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Times when Western movies or TV referenced anime

Last posted Feb 18, 2018 at 09:26PM EST. Added Feb 15, 2018 at 01:24AM EST
10 posts from 9 users

Anime has been quite popular these days, so let's see times when anime had been referenced in non-Japanese or non-Asian movies or TV shows.
One condition: No shows like the Simpsons, South Park, Robot Chicken--basically, the adult or parody cartoons. Those are too easy.

I'll start with a well-known franchise: Pokémon. A couple references to Pokemon include this scene from Paper Towns

House mentioning Arceus

And of course that Godzilla scene in Austin Powers Goldmember

As for anime that isn't Pokemon, there's that Evangelion nod from a movie called One Hour Photo

And the music video for Michael and Janet Jackson's "Scream" features clips from Zillion, Akira, and Vampire Hunter D

Well I’m certain there are other instances, the one that always stuck out to me the most was from the show Wakfu, where Tristepin (or Sadlygrove) mangles another character’s name, Grougaloragran, into “Gurren Lagann.” Twice.

Silent_Witness wrote:

Well I’m certain there are other instances, the one that always stuck out to me the most was from the show Wakfu, where Tristepin (or Sadlygrove) mangles another character’s name, Grougaloragran, into “Gurren Lagann.” Twice.

There was also the part where Evangelyne and Amalia turned into guys, and Eva called herself “Evangelion”

On the topic of this thread, I’ve noticed that except for Kill Bill, a lot of these references are from cartoons--and even then, they just reference anime in general, not a specific anime. Aside from what I posted, there seems to be a lack of anime references in live-action movies/shows.

Satoshi Kon's works are usually the most likely to be referenced in a western live-action movie, which you can see examples of in Black Swan, Requiem for a Dream, and Inception being the biggest one in drawing the most of its influence from Paprika.

This is a huge cheat on my part because it's a video game, not a movie or TV show, but I feel like I have to bring up Shogo: Mobile Armor Division because I've been playing it recently. Shogo is an FPS from Monolith Productions (the American company that made FEAR, not the Japanese "Monolith Software" that makes Xenoblade) that was released in 1998, and the game is notable for being one of the earliest Western made games to be heavily influenced by Japanese media like anime. A lot of the sound effects are ripped right from shows like Gundam, one of the first levels has things like a poster referencing Evangelion and crew quarters with names referencing things like Ghost in the Shell and Patlabor, and after the company logos the game then has this intro movie:

Remember this was during a period in the 90s when anime was just starting to get mainstream attention in the US, so this clearly showed the people at Monolith Productions were huge otaku during a time when "otaku" wasn't as a common word among your average "geek/nerd culture" circles as it is now (though nowadays most otaku like to use "weeb" as an ironic self depreciating term).

Check out Mandalore Gaming's review on it and you'll notice a bunch of the stuff I brought up:

Skeletor-sm

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