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What's the deal with anime?

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Animes shit on almost everything when it comes to sheer creativity. I respect mangas even more since they are mostly made by very few or even just one person alone.

The ignorance in this thread - smh. I dislike certain groups among anime watchers that have skyhigh standards for each fucking series be it shounen or who-the-fuck-knows and think of themselves as better beings than others for having a niche taste and shit, but discrediting a whole group of consumers because they prefer a medium that you don't doesn't paint a very good picture of you.

Reading some responses here.. damn, kinda glad I know people in real-life who are pretty open-minded and enjoy anime after showing them a few episodes.
 
I cant get into them. There's something about them I find very samey even though they're totally different, and too many of the tropes just annoy me.
 
etc...

I know this is a little thing, but it bugs me quite a bit.
Anime is NOT a medium. Animation is a medium, and anime is a (pretty big) part of that medium, with the criteria that it is made in japan.

There is nothing Anime can do that other countries animation can not, it's just more common in Japan for reasons I am not going to get into.

Semantics - its pretty clear what those people are trying to say.
 
People with limited exposure to it only recognize a few franchises and think it represents the genre. Many don't realize there are nearly dozens, maybe even 100 new series a year released by a slew of independent studios which often have a very small, dedicated crew working on them. Anime is indie as hell.
 
Seriously. I legitimately have no particularly positive or negative opinions about anime. Some movies I like, such as Spirited Away, and some TV shows I like, such as Kino's Journey. Why is there an obsession over it as if it was one entire genre? I feel like... some of it is good, some isn't so good, just like any show or movie.

You have exactly the right approach to it. Most of it honestly is crap. Just like most movies, tv series, and music are crap.

Just watch the bit that's actually good and don't obsess over it or anything.
 
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God damn, is this real? That's like Walt Disney calling Saturday morning cartoons rubbish.

I always viewed Anime as being an umbrella term for Japanese Saturday morning cartoons. The quality varies as much as American stuff...except with less censoring it would seem.
 
People with limited exposure to it only recognize a few franchises and think it represents the genre. Many don't realize there are nearly dozens, maybe even 100 new series a year released by a slew of independent studios which often have a very small, dedicated crew working on them. Anime is indie as hell.
To be fair, the popular anime here in the US are popular elsewhere. It's just that outside of those mainstream ones (much of which they oftentimes didn't even get because they weren't clones of the same shounen anime being aired), the US typically got the bottom of the barrel. Now some fansub groups became "legit" and there's a streaming industry here.
 
God damn, is this real? That's like Walt Disney calling Saturday morning cartoons rubbish.

I always viewed Anime as being an umbrella term for Japanese Saturday morning cartoons. The quality varies as much as American stuff...except with less censoring it would seem.

No, it's not real.

And yeah, they're Saturday morning cartoons if anime was defined by Dragon Ball, One Piece and Naruto. It's not, though.
 
I like anime but I don't obsess over it.
I guess that I find the general art style beautiful, thus appealing to me. And most action oriented animes are often hilarious. It's difficult to find action cartoons and tv series that can be both, they often take themselves too serious.

Oh, and I really like anime openings and endings.
 
When I was in my teens, i fucking loved anime

These days whenever I'm exposed to it, I find it increasingly creepy, full of the same old anime tropes (school kids, magical powers, etc.) and just plain uninteresting.

I do very much enjoy the Studio Ghibli movies though!
 
These days whenever I'm exposed to it, I find it increasingly creepy, full of the same old anime tropes (school kids, magical powers, etc.) and just plain uninteresting.

I mean, yeah, if you're not actually looking for things to watch yourself, the only things you will be exposed to is mainstream rubbish. I'm willing to bet you have no idea what Death Parade is, for example.
 
I don't get what you mean. It's a medium. Some people play games more than others. Some people listen to music than others. It's not anything stranger than that.

As for me personally, I enjoy the fact that anime isn't bound to budget the same way western television is which allows for a greater variation of stories to be told. After watching so many western shows, I sort of got burnt out and wanted more variety, so anime became an excellent outlet for that. Good luck having something like NGE/EoE as live-action TV.
 
Anime is so strange to me. So much of the stuff I see looks like the same artists with the same styles, same character types, same weird "reaction" expressions (all the "ooooohs" and "ahhhhhs"), same animations. I think the animations are my favorite thing about anime, but a lot of the other stuff I just don't get, and I don't really care to at this point, it's just not my thing. I was into DBZ as a kid and it was entertaining, but the pacing is just weird as shit to me.
 
Anime is so strange to me. So much of the stuff I see looks like the same artists with the same styles, same character types, same weird "reaction" expressions (all the "ooooohs" and "ahhhhhs"), same animations.

But what's the stuff you see? Ping Pong, Monster, Paranoia Agent and Death Parade, or Attack on Titan, Sword Art Online, Naruto and Bleach?
 
No, it's not real.

And yeah, they're Saturday morning cartoons if anime was defined by Dragon Ball, One Piece and Naruto. It's not, though.

When I meant Saturday morning cartoons, I didn't infer that it was rubbish. The 90's X-Men cartoon aired on Saturdays and that show was dark as fuck. I meant that they're cartoons - with quality that varies and genres ranging from action, silly, mystery, etc. But "anime" is basically an umbrella term for cartoons from Japan. It's like defending "American cinema" or "Korean music". It's weird because it's hard to determine what's good or bad as a whole group but rather it's individual works that should be judged. But for some reason, probably related to the subculture, it all gets lumped up as "anime".
 
When I meant Saturday morning cartoons, I didn't infer that it was rubbish. The 90's X-Men cartoon aired on Saturdays and that show was dark as fuck. I meant that they're cartoons - with quality that varies and genres ranging from action, silly, mystery, etc.

Oh I see, I agree with you. It's just that when I think "Saturday morning cartoons", I think of the typical shounen (even if they're violent), but I wouldn't place all anime into that category since I wouldn't expect something like Welcome to the NHK or Death Parade to be the kinds of shows that I'd ever see during that time frame.
 
Saturday Morning Cartoons probably isn't the best moniker for a medium whose shows largely air after midnight and are aimed at older audiences.
 
I don't get why many people refer to the whole anime medium as a single thing. I mean, no one says "Movie is good/bad" talking about all the cinematographic medium.
 
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As for me personally, I enjoy the fact that anime isn't bound to budget the same way western television is which allows for a greater variation of stories to be told.
I understand what you're trying to say, that being animated allow for more flexibility. For example setting a show on a spaceship costs the same as setting it in a school since drawing an interior is just the same whereas live action would require having to build expensive sets. But budgets for anime are tight, like barely make much money back tight. This is why you can get crappy animation and short series.
 
If you want to try some quality stuff I'd start slow and easy. Don't jump into a Kill la Kill too quickly.

Or ever. I don't know. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I'm finding out that I tend to really dislike the more outlandish kinds of anime out there, given my distaste for Kill la Kill and FLCL. I thought Panty & Stocking was alright for what it was, though, so... I dunno.
 
But what's the stuff you see? Ping Pong, Monster, Paranoia Agent and Death Parade, or Attack on Titan, Sword Art Online, Naruto and Bleach?

I mean I'm not very well versed in Anime, this is obviously the view from an "outsider", but there are similarities in style that permeate most of the anime that I've seen. Namely, flashy, tight and revealing clothes on women, men with a feminine quality to their appearance, tall and thin bodies, faces with simple contours, small or no nose, big eyes, small simple mouths (well small until the characters talk at least). Fast talking bubbly females with slower talking more subdued male characters. I don't know how to describe the animation similarity; everything is sort of static with sudden bursts of movement and fluidity. Lots of pausing and strangely timed reactions in conversation. There's just a look and flow to it. I know there are intricacies and different styles within anime, but much of it is within the same realm aesthetically and atmosphere wise.

But from your list I've only watched Attack on Titan, Sword Art Online and Naruto.
 
But from your list I've only watched Attack on Titan, Sword Art Online and Naruto.

See, that was my point. The first 4 items I listed are the kinds of stuff that you aren't aware of because they're not mainstream; amazing shows that don't fit in to your general view of anime at all. The latter 4 are the typical, relatively generic shows people who don't actively look for good anime think of when they think of "anime", and how it supposedly all follows the same tropes, concepts and aesthetic. It seems that those are the shows you're familiar with, which is the problem. All of the similarities you mention mainly apply to the popular stuff, but branch out and you'll find that it's not true of the entire medium.
 
I think the thing with anime is that, because it comes from a different culture, its influences and references are often so far removed from anything we grew up with. So when you're young and you run into anime, it's a pretty fantastic experience because it's so incredibly fresh and creative compared to anything you had seen before. It's drawing from a completely different place than the west.

However, once you see a lot of anime, you get used to the tropes and references and you realize that a lot of it isn't that creative within the context of its own genre... just like western tv shows and movies.

That said, anime isn't a genre, it's a medium (although, that's a tenuous definition, the medium is animation, it's just animation that comes from Japan). There's all types of anime, not all of them follow "High School Girls Team Up to Do Something" or "Young Plucky Protagonist Makes Friends Out Of Enemies And Achieves His Dream". Sure, these are prevailing tropes, but there's other stuff out there.

There's tons of good anime out there, just as there's a lot of bad anime out there. It's dangerous to have a mindset of "if this is anime I'll consume it", just as it's bad to have a mindset of "If this is anime, it must be bad".
 
See, that was my point. The first 4 items I listed are the kinds of stuff that you aren't aware of because they're not mainstream; amazing shows that don't fit in to your general view of anime at all. The latter 4 are the typical, relatively generic shows people who don't actively look for good anime think of when they think of "anime", and how it supposedly all follows the same tropes, concepts and aesthetic. It seems that those are the shows you're familiar with, which is the problem.

So It's basically like I'm listening to pop when there's classical, jazz and maybe some underground rock going on in the background. I mean I'm not surprised, I don't pretend to know much, it was just an observation. Maybe I'll give some of the other ones you mentioned a try and see how it resonates with me.
 
Or ever. I don't know. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I'm finding out that I tend to really dislike the more outlandish kinds of anime out there, given my distaste for Kill la Kill and FLCL. I thought Panty & Stocking was alright for what it was, though, so... I dunno.

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I like the series, but I can see how just all of it could be unappealing
 
I understand what you're trying to say, that being animated allow for more flexibility. For example setting a show on a spaceship costs the same as setting it in a school since drawing an interior is just the same whereas live action would require having to build expensive sets. But budgets for anime are tight, like barely make much money back tight. This is why you can get crappy animation and short series.

And despite the tight budgets, I still am consistently amazed at what the medium is creating. Sci-fi and fantasy (not counting GoT) is basically dead on western television. Whereas there are always 3-4 anime shows each season being of that genre. Live-action television is simply too expensive for anything but the dry same-sets, same-actors shows. And even Game of Thrones like I mentioned earlier, being really fucking expensive, would've done more justice to the source material in animated form, with a fraction of the budget.

That's the advantage anime has on live-action. The more outlandish settings and stories will always be better told through anime than live-action TV, given realistic budgets for each medium. GoT can't sustain itself without a massive viewer base. Whereas anime can and does sustain itself by appealing to certain niches rather than all-encompassing audiences.
 
Honestly Op, your pretty much on the mark, anime as a meta-genre has both very good things (ex: full metal alchemist brotherhood) and very bad things (ex: Mars of destruction).

That being said, the appeal of anime (to me) is just the shear volume and huge selection of creativity out there. While there is a lot of "moe" out there, there are still a good deal of shows every season to appeal to.

Saying "why does someone like anime" is gonna get lots of responses, and none of them will be quite right, since it's a very nueanced question. Idk... I've enjoyed lot of different things in anime from action to romance to just straight fucked up shit, and I'd give you a different answers as to why I liked each and every one of them.

That said I binge like a motherfucker (watched 200 different tv aired anime last year, not including rewatches, movies, ova's etc), so I might be completely a outlier.
 
Anime had season-long stories when US television was almost entirely episodic. American television plots have become a lot more complex over the past decade or two, so the difference is not as noticeable now as when I started watching anime.
 
I don't know if that's true. It's an amazing, amazing film, but an argument could be made that The Tale of Princess Kaguya, Wolf Children, Paprika or a number of other flicks could be considered at least as good.

I don't know about the other two movies but I think that Princess Kaguya is overrated on Gaf. I liked Song of the Sea more even though Kaguya (which is pretty good too) is perhaps a little more 'mature'
 
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