@CorpseKings Hmmmmm.... off the top of my head:
Bob British
Guy Silvertongue
Edward Longhandle
Sorbin the Sweetener
The Candy-Handed One
Preston Getsun
For some of these I'm imagining a person who disarms you with his charm while secretly robbing you blind.
@doomguy255 What threw me is I thought I could see a boxing glove or punching fist, and I recalled Mischief Makers having something like that on its cover, hence my guess.
@gcmn3 That isn't Akane, that is someone named Mariko.
I need to read the entire manga sometime because I have never heard of a Ranma character named Mariko.
Short answer: YES, he's totally right.
That's literally how business works. If you stop satisfying your customers, you fail, and then someone who is more capable takes your place.
The idea that these legacy companies need to keep on going forever is just insane. That's the gaming version of old monarchies where a King was guaranteed to rule entirely because he was related to the last King, regardless of whether he was actually good at it or not. I would hope that in 2026 we are beyond such mentality, but clearly we are not.
Something I'm curious about.
As an American, I feel like during the 1980s, America had better cartoons than Japan did. Though I'm aware there's a lot of Americans who would disagree with me.
I wonder about Japanese people though?
If there's any Japanese posters reading this who saw American cartoons during the 1980s.... whose output did you like better, Japan's or America's?
I am having a lot of fun talking about old animation!
Here is another American classic... unfortunately, this one is obscure even in America. It's an adaptation of Peter Pan. This one does some unique things.
Most people who see this version say their favorite thing is how it interprets Captain Hook. Here, he is a complex person. He is a pirate, but he has a sort of honor system. He wants to kill Peter Pan but sometimes he will put that aside for something he considers more important.
Unfortunately, this show is very obscure, even in America. A lot of companies have their own version of Peter Pan, so they have no interest in reviving a competitor's version.
Also... I love the theme music. It is full of adventure, but a part of it sounds a little bit sad to me, like it's mourning for a lost age.
https://t.co/MPh1hX3mbL
Today I learned that Doctor Who has ended... again. Of course, Doctor Who had previously "ended" in 1989, then gotten a movie in 1996, then finally got a regular TV series in 2005.
Doctor Who is one of the rare cases where I discovered both the original version and the reboot at basically the same time. I still wound up preferring the original, because despite being a kid's show the writing felt more "adult." 2005-Doctor Who had entertaining stories but it felt more "juvenile" in a lot of ways. In particular, it keeps telling us the Doctor is smart, but it was one of those shows whose idea of "smart" is "basically magical."
It was still a blast, up until the end of the Tennant Era. I found the writing got worse around the Matt Smith era, and that was when I stopped watching. From what I've heard, the show just continued to get worse.
Anyone reading: What was your favorite era of Doctor Who?
I have a bluray set of Dunbine!
I always found the premise interesting, putting sci-fi elements like mecha in what looks like a fantasy environment, and playing it all very seriously.
Dunbine was an example of a 1980s anime that did not come to America until 2006, and at first it was hard to find. Thankfully the bluray release is common.
@C_WERdNa First there was Super Dimension Fortress Macross. Then Super Dimension Century Orguss. Then, finally, Super Dimension Cavalry Southern Cross. Macross and Orguss were fairly popular. Southern Cross was not.
This show is called Robotech, and the shows it's made from are Super Dimension Fortress Macross, Super Dimension Cavalry Southern Cross, and Genesis Climber Mospeada.
The amusing thing is, Macross and Mospeada aren't that different from the original Japanese versions. I've been told Southern Cross was very different though.
The major difference from the original shows is that now, all three shows are one continuous story--Macross first, then Southern Cross (now taking place on Earth), then Mospeada. The Zentradi are rewritten as being the servants of the aliens from Southern Cross (here called the Robotech Masters), who are at war with the Inbit (the aliens from Mospeada).
Another major rewrite is "Protoculture." In Macross, Protoculture referred to an ancient civilization, a literal prototype culture. In Robotech, Protoculture is instead a fuel source with weird and semi-mystical properties, and all three story arcs are about Protoculture in some way.
If you're familiar with the original three shows, Robotech is an interesting variation. In America, there are people who hate Robotech because they see it as Americans tampering with Japanese art, but there are also people who feel like it actually manages to stand on its own. You could call it an alternate timeline.
And like I said, there are American-exclusive novels, comics, and sequel movies. It is a very interesting thing.
Apparently, a Japanese dub of Robotech did air back in the day. The legend is that Southern Cross wasn't actually popular when it first aired, but seeing the Robotech version got people to look back more fondly on the original. This dub might be lost media though.
That's not the only way RPGs have gotten easier.
I remember when I first played Gateway to the Savage Frontier, I had a lot of trouble with it because I was used to the Final Fantasy mold, where the only magic worth using was direct damage spells (so I loaded up on Magic Missile and ignored Sleep... and anyone who knows Dungeons & Dragons is cringing right now).
I later realized this was a common decline across not just JRPGs but western ones as well. It used to be you had to be smart and make strategic decisions. "Do I use sleep and hope to get breathing room, or do I throw a fireball and hope it kills everyone?"
But a lot of RPGs since the Playstation era have been just "if its an ice monster, throw lightning magic. If its a fire monster, throw ice magic." Many of them don't even *have* damage buff or status effect spells anymore!
RPGs used to be games for thinking types, where you had to consider the situation, and the ability to just magically nuke everyone was a privilege you had to earn and even when granted, came with caveats (like only being usable outdoors in Migth and Magic).
Nowadays RPGs feel like they're just movies where you have to manually play out the fight scenes, or worse, they're just action games with level-up mechanics.