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Although I prefer cel animation, I will say that our perspective on older anime is a bit warped. I imagine seasonal anime has always been rather shoddy, even if the art quality might have been better and we hadn't been inundated with mindless LN adaptations yet. We're mostly thinking of the most acclaimed productions from the 80s, 90s, and even early 2000s. A lot of stuff during the cel era was poorly animated, badly paced, and often not notable in most categories. I suspect average production quality has improved in more recent seasons, even if many of them look cheap, and I have a preference for cel. Pacing is also certainly better. I'm having a bit of hope for Saru lately, Shaft is generally good, Ufotable at least looks nice, and some other studios are fine... and there's a decent enough movie or series coming out here or there, so it's not all bad at least. :P

SAC is a rather silly style over substance show, which is best served as a film, I feel. I remember it being decent enough. Both the movie and series are directed by Dezaki, so they should be fairly well made. I only ever watched 1 episode of the series. Was okay, but I don't think it's the kind of thing that would work for 35 episodic episodes.

I'm getting to where I watch fewer seasonals lately. They're mostly dull and lacking creativity. Notable directing or writing is uncommon. Many of them aren't that well made. Concepts? Well, every season consists of goofy niche material (like work or hobby bullshit), long-running shonens, CGDCT sludge, loads of generic fantasy and isekai. Older isekai, even if not good, tended to be more thoughtfully constructed. Now it's the most escapist wank imaginable. There's usually only 1-2 shows I'll even give 6-7 to per season, and I feel like I've lowered my standards to do so in some cases. :D

Hi. You're welcome. It's one the main movies I usually recommend for that period of Japanese cinema. You might like some of Kurosawa's other films, but I think that must be his best. I was pretty much in the same boat as you back when I watched Cagliostro (since then, I've watched maybe 1-2 other Lupin movies and that Fujiko spin-off that came out a while back; so I've barely scratched the surface of this franchise). It stands on its own well, so I don't think any familiarity with the series is required, and the series is fairly episodic, I believe. Maybe read a wiki about the characters, but even that is probably unnecessary. Miyazaki is largely using the setup of Lupin as a vehicle to explore his own subjects of interest, so it doesn't depend on much knowledge of the series. Oh, haha... I understand. 26 episodes is usually my limit, and I find anything more than that is usually a slog.

It's a fascinating film for the animation technique and atmosphere, and I think any animation fan must see it (well, those who like independent animation, anyway). I find the Nazi references sort of obtrusive, having read about the actual colony. It did have colonists formerly in WWII-era Germany's military, but most young, fighting age men coming from Germany would have served in some way. It wasn't part of the "ratlines," from what I can tell, and they were ideologically Christian (national socialism is anti-Christian) and, evidently, getting perks from assisting Pinochet's regime. I didn't care for some of the themes, and the symbolism was lacking in subtlety (didn't the kids drink milk and become blonde and blue eyed and wearing lederhosen and suspenders? lmao... I've probably never seen anything more on the nose than this), but the modern fairy tale framing made it more palatable. It's slow (hardly anything happens beyond establishing the scene in some cases), detached, and maybe experimental to a fault. The film is about abuse, but the style is too alienating for an emotional connection to any of the characters, which can make it dull and removes a lot of the impact from the final phase of the film. It's far more concerned with aesthetics than storytelling, so I feel you could accuse this film of style over substance, but the style is so unique that it makes for a worthwhile film.

Wow my "Mean Score" dropped a lot since I started to rate dropped anime haha.

Cure is probably the best Japanese horror film, I feel. Kind of like a good, less edgy version of Se7en. I remember liking Onibaba too, but I'd reckon it's a touch overrated. Still, probably one of the best older black and white Japanese horror films, along with Kobayashi's Kwaidan.

It's a quirky horror comedy with dark, satirical tones, and the kind of weird concept that I tend to like. Unfortunately, I remember even less about it, as I watched that many years before Love Exposure. Have you seen Kiyoshi Kurosawa's Cure? I wonder if you'd like that for horror.

Hi. I see I gave it a 2.5/5... It's been a long time since I've seen it, so I don't think I can say anything too specific. It has that shitty digital camera/modern TV movie look, and it's LONG. Many of the shots are unappealing, and there is a cheese factor to some of the acting/expressions. Then there's Sono's typically perverse/grotesque characters and events, though the slightly kung fuish presentation of stealthy panty peeping is amusing, I guess. I don't like the culty Christian atmosphere of it, as I don't like the Abrahamic religions. It's usually around this time that I'll be told, "Oh, you don't understand. It's, like, making fun of Christianity." Yeah, I get it. I'm not too enthused about basic bitch critiques of religion and "cults." I don't like his Noriko's Dinner Table either, and it's a long, grueling film. About the only one I've tolerated well was Suicide Club, but that's been so long that I might have a change of heart there as well. What did you think of the movie?

Hi. No, I haven't seen it and don't recall the title. I'll give it a try. I've enjoyed a fair amount of Russian animation in the past. Thanks. Looks like vagabond Ronald McDonald ran out of clown makeup and red wigs and had an acid trip...

Ouch, what you said about restrictions and taboo growing up there sucks. Do you think it was like that for previous generations as well?
The perception we have of Chile here (and Argentina) is that you are more European-like (and I mean cold-European, like Germany) like the southern states of Brazil - which are more cold, conservative and their Carnaval sucks hehe (the further north you walk here, the more culturally mixed and party-prone we get).

I don't know much about how other countries and cultures dealt with nudity. I think because of our very tropical climate our natives were traditionally naked, we have a day to celebrate native culture and all their depiction on media, movies, cartoons for kids, etc, they were always naked, so I think our approach to nudity (before globalization) was highly influenced by them. I remember going naked to pools when I was a little kid and it wasn't rare to see little kids naked on the beach as well, I guess the general sentiment was that kids are sexless entities so no problem with that - of course the parents were always together, and if someone was looking weirdly they'd probably get lynched. There was this kids' TV show called Castelo Rá-Tim-Bum, I remember one episode had a native folklore tale and they had two boys, probably aged around 6yo, playing two native kids and they were fully naked the whole episode... here it was seen as natural, but in other places I'm sure it would be a scandal - but times changed, I don't think any of that would be possible today.
But, for example, Black Moon (1975), a German/French movie by a French director, has a bunch of little kids playing naked. El Topo (1970) is Mexican production and the son of the main character (played by the director's son) is naked the whole time. I recently watched Valerie and Her Week of Wonders (1970) and it's a very whimsical and cute Czech movie about a girl on the threshold of childhood, circus artists just came to town and she imagines adventures, villains and romance, I really could see Hayao Miyazaki animating it, it reminded me a lot Spirited Away, and there is a scene the girl is naked, I was going to log the movie on letterboxd and saw all comments about pedophilia and shit, man, some people automatically links nudity to eroticism, but in all those movies, as in those Japanese productions I mentioned in the blog, as well the cherubs in Renaissance art, the nudity is used to represent innocence and purity. But because of those movies I know it wasn't just Brazil that had this natural approach to nudity.

About nudity on Carnaval, yes it's artistic, "tasteful", but obviously it's linked to sexuality - as it is adult nudity, but it's exclusive to the parades and private parties. The street parties we have all around the country the whole week people don't go naked, it wouldn't even be safe.

Then from the '80s to the '00s we had this guy called Gugu on TV (I mentioned "Banheira do Gugu" in the blog and celebrities getting naked) well, this guy was shamelessly selling sex, and his show Domingo Legal was Sunday from 12h to 16h (I hope you guys in Chile don't use that AM/PM crap), so it was the time the whole family gathered to have lunch... you can't find much about it on Youtube, I found on a porn site a short homage our biggest newscast made when he died, and I can't upload it on Youtube because of the content lol, and yeah Brazil is a very Catholic country, but this was our Sunday family entertainment (I won't link it from a porn site here, so I downloaded the video and put on gdrive) https://drive.google.com/file/d/1mjP6ePxkdKrXKKzguaSdztwBlkOh-GlO/view - I look back and laugh at how unhinged this guy was lol, his show was absolute crap, but in a way I'm glad we had him - and watching it as a kid it was just some dumb competitions they had to swap clothes inside a pool faster than the other team or collect bars of soap inside a bathtub while the person from the other team tried to prevent it. edit: I just discovered this is a fan-made edit of best moments of his show

Stuff like sex and drugs in the media, I do think kids need a parent or a teacher to talk about it, they shouldn't just be exposed to it without someone to explain it, at least the first time. That movie Kids (1995) I mentioned I watched on school in fifth grade (10/11yo) it's pretty heavy stuff about unprotected sex, all the language is very explicit, but that's exactly the language we would have a few years from then (the characters are between 12 and 16yo), so what teachers expected is that when we got there we wouldn't be as dumb as those kids in the movie that had no guidance. We had that movie to scare us about sex and Christiane F. to scare us about drugs, but the approach to sex was pretty much just about unprotected sex, and they would talk more about boundaries and consent (first scene of Kids is rape, but some might not notice it unless it's pointed out). What you said about the censorship taking away the chance to understand it, yeah I think all those themes should be tackled in early adolescence, and then adolescents be free to watch all those stuff about problems they are going to face and really think about it, rationalize, be ready. Kids/teenagers are very smart if you let them, if you encourage them, I believe all the censorship just dumb us down.



I can't agree more

ps: I talked so much about the nudity subject because you asked about Brazil, and you know that video I posted about Carnaval? 2016 was the last year she was naked on TV, in 2017 they started clothing the character, and they killed it in 2022. There is way less nudity and sex in mainstream movies nowadays compared to the '80s and '90s as well (and that's a documented fact), add that to the general American-like censorship of the mainstream internet (social media and big platforms), I guess kids growing up here now are going to have a repressive view of nudity like Americans do, linking it to pornography and vulgarity. And that's probably the future until we get an anti-internet counterculture among young people, probably two or three generations from now before that becomes possible, if we don't become mindless pets tutored by AI until then.


Another effect of the internet, well, that wonderful part in the middle of this comic is probably dying because the algorithm put us in interest bubbles to drive up engagement - and peer pressure on the internet is insane, I blame that for the total homogenization of "sides" and the crazy politics we are seeing. Politics nowadays in Brazil also got Americanized, we are increasingly moving toward a bipartisan system, but all the left here came from a strong working-class tradition that stemmed from century-old unions, and in the last ten years it was diluted by American liberal identity politics young activists learned over the internet, as they have easier access to Twitter trending topics than their local unions and social movements' newspapers. Screw workers' rights, we just need more black, gay and female bosses, and support the big corporations that change their logos to promote it in specific months. The agendas also got Americanized lol - great strategy to stray workers from workers' movements.

Man, sorry if I got too political haha
But I saw that Miguel Hernández poem in your profile, so I guess that last paragraph won't bother you.
I just saw you are from Chile. What's your view of the subject there - changes the internet might have brought to your culture and society, and if it got Americanized as well.

Hi dude, how are you doing? I'm surprised someone actually read it haha
I think internet has changed childhood everywhere. I was watching Night of the Comet (1984) the other day, it's a teen apocalypse movie, and one thing that showed something was wrong is that there were no kids on the streets on Sunday morning.

Apocalyptic scenario back then, completely normal today hehe

Probably TV has also impacted childhood before, but I don't think it had nearly the same grip the internet (and especially mobile internet) has on people's lives, and at least TV is local, whereas with the internet we are all subjected to the sensitivity and set of morals from the service provider and their necessity to appease wider audiences. My page on Facebook had 40k followers and I lost it because a bunch of strikes related to nudity lol - and I don't post anything erotic, it was just pieces of art that happened to have nudity, and even though the TOS says it's ok, in reality they will censor it. So nudity is no big deal for people from some cultures, but people from cultures that make it a big taboo can't discern nudity from pornography, hence that censorship I mentioned in that text, like the Dragon Ball one.

(I'm often posting Watchmen on my page, and from time to time there is a follower who tells the story of watching it in the cinema and there was a parent with a kid behind him and the moment Dr. Manhattan appears naked the kid gasped so the parent would have some explaining to do that night... and after that I looked around the internet a bit and saw some forums people telling how to explain the bath scene from My Neighbor Totoro to their kids... so some people are so freaked out by nudity that they can't even shower/bath with their own kids... - I mean, if that kid from the cinema had seen his father naked before I guess he wouldn't have gotten surprised by Dr. Manhattan)

I don't have much contact with kids today, but until the pandemic I was still hanging out regularly at underground gigs (punk, goth, metal) and over the years I noticed a huge decline of "kids" (teenagers) in those shows... so I wonder how much the algorithm pointed kids towards things it judged more appropriate, "family-friendly", and they strayed from everything else. One thing I also wonder is how much kids today are affected by boredom. I'm hardly ever bored today (I don't know if it's an age-related effect), I mean, if I get bored I'm easily distracted by some feed of dumb short videos on my cell phone, but before the modern internet, I guess boredom was a big social drive, you'd go out and find something to do, see places, meet people, etc, and now you kinda just look at your phone and dull it.

De mera causalidad honestamente xd, más que nada en el hilo donde hablaban del anime del frifayer, dije "waos, otro chilango más" y ps me mande solicitud

Por cierto disculpame por responder tan tarde ^^

There are many approaches, and I find I often don't agree with what is "orthodox." True, for maximum immersion, you'd want to watch most anything in one sitting, but this feels like a purist thing. Like people who geek out over the amount of pixels on a TV or something, lmao. At this point, I have a hard time even finishing 2 hour movies in one sitting. XD

Bergman is a bit of a mixed bag when it comes to accessibility. Some of them are highly so, though maybe not to modern sensibilities. Though I feel The Seventh Seal is easy to get into. Persona might seem too experimental for some, though it's kind of tame, really. Others that aren't that experimental can be quite alienating, though. I'd be careful with what you choose for Bergman. Some of his early films are real snoozers. Start with the most acclaimed.

Silent films as a whole are "weird" compared to modern films, kind of. I'd much rather watch Satantango than just about any silent film, though Metropolis is one of the better ones. I feel they're usually not worth watching except when the technique is exceptional, unique, or it has a fantastic setting. "Realism" in silent films is pretty gross. XD

Those are much more conventional and accessible movies. At least having seen older black and white films is a good start. Somewhat more experimental European films would probably be the best introduction, but just watching Satantango is probably okay. My suggestion would be to watch it in chunks. Like an hour here and there. It's an adaptation of a novel, but it's very concerned with aesthetic and cinematography. A good example of why the book is better than the movie memes are so bad because it's not strictly true (I'm not necessarily saying the book is worse, it's just that Tarr's adaptation is so unique as a work of cinema, rather than some straight adaptation of, say, Count of Monte Cristo that has less of a unique style and is doing a conventional film at a length that can't do the book justice). Tarr has LONG takes and lots of inventive tracking shots that will often revolve around the scene. I believe his Othello adaptation (or... maybe it was Macbeth? Anyway, it was Shakespeare) was around 80 minutes and was just 1 take or a few takes. Was interesting to watch, just like Russian Ark or whatever films that appear to be one take or simulated to appear so. Satantango has long takes, but they're cut up quite a bit more than that. I want to say the film is divided into three parts, or that's how it was back in the DVD days. I will say that Tarr, while not as accessible as plenty of other film makers, has a craftsmanship that I think most people can appreciate on some level. It can be alienating, but it's not like some of the relatively shoddily made experimental films that get namedropped often.