Talk:Kaze: Ghost Warrior

"It flirts with the ideals of honor and justice in softly spoken dialogue, but unintentionally mocks Japanese culture: "No one names their kid 'Kaze' in Japan. Kazehiro, perhaps. Heck, even 'Fujin' would have worked if Misuta Wapanese Albee-San wanted to name his main character something having to do with wind." ..."

I have been a bit befuddled by this criticism since I first read it. I guess its because I know nothing of Japanese culture (I'm not an anime fan by any means, aside from Kaze, Wolf's Rain and Princess Mononoke). How is naming a character 'Wind' any more mocking/sillier than naming characters Fang, Claw, Whiskers or Howl in Wolf's Rain? Is there a similar criticism/mockery of Wolf's Rain even though Wolf's Rain was genuinely made in Japan? --Chibiabos 09:07, 30 April 2006 (UTC)

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"No one names their kid 'Kaze' in Japan. Kazehiro, perhaps. Heck, even 'Fujin' would have worked if Misuta Wapanese Albee-San wanted to name his main character something having to do with wind."

Who said that? Source needed?

Despite its short running time and historical/cultural inaccuracies...

What cultural inaccuracies? The film is not a history about Japan.

Despite of all the bad talk about this piece of work, mainly triggered by the movie industry...

What bad talk? Who in the movie industry is talking bad about it, and what are they saying? I've heard nothing but good from everyone who's seen it.--Tagenar 01:43, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

I can find nothing online that refers to this first quote, and none of the links provided contain it. It was in the original article (created by ShrikeWolf), so until a reference is produced, I'm removing this quote from the article and putting an unreferenced template on it. Spaz Kitty 01:57, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

Quote source, if you'd like: http://www.crushyiffdestroy.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=38591#38591. 'Kaze' simply isn't a proper name. Anime and manga characters have been named after everything under the sun, but 'kaze' never appears until a Canadian furry appropriates it for his fiction. Why? The kanji, as a name, is read as Fuu - see characters in Rekka or Rayearth - or Fujin. Perhaps someone who's studied Japanese or speaks it natively can explain why in detail, but that should be enough.

One example of negative criticism: http://mag.awn.com/article_view.php?id=2333&page=all&img=true. Don't add this to the article, it's already there. There's also the IMDB commentary - either you love it because OMG TALKING ANIMALS or it's just decent. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0415092/usercomments

Note that none of this could have been "triggered by the movie industry", unless the negative reviews were triggered by the superior voice acting and animation in real movies. As such I'm going to scrap the part about the movie industry. Somewolf never stated a source for it - rampant fanboyism assumed. The cultural inaccuracies should be noted, lest we raise another generation that thinks ninjas were half of Japan's population and samurai would commit seppuku at the drop of a squid. --the Shrike 02:39, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

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Thanks, Shrike, for the reference. But is it really a good idea to include, in a Wikipedia article, a quote from a forum by a random user who may or may not have experience with Japanese?

There is mention of unintentionally making fun of Japanese names and being inaccurate about Japanese culture. I didn’t realize Ghost Warrior was supposed to be a history of Japanese society. Yes, there are elements from Japanese culture and it is anime` inspired, but isn’t this supposed to be seen as an independent society? How will people get the wrong idea of Eastern history from watching Kaze? This film doesn’t take place in Japan, and these characters are not Japanese (especially with those accents :-). This is a separate society.

One could argue that The Lion King mocks African culture. According to its Wikipedia entry, Rafiki means "friend" in Swahili. Is anyone complaining that no one in African would really name their kid friend? And "Hakuna Matata" is grammatically incorrect, but is anyone worried that it mocks African culture?

A few mentioned that the story was nonexistent and poorly written. When taken by itself, yes, but if you watch the first episode of any TV series by itself you’d think the same thing. Most TV series (anime` especially) don’t make much sense if you watch only the first episode. The more you watch, the more sense it makes. You must watch Kaze as if it were the first of a 26-episode series to enjoy it. Does it make you want to see the rest of the story? If so, then its job is done. If not, then you’re not going to be a fan anyway.

My point is that the forum cited as the source of that quote is probably not a good criticism to include in a Wikipedia article. Are they criticizing the animation? No. The dialogue? A little, but not much. Do they even complain about the story? A bit, but much of the criticism is aimed at the credits. They’re calling the credit reel pretentious and pompous--one man getting a big head about the 22 minutes he animated and shoving it in the audience’s face.

The credits? Is that really all they can find wrong with it? If I worked for six months to animate, voice, score, foley and direct something like that I think I’d be entitled to a little self-indulgent humor.

Most of the people on that forum seem to hate everything to begin with and just found a handy forum of other people who hate everything, too. It is wise to include quotes from them in the article?

As is, the article feels slanted to the negative and highlights the criticism instead of presenting what Ghost Warrior actually is. Could anything I said be reworded in a more neutral tone and used to revise the article? I'll think about it... Any other thoughts? --Tagenar 16:09, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

It's a moot point if he has or hasn't had experience with Japanese, as he's right in this situation. As to the comparison with The Lion King, well... I don't know enough of Swahili to say. I think if it was as bad as this, The Lion King article should note it. This is a wiki, after all, a source of information. Oh, and plenty of anime characters are named Wind in our language, but never Kaze in theirs. Again, the proper name is Fuu. Again, I'll defer to a native or better trained speaker, if they say otherwise.

Kaze was released as a brief 22 minute technology demo, but some people (Chibiabos) have taken it as a message from God. We don't know if there will be a series to follow, just rumors, and until a series appears I would simply describe the video exactly as it is: short, cliche, and lacking deep literary value. Don't take that as an insult to the work, you can describe most of my favorite entertainment that way. If a series comes out that ties into this story, go ahead and edit this article to reflect that.

CYD doesn't tend to make serious criticism about art. Instead the forum members laugh at the more stupidly absurd things - like the credit roll. I've only linked the CYD thread to provide a source for the quote. No, you're right, it's not a good review of Kaze, because it's not a review at all. I could add serious technical criticism, if you'd like: The animation of the DVD is riddled with problems though. Intersections, sudden stops, no overlap, arms moving rapidly with no impact on the body, broken wrists, obviouly constrained controls and much more. The camera moves and staging are alright for a student film but, full of novice mistakes that cg artists commonly make. Source, the Amazon page. Don't let your furry bias color an objective review of the video. It is impressive that a single man built this, but it is not that amazing compared to other works in its genre.

I don't mean to insult, honestly. Only to be fair and provide honest, objective information from a number of sources. I thank you for pushing me to explain this. --the Shrike 00:53, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

Actually, you seem to insult yourself with that, since Timothy Albee is not a CG novice; he's worked on such projects as the Babylon 5 series, several Disney films, and he was recently hired on to animate new all-CGI characters for the upcoming third season of the new Battlestar Galactica series ... unless you consider Babylon 5, Disney films and the new Battlestar galactica as novice student works as well.

The CYD are just another burned furry group who can't stand furs, and yet try to hide behind the "its all a joke, we aren't serious" farce of an excuse. --Chibiabos 09:43, 7 August 2006 (UTC)

Article move intentions

When the second episode in the K:GW series is released in 2007, the bulk of this article will likely be moved to something like Kaze: Ghost Warrior (Pilot original) to note it is a discussion of the original pilot that is (at present) all we have of the Kaze universe aside from some scenes in the trailer that were not incorporated into this pilot episode. "Original" will be important to specify, as Tim mentioned to me his intention to expand and enhance this episode with at least one extra scene of Kaze's father speaking about Kaze's disappearance and reapparance, tails for the characters, and a voice for at least one of the female characters. He did not specify a timeframe for this, but I imagine completing the second episode will take precedence.

When I do this, I will try to extract, cleanup and move material in the article not specific to the pilot to the overaching Kaze: Ghost Warrior (series) article.

I don't when exactly I will do this, but I would like to offer the other wikifurrians who have contributed to this article (or would like to) an opportunity here to voice in their thoughts on my re-organization plans for this article. --Chibiabos 23:45, 28 September 2006 (UTC)

The plan sounds logical enough. Once a series actually exists, then we can move plot and continuity info from this article to the Kaze: Ghost Warrior (series) article. If he does release a bug-fix of this original pilot, here will be the place to note the differences between the two and (someday) how it fits into the history of the series.

I think we'll know more about how the article needs to change only when he releases the second episode. Note that on the project blog he says that Kaze 2 is only in preproduction. The main site says it "Kaze, Ghost Warrior 2, coming 2007...." That's a pretty big range. The best we can hope for is that he's planning to have it ready by Anthrocon. (Any bets?) Keep in mind that anything is subject to delay and projected release dates can change at any time. Nothing much to do or discuss until it's finished.

One suggestion for the present and future of the articles: remove the "Reaction" section. Yes, I wrote that part, but only because it seemed relevant at the time. Reading it now it's just reaction to petty criticism. The article should present what this episode is and should not be a place to address the critics' nitpicking, especially if that nitpicking isn't really worth noting. Same for the future article on the series.--Tagenar 01:54, 30 September 2006 (UTC)

I certainly think the "criticism" is witless naysaying, but the wikifurrian in me wouldn't feel comfortable in deleting it, as it'd attack the NPOV of the article.

As for the release date .... I've been in e-mail conversations with Tim to help me flesh out the numerous Kaze related articles (especially the character articles). Tim was recently hired on to work on Battlestar Galactica, and unfortunately that has eaten into his schedule to work on Kaze ... that's why (I gather) the work they started on it was interrupted. He has a team together this time, he's proven it can be done alone, now its time to let it fly.

The criticisms will become a lot less relevant once the series gets going. The second episode in the series is next, and after that I'm not sure -- it could be one of the third episode, the remake of the first episode, or the feature.

The latest e-mail I got back from Tim was unfortunately brief (understandably he's very busy), replying to my query for clarification about naming. Unfortunately, the naming scheme we've been using all along is incorrectly punctuated; it is properly "Kaze, Ghost Warrior" as opposed to "Kaze: Ghost Warrior" ... the error is understandable since the DVD did not punctuate the title. Given the span the article has been in existence and how big it is, I think I will hold off on formally requesting it get moved for the naming error until the second episode is released, then I can kill two birds with one renaming process. --Chibiabos 06:24, 30 September 2006 (UTC)

And the part of me that did well in algebra says that if mention of both the positive and the negative is removed, this will not affect NPOV. Maybe cut them to a paragraph, mention that it's been praised and critisized for broad reasons but don't go into specifics. Put in too many examples of rave reviews and it'll read like a fanboy's forum post. Too many examples of the complaints people have against it and it will read like a critic's rant. When the two are all collected in one place it comes across as petty arguing, not balance as I thought. There is mention of the technical flaws in the film, all of which other reviewers have noticed, so those are with merit, and that's enough. Now when someone has valid complaints about the film and those become well-known among those who've seen it, then they might need addressing. But the intent of the article is to present what the film is, not defend it against its critics.

Anyway, Timothy Albee only said it will be released in 2007. There's a pretty wide margin in that. We'll just have to wait until KGW2 is done and released before getting excited. We can't and shouldn't do much of anything until then.--Tagenar 00:50, 1 October 2006 (UTC)