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Comment by donatj | Hacker News Reader

I watched it as a teen at a friend's house around year 2000. Might have been an early bootleg, he was really into bootlegged Japanese VHS tapes. I found the story and tone really disturbing. I remembered it this way, and wasn't really interested in seeing it again.

Didn't watch it again until maybe a year ago when my wife wanted to watch it. She's gotten really into Studio Ghibli and we've been working our way through the catalog. Even so, I was actually still hesitant to watch it.

I found it much different than I remembered. Layered story with actual shades of gray that Hollywood isn't capable of producing. Only movie I can think of where there are multiple factions and none of them are clearly good or bad. Compelling narrative all around. It's genuinely a masterwork only outdone by Spirited Away.

Point of my story is, I wasn't ready for it, I don't know if America was.

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> I found it much different than I remembered. Layered story with actual shades of gray that Hollywood isn't capable of producing. Only movie I can think of where there are multiple factions and none of them are clearly good or bad

Actually I feel like western movies and tv tends to be more morally ambiguous than anime. In terms of multiple factions where none are clearly good/bad, Game of Thrones comes to mind

But is Game of Thrones an American or a British thing?

George R. R. Martin is American, and Game of Thrones was produced by HBO. It's an American thing.

This.

From what I've experienced of anime, majority of them have a pretty straightforward protagonist v antagonist storylines. Notable exception: Death Note

Game of Thrones is based on a book series and for the first couple seasons was very faithful to that book series in terms of characters and plot. You can't really give credit to Hollywood writers for something created by a novelist. In fact, as soon as they started running out of book material you see a noticeable decline in the quality of writing.

Looks as though Spirited Away (one of my favorite animations) also flummoxed the world. Here it (initially) earned $10M, (Japan at $234M, China $69M, France $6M)

[https://www.boxofficemojo.com/title/tt0245429/]

Not too surprising for the US, which pretty much ignored electronic music, both domestic (except for NIN) and foreign (except for 'Autobahn'), until Prodigy arrived in 1996 with "Fat of the Land" (US#1??!!) and landed one more with 'Smack My Bitch Up'.

You must have a very narrow concept of "electronic music?" Otherwise, the second British invasion, hip hop, house, and freestyle, all huge in the 80s would like a word with you.

Even things traditionally not electronic like R&B and Hard Rock were significantly influenced by drum machines and synthesizers in the 80s. TR-808? Keytars?

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