"Mark Brown" <mark.brown@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote in message
news:4144b071_2@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> "Wanderer" <wanderer@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote in message
> news:10k847pgtd7it87@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> *SNIP*
> > I don't think you're giving kids enough credit, here. True, the
> > "Gargoyles"
> > series was a bit more mature than any of the "higher-ups" wanted to
admit.
> > But back in the '80's (when I was one of the "ten and eleven-yo.'s"),
> > Transformers had a plot spread over three weeks' worth of episodes.
>
> And you could argue that the entire S3 run of Transformers G1 was a
cohesive
> story ("The Rise of Rodimus Prime," framed by the death & rebirth of
> Optimus). Granted, not a particularly good arc, all things considered,
but
> it
> is an arc.
<grimace> Don't remind me. I mean, was there any real point to
introducing
an aged Cobra Commander for one episode?
>
> > Trust
> > me, the Avalon arc was shorter than the Unicron arc by at least half!
>
> You mean the Armada Unicron arc, I presume, as Unicron only appeared in
G1
> for the movie.
Actually, the Transformers movie was cut up into episodes and shown as
part
of Transformers. Starscream dying and coming back as a ghost and all.
>
> Neither of which match up to Beast_Wars' mind-blowing time-travelling
sci-fi
> soap operatic mecha freak show.
Oof... tell me about it. And then Beast Machines turns it into a
mind-blowing *mystical philosophy* sci-fi soap operatic mecha freak show.
>
> > And
> > yet Transformers became a winning toy enterprise. Likewise, Japan has
> > anime
> > for this market, and anime is infamous for having enough subplots to
keep
> > a
> > soap in scripts for a month!
> *SNIP*
>
> Like Cardcaptor Sakura (aimed ostensibly at pre-teens), with its
"Capture
> all the cards" arc, its "Secret manipulations" arc(s), its "Meiling
loves
Li
> loves Sakura" arc, the "Final Judgement" two-parter (foreshadowed by a
motif
> that recurred throughout the season) --and that's just season 1.
Even the toy tie-in lines have sublevels. "Pokemon" gives game tips,
"Yu-Gi-Oh" gives gameplay tips and introduces new cards (completely aside
from the subplot of Tea's love for Yugi, the subplot of Honda [Tristan]
falling for Jonouchi's [Joey's] sister, the subplot of Bakura's still
being
occasionally possessed by the spirit of the Millennium Ring, and the
current
story arc involving Duel Monsters becoming real for the first time since
Ancient Egypt), even with the American snippage of the first half-season
of
episodes. (If you remember the scene in the Duelist Kingdom arc where
Yugi
has a hard time trusting Yami, there's a reason... in the first
half-season,
Yugi's "other half" tortures and destroys cheaters of every stripe,
including causing one to set himself on fire and cru****ng another behind a
block of ice.) Even Akazukin Chacha, a relatively shallow anime, had a
love
triangle, a stalled love affair and a Japanese language lesson in
homonyms... in the first episode!
I mean, it's painfully clear that continuity is *not* a problem for young
kids to grasp. Just look at the "Oz" books by L. Frank Baum for an
example.
Baum was very inventive, but had lousy continuity... he kept having to
backtrack to explain and correct things he'd messed up in previous books!
And this was because *young children* were writing in and asking things
like, "Why did the people of Oz let the Wizard rule over them just for
dropping in in a hot air balloon", "What happened to all the pieces that
Nick Chopper cut off when he became the Tin Woodman", "What happened when
Dorothy told Auntie Em where she'd been", and, "If people in Oz can't die,
why are they afraid of getting hurt", just to name a few.
Getting back to Gargoyles, it wasn't the long story arcs that put off the
sandbox set, nor yet the literary quotes... mostly, it was the maturity of
the storylines. I mean, the main character saves the princess who
slighted
him, destroys the man who betrayed his entire race, and still loses his
clan
to the Magus' spell. He goes to sleep for a thousand years, is woken up
by
a businessman and reunited with his lost love... only to find out that his
lost love is the one who collaborated with the human to arrange the
betrayal, and the businessman is using him for theft of another company's
secrets.
<look askance> And that's all in the "Awakenings" arc. It's not that a
kid
will find it complicated, but kids don't really like the whole "betrayal"
plot element to begin with. It's serious, it's talky, and the action
slows
down for "mushy" scenes... not for small children, really. There's a
reason
anime is divided into "boy anime" (action) and "girl anime" (feelings and
relation****ps). It's not that you can't have both, but you have to know
which one you favor. If Gargoyles had been "boy anime", the chase scene
in
"Awakenings" would have been longer, and the closest thing to a "mushy"
scene would have been Goliath and Elisa gazing at one another for thirty
seconds of voice-over introspection each. If it had been "girl anime",
there would have been a lot more talking, and only one battle per episode.
<shrug> Like I said, it's more mature than Disney and ABC (not that
there's
a difference anymore) gave it credit for.
Yours with a sigh,
The analysis-prone,
Wanderer
wanderer@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
"Where am I going? I don't quite know.
What does it matter *where* people go?
Down to the woods where the bluebells grow!
Anywhere! Anywhere! *I* don't know!"
-- a. a. milne
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