How do you feel about anime?

[Soviet Heavy]

For all of you who won't give it a chance, though, I have an article a friend of mine wrote that I think is relevant to this thread.

http://www.thespoonfeed.com/why-after-only-two-episodes-you-will-love-anime/

I'm sorry, but I could not get into that at all. As soon as he said we were wrong, I lost all interest. No offense to you, but it is these people who drive me away. The ones who presume to know what is best, and how everyone else is wrong because they don't agree with them.

 

[orangebandguy]

I hate the cutesy high pitched girl ones.

Like the little girl who goes: "Timotei"

Bleach is more my thing, anything with swords and violence is usually enough for me. And of course Pokemon!

 

[DanielDeFig]

I love anime. And as a response the comment in the OP about anime not being better than animation from any other country:

I personally feel like they take it more seriously and handle it more professionally. How many non-anime animated movies/series have movie-like shots editing pacing, script, etc. In the west we tend to think "animated" to be synonymous with "Children-oriented".
Which i guess relates back to how the general public in the west views video Games as being mainly for kids (and thus outraged when videogames are released with content not aimed at kids), while i get the impression that in Japan teen and adult oriented games are more easily accepted for what they are.

 

[neoontime]

Well I had many of those "WTF, I'm not even gonna" moments, so I can't say I really like it.

 

[Soviet Heavy]

I love anime. And as a response the comment in the OP about anime not being better than animation from any other country:

I personally feel like they take it more seriously and handle it more professionally. How many non-anime animated movies/series have movie-like shots editing pacing, script, etc. In the west we tend to think "animated" to be synonymous with "Children-oriented".
Which i guess relates back to how the general public in the west views video Games as being mainly for kids (and thus outraged when videogames are released with content not aimed at kids), while i get the impression that in Japan teen and adult oriented games are more easily accepted for what they are.

I can respect them trying to do something different with animation, but I don't see how that should make them better than others. I'll take your example of making the anime seem like a live action flick. It is commendable, but not what I want from an animated feature. If I see something that is animated, I want to see where they can go with it technically, instead of trying to emulate something else.

I will however, disagree with you on the movie like editing and pacing. 300+ episodes of filler is not good pacing. (I realize that is a gross generalization, but you get my meaning)

 

[blankedboy]

I've only just started watching anime, I'm halfway through Higurashi No Naku Koro Ni at the moment. And it's completely awesome.

I have Serial Experiments Lain lined up next... that should be VERY different.

If those series are the kind of thing that you like, I can heavily recommend Ergo Proxy or Texhnolyze. Texhnolyze even has the same director as Serial Experiments Lain.

I tend to prefer the more adult oriented series, but I have no problem with a lighthearted, romance, or shonen series now and then.

Some personal favorites are:

Ghost In The Shell: Stand Alone Complex
Rahxephon
Ergo Proxy
Texhnolyze
Hellsing: Ultimate
Gunslinger Girl
Black Lagoon
Full Metal Panic
Blood +
RIN ~Daughters of Mnemosyne~
Darker Than Black
Trinity Blood
Witch Hunter Robin

Whoa... screw Serial Experiments Lain, I'm watching Texhnolyze. That looks so fuckin' epic.

Thanks, mate

 

[Smorlock]

Not to be offensive but I really don't like it. The ridiculously poor scripts and horrific voice acting, coupled with the insane cut-and-paste animations and facial expressions might be okay in one series, but in every anime, I can't believe that this is still okay. For instance (and doing my best to explain without images), how often do you see a character point a finger to his nose and close his eyes when they are being sarcastic? Or whip around in some crazy abstract tube of colour when they are saying something intense? Or have facial expressions composed of characters on a keyboard? Turning into chibi versions of themselves and flailing their arms when they are embarrassed? The list of cliches just goes on and on. And then people try and act like their anime heroes in real life and I get very uncomfortable very fast.

 

[Arcane Azmadi]

I think anime's golden age has well and truly passed and we're now in a period of absolutely horrid stagnation. The years after I started watching (the late 90s/early 2000s) were the absolute golden era, with an incredibly high proportion of absolute top-quality modern classics coming out each season- Neon Genesis Evangelion, Vision of Escaflowne, Cowboy Bebop, Love Hina, Trigun, Princess Tutu, Card Captor Sakura, Revolutionary Girl Utena, Serial Experiments Lain, Vandread, Full Metal Panic, RahXephon, Noir, Please Teacher, Wolf's Rain, Gad Guard, Gundam Seed, Abenobashi Mahou Shoutengai, Infinite Ryvius, SaiKano, Last Exile, the list just goes on and on and on. But the last 2 or so years have seen a ROT set into the industry as fewer and fewer truly great series are made and more and more indescribably AWFUL ones are puked out- and the real problem is it's the awful ones that get the exposure and attention. Absolute puke like Maids vs Butlers, KissXSis, Queen's Blade and Yosuga no Sora, series bereft of ANY redeeming features, work off the idea that otaku are a bunch of mindless perverts who want nothing more than softcore porn which alternates between bouncing torpedo-tits and flat-chested semi-child porn, while nonsense like K-ON! and other moeblob bullshit tries to get by on nothing more than girls being cute for these same guys to leer at- not as offensive, but little better. There's little to no ambition, writing talent or creativity left in the industry any more. And don't even get me STARTED on season 2 of Suzumiya Haruhi and the Endless Eight debacle or I think I'll wake up with someone else's blood in my teeth again.

There have been a couple of decent series this season -Panty & Stocking With Garterbelt is at least insanely weird and crazily fun despite being in shockingly poor taste, without being as creepily disgusting as crap like Yosuga no Sora (which is LITERALLY almost porn) and Shinryaku! Ika Musume (Invasion! Squid Girl) and Soredemo Machi wa Mawatteiru (Even so the City is Turning) are hilariously entertaining, but the outlook is still not good. I am desperately hanging out for season 3 of Shakugan no Shana (one of the truly great series to emerge in the last 5 years) but if it gets turned into a moe-obsessed, fanservice-overloaded piece of rubbish as well (like happened with Zero no Tsukaima) I think I'm going to have to find someone to execute.

 

[Ultra_Caboose]

I really enjoy anime. It's been a staple of my entertainment since the mid 90's, thanks to Dragonball Z and Robotech.

 

[Leemaster777]

I'm a fan, although I don't watch it as much as I'd like.

Currently, I'm enamored by an anime called Panty and Stocking With Garterbelt. It. Is. Hilarious.

Isn't that Nabeshin?

OT: There is only one anime i can tolerate and that is Excel Saga. the reaon behind it is because i saw 26 episodes in a row with some friends when we where REALLY tired an laughed at everything! those fond memories has made me not hate that one anime show! might watch episode 26 just for the reason it's so absurd! The rest should be burned!

Why yes, it IS Nabeshin.

If you like Excel Saga so much, you should really check out Panty and Stocking with Garterbelt. To sum it up, imagine episode 26... all the time. That about covers it.

It's absurd in every way. And I love it.

 

[Naheal]

I like some. I'm a cyberpunk and magitek fan. Anime does a good job of it.

 

[Steppin Razor]

I like it. I've seen quite a lot of it, and my collection is always expanding when I find something else that seems interesting to watch.

Yawn. Complete "meh" disinterest. I don't actively dislike it (except when anime fans, who I swear are incapable of holding a conversation about anything that isn't anime and manga, start jabbering about it), but it just falls under my overall disinterest in Japanese culture (I like sumo, sushi, and Iron Chef. End of list.)

Who doesn't like Iron Chef?

I've always liked anime, just not the die hard community that's become associated with it. And I've become a bit disconnected with anime because more and more they're starting to pander to that same community... a lot of which comes from the concept of 'fanservice'.

Here's what I mean. 20 years ago, you'd have a show like Ranma 1/2, not necessarily meant as a 'mature' series but would occasionally have bits of nudity. It wasn't pandering to the audience or trying to be sexy or anything, the series creator is a women afterall, but usually used as a gag or just because, giving the sense that the Japanese didn't think anything was wrong with it.

Fast forward to today, where a lot of anime gets exported, and nudity is treated with the same 'Western' value that it's shameful to show to something anyone under 18 may see. Yet at the same time, the sexual objectification (more or lease softcore teasing) has increased like ten fold for the same genre. I guess that's great if you're the sort of person that likes the stuff but it's annoying to see and gives it a bad image for the rest of us.

Not entirely true. 20 years ago there was anime exactly like that, we just never saw it because anime was nowhere near as popular as it is now. With the increase in viewers of anime in the West, all the shit we never would have seen before has started to get released outside of Japan.

None taken, some of us can indeed be pretty crazy. Besides, I'm also driven away from WH40k for the same reason, even if some of it can be good with the right attitude.

Us 40k fans aren't that bad, are....

...ok, nevermind that. Some of them are downright fucking weird to the point that even obsessed weeaboos are less annoying and creepy.

Hate it, it's so cheap, so tacky, the pace is far too slow in some. One Piece, and DragonBall spring to mind. Each episode is 22 mins, 3 mins intro song, 3 mins recap of what happened in the last episode, so only about 14 mins is on the actual episode, 2 mins for outro song too.

So your opinion on anime is based entirely on your perceptions of the most popular series? That's mindless stereotyping and is exactly the same sort of thing as someone saying they dislike games because they're all the same as CoD and Halo.

 

[Macgyvercas]

I like it...mainly because it's at least 10 times better than anything we have in the States.

 

[daemon37]

95% of anime is complete crap. the better stuff is usually older (i.e. Ninja Scroll, Akira, etc.)

 

[A1]

I like to think of myself as a dedicated anime fan although I don't think I'm on the level of an actual otaku.

However I'm afraid that the question of "How do you feel about Anime?" does seem to be at least a bit flawed and problematic.

I believe that the most fundamental difference between Japanese Animation and Western Animation is variety and application.


In the West animation is generally just used for either children's content or adult comedy (shows like Samurai Jack, Justice League, and Avatar: The Last Airbender may contain certain elements that may appeal to adults but it still doesn't change the fact that the primary target audience is young people).

But in Japan animation is used for pretty much everything: action (Mobile Suit Gundam 00), drama (Hitohira), tragedy (Texhnolyze), crime drama (Black Lagoon), science fiction (Betterman), medical drama (Black Jack), comedy (Desert Punk), horror (Boogiebop Phantom), fantasy (Record of Lodoss War), psychological thrillers (Death Note), children?s content (Pocket Monsters), Cyberpunk (Ghost in the Shell), romance (Ai Yori Aoshi), adventure (Nadia: The Secret of Blue Water), sports (Prince of Tennis), slice-of-life (Azumanga Daioh), realism (Jin-Roh: The Wolf Brigade), mystery (Higurashi no Naku Koro ni), even pornography (La Blue Girl). Heck, there are even a number of anime and manga titles that revolve around gay or lesbian relationships. There's more that I haven't brought up but I think I've gotten my point across.

Even Yahtzee, who by all accounts is pretty much clueless when it comes to Japanese culture, has admitted (and I'm paraphrasing here) that there is a lot of variety in the world of anime, which of course would pretty much seem to be an understatement all things considered.

It's really not accurate to speak of anime as if all of it were the same because such an idea would needless to say seem to be, all things considered, extremely far from the truth.

 

[TheLaofKazi]

Anime is a medium, not a genre. They tell stories as wide and varied as books, movies, tv, video games, comics, etc.

I'm not one to care about technicalities, but wouldn't the medium be animation, and the style be anime, and the genre be whatever it is?

But yeah, I agree with you, anime is not limited to one type story or whatever, although it does have it cliches and trends, as with all styles, genres, ect.

 

[JimHarryinc]

For all of you who won't give it a chance, though, I have an article a friend of mine wrote that I think is relevant to this thread.

http://www.thespoonfeed.com/why-after-only-two-episodes-you-will-love-anime/

I'm sorry, but I could not get into that at all. As soon as he said we were wrong, I lost all interest. No offense to you, but it is these people who drive me away. The ones who presume to know what is best, and how everyone else is wrong because they don't agree with them.

That seems fair, although a bit quick to judge an article by its opening paragraph.

 

[Vykrel]

imo, most of it is ridiculous crap, but there are a few exceptions.

i love Trigun, Yu Yu Hakusho, and the original Pokemon series. Cowboy Bebop and Full Metal Alchemist are also good

 

[Gordon_4_v1legacy]

The further back you go for Anime, paradoxically the better it becomes. I've recently gotten a hold of Space Adventure Cobra and the original Bubblegum Crisis and they're both brilliant despite being as old as I am (nearly). Teknoman, Neon Genesis Evangelion and Ninja Scroll were pretty much what sold me on the Genre, and anything Studio Ghibli has made is as good as Disney. I don't mind some of the newer stuff, Queen's Blade is a guilty pleasure if only to see the absurd moon logic the show runs on.

Remember though, you are not your fandom and your enjoyment of your chosen medium should never be affected by the hooting dick-holes who ruin it for everyone else.

 

[ninetails593]

I enjoy anime but I absolutely hate dubs (excluding Baccano! and other anomalies). I've been watching One Piece, Fist of the North Star, and Lucky Star.