I'm really sick of all these "Shadowrun is anime" comments. This may be my intense hatred of everything Japanese showing through, however. Shadowrun IS Shadowrun. That's all it is an all it ever will be.

There may be elements of other genres in Shadowrun. All stories, especially the longer they run, incorporate other tales. One of my friends insists that Akira is one of the major influences for Shadowrun.

My response? Yeah, we have biker gangs and a dirty, gritty world. Sure the schools are screwed up. Some cyberarms look like the one the antagonist had. But I don't see anyone blowing up the center of Tokyo is some quasi-mystical sense. There was no war to screw up the world at large. Elements merge and there are other countries creating stories than Japan.

I seriously doubt that Akira had a very large influence in Shadowrun.
It's a great little movie, but I doubt it had time to influence Shadowrun very much.
SR was released in 1989.
Akira was released in 1988.

It takes a little more than a year (if anyones tried) to pull things together well enough to make an RPG.
Would it have had some degree of effect?
Sure. It probably did. I'm sure some rigging flavor might have come out of that just as easily as Tron could have influenced concepts of the cyberspace.

But saying that it was one of the major influences....? I have my serious doubts there.

Stumps, my point was that Cyberpunk tends to be defined by technology, esp. the technologies that would blend man and machine, matrix, cyberware; and the consequences thereof. I don't feel that SR is defined by its technology. Cybered individuals get a +1 char modifier (sometimes), and (aside from Deus) the Matrix is just the internet.

We agree on what themes are common to Cyberpunk, but I think what defines Cyberpunk is a world remade by technology, and the impact that has had on people. All other themes are IMO, devices for conflict nessecary for storytelling rather than key points of Cyberpunk. SR is not defined by technologies, the majority of MAJOR, world defining events of SR are magic based. Lowyfr Runs Corps, the GGD and the fallout from it eliminate world superpowers, balkanize the globe, and set the stage for most of the events in SR. The effect that Technology has had on the world always seems less. This isn't nessicarily bad or unchangeable, it always what type of game your group wants, but it does seem to explain why some think SR is getting away from cyberpunk, I don't think that was ever the major focus, or really ever addressed beyond there being a Matrix in SR.

If the Matrix is just the Internet this implies that Dues is quite likely to really be and FBI agent pretending to be a preteen girl...

One of the themes of cyberpunk I think the discussion has missed so far is the empowering effect of technology on the indicidual. In almost all 'classic' cyberpunk (Neuromancer, Hardwired, etc) the characters are able to challenge the status quo not becuase of some 'magical inheritance' but through skills and technology. This is often re-enforced by the fact that the classic cyberpunk has brough themselves up from 'nothing' (typically starting their lives living on the streets).

Consider the characters able to challenge the status quo in The Lord of the Rings:

Gandalf: Wizard, powerful spirit. Almost none in the world like him.
Aragorn: Last of a line of great kings, wielder of a singularly powerful magic sword.
Frodo: Possesor of the most powerful magical artifact in the world.

When compared to the above fantasy characters, the classic cyberpunk is much more of an everyman. Notice how there are many hackers besides Case (and who in fact may be better hackers than he is), there are no other Gandalfs.

That was kind of my point there Crusher Bob.
I think it was missed or mis-understood by others.

What I was trying to say was that technology in SR allows the characters to challenge the status quo, but they are also able to do this with magic.

This is where SR becomes different from your normal brand of cyberpunk.
And honestly...I think that was their point. I don't think they wanted to spit out a game that was just re-hashes of a collection of similar ideas on the same old theme.

I think they wanted to ante it up with magic.

So now, really...if you wanted a more acurate "label" for SR, it would be along the lines of cyber-magicpunk. (punk optional since Fields of Fire.)

Actually, magic tends to de-power the individual in SR. In 'normal SR' there are several magical individuals (IEs, Dragons, Horrors) that by the very rules of the world are unchallengeable by the everyman cyberpunk.

Notice how many fans of SR come out to defend how it is actually impossible to defeat the IEs, Dragons, and or Horrors.

In the classic cyberpunk if you have mister high up corp exec tied to a chair, pull out your gun and shoot him, you have a dead exec, the hard part is getting the exec tied to the chair (but this is still possible). In SR 1: you can't get an IE tied to a chair and 2: even if you could, your gun wouldn't wourk, or something.

Compare to ED where the Horrors are at least mechanically beatable (and also 'fictionally' beatable). IIRC the opening fiction of Earthdawn as 'Lorm was an angry troll...' not 'Lorm was the greatest troll warrior to have ever lived' and ends with 'this axe blooded a horror, some day it might slay one'... Notice the appeal to the everyman. Even the mightyest horror in ED Verjigorm (sp?) has stats and can conveivably be killed or severly wounded by a 'mighty band of heroes' (well, probably a quite a few more than a 'band').

In SR, a might band of runners can't even muss a IE's clothes because the IEs are written in as unbeatable. This is imho, why SR is not even heroic fantasy.

Whats the comparative Death tolls since the game's inception in 2050?

If I recall correctly (going from memory) ...

2 or 3 Great Dragons?

1 Immortal Elf?

1 AAA Corporation

Doesn't seem like anything is 'unbeatable' in the Sixth World. Difficult, yes, but it can and has been done.

Only when the designers wish them to be.

Yes, but who brought them down?... it wasn't just any cyberjockey off of Shadowland.

I was born in Japan and I've watched various anime shows since I was really little.

I just have one comment to make about "anime is shadowrun!!"

That comment is: If Shadowrun really were anime, it would be d20 and you'd have assloads of hitpoints.

One example: Look at Noir. Two smallish women repeatedly charge into buildings wielding crappy European made slightly outdated 9mm handguns with small ammo capacities and using the occasional cinematic martial arts move. But, they never have to reload, they never have any trouble decking guys three times their size, and for some reason they always win in the end even when the run directly at multiple opponents behind cover who are waiting for them with SMGs.

Now, what would happen in Shadowrun if you did that? You'd be screwed on stopping power, on range, and on them having cover and you not having cover. You'd be drilled and killed within a turn or two.

The only way that you could have something like that happen in an RPG would be with the d20 system with your millions of hitpoints and with the SMG goons have really bad to-hit rolls.

Another example: There was another anime that was releated in the US as "The Wolf Brigade", I believe. In short, in that anime there are this armored stormtroopers who fire LMGs from the hip and completely rip everyone up because they're just awesome like that. But in Shadowrun, with a non-twinked off-the-shelf basic LMG, you'd get screwed by double uncompenstated recoil and not hit anything. Then the guy you were trying to shoot would plink you with his pistol and hurt you more than you hurt him.


Yet a third example: A basic off-the-shelf katana *cannot* cut through anything, destroying castle walls and tanks, in Shadowrun. In anime, katanas often can. Because they're special.

For all your argument from authority, you’ve still mistaken anime for a genre.

~J

Seriously. Anime is a medium, not a genre. It's like saying "Shadowrun is Live Action Film!"

If anything, I'd say Shadowrun and the shows people keep referring to as "anime" had similar influences... but neither inspired the other (except in the cases where they obviously did, like the Shadowrun manga).

Anime is not a genre it is a medium. I know Doc just said that but I though it worth mentioning twice.

eh, it's a medium with a built-in set of common conventions. not all anime uses all of those conventions, but a lot of anime uses a lot of them--enough that you can apply those conventions pretty much across the board to all anime, and be correct eight or nine times out of ten. those conventions include things like katana being badass, tiny people with tiny handguns regularly blowing the bejesus out of larger and better-armed and -armored opponents, catgirls, etcetera.

You and I must be watching different anime, then.

Which, incidentally, seriously challenges your point.

~J

the fact that most people think of the same concepts when they say "anime"--the fact that many people in this discussion are mistaking anime for a genre instead of a medium at all--speaks pretty strongly for my point.

If people only saw Alf, Full House, or Family Ties clones as representive of American Television, they would also assume the rest of American Television is made up of kooky and off-beat families that utilize a laugh track.

Hasty Generalizations are not a sound foundation to build a point.

There is much anime that is good. Watch Wings of Honneamise.

There is much anime that is horrid. Watch anything with tentacles.

But anime itself, is just a medium.

That, or in their mind they're confusing "anime" with a specific genre of the anime medium.

the distinction is only important to people who watch a lot of anime. and there is a lot of anime out there that follows those conventions i mentioned--and others--blindly and completely. the anime that doesn't follow them is a definite minority. just because the best anime doesn't tend to doesn't change the fact that the majority of anime does. i mean, come on, there's an entire roleplaying game dedicated to replicating the idiosyncrasies of anime. that really speaks to the validity of viewing most anime as fitting several broad generalities.

I completely agree TJN. For instance, if someone only ever watched Episode II: Attack of the clones, they would think Starwars was asinine and stupid.

However most of us have seen the 'real' Starwars and no that it is not, only this latest incarnation.

My first experience with Anime was the classic Robotech. I loved it, but I didn't really see it as anime, just a cartoon that had a semi serious subject matter.

The next thing I saw was Akira, and that too I liked. But the next five or six things I saw were so horrid and disgusting that I didn't watch anything for years, until Ninja Scrolls. Now that was awesome.

My point is that a lot of anime is really horrid, but there are a few gems.

Look at it this way. Live action cinema has a lot of conventions that are the same, too. But that doesn't make Citizen Kane the same as Revenge of the Nerds III: The Next Generation beyond both being filmed in the same general medium.

yes, and the fact that there are a few gems doesn't magically negate the existence of the huge mass of unadulterated crap. the crap anime is still anime, and it still contributes to the definition of what anime is.

edit: yeah, funk, but anime has a lot more commonly-shared conventions than the live-action industry. there is lots and lots and lots of anime in which katana are the badassest weapons ever made, in which there are catgirls, in which giant robots blow stuff up, etcetera. an analogue in the live-action industry would be exploding cars. if cars wreck, in a live-action movie, they're probably going to explode. it's stupid, it's a hollywoodism, it's unrealistic, but it's still perfectly fair to expect cars to explode in movies, and to say something like "cars always explode in movies". just because there are a few, good films in which cars don't explode, that doesn't mean that "cars explode in movies" isn't a valid generalization.

The majority of anime doesn't even share the same genre, let alone the same conventions.

Anime is a style of animation. That's it. Neither the gems nor the crap have any contribution to the definition. This does not make the crap or the gems magically dissapear. It's still there but it has no bearing upon the medium of it's conveyance.

Honestly mfb, you're looking at anime with the same perception of cartoons. Cartoons in America have largely had a single genre since the 1920's (however that's beginning to change due primarily to the success of the Simpsons and Cartoon Network).

Watch the Venture Bros., it is a cartoon. But in no way in hell would it ever make Saturday Morning Cartoons.

EDIT: Cars explode in Action movies. Off the top of my head, I can't remember any cars exploding in say... a Romantic Comedy.

Simularly, bad ass katanas are a genre convention of Action anime.

While I'd normally argue plenty loud in defense of anime, this discussion really just sounds like fixed biases right now.

Can we get back to Birdy's standard assertion that Shadowrun is dead?

okay, that's fair. let me revise my statement: anime, as a medium, is largely a mix of certain easily-identifiable genres, which are in turn often combined in various ways. this means that when one speaks of "anime", others can make certain basic assumptions by taking into consideration other factors. for instance, if we're talking about robots and i say "anime", you'll probably think of giant mecha anime--Robotech, Gundam, etcetera. talking about anime in conjunction with SR conjures up a number of genres simultaneously--a little GitS:SAC, a little Ninja Scroll, a little [insert anime with catgirls].

the difference being that anime has more, and more common, shared elements, such as badass katana and giant robots. again, i'll point to the existence of an entire roleplaying game (BESM), available in not one but two game systems, that specifically deals in the elements common to anime. this rather strongly implies that many, many people view anime as having a number of easily-identifiable traits.

That is a matter of peoples' perception. An interesting project (completely beyond the scope of this discussion) would be to find out just how many examples of anime share these supposedly nigh-omnipresent traits.

Or maybe the perception is being created by what gets popularized here in the states.

Anyway, like I said, any identifiable body of work is going to share traits. Continuing my example above, one starts with the assertion that American movies feature big-haired women. If one looks at the large body of work, they find that this common feature is actually restricted to a specific genre ('80s films, in my example). Sure, there are crossovers, such as the use of a stock character as a figure to be mocked (or whatever) but on the whole, it stays in its genre.

My feeling is that if the totality of anime was examined, it would reveal itself to be just as diverse as American television shows (probably more, if we're just comparing cartoons). I make no claim to onmiscience on the subject of anime, but I have watched a whole hell of a lot of it, and there's more out there than the stereotypes suggest.

anime is basicly animated manga, and manga have everything for comedy to action to romance to fantasu to anything else. in fact there are more manga topics then there are for your avarage american or european comics (mostly userheroes or comedy). manga can be damn serious in topic...

problem is that most of the stuff that get exported is over the top action and comedy mangas and anime. robotech/macross, dragonball z, cowboy bebop, akira, to name some. therefor one gets a slanted view of the whole thing.


as for the comparison made by wounded ronin of anime being equal to d20 shows more about this pre-judgement of d20 then about anime. i dont want to turn this into a d20 debate (there have been to many lately). but it shows the same generalization about d20 that some in here show about anime.

pure and simle, anime is animated manga. and manga is basicly a special way to draw comics. most of the time with oversized eyes and simple emotional (at times exagerated) indiactions. BESM just captures the part about manga that would be most interesting to play, action, fantasy and sci-fi.

This thread has been seriously hijacked, but who cares.

but those are sold as special interest or collectors items. not general public in the way manga is sold. in fact comics are not fashionable to be reading on say the bus or train unless your a kid or have a special interest in it. therefor the content and tone gets slanted so as to aim for the expected market.

this is allso why the anime imported is mostly aimed for kids or teens. and therefor one gets a slanted view of what anime and manga is about. and that was the point i was trying to make.

To address the many posts that followed my last post:

Yes, the term "anime" just means animation. So, strictly speaking, it's a medium rather than a genre.

But, in many cases, mainstream anime (for example, that was really popular with little kids in Japan and then was ported to the US and was really popular with little kids there too) does have certain cliches or conventions to it.

Is there anime that bucks the rule or is genuinely creative and artistic? Of course.

But, the majority of anime that is consumed by the social mainstream is more likely to adhere to certain cliched characters, plots, and circumstances.

I like to compare the mainstream that I'm talking about to Comedia D'ellarte (sp?). It has certain cliched characters, plots, and circumstances, and that's why everyone can just kick back and really enjoy it.

Another way of thinking about it would be if I talked about how "Hollywood Cinema" tends to be cliched in the ways I described above. Are *all* Hollywood movies cliched? No. Are there some that are really creative, unique, and interesting? Sure. But, these interesting Hollywood movies are far outnumbered by the endless action, romantic comedy, comedy, etc. movies that spill out of Hollywood machine.

And nobody go stick the blame on "Well, it's only the crap that gets ported to the US!" A lot of Japanese people don't even watch anime seriously, much less know about the actual creative and sophisticated stuff. The crazy American who downloads fansubs from the internet of stuff that never got released in the US probably knows more about anime than many Japanese people.

Have any of you considered why anime that parodies cliches within other popular forms of anime, like Exel Saga, or Chromartie, for example, works and is funny? Because the most pervasive and mainstream product tends to be very cliched. No one would snort Calpis out of their nostrils when watching Chromartie if the "rebellious martial arts high school youth" tack weren't absolutely played to death and then reran and played some more. If large numbers of people didn't watch that genre again and again and again, then no one would get the joke.

I'm sorry, but the anime that is unique and interesting is to the cliched ocean as independent film making is to mainstream cinema in the US. I've been watching various shows since I was very very young and that's my conclusion after all these years. Call me prejudicial or uninformed if you want, but you'd just be WRONG, because I actually have logged a lot of hours just watching, including many things that were not to the best of my knowledge released in the US.

And you know what? I'm not even anti-anime. I consider myself a fan. I have over 10,000 posts as Blood Soaked Ronin logged on an anime forum, www.poalo.com/forum. So there's nothing to "defend". I'm not saying anime sucks due to the fact that a lot of it is cliched.

I'm really just pointing out that as in anything, the cream of the crop is NOT the same thing as the mainstream or most pervasive. Whether it's martial arts, cuisine, literature, or whatever.

In Record of Lodoss Wars the beserker guy swings his two-handed sword through...earth and rock. Nobody is that special.

but when your seeing those values your looking at the equivalent of 20+ karma pool SR runners.

Yeah, and you'd need that much Karma to get to the ridiculously high 35 CP I used as an example. 20 KP wouldn't help you out for more than a few Phases against 5 goons with no initiative-boosting ware. Whereas in D20 with DC 20 to hit them and 100+ HP, you could stand there in the open for minutes.

As I may or may not have already said, it's unrealistic for a team to retire on as little as 4 million apiece if they managed to make that much. Keep in mind that a lot of their retirement cred is going to go to keep their past from catching up with them rather painfully.

~J