If anybody wants a D20 OSR game reworked for medieval Japan, this is a free one you can download called Shinobi & Samurai. 

http://taxidermicowlbear.weebly.com/uploads/2/3/7/4/23742956/shinobi__samurai_1.0b.pdf

Another game I can recommend is Sengoku, but this time the appeal is for Japanese lore.  It is a game running the Fuzion system, which I'm not a fan of.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/16758/Sengoku-Revised-Edition

Now do a D20 OSR game for anime.

Quote from: MeganovaStella on November 07, 2022, 06:57:12 PM
Now do a D20 OSR game for anime.

D20 Modern was pretty much this for a while. One of the Polyhedron pack in games is one about Travelling music groups salving crimes as in some older cartoons. Another covered being trapped in a video game and having to explore various game worlds and games based on whatever arcade or console game you wanted. Even ones for mecha battles and pulp heroes among others.

As with most of these sorts of systems, the DM still has to do alot of the legwork. But not as much as say gurps or BESM. But BESM has ample expansions geared to specific types of stories, and not just anime.

AD&D itself is more than able to handle a historic themed setting, especially something like Japan and to a lesser degree China once you have Oriental Adventures. Ancient Rome, Celtics, Crusades? They had ones for those too.

Quote from: MeganovaStella on November 07, 2022, 06:57:12 PM
Now do a D20 OSR game for anime.

BESM d20 version is here.  FYI, BESM stands for Big Eyes, Small Mouth.  Weird name, but that's what it's called.  It is meant to cover all anime genres from Samurai to Mecha, or even quirky Japanese dating in highschool love triangles.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/m/product/850

Oh, and look at that.  It's on sale at $10 instead of the usual $35.

NONE

I am running an RPG setin the Star Trek universe...

Wait does"Sulu" count as influence?
No, wait my campaign set 4 years before "TOS"...
Yep, still NO Japanese influence

- Ed C.

(there ARE other cartoons people!)

Quote from: Koltar on November 07, 2022, 11:28:39 PM
NONE

I am running an RPG setin the Star Trek universe...

Wait does"Sulu" count as influence?
No, wait my campaign set 4 years before "TOS"...
Yep, still NO Japanese influence

- Ed C.

(there ARE other cartoons people!)

Yeah! Like "Lower Decks" which is totally not influenced by anime!

Answering the OP: Yes, I love to play games based or informed by Japanese culture (even if I don't usually like to mix genres/themes). Shinobigami is one of my favorites, for eg:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/diamondsutra/shinobigami-modern-ninja-battle-tabletop-rpg-from

Quote from: Omega on November 07, 2022, 12:46:41 AM

Quote from: Persimmon on November 06, 2022, 06:37:05 PM
Funny thing with me is that while I'm literally a professor of Asian military history, anime and manga have never appealed to me.  My entry into Asian cultures was via Godzilla in the 1970s and Kung-fu movies and James Clavell novels in the 1980s.  So those things have an influence in my campaign.  There are analogues to the major East Asian cultures and a couple kaiju infested islands exist far to the south of the main continent.

There are some rather good historical themed anime and manga out there and even a rather nicely done merger of Japanese writing and Chinese puppet theater for the puppet show Thunderbolt Fantasy. Apparently there are more produced in China that have not seen much of yet. But are really amazing some of the effects and style used. Which then got me to check out what some traditional puppet theater is like.

Point in case, I recently came across this historical anime, "Hyouge Mono", about a "tea aesthete" at Nobunaga's court. Very interesting and I totally recommend it:

https://myanimelist.net/anime/9996/Hyouge_Mono

Quote from: jeff37923 on November 08, 2022, 09:34:06 AM

Yeah! Like "Lower Decks" which is totally not influenced by anime!

My campaign takes place in 2261, "Lower Decks" takes place in 2380 to 2382 - at least a century later in the timeline.

So, yeah No Japanese or even 'anime' influence in my campaign.

- Ed C.

Quote from: Lynn on August 14, 2022, 02:13:39 PM

Quote from: Omega on August 14, 2022, 01:17:17 PM
Some of the monsters were from a pack of 'dinosaurs' that included some japanese monsters in it. I suspect some were inspired by Ultraman monsters as pretty sire seen some in various shows way back. Here is a example of the pieces. Pretty sure I had some of those too and never knew the connection.
https://www.belloflostsouls.net/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/PrehistoricAnimalsS.jpg

That's kind of amazing and you can totally see it. Remove the 'water cup' from that kappa and it does look a lot like an owlbear.

Yes, fascinating. Here's an article explaining how the Hong-Kong-produced plastic toy is probably a kappa, though most of the others are off-brand copies of the Japanese comic and show Ultraman.

https://www.enworld.org/threads/the-plastic-ancestry-of-the-owlbear.672928/

However, there's a convincing comment on that article that the figure is actually an off-brand copy of Totsaurus from the Japanese show "Go! Godman".

https://wikizilla.org/wiki/Totsaurus

Quote from: Koltar on November 08, 2022, 11:48:44 AM
My campaign takes place in 2261, "Lower Decks" takes place in 2380 to 2382 - at least a century later in the timeline.

So, yeah No Japanese or even 'anime' influence in my campaign.

It's very indirect, but the show's producers talked some about how Westerns influenced original series Star Trek.

And U.S. Westerns influenced and were influenced by Japanese films - like The Seven Samurai vs The Magnificent Seven.

So that would be a very indirect influence.

the word "anime" means too many things to people.

I was there at the dawn of anime - Gigantor, Speed Racer, Gundam, Kimba etc. Love Lodoss, Ninja Scroll, all the usual suspects. Somewhere between Studio Ghibli, and Full Meta Alchemist the genre *really* fractured into many subgenres (which honestly always existed in some form, but only got popular with weebs here in the states.) I find it difficult to connect to the sillier stuff. I'm not against "anime" but like all things: I only want the good stuff. And like most popular things - there is a sea of dogshit and the good-stuff is hard to find in it.

As someone that is part Japanese and lived there - I don't associate "anime" with Japanese influence or even actual "real" Japanese culture per se. It's a pop-culture artifact that is as much an industrial product of Japan consuming post-war American cartoons and regurgitating the form back at everyone. I don't have any proof of this, but I'm betting Americans consume more anime more intensely than the average Japanese person. Age demographics are likely part of this. I know there is a very very healthy industrial channel in Japan for teaching animation and art for the express purpose of churning this stuff out out for international consumption.

As for translating it to TTRPG's? Japanese culture in my TTRPG's is a feudal aesthetic with strong martial tones and traditions to me. It's about forms and codes, and the friction caused by those that break them (for good or bad reasons) - the contrast of morality codes in action. I'm less interested in the aping of feudal Japanese culture which I think dominates most "anime" assumptions of Japanese feudal culture. To make these ideas which also appear in European and Middle-Eastern cultures as well, distinct from one another, one has to understand many of the arts that make these cultures value and practice (and hopefully *why* they're valued) for verisimilitude, if nothing else. I prefer the more romantic ideas of these cultures vs. the realistic versions of them by default. Mainly because TTRPG's can get down to dirty realism very quickly if the players feel too constrained by the pomp and detail.

I reserve the influence of Japanese culture in my games by a choice of refinement in the setting and its NPC's as *necessary*.

Quote from: Koltar on November 08, 2022, 11:48:44 AM

Quote from: jeff37923 on November 08, 2022, 09:34:06 AM

Yeah! Like "Lower Decks" which is totally not influenced by anime!

My campaign takes place in 2261, "Lower Decks" takes place in 2380 to 2382 - at least a century later in the timeline.

So, yeah No Japanese or even 'anime' influence in my campaign.

- Ed C.

That just means that your campaign is subject to the influences of "Star Trek: Strange New Worlds" and its anime influences.

And Klingon cosplay totally isn't an offshoot of anime cosplay.......

Quote from: tenbones on November 08, 2022, 03:41:05 PM
As someone that is part Japanese and lived there - I don't associate "anime" with Japanese influence or even actual "real" Japanese culture per se. It's a pop-culture artifact that is as much an industrial product of Japan consuming post-war American cartoons and regurgitating the form back at everyone. I don't have any proof of this, but I'm betting Americans consume more anime more intensely than the average Japanese person. Age demographics are likely part of this. I know there is a very very healthy industrial channel in Japan for teaching animation and art for the express purpose of churning this stuff out out for international consumption.

I would say that American otaku might be more obsessed than regular Japanese, but against Japanese otaku the best they can hope for is a tie. If you're going to stick out in Japanese culture, apparently it doesn't pay to do it halfway.

Average Americans are probably on a similar level with average Japanese. They mostly don't care that much, but they will perk up when they see something from their childhood.

In the 90s and 2000s, American otaku tended to be somewhat better socialized than other fandoms, because getting anime used to require the ability to network and do tape trading.

Quote from: jeff37923 on November 08, 2022, 08:12:15 PM

And Klingon cosplay totally isn't an offshoot of anime cosplay.......

Star Trek cosplay was probably the originator of all other cosplay.

But well before that cartoon and TV themed halloween masks/costumes were a thing.

Star Trek may have been the first to show people that this sort of stuff could be fun. Though I'd be really surprised if there were not some Lord of the Rings costuming going on well before that at conventions.

The problem with anime is the dichotomy of thinking, "This is the coolest shit, ever!", or "What is wrong with these people?!?!....<right click, save as>".

Like Goblin Slayer.  I would class that as both in the first episode. 

But some of my favorite bits of entertainment are anime.  Macross and Mospeada in particular.  Whenever I think of Power Armor characters, I think Cyclones are better.  When it comes to high tech jet fighters, I want a transforming Valkyrie.

When we played Palladium Rifts, two of the six player group PCs were Veritech pilots, one imported, and the other a brand new PC. 

Rifts has a ton of robot vehicles in it.  A Coalition UAR-1 Enforcer is just a mech, but Palladium cut and pasted the rules from RoboTech/Macross. 

Today, I would probably go Tiny D6 Mecha vs Monsters.  Their 2nd Edition, "Evolved", is due out soon.  It's my game of choice, but don't buy it until it's out and reviewed.  Hopefully before Thanksgiving.