AnimeTV first impressions

After checking out the first two videos of AnimeTV, I have to say that it looks like it has potential. There hasn’t been any industry authorized show like this yet, so if it were to be brought to actual television, I have a feeling it would do pretty good. I doubt it would become as immensely popular as an actual hit anime show like Naruto or Bleach, but I think it would do good among mainstream American fans.

It’s hard to judge it from just the first episode because the only topic of discussion was the new dub of The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya. But it kept my interest well enough. Each member of the cast got to voice their opinion and we even got to see new clips from the dub. The only opinion I didn’t think was very well-founded was Nicholas’. He failed to take into account the fact that The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya, and every other anime for that matter, is meant to appeal to the ideals and expectations of Japanese viewers. So an American viewer shouldn’t blame the actual show simply because he or she can’t relate to the Japanese culture involved.

I think the discussion part of this first AnimeTV episode was well done. Maybe if there was a bit less of the cast members talking over each other, it would be even better, though it shouldn’t be totally rehearsed either. However, there were other things I thought should be improved:

– The ATV’s top 5 list. I’m sure lots of people had problems with this. Three Miyazaki movies, Evangelion, and Bleach topping them all. Miyazaki movies are fantastic, sure, but I really think anime movies should be judged separately from series’ (and Nausicaa beats Howl any day). Also, I think it would be better if each ATV member had their own top 5. I mean, it’s hard to believe that all 9 of them think Bleach and Evangelion are the best series’ (that’s about as mainstream as you can get =P)

– The segment where they had fans submit ratings for the series in question, and rate each category like story, animation, music, etc., and then have a short quote as to why they gave those ratings. For Haruhi, they had one really good rating and one really bad one. I think they should have had at least one medium one just to balance out the two extremes. I also think they should have made the reviewers expand on their reason for the ratings. One little quote as to why they gave such terrible or such wonderful ratings isn’t very convincing.

Anyway, like I said, it’s hard to judge AnimeTV from just one episode. The short Behind the Scenes video that was released last night helped give a slightly better idea of what the show will be like, but not much. I just hope that the cast members don’t “fool around” more than actually talk intelligently and informatively about anime. I wish they had a more variety of ages among them. I mean, having a bunch of teenagers together will probably always lead to some distractions and joking around with each other. But I don’t mind that as long as there’s not too much of it. I also hope that they don’t limit their discussions to just new series’ that are going to be released on DVD in the US. It would be nice if they also talked about older anime that were once popular (or unpopular), anime that’s currently popular on TV or even among fansubs, and maybe a manga discussion once in a while too. These things wouldn’t definitely make the show appeal to a more variety of anime fans ^_^