Is master chief fighting a gorilla in the Toei one?

Oh big surprise. A typical anime "War is bad but inevitable" intellectual circle jerk.

What is it with sci-fi anime that makes it obsessed with being about WAR R BAD?

It's not smart or dramatic anymore, it's a tired cliche.

Not so much a cliche... more like a fact.

Regardless of the random blond kids, it still looks pretty cool.

Fighting gorillas=win

"Not so much a cliche... more like a fact."

Yeah, and the sky is blue, but we don't need fifty soliloquies going on for 24 episodes about it to show how "deep" the writer is.

The Brute and Elite looked like Digimons!

I'm neither a Halo fan nor an anime fan, but I'm actually interested!

Looks like a gorilla, but it's probably a Brute. Same difference though, 'cept Brutes are gorillas with armor and grenade launchers.

It's not a gorilla, its obviously Goku in his Monkey Sayian form.

I'd have to take issue with some of your points. As a disclaimer, I'm not doing this to "troll" you (ugh, I do loathe that term), because I enjoy your writing and respect your opinions, and honestly, what's the point in trying to annoy someone you'll never meet?

No, I just find it interesting that you (quite rightly) lambasted Transformers 2 and its ilk for being mindless action with no context or character, and yet here you almost angrily refer to everything that ISN'T action as "boring shit".

Why the knee-jerk hatred for the blonde children? "The Fall of Reach" novel (and "Ghosts of Onyx", to a lesser degree) detailed the Spartans' training when they were children, and touched upon the ethical issues of using them as soldiers. The theme isn't foreign to the Halo universe, and it's far from confirmation that this anime will be one long proselytisation about the evils of war.

I personally thought the trailer was TOO action-heavy for me. Notice that I said me; I enjoy the Halo universe, and understand its focus, and wouldn't want to see it turned into something it isn't. What works for me and what works for the story are two entirely different things.

But saying that, I do hope one of the stories is slower. All stories need to be grounded by context, although the amount needed differs depending on the genre. In this case, I see no issue with one of the stories focusing on the larger effects of the Human-Covenant War. Again, it's nothing the novels didn't do.

I'll be seeing it when it comes out. I'm not impatient for it: it probably will be too action-heavy for my tastes; and a lot of the animation has that drab, slightly static look that a lot of American anime collaborations tend to have. Still, I think it's only fair to give it a chance.

Sorry for the essay! As I said at the start, I don't intend to offend anyone by having a difference of opinion. I just think it's an interesting topic of discussion, and that is, ostensibly, one of the reasons we're here!

This is more than just wank. All of a sudden, the Halo series is full of pussies and emotions.

I don't even like the Halo series much at all (the first was the only OK game), but now it just seems like MS's poor attempt at expanding to the market in the east.

Man, I'd rather see that red vs blue cartoon being made over this pile of shit. Who ever needed more context in Halo? Point at the thing you want dead and kill it.

@Manwards- I agree.

I'm looking forward to this.
Everyone continuously bashes this and says it'll be crap. But if it were Gears of War everyone would say its sooo good , Cliffy B is the greatest game designer ever, and then proceed to kiss the ground he walks on and get in line to give him a B.J.

@dannyboy- you'd rather have a cartoon with the same five jokes used over and over again rather than something with a story?

I have no problem with the blonde chick, since half the Spartan IIs were female the problem is I'm afair they're going to just keep her as a 100 pound waifu were all of them were 300 pounds of muscle and seven feet tall

@715
100% agree. But without T&A its hard to sell anything.I just hope TOEI has master chief take off his helm and revile that he has been yajirobe the whole time. That would be amazing.

I'm still pretty skeptical about American/Japanese co-productions and I'm not into the Halo mytho's but the trailer looks kinda promising, I'm interested to see how it will turn out.

and if it is anything like the Animatrix or Gotham Knight, it will be about 1/3 meh, 1/3 decent, and 1/3 awesome. Seriously, why is it that western properties have to become compilations of 10 minute studio short films? they should pick ONE studio, ONE director, and make a feature film, or a 6 episode OVA, or a 12 episode TV series or something, not a 70 minute clipshow like Animatrix.

Also, I agree with Manwards, mindless western crap like Dragonball:evolution and Transformers gets blasted for being nothing but explosions and unfunny gag humor, yet more introspective style anime gets blasted for being "boring shit".

From an objective point of view, I like the whole thing. Then again I'm not sure non-Halo fans are the target audience...I'll watch it regardless.

Those underfed, blonde twelwe-year olds really need to go the fuck away.

Pause at 1:33
That spartan's tag is 1337

@Manwards
The key word is that Transformers had "mindless" action. What we all hope for (and I think Rob would agree) is for a plot that can advance without completely halting the action or taking the focus off of the main character. Rob's review of Transformers stated something similar when he said that that movie focused on humans rather than the actual robots. So what we ended up with were robots fighting in between sequences of humans stopping the action and advancing the "plot".

I, personally, would love to see the bigger picture of the Halo universe and that is a weakness that the games most definitely had. You're Master Chief and the player sees what you see so the plot ended up being a vague mess. Obviously, the novels expand upon the game's universe and explain a lot, but with a movie (especially with anime), there is a danger for these plot sequences to just be talking heads waxing philosophical for several minutes and could throw off the pacing.

I see your point and I am a firm believer that movies, games, what-have-you should have a solid plot to hold them together. However, the reason why we can want more action but criticize Transformers is that Transformers (and Dragonball: Evolution for BadNflu3nce) is that those movies were badly made in general and any plot surrounding the action was poorly executed and lazily put together.

We don't just want action, we want well thought out action.

@Declan

I completely understand that. Action may not be my genre, per se, but I can still thrill to an action scene if it involves characters and situations I care about. Since this topic is related to video games, I'll use "Metal Gear Solid 3" as an example. I love Hideo Kojima's insistence on giving even the most minor of characters a full backstory, but that isn't to say my pulse doesn't race when Snake is fleeing Groznyj Grad on the back of a motorbike, being pursued by a massive rolling tank. As I said, I wouldn't want a Halo project to trade action for exposition, but there's still room for both. It's just finding the balance.

With regards to keeping the focus on the main character, it should be pointed out that the Master Chief is really quite dull. Intentionally so. Like most playable protagonists in first-person shooter games, he's little more than a blank slate that the player can superimpose their own identity onto. Gordon Freeman of "Half-Life" would be the best example of that.

The Master Chief has no complex motives or agenda. He just follows his orders - the player's controller commands, as well as his superiors in the story - and speaks only when entirely necessary. There's no room for him in a story more complicated than finding a target and blowing it up. That's why much of the expanded universe stories either make him a minor character, or simply don't feature him at all. So, it makes perfect sense to me that some (if not most) of these anime shorts won't heavily involve him.

Also, between the games, the novels and the comics, the Master Chief's timeline is pretty much set in concrete from the fall of Reach (before the first game) through to the end of Halo 3. Six of the seven shorts in this anime are canon, so unless they focused on his earlier life, there wouldn't be a lot of room for side stories.

I'd expect most of them to focus on other Spartans. There are hundreds of them, only a handful of which have been fleshed out in other formats, which leaves a lot of room for writers to tell whatever stories they want while still staying true to the fiction.

Since two of the stories would appear to be about the Forerunners, and another suggests showing the conflict between the Brutes and Elites, I wouldn't be surprised if the Master Chief only starred in a single story, if that.

Well so much for my optimism....

I think what everyone is trying to say is that they don't want a Micheal "Explosion, Gotta Mobilize the military every 5 seconds" Bay type of Feature. But at the same time I really don't think that anyone wants a Ghost in the Shell 2 innocence. Where they walk around for 100 plus minutes and talk about the meaning of life or how war is bad.And leave you feeling disappointed

But also believe that there is a such thing as too much back story.Because i really don't need to know what character x favorite food is in the morning if its not essential to development or the story.

A: Jesus Fuck I wish people would learn to spell "Michael" properly.

B: Haha, in that Bones clip it looks like Master Chief gets a Marauder power-armor suit from the "Starship Troopers" anime...that would be a cute little riff!

I hope this will work out!

i'm so rry, but those blond children are just about the most interesting thing in that trailer. why's that one blond pussy pointing a gun at that other blond pussy? inquiring minds want to know.

as for the other crap, just looks like more of why i don't care about halo in the first place. especially the footage that just looks like halo gameplay. honestly, all that "action" looks pretty boring.

Hmm. A lady pointing a gun at another lady. What doesn't Halo do?

Long Haired Girl: Hello, I'm a Mac.
Girl with Gun: *BANG*

True story. It took four companies to revive the long haired girl, but after that she was abandoned.

This is exactly why I hate anime.

Well, the blonde kids one seems to be the studio 4c one. From the description in an ANN article, their story is covering the history of the universe. So I'm think it is like the Animatrix one Second Renaissance. Maybe it's all nice until an invasion blows all those blonde kids up.

@ Paul

I'm with you, pal. Anime is Japanese for "shitty cartoons with identical-looking characters, comprised of lots of still images surrounded by motion lines".

I outgrew anime when I was in my early 20s. I evolved, and it never did. It stayed exactly the same.

However, as I'm not the biggest Halo fan, I don't particularly care what they do to pimp out Microsoft's cash cow. They could turn it into a musical, and I'd consider that an improvement over the outright plagiarizing they did with the Halo story, characters, and visuals. The whole series is filled with direct rip-offs from "Aliens", "Blade Runner", "Predator", "Starship Troopers" and a few other movies. Not just homages, either, but direct line-for-line rip-offs.

Halo is about the most unoriginal thing out there; It's just well-crafted and a lot of the people playing it haven't seen the stuff it steals from.

I have to say this. Basically, Japanese studios are screwing around with Hollywood studios. Their secret motto is: Rip off as much money as possible from them, while Anime is hot and trendy. They say that how wonderful their Hollywood project in front of Americans, but in Japanese interviews they hate American producers who dictating them what to do.

Studio 4C made better anime for Russians (First Squad) than for some American video game anime that they barely understood. Not everyone in the world plays Halo and nor care about it.

To ZeroCorpse and Paul

You're biased. I bet you only watched selected few hyped by your peers back in your youth. You're just making a blanket statement. You sounds exactly like some people who say that all movies are bad because of several bad movies. Most of Anime are bad even today, but titles like "Sword of the Stranger" and "Akira", will make you to retract your words. Would you be happy If I said all American cartoons are bad because I watched nothing but Hanna Barbara cartoons and Transformers?