Wednesday, April 13, 2011

I want boobies, lots of them, and I want them NOW!

This rant is a long time in coming. Since about 2009. Back then I kept going to movies not expecting to have wiener shoved in my face all the time. Even in the Hangover live on screen. These guys are in Vegas for a bachelor party and we the audience get no naked females? At least Watchmen had some boobage, for about five seconds. That's why I loved Hot Tub Time Machine so much: breasts on the big screen.

Now in 2010 I picked up season nine of Family Guy and was quite shocked to see uncensored Peter's peter. What was the message being sent here? What social commentary needed to put out? Can anybody tell what episode we saw Lois or some other female cast member topless? When Peter said to the cutout of Kathy Ireland that he is "out" under the table, that was funny, showing it wasn't.

Recently on American Dad the did the similar joke. First they used a word for wiener that I hadn't seen since a 1980's issue of Hustler Humor. Then they actually showed Stan's wiener falling out of his pajamas. Censored of course, but on the DVD it won't be. What was the joke? That Stan stood there until Francine put it back in his pants, just to fall out again?

Ya'll probably wondering what's my beef? This stuff is many years apart. What set me off?


I finished the second collection and thought that while it was a bit schizophrenic and riddled with ADD, it was a big improvement over the first set. It seemed as if the writer was throwing a bunch of ideas at once in the hopes that the Inukami manga would get picked up as an ongoing series and could fully explore them for many years down the road. I also noted the fact that nudity was next to nothing or just barely out of shot.

"Hold it, isn't Inukami is all about female nudity? Why do you have a problem with that? So far you've been whining and moaning and bitching about wiener." Inukami manga is rated 16 and up, it should have been rated 18 and up. Now I fully reorganize that Japanese sensibilities and American sensibilities are very different. I think that nudity of any kind has no place in comic books and cartoons that can be easily purchased by kids or unsuspecting parents perusing the graphic novel sections of Hastings or Barnes and Noble.

I gots no problem with Hustler Humor or Penthouse or Playboy. I know what I'm getting into. After watching that episode of American Dad I was pissed at what slapped me upside the head the next day. Inukami the anime.

(Editor's Note: As of this writing I am about 20 episodes in.)

The writers decided that what was needed to improve this series was as much wiener as possible and as much male erotica as can be shoved in our faces. If I hadn't read the manga first, I would have quit not even half way through episode one.

I accept that the Japanese are much more open than we Americans about about what we call adult material being seen by a younger audience. There was no warning about what happened in episode one. I was expecting lots of nudity of Yoko and even Nadeshiko, but KEITA!? And almost every other guy in that episode!? What audience are they going for here? Obviously not those of us that read the manga.

Granted, the nudity was "cleverly" hidden by an elephant's head. That got really irritating after more than a minute. If they were really clever, they should have used an elephant's butt to cover up the butt shots. It wasn't just once or twice, it has been through out the whole series. Even ruining a boring episode. The one with the fight on the blimp with the shinigami. I found it boring because it was almost just like the manga. The writers must have been thinking "What can we do to spice it up? We can have magic frogs shot from Keita's groin area!"

Like I said they covered up the naughty bits. I have to admit they engaged in a strange bit of self censorship. It was strange in how they implemented it. At no time did we ever see any female nudity. If the writers were clever enough to use an elephant's head to cover up the guys, couldn't they have used a cat's head to cover up the woman's lower fun part? Or watermelons to cover up their boobs? In the panty thief episode, the main villain eyeballed Tomohane and said no, but was looking forward to it down the road. Thank you for NOT stealing the little girl's underwear. Later on in the ranking episode it was decided to change from the manga. They had Imari and Sayoka just stand there in their normal outfits instead of the sailor suits lifting up their skirts showing off their gym shorts.

However for some strange reason it was perfectly alright to have a little boy naked and uncensored.

I just spent this entire time trashing the anime of Inukami. Let me tell you what was done right. When they stuck to the manga and/or explored side stories or throw away bits from the manga the writers of the anime had a 90% success rate. The story of Kayano and Hake was top notch. The date between Keita and Gokyoya gave a purpose to a character that really had none to begin with. The fight between Yoko and Kaoru's Pack was superbly animated and the expressions on Yoko's face made me believe that she was out for blood. Also she kept her clothes on.

Now my final question: I was asking myself this by episode 2, why is Yoko's shirt still on?

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

yous a damn racist

Joe said...

There are two ways I can answer that: The first is to go through the history of Colin Thomas's dating preferences.

Or.

My dating preferences: I don't care if she's white, black, brown, red, yellow, or in the case of those Orion women: green. They're all woman on the inside. (I used to say pink, but a lesbian friend of mine corrected me.)

Here's a third way to respond.

Anonymous said...

I can summarize your entire article very quickly, I have no idea why you kept explaining it over and over again.

1. I do not like cartoon penis
2. I do like cartoon boobs.
3. I am going to create a vain and thin moral argument to support the two previous statements.