TV shows/animes that influence your YA?

[Laura Was Here]

Because I bet at least some of us are big glorious nerds, I wanted to know if any if you guys watch anime and if it influences your YA at all? I've seen at least a couple people cite The Last Airbender as inspiration. Same for TV shows - any in particular that inspire/help you visualize?

I just watched Cowboy Bebop and if any of you have sci-fi/western themes...go watch it it's so gooood.

(I was gonna stick this in the pop culture section but I was curious specifically about whether or not it went into your YA)

[RRK]

Veronica Mars and Buffy the Vampire Slayer (with maybe Chloe Sullivan from Smallville thrown in) are pretty much my mental image of what kickass teenage girls should be like (except none of mine are blonde).

[thebloodfiend]

The title of the MS I'm querying right now is a popular anime movie by Makoto Shinkai (Five Centimeters Per Second). I'm not a fan of his story telling, but his art is rather pretty.

There was a thread on something similar a while back in novels, I think. AtLA influenced me a lot. A LOT. Shonen stuff, like Naruto, to a lesser extent. Some harem anime and slice of life (Clannad, Love Roma, etc).

Cowboy Bebop definitely. I've been meaning to make time to watch more seinen like Perfect Blue and Tokyo Godfathers, but I'm always falling back on that damn Grey's Anatomy. It's so addicting, it's scary.

[Laura Was Here]

Originally Posted by thebloodfiend

Cowboy Bebop definitely. I've been meaning to make time to watch more seinen like Perfect Blue and Tokyo Godfathers, but I'm always falling back on that damn Grey's Anatomy. It's so addicting, it's scary.

I'm 10000% obsessed with anything by Satoshi Kon. Tokyo Godfathers is so funny/touching I can't even. I watch it every Christmas season!

Also RRK, <3 Chloe Sullivan

[RevanWright]

I've been watching anime for a very long time. I'm sure it's inspired my writing here and there, but most of my inspiration has come from literature. As for examples...

The main series I've been working on has elements that may have been inspired by Escaflowne, Spirited Away, and Mawaru Penguindrum, among other things.

The MG fantasy I just started was inspired almost solely by a single building in a couple scenes of From Up On Poppy Hill (the Latin Quarter). I also drew inspiration for the concept from A Letter to Momo and elements of Time of Eve.

[bobcat22]

It's not anime...but MY SO CALLED LIFE influences my writing a lot. I'll watch it sometimes when I want to get into the groove!

[Isobel Lindley]

I'm more influenced by school stories from the 1920s to the 1960s, but perhaps Maria-sama ga Miteru / The Virgin Mary is Watching for the gentle intensity of the relationships between the girls. I'm certainly hoping that fans of shojou-ai school anime are a potential market.

I also wonder a bit if tiny elements of Utena and Anthy from Revolutionary Girl Utena crept into Charley and Rosalind and that's why I'm so sure Rosalind wears glasses, although Rosalind breaks her apparent passiveness to take action in far more positive, assertive and loving ways than Anthy. Not that that would be hard, mind you.

[JustSarah]

Ghost In The Shell, Gantz, Monster, Ergo Proxy, Now And Then Here And There, Serial Experiments Lain, Elfen Lied, Gunslinger Girl, Texhnolyse, Saikano, Ghost Hunt.

I've also wanted to see Grave Of The Fireflies as well. I've heard there is a good novel version too. f figures I would like Texhnolyse, its made by the same company who made Lain. These are the main ones I remember making more than just a passing glimpse on, and are sort of what influenced my gunslinging cyberpunk/biopunk crime stories.

Oh I forgot Legend Of The Galactic Heroes As Well.

[Zoombie]

Planetes for the anime and Exo-Squad for the cartoon.

By the way, Exo-Squad was amazing. It was a children's cartoon show that included realistic light lag, tense race relations between humans and transhumans, genocide (from both the heroes and the villains), semi-realistic space fights, the tragic deaths of main characters, terrorism and holographic pornography.

Being a kid in the 1990s had it's downsides, but Exo-Squad, Captain Simian and the Space Monkies and ReBoot really helped.

[Sage]

Let's start with Buffy. We could potentially just stop there. I watch fifth season and laugh every time something resembles one of my novels.

There's a little Firefly and a lot of Absolute Boyfriend in Taylor-Made. Hana Kimi, along with every sex-changing MC or girl-masquerading-as-a-boy manga/anime ever, is in Boy/Girl. Full Metal Panic: Fumoffu is all over DownLoad. Euniq's cast was pretty much mimicking Tsubasa's. Echoes of Silence developed out of a fanfic based on a Sailormoon RPG. A Paranormal Bromance is basically The Road to El Dorado (an animated movie, not anime) with a ghost instead of a city of gold. Although I wrote Love Sucks before seeing Pushing Daisies, the no-touching LIs in each reminds me of the other.

[Tolstoyce]

Let's see. My current series involves the four elements, but that was actually not influenced by Avatar: The Last Airbender, though I love the show (I only know the influence isn't there because I started watching ATLA long after I started this series ). Actually, my conceptions of the elements were more influenced by the Pokemon show/games--I interpret earth as being more plants and grass than rock, etc.

Also, I don't know if this counts, since it's a video game and not a show--but it is an anime. Some of the themes of Kingdom Hearts have found their way into my books, and the aesthetics have heavily influenced the way my world looks. I'm sure there's a lot more, but they're slipping my mind at the moment.

[Emermouse]

My influence for my work was the kiwi drama The Tribe. I liked the concept but felt the show badly underutilized it, so I wanted to see if I could do better with it. Anybody else got a similar story about a work of art?

[breaking_burgundy]

Some of my earlier ideas for this novel were inspired by Neon Genesis Evangelion.

[kuwisdelu]

Originally Posted by breaking_burgundy

Some of my earlier ideas for this novel were inspired by Neon Genesis Evangelion.

I like you.

[ArachnePhobia]

Bad Princess owes a lot to old Sunbow cartoons and Voltron, and the vampire story I'm outlining has a really strong strain of Subspecies running through it (Legacy of Kain, too, although that's a video game).

[RevanWright]

Originally Posted by JustSarah

I've also wanted to see Grave Of The Fireflies as well.

That movie destroyed my soul.

[katci13]

Magic Knight Rayearth is the only anime. My go-to favorites are Xena Warrior Princess and Buffy the Vampire Slayer (of course!).

It's part of my formula. Those shows are guaranteed to make me want to write SOMEthing.

[Becca C.]

Don't watch anime, but Downton Abbey partly inspired one of the WIPs in my sig, SHALL NOT SLEEP.

[phantasy]

Every Miyazaki Movie.

Ryoko and Washu from Tenchi Muyo. I love the idea of super powerful women and it's fairly obvious in the stories I tell.

Doctor Who.

Simpsons.

[TTCleveland]

Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood.

A spectacular anime based on a spectacular manga.

[Robert L.B.]

I tend to read and watch various shonen to get some ideas for powers and uses of those powers. I don't copy the powers wholesale, but I might get an idea for a variation on it that I think could fit in a story. Psyren for example, has an antagonist who can teleport objects, including people, at will. I come up with a technique for a character where they warp something high up, let it fall, then warp it at terminal velocity into whatever is displeasing them.

[itsaplane]

SPN, Buffy, Cowboy Bebop, Samurai Champloo, Ah! My Goddess,Neon Genesis Evangelion, FMA..the list goes on and on. I find inspiration in everything really.

[Yeasayer]

Freaks and Geeks
Gilmore Girls
My So-Called Life
The United States of Tara
Six Feet Under
Wonderfalls
Shameless
Dead Like Me
Pushing Daisies
Seth Cohen The OC


I do watch anime, but I can't think of any that inspired my writing except for maybe Nana. Though, I've always wanted to write a character like Osaka from Azumanga Daioh.

[CQuinlan]

Yes.

To everything that's been said. I'm easy influenced.

Kimi no todoke and the wallflower also. I'm not big into shoujo (it's stories get very predictable and very repetitive) but it has some gems.

[RevanWright]

Originally Posted by CQuinlan

I'm not big into shoujo (it's stories get very predictable and very repetitive) but it has some gems.

There was a shoujo that aired just last season, Tonari no Kaibutsu-kun, that was pretty enjoyable. There were a couple lines from a scene in the 2nd episode that inspired me when my MC was in a difficult state of mind:
"My world is growing. What I once considered background noise is now comforting."

It's little things like that that I draw inspiration from. Pretty neat.