"All the animation from an entire country is for little kiddies! Seeing any influence of Japanese art puts me off!" Come on, Carnivac! Give the magical girls and super powered teens of the world another chance! They'll grow on you, bro! (?>?<?)?
Or just go watch Ghost in the Shell or Samurai X or something. You're an artist, so you'll probably appreciate them.
Ok. So very, very wrong.
I was actually a HUGE fan of anime in the early to mid 90's and still consider such films as Akira, Ninja Scroll, Ghost in the Shell and Wings of Honneamise to be big favourites of mine. Back when anime (at least here in the UK) was seen as quite underground and definitely NOT for kids (it had the reputation of being animated porn thanks to over the top demon rape stuff like Urotsukidoji... not one I should not have purchased, looking back, now). I had every issue of the UK magazine Manga Mania which reprinted various stories such as Akira (which took about half of each issue for most of it's publication history cos it was so huge), Dominon: Tank Police, Ghost in the Shell, Appleseed and others plus various trade paperback versions I still own including 3x3 Eyes, Lupin III, Ranma 1/2, Dirty Pair, Bubblegum Crisis, Devilman (I had almost all of the fewture Devilman figures during the latter part of the 2000's). Then when the whole Pokémon thing kicked off it's like the perception of anime went completely the other way and everyone started assuming it was all for kids. Suddenly I was getting ridiculed for supposedly liking all this awful crap I had no interest in such as that and (the worst anime I've ever seen) Dragonball Z. My sole birthday present one year (other than cash) was a frickin' 'talking' Pikachu plushie... ugh... Hated the damn thing. Ended up giving it to a children's hospital charity thing (rather than setting it on fire as had been my original plan).
I've tried various anime series since then though the only ones that have appealed to me have been Cowboy Bebop (largely helped by a great soundtrack by Yoko Kanno who also did the Macross Plus music of which I own the CD's for) and I admire the Miyazaki movies (in that something like Spirited Away or My Neighbour Totoro can be charming and family friendly in an imaginative way and not a merchandise-driven gimmicky badly-animated way like many others) though my favourite work of his is still the classic Lupin III movie The Castle of Cagliostro. However there are certain anime-stylistic choices, mostly in action series (even of companies I respect the work of if not always enjoy such as Madhouse), either irritate me or just seem unintentionally ridiculous when used in supposedly serious stories.
Watch them in Japanese, so the god-awful dubs your country's distributor supplied doesn't make you want to throw up and/or punch someone.
Sorry, I know I may get hated by 'purists' but I just can't stand japanese voice acting... It has always given me headaches or made me grit my teeth like the sound of nails on a chalkboard. Besides, having to watch subtitles makes it harder to appreciate and study the animation in anime that I do like. While there are some truly awful dubs for sure I actually do like a lot of the better done dubbed voice acting. And in some I actually far, faaaar prefer the US replaced soundtrack (particularly the heavy rock and metal choices for Cyber City Oedo 808 and Street Fighter II, the latter of which pretty much made the KMFDM song 'Ultra' my absolute fave tune ever for kicking peoples faces in... in video games I mean... honest )
Then you'll be able to enjoy Arne's new set to the fullest!
Yeah if it was anime-inspired of the ol' 'cyberpunk' type maybe. Not the pocket monster variety. Anyways as I said I do like the actual icons themselves and the pixelling. Just could do with a lot less of the cutesy stuff.
Ok I'm done. Sorry Arne for the somewhat longer than necessary post. Just had to make it clear to that person that I have actually seen a LOT of anime and I definitely have a preference for the old school stuff. Some of which did make it onto the Amiga in some ways.
Keep up the great pixelling.