Having recently taken a look back at anime series I used to dislike, my view of the medium has evolved and changed over the last few months. I've learned to gain a new appreciation of anime series that are bursting with enthusiasm, vibrancy, and incredible, detailed animation. Anime like Redline, trigun, and afro samurai are powerful, action packed series with a lot of heart and soul put into them. But there's another brand of anime I've started to really dislike. What I call pretentious anime. Obviously, anime can be artistis. No one would say studio ghibli doesn't produce great works of art. But what im talking about are anime that try to sound smart in order to make up for a boring story or bad animation. There are a lot of series that do things like this. Serial experiments lain, 1997 berserk, and the garden of words are all excellent examples. But today i was going to focus on one example, and why it upsets me. I was hoping some of you would do the same.
Panty & Stocking with Garterbelt clearly like to pretend that it has high ambitions. Yet, just a few moments of analysis show just how shallow it really is. Produced by Gainax, is has many of the same shortcoming and pretentions of shows like Neon Genesis. The show loves to throw angelic and Christian imagery at you, but it never actually seems to make a concrete statement about religion. It acts as though it wants to make a statement of sexual liberation and womens rights, but never actually seems to lay down a thesis. Instead, after repeat analytical viewings, I am forced to conclude that the show does't really have much to say at all. The animation is laughably low quality, and at time feels like they were low on ink, low in time, and frankly, low on talant. Imagine the last two episodes of EVA, stretched into an entire series. The high minded themes are not deeply explored, revealing an anxiety in the lack of direction of the narrative. All of these issues result in a show that is both less deep then something like redline, while also being less fun. Unfortunately, the mere mention of intellectual ideas is enough to entice some people, even if they are never truly explored.
What series come to mind for you as pretentious anime?
Panty & Stocking with Garterbelt clearly like to pretend that it has high ambitions. Yet, just a few moments of analysis show just how shallow it really is. Produced by Gainax, is has many of the same shortcoming and pretentions of shows like Neon Genesis. The show loves to throw angelic and Christian imagery at you, but it never actually seems to make a concrete statement about religion. It acts as though it wants to make a statement of sexual liberation and womens rights, but never actually seems to lay down a thesis. Instead, after repeat analytical viewings, I am forced to conclude that the show does't really have much to say at all. The animation is laughably low quality, and at time feels like they were low on ink, low in time, and frankly, low on talant. Imagine the last two episodes of EVA, stretched into an entire series. The high minded themes are not deeply explored, revealing an anxiety in the lack of direction of the narrative. All of these issues result in a show that is both less deep then something like redline, while also being less fun. Unfortunately, the mere mention of intellectual ideas is enough to entice some people, even if they are never truly explored.
What series come to mind for you as pretentious anime?
