X Never Marks the Spot

Shounen Jump just announced that the Gintama anime is ending - not going on hiatus again but actually ending. Now, this could be trolling the fans (wouldn't be the first time) but the wording is...awfully final. And the show did get in trouble a few times this year for pushing the envelope of offensiveness that much further...

...But why now? Right before it got to the Kintoki arc that I desperately wanted to see - and it's not going to adapt the current manga arc either (which I had been avoiding since I prefer to watch anime unspoiled, but had to check it out and oh my god it's got Joui flashbacks and backstory with Shouyou-sensei - that is to say, it's in the full-out shounen action mood that it does so very well, and the anime does even better...) The thing is, if the One Piece anime was canceled, I'd be unhappy, and I'd miss the seiyuu dreadfully - but we'd still have the manga, and the anime has never reached the original's quality, in art or pacing or anything else. But Gintama is one of the only series where I outright prefer the anime to the manga - it's such a loyal adaption, but the jokes are funnier animated and the art is far prettier (Sorachi's art has improved somewhat over time, but writing is still where his talents lie). Not to mention Gintoki without Sugita's voice is like...chocolate without peanutbutter! Fries without ketchup! Metaphors without food! (hmm, maybe I should go get lunch...) (Plus, it's really hard to find raws of the manga, and I can barely understand them as it is. The official manga translation was discontinued, and while there is a group scanlating it, the level of translation is about at my own - no offense to the translators; the series is a nightmare, but comparing to the raws I've found multiple lines that even I know are wrong, elementary Japanese mistakes like mistaking an emphatic 'ja nai' for a negative. The fansubs for Gintama aren't fantastic but better than the scanlators, so without the anime I'm going to be lost...)

There is always the hope of movies, of course, or endless OAVs like Hunter x Hunter. And yeah, until I know for sure otherwise I'm still going to keep a little hope we're being trolled. But all the same...sigh.

Also my silly cartoon Generator Rex has apparently ended; haven't watched the last eps yet, but I don't see how they could tie up the whole arc in the few they have left. Plus it means we'll never get the Rex-goes-to-Ben-10's verse x-over I craved, with Rex flirting with Gwen and Kevin flipping out and Ben & Rex making out... ;_;

In better animation news, am about halfway through Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood and loving it! Such an incredibly creative and unique story, and it's so much more satisfying than the first anime; the plot actually hangs together and is going somewhere. Plus Roy Mustang is 100x more badass, gaaaah Roy. (Also there is a particular character of whom I hadn't realized how fond I'd become, until suddenly that character wasn't that character anymore and I realized how very upsetting I found it. I do so enjoy it when a series can do that to me, sneak up and make me fall in love before I even realize it's happening (though man I am hoping said char is restored somehow, and being FMA I have no guarantee...!))

Or rather, how come the best scifi I can find on Western TV these days is in kids' cartoons? This isn't a total problem for me, because as you know I have an undeniable adoration for silly kids' superhero cartoons (my brother and I are possibly the only people over 30 in the world who get excited about new eps of Ben 10. But it's so much fun!) But it gets frustrating because there are no fandoms for these to speak of. The cartoons based on existing properties like Marvel and DCU have followings, but not the original stuff.

Which is a shame because I just got into Generator Rex and want fic for it and there is none to speak of, because it is a silly kids superhero cartoon. (But it is a silly kids superhero cartoon with Agent Six and César!! Sigh...) It's also got some of the better scifi I've seen on TV in a while - super-mad-science technobabble-laden scifi, little to do with realism (except when it has a space elevator, which was pretty much spot-on, down to the mobile base station) but everything to do with the intriguing possibilities of humans intersecting with technology (it's set in the near-future, five years after the nanite-pocalypse, in which every living thing on the planet was infected with nanites that usually are dormant but occasionally get activated and mutate their hosts into nightmarish monsters. Yes, it's very anime, down to the hero's pre-canon amnesia, though the characters and general sensibilities are much more American superhero.) It makes me miss scifi shows - especially space shows; with BSG and SGU off the air, as far as I know there are no TV shows currently set in space, no Star Trek, no Farscape or Firefly. (Doctor Who only halfway counts, because it's not always in space and not always in the future.) I like fantasy too, don't get me wrong, but I miss my space future shows something fierce.

The brother hypothesizes that procedural dramas have primed audiences to expect "realism" in their TV - the sort of plausible semi-pseudo-science that sounds convincing, that can be hard to write. Scifi shows couldn't get away with just crying "tachyons!" and having time-travel, in the current TV environment. gnine suggests that it's due to reality outpacing the past's vision of the future. We don't have a moonbase or FTL, but a lot of the trappings of classic space opera, the giant computers and video phones and such, have become ordinary or even quaint in this age of ever-advancing electronics. So a modern space opera would have to reinvent the old tropes, and maybe no one's figured out a good way how yet, or no one's dared to take a risk on a show that might have. Except on kids' shows where realism isn't considered a concern - and cartoons can more easily present futures anyway, when all sets and such are drawn from scratch anyway.

Personally I really want the USA network to do a sci-fi show - I doubt they'd have a budget for space opera, but maybe a smaller show, set it on a colony world - Mars? - in the nearish future (say a century ahead?) - and in keeping with their other shows, character-focused rather than f/x, mostly small enclosed sets. Make it a crossover-genre, perhaps, cops, or doctors, or whatever - but show me the future, show me where we could be going, the endless possibilities humanity has to look forward to.

Meanwhile, at least I've got my silly kids' cartoons! (I could also ask why American kids' cartoons are doing better than most TV on the race front - the eponymous hero Rex is a fairly obviously non-white Latino, though I'm pretty sure the toys are marketed to any kids that'll buy 'em - can't figure out if that's because it's a kid's show and they think kids won't care, or because it's a cartoon so they they think no one will notice, or something else, but kids cartoons are still some of the only non-specific-racial-demographic-targeted American TV in which the lead character isn't always white?)