Scooby-Doobie Doo, I Wrote an Analogy Article on You!

Some people look at me like I'm CRAZY when I bring up Mono and Scooby-Doo in the same sentence. How could you compare the two, my parents say, outraged. The two have nothing to do with eachother! Scooby-Doo is a HORRIBLE SHOW! YOURS is PERFECT. Though that's all very true, I can't help but feel my parents are missing the point and the bigger picture of this comparison. As much as I hate the stupidity of those Teenage Sleuths, oversimplified villains, and annoying Great Dane and its annoying Cousin Scrappy, there's a bigger comparison being made there. Scooby-Doo was the very first animated crime show, animated cop or sleuth show, spooky cartoon, and animated mystery and suspense show, all produced at the Hannah Barbera studio sometime around the 1970s. I know a bit about its history. Just like if there was no Lone Wolf and Cub there'd be no Blade of the Immortal, if there were no Scooby-Doo, I question whether there'd be a Ghost in the Shell. Or like, how, if there was no Snow White, there wouldn't be an Akira, as they both fall under the category of theatrically produced animation.

What's the underlying theme here, you ask? Genre. Genre history, evolution, lineage, and development over numerous decades. If Show or Movie A didn't Come out in 1956, show  or movie B wouldn't exist in the same form as we appreciate it as today, even though it is a thousand times more complex and beautiful to look at. No Flinstones, no other sitcoms like Simpsons and Family Guy or King of the Hill.

Genres change over time. When I wrote the script for Mono, I was thinking of David Fincher's Se7en, Jet Li's WAR, and Ghost in the Shell, and maybe 24 and dare I say the emotional delicacy of Leiji Matsumoto, and it's emo kin Oban Star Racers. Certainly not that famous Great Dane. But because of my unconscious genre choices, and the fact that I'm working within the limitations of an animated mystery and intrigue series, being linked to Scooby Doo, by history if nothing else, was an inevitability I eventually came to welcome. After all, Oban is an obscure show. Scooby Doo, though it often looks ugly as sin, is considered an icon and institution of the genre. Better to be compared to something famous than only obscure things. It's like writing a slasher film and getting compared to Michael Meyers. I can live with such comparisons