The latest DLC episode for Grand Theft Auto IV features a typically biting satire of the less than healthy state of the current anime market in the form of Princess Robot Bubblegum, astutely lampooning just about every genre and even the woeful dubbing so beloved of US anime fans…
You can see the fittingly oppai laden and tentacle laced video below:
Few could fault its grasp of the current state of anime.
The DLC itself, Episodes From Liberty City – The Ballad of Gay Tony, is bought and paid for by Microsoft, so anyone without the Xbox 360 version can just forget about owning it.
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Why is anyone talking about America? Rockstar North is located in Scotland.
America is the center of the universe, don't you know?
A great man once said: "Everything belongs to America." Said man, when asked where to flee to if banned from America, admitted he didn't know.
I know no one implied america is a bad place but still, america or more rather United States is a cool country, they don't ban media or register users internet records.
Maybe not the land of freedom it once was but still free'er than many other places in europe or asia.
Just creepy, but it's true that too much moe will kill you.
english dubbing of japanese anime is the worst thing ever
English dubbing was only bad back in the 80's before they had voice actors. And you cant tell me there has never been a bad Japanese dub.
I beg to differ ive seen some pretty badly dubbed anime and they were long after the 80s.
german dubbing makes me cry
People like you make me rage.
Pretty much fits the description of about 10 percent of the animes out there
Funny how they're fine with parodying anime but tried to sue the ass off the guys making The Simpsons Game for parodying GTA...
LOL! I forgot abt that!
LOL, simply LOL
blah, no flat chest loli.
epid fail
or does that mean they think loli is a good thing in anime?
I so lol'd 'coz of trufax XDDD
Is it just me, or does this seem to not be a parody of all anime, and is only a parody of the english dub of La Blue Girl?
ITS ANIME AT ITS FINEST!
I love that part.
best show this season
Satire is serious business.
*waits until the episodes get on the Internet*
so this is what Rockstar thinks of anime....
Only if you think that the events of GTA 4 are what Rockstar thinks of the common life of a New York immigrant.
The people who made this trailer for this fake show are fucking geniuses. I mean I love anime but some shows are just too ridiculous.
Excuse me while I buy an XBox.
If all the shows were moeblob or oversexualized shows then most of the currently airing shows would be. I checked with the anime series currently being released and there are 6 shows that fit this out of several dozen currently running anime. People just like to focus on the bad and ignore the good. The bad is the small percentage of shows that are considered moeblob or oversexualized which doesn't precede whether it has a good story or not. The good is the many shows that don't fit under the said catagories.
Well said. This is more a parody of a hentai anime than regular anime. Sadly most westerners are so ignorant that they think that all anime is about tentacle rape.
The anime I've watched recently is Tokyo Magnitude 8.0, Kyou no Go no Ni, Shinigami no Ballad, Eden of The East, Ouran High School Host Club and Kannagi. I see very few similarities between these shows and Rockstar's parody. About the most similar series to the parody was Kannagi but even that is a considerable stretch.
To be fair, Rockstar probably intended this as a joke but unfortunately it has come off as being rather offensive to anime fans and the anime industry as a whole.
To be fair, Rockstar pretty much insults everyone left and right with these types of parodies and side jabs, so stop being an oversensitive prick.
@West
Just FYI, Ouran High School Host Club is several years old now, and so does not count. But I agree with your statement.
somehow some of this reminded me of Perfect Hair Forever, and looked like "Brenda's BACKstory".
It was a pretty funny parody nonetheless. Rockstar's the media troll. Don't take them too seriously.
Yeah man, offensive to us anime fans lets ban it.
Some people are too sensitive....im a huge anime fan and i found it kind of funny. I didnt order anime whore lol
Rockstar pull the piss out of everything , why wouldn't they do the same to anime. I thought it was great.
not only did it feel like a jab at anime, but also at American marketing and dubbing, and even at American cartoons that are animated in a manga/anime style and passed off as "Americanime". i give Rockstar props for a parody well done.
I noticed this too - in fact, the selection of overdone older titles and "hentai" anime as parody elements is itself a low blow at an industry which has been slow to market more modern titles.
Amen to that.
wow well done, i may buy GTA just for that
Is it sad that I'd still watch this?
Oppai Missiles!!
i actually saw this at GTA chinatown wars billboard. well not the video.
"biting satire of the less than healthy state of the current anime market"?
How could this not have been made at any time since 1989?
It's also awfully blunt. "Why do I have to wear skimpy clothes? Anime has bad translation lol". The best joke was the deadpan "women dressed as schoolgirls" thing and the parody of loli via sexualizing the "baby" heroine.
i'lol'd hard at the video.
true story bro.
At least Girlchan in Paradise is actually entertaining. This one's actually a bit patronizing, much like those Meet the Spartans movies.
Funny, but not as funny as...
REPUBLICAN SPACE RANGERS!!!!!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9a5SFr1v4LY&NR=1 [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9a5SFr1v4LY&NR=1]
Also from the game.
Reminds me of La Blue girl...All the western just thinks off are tentacles.
Anyone who gets offended by this need to take a long, hard shit.
This video still makes me laugh, because it's so accurate.
and it's way better than mainstream us cartoons, maybe the should try to keep doing parody anime instead of the stupid shows the come up nowdays.
aw man! i was hoping theyd say, "now we make'a love like, thrash can!"
Lol, Kappa Mikey?
I hate it when anime sexualizes moe when you don't need to. In my opinion I think that's why some people look down on moe so much because it's being turned into some kind of worthless sex-sludge. Some people equate moe to something like this Princess Robot Bubblegum (to me it reminds me of really bad bargain-bin eroge).
...i NEVER get a baby hot girl in a basket on my doorstep.
Needs more lolis.
Few could fault its grasp of the state of late 80s, early 90s anime FTFY.
Current state would be a moe moe harem parody.
This made me not hate Microsoft.
For like two seconds, but whatever.
"Crazy misogynistic sexuality"
QFT.
Yeah, for those wondering what a Japanese person thinks about this, he's laughing. Who you ask? My otaku next door neighbor. If I have his words correctly he said:
Eh, its the equivalent to you American otakus facination with Princess Lea. Not bad though.
"Eh, its the equivalent to you American otakus facination with Princess Lea."
Lol, let's not forget Lara Croft too.
As far as satire goes, that's about as subtle as a kerb-stomping in stilletos. I think it'd have been a whole lot funnier if they'd shown a little restraint.
Welcome to a Rockstar game.
It was a satire?
I thought it was the real shit and Rockstar was finally making anime.
Imagine that, it would rock.
it would totally kick fuckin ass
Yeah man, only japan is sugoi enough to make anime.
(sugoi means awsesome in japanese ^_^)
If they actually made an anime then it would be the best anime since Cowboy Bebop.
No way. Anime needs to be made by the Japanese. Western anime would suck hairy monkey balls so hard they'd turn purple, develop three cancers at once and finally divide by zero.
They could have been a whole lot worse. At least it obvious that they are making fun of old school anime. If they were making fun of recent anime then we probably wouldn't be finding this as funny.
I was expecting some serious stereotyping of anime in general, mayb something clever judging by the comments, but... wtf? Big boobs, skimpy outfits, bad dubbing, tentacles, mecha, etc. Wtf? That's it? What else is new? Seriously. Anything for a laugh, huh? God...
Papillon Rose + La Blue Girl = Princess Robot Bubblegum?
To everyone thinking there are to many moe anime... have you all check what is airing this season? how many moe animes in comparison to other type of animes?
You're kidding, right? It's almost ALL moe anime this season, or was that your point? There's three exceptions, and one of them is turning into moe-in-disguise...
Maybe you'll be kind enough to list the three non moe animes?
Blue literature? Trapeze? Winter Sonata? Miracle Train? Book of Bantorra? Kimi ni Todoke? there are a few more title that I can add to the list, but I'll stop here.
People sometimes confused between moe anime and anime with moe characters in it... not to mention people probably have different interpretation of moe.
Last summer there are lots of moe in animes, but probably only three that are really moe animes. A few others can be argued depending what your take on what makes an anime a moe anime.
"People sometimes confused between moe anime and anime with moe characters in it..."
QFT! Though i would change "sometimes" to "all of the time".
What I don’t understand is the relation between this videoclip and the GTA IV videogame. Can someone explain it to me?
In the GTA4 game, this Princess Robot Bubblegum was a radio show. Now in these expansions as the story has progressed, the franchaise has moved to the big time and now has the TV show.
They're just taking note of that while parodying anime at the same time, since like we've seen with these comments, people are bound to get offended a cause a fuss, which is what Rockstar want since it helps advertise their product.
GTAIV: Calling the kettle black with lots of money to burn.
Modern state of anime? Isnt it always was like that? sine 80's, there's been jewels, and there's been shit
Hell, even the parodies of anime have looked like this for at least a decade.
4 years from now and this will be everything you will see on the anime market.
It's a shame.
Anyone who truly believes this and isn't joking, I don't think I can respect all that well.
Just because all you hear about on the internet or in America (etc.) might be this, it doesn't exactly mean it is.
In fact, moe anime and fanservice anime are only a sliver of the profits of anime/manga (big enough to make an impact, but far from monopolizing the industry).
If this is supposed to be an anime spoof, they've covered just about 5%-15% of the anime out there. No exaggeration, believe it or not.
Then give actual examples so we might believe what you say. Throwing percentages randomly ain't gonna help you to make a point.
Yes, this video is very stereotypical and takes all the bad merchandising and bad anime tropes in order to mock the anime industry but, if people laugh about that it's because they find some insightful attacks in it.
Look at the Fall season anime. A lot of them contain a lot of fanservice and almost no interesting plot. And if there's one, you have to wait 3 to 5 episodes to get something at least interesting and senseful. "A certain scientific railgun" → 2 episodes of Yuri fanservice, 1 episode with a plot ruined in terms of seriousness (Oh god, tazer in the eye... no wait... wtf !?) and 1 episode with Touma-rediscovery. The only two "hints" are "Database lies" and "The scientific woman". "The Sacred Blacksmith", Fanservice, Stupid woman is stupid, fanservice, Sluggish plot evolution. The only character with non-idiotic personality seems to be "the savior" (which is quite cliché).
Almost all others are everlasting overrated romance anime. There's exceptions like "Darker than Black ～Comet of Gemini～" but they are a few.
Even Seitokai no Ichizon satirical jokes becomes quite repetitive and bland after a few episodes.
So, IMHO, yes, saying that every anime will become like this GTA video because of some mystical merchandising power hypnotizing the anime producers crowd is clearly, at best, an uneducated opinion. But it also seems like there's a clear intent to produce a lot and lot of anime about big (and stupid) boob girls with overused clichés and tiresome scenarios, like this video satire, since it's fast, cheap and quite easy.
Laughing about a parody doesn't require anything particularly insightful. People laugh at movies in the vein of "Meet the Spartans", and those aren't insightful parodies. They're not funny on their own, either. They're also not good. In fact I'm pretty sure that they're a human rights violation with how bad they are. But someone out there is chuckling at them because they keep getting made.
The thing about this parody is that it really isn't very insightful at all. It's a parody that's based mostly on other parodies, which based themselves on other parodies, and somewhere someone may have actually watched a couple of episodes. Just like the Dragonball Z parodies that go on and on about powering up for three months and growing hair of skyscraper proportions... a lot of the people doing the parodies probably haven't seen more than part of an episode, they're just repeating someone else's parody where they powered up for two months and grew hair of radio tower proportions.
I mean, this thing basically just seems to be "Perfect Hair Forever" with somewhat better animation. It wasn't insightful then, and it's not insightful now.
As William Shatner said, "You people have been making jokes at my expense all night long, and frankly, I'm insulted... at how bad you are at it."
I didn't deny that it had an impact on the industry, nor did I deny that it sold well.
The big moe series do sell extremely well (K-ON!, Bakemonogatari, and Haruhi are swell examples of top anime series in the genre).
In fact, I'm not really talking about series with moe character designs, but rather, fan-service based series made to exploit images of the female body using insignificant plots plots.
The percentages up there were, indeed, just an estimate based on my own knowledge, so here are the thoughts behind my estimate.
Of the 65 anime scheduled this fall, only [around] 15 were fan-service based.
In the summer, of the 45, only [about] 10 were fan-service based.
And in the spring, [about] 12/63.
The majority of these series not being watched by Japanese audiences.
And of course, you cannot take children series, popular shounen series, popular shoujo series, some of the older-women romance anime, and plenty of re-runs of older classics on television.
Practically none of these are fan-service based.
In short, I was simply pointing out that one should not take one small side of the picture and assume it represents the whole or will represent the whole.
Anime is huge, so of course, each part of it has a huge fan-base somewhere.
But considering the difference in opinions and preferences between different groups of people, if one hangs out on moe-themed news sites (Sankakucomplex) and hears mostly that part of the story, it is likely that such a person will assume all otaku are similar to them and what they know is the gist of anime.
It's not stupidity that I'm accusing anyone of (because most people here can think for themselves, right?).
I'm just saying that you should open your mind to other things. >.>
I did say that it's fine as a joke...
Just please don't actually believe that other anime will become overwhelmed by these kinds of series. ^^;
I'm curious what the Japanese think about this.
they probley dont give a shit...but when it comes to the sterotype of anime its pretty much true
Except the Japanese are very sensitive about what other countries think of them. If this was made by the Japanese then they wouldn't give a shit but since this was made by Americans then they will probably be pissed.
Excel Saga did it in one episode.
I'm waiting for a Japanese interpretation of stereotypical American cartoons filled with ridiculous amounts of violence.
The joke will be on them, when R* makes Princess Bubblegum their next flagship game.
I'd watch it
Well I just fapped to this. Fake anime girl or not she is still hot.
That MUST be worth some gamerscore...
10g: Completed Princess Robot Bubblegum minigame one-handed.
Radio-active nymphomaniac plants? Ohh yea, i see that happening~
Oddly enough, the current hentai video market isn't like this. Is pretty much like regular porn featuring rape/humiliation.
Okay, it is the same. Just not as many tentacles. If any.
So will her nemesis be King Droid Taffy Pull?
This = awesome
unfortunately this is pretty depressing... anime has just become that pretty much.
It may well accurately lampoon the current state of anime, but was anime ever all that different?
Anime is anime, it takes a while to make anime, so the production companies can only really make money from adhering to the public demands for things...
We aren't Japanese nor do we live there, so our opinion doesn't count, but the opinions of all those Japanese otaku, do count, so long as they have money.
It's voting with your wallet.
Yep, they at last had a good storyline that makes somehow sense and not just random fanservice thrown together.
There are anime with good storylines now. There were random fanservice anime then. (Whenever "then" was.)
People just put on their nostalgia goggles, especially when a batch of younger fans comes along and is interested in newer, slightly different shows.
Plenty of the anime that are now elevated to the level of classics, that bemoaning fans speak of in terms of longing for the day, still drip with fanservice. In fact, accounting for "inflation" of the subgenre, many of them would have been counted as fanservice series... they just came before blatant fanservice anime became its own sort of sub-genre.
Similarly, many modern series that are brushed off as "moeblob fanservice" actually have greater depth to the characters and more emotional development among them than many of the said classics. Basically, things just happen in slightly different ways.
Teal dear version: New anime, same as the old anime.
("Was anime ever all that different" anon here - must get around to registering one day)
Quite so. I've been watching anime for over 40 years, and it's not really changed all that much apart from the character designs, and of course all the stuff that goes with the digital age. Most plots have always been pretty dire, and as for fanservice, there were naked lolis even in the 1960's.