Why Does the Supernatural Anime Look So Damned Good?
Seriously, I don’t get it. In all my years at Anime Insider and after, I’ve seen many Western franchise/Japanese anime collaborations come and go, and they’re generally just dire. It’s not that the two can’t mix, it’s that the franchise’s rules and tenets and Japanese auteurship almost never mix, and you end up with boring nonsense like 2/3rds of Batman: Gotham Knight 99% of the time. And yet, here’s a lengthy promo for Madhouse’s anime adaptation of Supernatural, and it looks amazing. The character designs — even though that’s primarily dudes in tight t-shirts — are great. It looks like they’re using animation to amp up the horror effects and storytelling appropriately. They even have Jensen Ackles and Jared Padalecki stop by to say “konnichi-wa” while wearing tight t-shirts. I am not at all emotionally prepared for a good anime adaptation of a U.S. series, especially one that’s a CW show, no matter how beloved. This shouldn’t be happening. (Via Anime News Network)
About The Author
Robert Bricken is one of the original co-founders of the site formerly known as Topless Robot, and its first editor-in-chief, serving from 2008-12. He brought the site to prominence with “nerd news, humor and self-loathing” as its motto, raising it from total internet obscurity to a readership in the millions, with help from his savage “FAQ” movie reviews and Fan Fiction Fridays. Under his tenure Topless Robot was covered by Gawker, Wired, Defamer, New York magazine, ABC News, and others, and his articles have been praised by Roger Ebert, Avengers actor Clark Gregg, comedian and The Daily Show correspondent John Hodgman, the stars of Mystery Science Theater 3000 and Rifftrax, and others. He is currently the managing editor of io9.com. Despite decades as both an amateur and professional nerd, he continues to be completely unprepared for either the zombie apocalypse or the robot uprising.