24 Hour Anime Channel announced

[Mark Holtz]

ADV Films has issued a press release (http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/article.php?id=2784) announcing that they are working on a 24-hour all-anime channel.

Until we hear more, I'm filing this under the same category as "AMC Hollywood Classics". The last correspondence that I got is that they are still working on the channel, and they have no launch date.

[Mark Holtz]

More details announced. (http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/article.php?id=2786)

[Mark Holtz]

The Website is up (http://www.theanimenetwork.com/), although there is very little content on it at this time.

[Nick]

What is anime? Is it a process, a product or a genre'?

How is "anime" pronounced?

How, or why is it different from cartoons?

[raj2001]

Originally posted by Nick
What is anime? Is it a process, a product or a genre'?

How is "anime" pronounced?

How, or why is it different from cartoons?

I think its pronounced "ah-neeme"

And I think they're referring to those japanese animation shows that you see late night on TOON - they're cartoons, but not really for kids.

[Steve Mehs]

Anime, aka Japanimation, are Japanese action/adventure cartoons that are target towards adults, with the exception of the ones on the WB on are Cartoon Net during the day (Pokemon, Dragon Dall, ect). Encore Action has some anime at times, I'm not big in to it, but the stuff on Action is a great alternative.

[gcutler]

Anime is designed for Adults, but uses Cartoons as the media. It is very popular in Japan, and has a relatively popular following here. The difference between Anime and regular cartoons, is that the storylines are more violent, and deal with adult themes. Characters are killed off and have sex.

If you have seen the cartoons shows "Star Blazers" or "Robotech" these were japanese ANIME that were toned down for US consumption. The storylines contained the violence and deaths, but the sexual or adult situations were edited out (as always in the US, violence is preferred for to sex).

Imagine popular shows like "Farscape" or "Above and Beyond" (the Fox-TV Space Marines Sci-Fi show) but in Animated form, but everything else pretty much the same.

Most of my favorite Anime seems to involve "Power Suit" type shows. Many Anime have similar themes running thru them.

One Is "Bubblegum Crisis". After a Tokyo is rebuilt from the major earthquake (in 2032) the Genom corp makes AI Robots that do most of the work, they sometimes go a little wacky and start blowing up people and property. A vigilante group called "Knight Sabers" fights these robots when they go crazy (The robots going crazy are not as random as you would believe)

"Gundam Wing" is another good Anime, pretty much your war series where the pilots control large Mechanized Robots (think transformers or Mechwarrior)

If still interested, check out http://www.anipike.com/ You may have been an Anime fan and never realized it.

[toomuchtv]

My son is a huge anime fan. His favorites include Akira, Evangelion & Hellsing. Its popularity is growing rapidly & the new channel will help it to grow even more. He has seen the proposed programmimg & is very interested.

[gcutler]

Especially when the VHS or DVDs are sooo expensive. I'd say that Anime is twice the cost of the average media for the similar run time or product. Partly because in the past people have paid quite a premium to get the stuff imported, etc. So the price was established for the existing viewer. A new viewer will easily fall for the product but then pass out at the price. If I can watch an entire series on this channel and not pay $150 for the privledge, its a win for me.

And I think the animation may make it not such a bandwidth hog compared to other channels?

[Mark Holtz]

Some introductions to anime:
http://www.rightstuf.com/introduction/
http://alumni.imsa.edu/~leda/anime/
http://www.lkwdpl.org/anime/intro.html

[Mark Holtz]

Heh... an update. According to Anime News Network (http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/article.php?id=2942), the service is launching as a VOD service in Philadelphia.

The official website (http://www.theanimenetwork.com) has also been updated.