http://grantalexander.blogspot.com/2011/02/gainax-at-pixar.html
http://bobbyrubio.blogspot.com/2011/02/gainax-at-pixar.html

Thoughts:
-TTGL seems to be done, despite Yamaga saying he wants there to be more and more Gurren Lagann over the course of the decade.
-Panty & Stocking exists primarily because of Drawn Together. Hm.
-“…the fans were upset at the quality of animation [in TTGL's fourth episode], but it was completely intentional on the part of Imaishi (series director). He wanted to parody the common occurance, in many productions of the past, to have huge dips in quality during the course of a shows tv production.” I don't buy that for a moment. If the animation was supposed to be bad on purpose, why would they give that particular episode accurate lip sync?
-

I just read this myself. The explanation for Kobayashi's episode is quite strange since it wasn't really different from Kobayashi's usual stuff. An excuse for someone who wouldn't "get it" maybe?

Hey, awesome! This is--

"A few years ago I along with other Gainax staffers at an american convention were watching the American tv animation “drawn together” and we couldn’t believe they were showing such explicit things on tv….. I thought…why don’t we do that!"

I...

and his love for American shows like Glee

I'm..not sure what to think anymore.. ._.

NAveryW wrote:-“…the fans were upset at the quality of animation [in TTGL's fourth episode], but it was completely intentional on the part of Imaishi (series director). He wanted to parody the common occurance, in many productions of the past, to have huge dips in quality during the course of a shows tv production.” I don't buy that for a moment. If the animation was supposed to be bad on purpose, why would they give that particular episode accurate lip sync?
-

In the style.fm interview Imaishi said that it was the episode that was the most reminiscent of Dokonjo Gaeru and that correcting Kobayashi would be pointless or something like that. I think the episode is what Imaishi wanted or at least accepted from Kobayashi.

esselfortium wrote:I'm..not sure what to think anymore.. ._.

Imaishi talks about Gossip girl on his twitter. (I've not seen either that or Glee but I loved the American high school movie feel of episode 4.)

This shit is awesome

NAW's the man, once again!

Ugh..That episode 4 QUALITY explanation.. What the fuck?

toe mash wrote:Ugh..That episode 4 QUALITY explanation.. What the fuck?

blatant BSing. It's just in Kobayashi's usual style and GAINAX honchos are friends with dude so they let him do one ep like that

toe mash wrote:Ugh..That episode 4 QUALITY explanation.. What the fuck?

I didn't think the episode was very good necessarily but it was typical Kobayashi. Since people would hate it anyway they let him do it completely in his own way.

Some people tried to explain the Transformers episode of Panty & Stocking the same way (saying it had bad animation "ironically") but it doesn't sound very plausible. Imaishi just lets people direct their own episodes in their own way because that's the way he rolls for good and for bad.

Thanks for the very interesting read, though there's two key details I noticed:

• Pixar (or at least some of them) are fans of Gainax's work.
  
• Gainax asked to visit Pixar, so the inverse is presumably also true

So you just have wonder.... could a collaboration between the two studios be a possibility in the future? Perhaps that's just being a little too optimistic, but two of the greatest studios (if not THE best) in anime and western animation respectively coming together for something would be something of a "Dream Team" senario.

Presuming that it does come to pass, it's likely to be an original production because both studios prefer to do new and fairly unique projects rather than make sequels to old ones. Pixar making a new version of Evangelion tailored to western audiences would likely be more than a little redundant even if it somehow ended up being the best. However, referrences and tributes to both studios older works are still possible.



In any case, would such a project have a shot at becoming the first animated film to win Best Picture at the Acadamy Awards? There's only one way to find out.

The Abhorrent wrote:So you just have wonder.... could a collaboration between the two studios be a possibility in the future?

Dherlakekl thanks for making me sad that that'll never happen. If there were any possibility of something of that sort happening, Pixar would have collaborated on a project with Ghibli by now.

NAveryW wrote:Dherlakekl thanks for making me sad that that'll never happen. If there were any possibility of something of that sort happening, Pixar would have collaborated on a project with Ghibli by now.

I wouldn't say that it's impossible. The Kingdom Hearts games exist because of a chance meeting between Square and Disney (execs presumably, can't remember where I came across that info) in an elevator. Sometimes wierd things like that happen, so I wouldn't be so quick to declare impossible. Perhaps the thought just hasn't occurred to them yet. Someone just has to bring it up at some point, and the wheels can start turning.

The Abhorrent wrote:Gainax asked to visit Pixar, so the inverse is presumably also true

I can imagine staff from Pixar asking to visit Gainax's presumably glorious HQ only to get denied because the Gainax staff would be ashamed that their place is basically a shit hole.

So Pixar, Ghibli, and Gainax are all mutual admirers. It's nice to know that the professionals share the same opinion as us laymen on the quality of studios. (I was going to ask where KyoAni was, but then I remembered that they would be the only studio of the four that has only excelled at adaptations).

Akemi Hayashi was a surprise to me. To be honest, I didn't know there were any influential women working at Gainax. She says that "I’m always trying to push emotion and pull everyone (at Gainax) back toward feeling…Gainax already has so many boys for the big action sequences." I'm really curious to know her influence on various series now -- Gainax shows at their best are tremendously emotional.

That's interesting to hear about Drawn Together, as watching PSWG had reminded me of that show for the first time in years. They do share some stylistic similarities. Don't think I watched more than an episode or two. It's also interesting that they didn't say South Park instead of Drawn Together, given the references to it in FLCL.

The Gainax staffers seem really plugged into American animation culture, which is more impressive than it sounds. Very little American TV outside of CSI and 24 gets an official release in Japan; while stuff like South Park does get localized, I had serious difficulty finding it, even at the massive DVD rental chain Tsutaya. I would LOVE to know how familiar they are with the Adult Swim shows, for instance. Are there fansubbers bringing this stuff to Japan?

Most if not all of the American media referenced in PSG was released in Japan officially. South Park used to air on Japanese television. Nickelodeon has a presence in Japan and airs or at one point aired Spongebob, My Life as a Teenage Robot, and Ren & Stimpy. Cartoon Network doesn't really have a foot in Japan, but Powerpuff Girls was tremendously popular on Japanese cable.

But I'd be very surprised if Slave Labor Graphics had any presence in Japan. Whoever put the SLG logo on Panty's shirt must have encountered the company's output on an excursion to the United States.

drinian wrote:The Gainax staffers seem really plugged into American animation culture, which is more impressive than it sounds. Very little American TV outside of CSI and 24 gets an official release in Japan; while stuff like South Park does get localized, I had serious difficulty finding it, even at the massive DVD rental chain Tsutaya. I would LOVE to know how familiar they are with the Adult Swim shows, for instance. Are there fansubbers bringing this stuff to Japan?

I don't know, but I love the idea of Japanese nerds collecting 10th-generation VHS fansubs of The Brak Show like westerners did of Dragonball Z.

WOWOW and Sky/Fox, I think, brings US TV programs to Japan.

toe mash wrote:I can imagine staff from Pixar asking to visit Gainax's presumably glorious HQ only to get denied because the Gainax staff would be ashamed that their place is basically a shit hole.

It resembled more of a farmlot, really (based from one of the pics of the current HQ).


As for me... Who knows what comes next after this visit? Something really big from this possible "dream team" or "collaborative supergroup", I hope.

Excellent find, Nav. ;) It could also find its way to ANN.

Other members of Gainax (including Yamaga-san) have visited Pixar before, but it's certainly nice to see this latest report. It's true that Gainax's building is very modest compared to the Pixar campus, but even Ghibli felt the contrast when Miyazaki visited there in 2002. For people in the anime industry, Pixar is like those cliched scenes in a school anime when you visit the rich character's house for the first time, and it always turns out to be this huge mansion...

Carl Horn wrote:It's true that Gainax's building is very modest compared to the Pixar campus, but even Ghibli felt the contrast when Miyazaki visited there in 2002.

The Ghibli Museum is very nice (and there's a bottle of Toy Story wine on display there), but what do Ghibli's actual offices look like?

drinian wrote:what do Ghibli's actual offices look like?

There's a picture that gets variously posted on /a/ of animation studio offices which includes 3 different low-rise offices labelled as Ghibli (and a shabby light-industrial unit for Gainax).

^[URL=http://min.us/mvjxfdl][/URL] You mean?