Anime and I have a love-hate relationship, and I mostly agree with Purple. I know it sounds like fuel for a fan-boy holocaust, but the most enjoyment I would get out of a series would be when something makes fun of it (read: Yu-Gi-Oh the Abridged Series).
As with most generalizations, there are quite a few exceptions. I do love Death Note however, as well as FLCL and Bleach , probably because the only anime I've ever seen has been through [Adult Swim] though. I refuse to buy any DVDs, because I want to keep what little dignity I still have, and I loathe cute sidekicks and variations on the words "lolita," "furry," or "fanservice". On a side note, I've always wanted to go to an anime convention in a Hunter S Thompson state of mind, wink wink nudge nudge. Maybe then I could look at a guy with a giant cardboard buster sword, or anyone that's crossplaying without expelling Taco Bell out of my mouth.
Most anime I've ever seen alwyas makes me say in my head:
"what the fuck is going here?" "Why are they flying?" "What the shit is with that cat?" "Who made her a god all of a sudden?" "whoah, you guys can teleport? why aren't you robbing banks then?" "You can glow now? Wait, if you can glow, why are you fighting monsters, let some other masochist do that, you could totally become a pro spelunker, or a carny." "Oh, god, why? That's your sister you fucked up mutant!" "No, just no! Get the fuck out of that giant robot. That is totally unnecessary for the task at hand." "You're how old?!" "Just kill him already! screw the rules, you're rich!" "Ok, Light, I know you're a derranged psychopath, cram school could do that to a human, but there's a hot girl throwing herself at you, and you're not on top of that like a cathedral on catacombs. I don't want to see this actually happen, but seriously, every other guy around you is drooling over this chick and you treat her like she's a pile of ants. God, you deserve the police to lock you up, I don't care if you're a magnificent bastard."
I could go on for pages and pages at a time, but no one wants to hear about my confusion.
The sum of this is that I've come to the conclusion that I'm a closet anime fan, but that I also can't stand 90% of anime out there. Seriously, I hated Neon Genesis Evangelion . I had no idea what the hell was going on half the time. Why were there huge robots that fought aliens? If civilization had advanced to the point that giant robots were a feasible option as a weapon, why the hell didn't they just make an army of tiny ones complete with rail guns, or mini-hadron cannons, or just pick a word from a Quantum physics book and make a gun that shoots that. Seriously, I think they wouldn't lose too much of the audience if they decided to use all of a sudden use a gluon-quark wave cannon. (Although in a practical sense it wouldn't do shit, but it certainly does follow the Rule of Cool, along with the Giant Robots). Since I've succeeded in scaring off any readers at this point, why isn't there an anime that involves superscience, other than the Mecha type series'? It could sort of play out like Death Note where a goody two-shoes, genius-type character, lets call him Dave, develops a new quantum particle in a laboratory's particle accelerator. Through some inner karmatic reversal; such as Dave getting cancer (which isn't that uncommon in his field) or something emo like his girlfriend dying in a car accident; and then Dave decides to mutate the population with his discovery - after he makes a portable version of it though - and bring on the apocalypse, but secretly. Chaos ensues as he one by one starts mutating people - some get powers, some get horrible, horrible cancer, etc - and an antagonist starts to snoop around his lab after doctors find out what is going on. Shit, it's something new and doesn't involve a fucking giant robot or a cute sidekick.
It's all just a matter of personal taste, and no matter what weird genre of anything, there's always someone who'll die to defend it's existence. So long as it doesn't directly affect me, or rob me blind in a dark alley.
/* There should be a general law that states something along those lines, but screw off, I don't want to look it up */
