If Kevin isn’t welcome in Russia, then the rest of Archie’s gang aren’t going either!
Hey everyone, thanks for stopping by for Associated Geekery Episode #19!
Doc and Ryan are joined once again by co-host Carrie, fresh off of her adventures with GISHWHES! The gang also discusses Archie Comics’ boycott of Russia, Kickstarter banning GMO campaigns, crazy underwear vending Nazis from Gen-Con, even more converstations about Pacific Rim, discussions on Hannibal and it’s fandom, good news out of SWFA, and finally Disney’s newest walkaround prince, Thor!
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Associated Geekery Episode #19
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If I was going to go off on a limb, as an anime fan who didn’t much like the movie, to speculate on why Pacific Rim isn’t doing so well in Japan, my guess would be that the Japanese don’t really feel a need to see it.
Over here, it seems like there is a certain heft to the idea that it’s a live-action anime, as though being live-action somehow legitimizes it or makes it awesomer. I don’t think the Japanese really need that. They’re the ones who pretty well invented the whole idea of giant robots fighting giant monsters… They have Evangelion and Gundam and Macross and all of those. And they have Godzilla and Gamera and Super Sentai and all of those shows. Giant robots and giant monsters are not really a THING there… they’re just an established part of the culture.
So when you take away the novelty of Pacific Rim, what’s left? It’s not a particularly good movie (or to be fair, a particularly bad movie… its just a movie that happens to exist), it doesn’t really have characters to speak of or an engaging story, and it actually kind of works to undermine the genre with its realism (by demonstrating what a silly idea building giant man-shaped robots to fight giant monsters would be). It’s just a mash-up of cliches that are seen over and over again, and done consistently better in, actual anime television shows. When you’re steeped in the genre, at least to me, Pacific Rim has literally nothing to offer.
Your Godzilla analogy is probably correct, except not in the sense of revenge so much as Pacific Rim just being another type of movie like Godzilla… Americans lumbering their way through something that the Japanese do way better.