Anime

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Chris has liked anime since at least 2000.

Anime (アニメ) is a colloquial term for Japanese animation, a rather popular style that's been subbed/dubbed/emulated for its many hit series worldwide, drawing the attention of many loyal followers; including Chris. Over the years, Chris has taken quite an interest in the medium. Whether it be for inspiration or self pleasure, it's managed to make itself quite a large part of Chris's life. Chris enjoys the artform to some extent, as well, although it's not his primary obsession. Needless to say, he's watched a lot of anime, bought plenty of anime through the PlayStation Network, and swiped as many ideas as he can get his head around from his favorite anime series.

Chris and anime

Sailor Chris.

It's not clear when Chris first discovered Japanese cartoons, although it's safe to guess that Toonami, mainly Dragon Ball Z, or Pokemon were the seeds. He was a serious Pokémon enthusiast by the late '90s, and by 2004 he had enough interest in anime generally to attend the Anime Mid-Atlantic convention in Richmond, Virginia.

Chris doesn't appear to be into anime as much as people think he is, even if he often gets slapped with the "weeaboo" tag. He returned to Anime Mid-Atlantic in 2005, but hasn't been back to a convention since then. (He considered a trip to Baltimore's Otakon convention in 2010, but primarily as a way of meeting Jackie in person.) In his posts on the Adult Swim forums, he didn't have much to say about the Japanese imports on the Adult Swim schedule, except to note that he didn't like the cartoonish male nudity in Crayon Shin-chan (big shock there) and he wanted to see more anime featuring "very-close-to-nude girls" (even bigger shock).

Chris still ripped off characters and story concepts from anime left and right, however, and he still watches some newer anime series. His PSN account shows that he downloaded the entire "harem" comedy-drama Shuffle! in 2009; given that it stars a hapless twit who finds himself surrounded by willing women for no very good reason, Chris probably loved it (he has yet to comment on the scene where the main character got his eye cut by his psychotic galpal). He also downloaded all of Gunslinger Girl in early 2010, doing plenty to undermine his contention that he isn't a pedofork.

Chris summoning his stand,「Let Me Call You Sweetheart」.

According to his Netflix queue from around November 2009, Chris has purchased a number of anime in big sets. His anime sets centered around three of his likes: Sonic, Transformers and scantily-clad women. In terms of Sonic, only three disks were seen purchased, all three centered on Sonic X. It is more than likely that before the queue was taken, he had seen the other disks that comprises the series. While he had most of the Transformers series that were made in the last ten years, some of those were part of the Transformers saga known as the Unicron Trilogy: Armada, Energon and Cybertron.

The rest of the anime, as stated earlier, revolve around women — strong women who are capable of defending themselves without simpering over a man, unlike some creatures we all know and love. Some of those films and series included Read or Die, Slayers Return, Elfen Lied and, probably the least surprising of all, Kekko Kamen, a comedic action series featuring a heroine who battles evil while stark naked. The last series might have had a particular impact on Chris, as the face-rape of Jason Kendrick Howell in Sonichu 8 is very similar to Pubic Hair Jump, a move by which the title character of Kekko Kamen kills her enemies.

In his chats about sex with PandaHalo, Chris mentioned that he's watched some pornographic ("hentai") anime, but he didn't go into any further detail. However, we do get some insight into what kind of hentai Chris is into from Episode 17 during the elevator gag; unsurprisingly, it includes Sonic the Hedgehog, Pokémon and Transformers porn.

Anime and Sonichu

SO KAWAII! UGUU~

Although Chris was interested in anime before he began drawing his Sonichu comics, he didn't start giving the characters in his comic an obviously anime-inspired look until Sonichu #5, which he completed in the spring of 2006. This was almost certainly the result of Megan Schroeder's influence — she was a big fan of Sailor Moon and other popular Japanese cartoons, and Chris was pursuing her especially fervently at the time. Practically speaking, this shift in style involved giving his characters huge, prismatic, saucer-like eyes, which make them look more stoned than animu, or "set-theoretic intersection" (∩) eyes. He also made use of creative elements that work in anime but not in a sequential comic, as well as tedious and unnecessary clichés common to anime.

Needless to say, despite the radical artwork style change in his comics, Chris still was cockblocked.

Since his relationship with Megan deteriorated (eventually blowing up in his face), anime hasn't been so obvious an influence on Chris’s artwork. He still goes overboard with the giant saucer eyes from time to time, though.

Anime Chris has ripped off

Main article: Things Chris has ripped off#Anime

File:SchuComic6Page50.jpg

So pitiful, it's true. An example of Chris's anime-inspired artwork.

Like every other form of entertainment he enjoys, Chris views anime as a rich source of ideas that he can swipe and integrate into his own "original" works. Aside from the most obvious victims of his anti-creativity (like Pokémon), these are some of the shows he’s abused.

• Bobobo-bo Bo-bobo: The My Little Pony greeting card that Chris gave to Mimms mashed this series up with Naruto.
• Dragon Ball Z: Chris's infamous curse-ye-ha-me-ha attack comes from Dragon Ball.
• Cutey Honey: Chris quotes, almost word for word, Cutey Honey transformation speech in Sonichu 5. It should be clear why he even knows about Cutey Honey.
• Excel Saga: Consciously and otherwise, Chris has lifted (and butchered) dozens of jokes from this series.
• Fullmetal Alchemist: One of Chris's My Little Ponies is based off of main character Edward Elric.
• Inuyasha: The entrapment of Wes-Li Sonichu in Sonichu #2 rips off the similar entrapment of Inuyasha's title character.
• Macross Frontier: Blanca traced her illustration of Jiggliami over a character from this series, and Chris unthinkingly traced over her tracing.
• Pretty Cure: Chris's wonder-twin team-up with his sister Crystal in Sub-Episode 8 lifts from this popular magical-girl series, one of Megan's favorites.
• Sailor Moon: Chris ripped Sailor Megtune from here, obviously, among many other things.
• Samurai Pizza Cats: In a spectacular display of unoriginality, even by Chris's standards, he swiped this title to give to CWCville's platoon of robot defenders. Apparently they deliver pizza in their off hours.
• Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann: Simonchu and Simonla Rosechu were inspired by this series, although Chris probably doesn't realize that.
• Yu-Gi-Oh!: In made-up Yu-Gi-Oh! cards.
• YuYu Hakusho: Chris's Zap Cannon attack in Sonichu #10 bears an uncanny resemblance to the protagonist's Reigan attack.

End of Evangelion

Ivy got Chris to see End of Evangelion as inspiration for finishing the comic.

Chris's summary: A generic tale of a boy's struggle for acceptance… a lot like him. Chris thought he saw symbolism (IN MY EVA?), but he's too stupid to see what it symbolized.

Chris's favorite parts:

• The Misato and Kaji sex scene (where you saw only feet), because it made him feel that he was a big boy and that he was watching a no-kids cartoon.
• The Rei Angels that were kawaii and had boobs.
• The internal struggles of Shinji.

Chris didn't like:

• Asuka freaking out.
• Everyone turns to orange tang juice.
• Rei Angels getting turned on by stabbing themselves.
• Rei melting everywhere.
• The unhappy ending, because as we all know, he can't stand anything that's even remotely depressing.

Chris was familiar with Evangelion prior to watching the movie at Ivy's behest, "but not really a heavy watcher". Despite this, Chris owns a soap dish in the shape of the character Rei Ayanami, as pictured in his hotel at Anime-Mid Atlantic in 2005. It's likely that Chris saw this item at the convention, didn't even register the figure as an Evangelion character, and bought it because he thought a soap dish with a "hot anime chick" on it would make for a fun novelty item.

See also

• Anime Wings
• Anime Mid-Atlantic
• Adult Swim
• Shoujo Beat