Anime
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Although anime isn't one of his most notable enthusiasms, Chris still enjoys those big-eyed cartoons from Japan. 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
It's not clear when Chris first discovered Japanese cartoons, although it's safe to guess that Pokémon or Dragon Ball Z were the seeds. He was a serious Pokemon 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, though, 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. 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 rips 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 also downloaded all of Gunslinger Girl in early 2010, doing plenty to undermine his contention that he isn't a pedofork.
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 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, are all directed towards 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 series included Read or Die, Slayers: Return, Elfen Lied and, probably the least surprising of all, Kekko Kamen.
Anime and Sonichu
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 the fifth issue of the series, 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 "upside-down U" eyes.
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
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.
- Dragon Ball Z: Chris's infamous curse-ye-ha-me-ha attack comes from Dragon Ball.
- Excel Saga: Consciously and otherwise, Chris has lifted (and butchered) dozens of jokes from this series.
- Bobobo-bo Bo-bobo: The My Little Pony greeting card that Chris gave to Mimms mashed this series up with Naruto.
- 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 Schroeder'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 uses the protagonist's Reigan attack, calling it "Zap Cannon", in Sonichu 10.
End of Evangelion
Ivy got Chris to see End of Evangelion as inspiration for finishing the comic.[1]
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:
- Everyone turns to orange tang juice
- Rei Angels getting turned on by stabbing themselves.
- The unhappy ending.
- Asuka freaking out (I don't wanna die).