A Look at Scifi’s Ani-Monday
June 12, 2007 at 6:49 pm under TVWell, last nite was the first nite of the Scifi channel’s anime block, Ani-Monday. They started it off with the premiere of Ghost in the Shell Solid State Society. It’s was a pretty good movie although that was actually my seconding viewing of the movie. I saw it last year when it came out in Japan (watched the fansub of it). Anyways, the dub was pretty good but not much different than the dub that was for the Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex series. They used the same voice over actors as the series, which I find to be one of the better dubs out there. The one big problem with Ani-Monday’s showing of the movie was that they botched up fitting the movie to the TV format. They didn’t properly letterbox the movie so it looked a little weird but I think HDTVs may not have had that problem but I don’t really know. Currently, I don’t have access to an HDTV.
Now, Ani-Monday’s block didn’t really seem like a special block of TV. It was just a few blips on the screen of the anime that they will possibly be showing with a high-pitched Engrish speaker. Frankly, it was a rather stupid way to open up this block and it seemed to make fun of anime more than anything. Maybe not really making fun of anime but it was just irritating more than anything else. Also, I don’t think the Scifi channel really promoted this block that much. I don’t think I would have known about it otherwise if I had not read about it online a few weeks ago. Of course, I must point out that I really don’t watch the Scifi channel on a regular basis so I’m not totally sure how much promotion it got. The first commercial for the block I saw was 5 minutes before it started. And there was not really any commercials about the block while it was on. No commercial to say what’s gonna be shown or nothing. At least, Adult Swim actually does a much better job although Adult Swim’s focus is not entirely anime.
One last, thing the commerical breaks was really done badly. Why can’t other channels when they show anime have commerical breaks like Adult Swim does? They have them every 15 minutes. I feel that this is the best way of showing anime and I think that’s how it’s done in Japan as well. I guess Adult Swim may have spoiled me a bit.
Overall, Ani-Monday was ok. Nothing really that great I can say about it. It’s good that more anime is on TV and I’m glad that more channels are embracing anime. But I think this block needs some work. Hopefully, next Monday will be better when they start showing anime series.
BTW, next week Ani-Monday will show Noein, TOKKO, and Macross Plus, series which I’ve yet to see.
June 12th, 2007 at 8:31 pm
I wonder if, deep in their hearts, they really like or “get” anime at all. Maybe the best hope is if cable channels with a more intellectual slant, like IFC, have more anime and in subtitled form.
I could write more, but every time I visit this blog now I’m rendered insensible by the moe power of your Konata header image… kawaii… :)
June 12th, 2007 at 8:34 pm
@DS: LOL. Konata can have that effect on you.
June 13th, 2007 at 1:20 am
What you don’t have HD!??…yeah, me neither…to much money.
I didn’t even bother recording this block. I figured they’ll rerun it at some point, haven’t looked into it.
Maybe they’re playing it safe. I think “adult swim” started with a similarly scheduled block and expanded from there, if I recall correctly.
June 13th, 2007 at 4:18 am
I remember hearing about this a month ago but then I forgot about it last night. (Then again, I was studying for finals so I had an excuse!) I guess I’ll have to check it out next Monday when Noein and Tokko begin and also check out how the interstitials look graphically.
I don’t think that SciFi would change its commercial policy for 2 hours a week (11pm-1am) but it wouldn’t hurt to let them know. One good reason to adopt an “every 15 minutes” policy like Adult Swim is that almost every TV anime I have seen has its episodes divided into 2 acts. Some exceptions are times when there is a showdown (like in Naruto) and the action continues from where it left off instead of beginning with a new scene. It also happens to work really well for AS because most of their original comedies are 11 minutes long, although it’s a little awkward for reruns of Futurama and Family Guy because of their three-act plot structure.
BTW, do you happen to remember what kind of stuff was being advertised during the “badly timed” ad breaks? It would interesting to see what is pitched to people watching at that time of night.
June 13th, 2007 at 4:48 am
@CalAggie: To be honest, I didn’t really pay attention to the ads. I think a lot of them where commercials for other shows and stuff on Scifi, which I don’t really give a crap for.
June 19th, 2007 at 3:22 am
Anime is the greatest example of the wonder of the Japanese culture. I am a black american, yet I embrace the beauty of anime and it’s culture. Someday I would love to go to Japan and buy volumes of english-version anime.
Sci-fi does not know anything about anime and they certainly did not put enough anime programming to satisfy my tastes. Cartoon Network’s “Adult Swim” used to have a lot of great anime titles on its programing block like “Cowboy Bebob” which I would really enjoy watching at 2 and 3 in the mourning and at the end of the program, I would listen to the Japanese credits and music. Unfortunately Cartoon Network screwed things up by putting garbage and trash in the adult swim block instead of decent anime. Here is an example. Who really cares about Futurama? American Animation is fleeting at best and should be left to the professionals in Japan. Remember Final Fantasy the spirits within? Unfortunately the movie did not make that much money at the box office and this shows the ignorance some Americans have towards anime.
The best thing to do is go to an asian inspired store and buy a whole collection of whatever anime you enjoy so you can watch when you want and don’t have to suffer due to television network ignorance.
June 21st, 2007 at 6:21 pm
[...] was right when he criticized the commercial breaks and the interstitials. Ad breaks happened less frequently during Macross Plus [...]
June 22nd, 2007 at 10:52 pm
Futurama is not an anime it is a cartoon, and Final Fantasy the Spirts Within is not anime its computer generated MOVIE. Also not all American anime blows. Have you ever seen the anime version of spawn it fucking owns watch it. Alot of Japanese anime blows i know because i watched alot. also just cause not alot a people watch a movie means it sucks.