays on Animax, so I always hoped the Saturday movie would finish soon enough, so that my parents would frick off and go to bed early enough, so that I would sneak back into the TV room and watch the cartoon in the dark, and with the sound low, cuz I knew my uber conservative parents would NEVER allow us to watch such Satanic shit. I'm still salty at having been forbidden to see Aliens-Versus-Predator......

Other even more HARCORE shows like Basilisk, had the extremely rare DSTV age rating of 18R!!11!! And thus was never allowed to be aired outside of the rare midnight-6AM slot. What random Horror movie crap did you guyz watch without your parent's consent dramatards??

Now more than 15 years later when I have complete independence from my parents and conservative community, and have disposable income, so I can afford my own fiber-internet and pirate whatever my heart desires, and because I haven't watched good movies from HollyWoke, I could finally indulge going back and seeing if any of the anime Slop from Safrican Animax was worth a darn.

========

Well amongst all the garbage like Chrono Crusade (don't watch this shit), and extremely mediocre slop like Burst Angel, I found one show which surprised me, and took me aback in how good it was. And also how it demonstrates how fricking tasteless most weebs are, becuase there is like ZERO fanart or discussion from old forums or new about Basilisk (2005) - while other crap from 2005 have much higher awareness in weeb circles - it's like weebs are incapable of recognizing quality

https://old.reddit.com/r/anime/comments/14rxmpv/the_anime_called_basilisk/

The premise: The year is 1614 AD, and two Ninja clans hate each other's guts, for like 400 hundred subsequent years. Except our two lovebird protagonists whom are our Nip Romeo and Juliette, and these two just can't catch a break, as outside forces conspire to pit the clans into a mutually destructive nightmare conflict.

Imagine it being like Naruto, if it wasn't straggy and lame, and actually focused on the queer strange ninja magic nonsense. It may even be compared to Ninja Scrolls or Vampire Hunter D.

Throughout the 24 Episodes, 10 ninjas on each side will slaughter each other in a Battle Royale, and great deal of action will follow.

The show has a couple of great strengths. The animation is a God-Tier quality. Extremely fluid motion for both action scenes and mundane happenings - non of that BS where Jap animators will like have still frames for 30 seconds, and literally nothing but the mouths will move during dialogue, to save costs.

The Dub (i dont watch subs cuz I'm not a P-dophile) is also S-tier, as good as that of the Dubs of Cowboy Bebop or Deathnote. And this is topped by a very grand soundtrack score. Somber music for the inevitable tragedies and action tunes.

What also makes the show stand out, is how in comparisons, to other shonen slop, Basilisk is very economical with its runtime. There are only like 2 flashbacks in the series, and there are no hype-chats where the opposing parties tell how fricking baddass they are for 3 episodes instead of fighting. People die very quickly and suddenly and with no warning, and it is NEVER obvious which warrior will come out on top. Thus Basilisk keeps you on your toes, as to whom will perish next up until the very final 24th episode.

A MASSIVE refreshing turn of storytelling compared to the overplayed modern anime shit of telegraphing whom is gonna be victorious in Shonen shit. The thing which anime excels at compared to Western Shows - the weird and strange supernatural powers which individuals possess is also displayed at its best here, but no one individual is invulnerable - there is never a bullshit moment where the Main Character or Bossman nr. 3000 is just gonna be boringly invulnerable until the story says they get to die

Just nonstop action and a contest of brutality for 24 Episodes. Did i mention it's only 24 Episodes? Yeah, the show ends when it ends, and doesn't frick with your time.

Also it's very very violent and EDGY. There's 3 attempted r*pes, and two SUCCESSFUL r*pes onscreen so....uh, Trigger warning.

Also, apparently it got a sequel season, DON'T WATCH IT It's very very bad

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/boards/2000121-anime-and-manga-other-titles/76869044

Anyways, that's it