Anime. What's your opinion on it?

[Tabrotar]

As i have way over 1000 manga volumes and some TB of anime i would say that yeah i like anime.
Ofc not all are good or even worth to watch but that´s like many posters have said before true for almost everything.

[Wolfbear]

Anime is a conduit for storytelling and art, it in it's self can't really be bad. Some anime shows are bad, others are not.

[Spl4sh3r]

I like some, but I've noticed too many focus too much on fan service than the actual story. There are those that don't and they are better. I like the ones where you get stuck in another world. Such as Sword Art Online or Grimgar of Fantasy and Ash.

[Blood Raven]

I like anime. In general there's good and bad like any kind of entertainment, but I think you find a lot more variety in it than your typical tv show.

I'm personally not a fan of the overly cutesy or high school stuff, but I do like series like Berserk (Not the trainwreck current tv series) which is more dark fantasy, although the manga is much better; if only it wasn't stuck on constant hiatus.

[derpkitteh]

i like some of it. not a lot though.

[Neichus]

I'm always tempted to reply to these, and coming in on page 4 I suspect nothing I write here will be read, but here it goes:

I think anime is an unusual medium, full of great ideas and fantastical premises. There is something curious about the Japanese imagination that seems to inspire the strangest of settings, a sort of latent mysticism that is both alien and resistant to rational thought. When it is at its best, it surprises me in a way that Western works never do. I look desperately for such series, for those that encapsulate the unusual, insightful, or sublime.

Beyond the conceptual level there is also the art. Some posters above criticized anime's style, its usage of stills and minimal movement. Perhaps this is just due to exposure, but over time I've come to see this as a pleasant aspect of the medium. While originally developed for monetary reasons (it's not economical to fully animate every frame), over time it has become part of the artistic ethos, and in the best it shines, the scenes capitalizing on the feeling of flowing from panel to panel. Also, rarely, there is to be found a beautiful ultra-realism, the appreciation of the small details. On these occasions the nature of drawn art becomes apparent, and it cannot be regarded as a poor second to traditional cinematography.

However, after spending many years with anime, I've also become disgusted with its excesses. If the highs of anime are pronounced, so are its lows. The utter drivel that is peddled in the medium is astounding. The flagrant sexuality, excessive to the point of grotesque, saturates many series. Its overweening emphasis on adolescent emotionalism is also pronounced, whether it be in romance, action, or comedy. One has to only observe the average age of anime characters to see how pervasive this tendency is. These two things combine give much of anime an off-putting sheen, an expression of pure wish fulfillment and male fantasy, completely unmasked.

There is also the disturbing catering to niche fetishism. I'm unsure why this is. It may be the byproduct of a business model that relies on secondary merchandise purchases to continue, thereby forcing it to continually court its customers in any way it can. From the disturbing extremes of incest and pedophilia to the blander idiocy surrounding "best girls" and traps (males who are entirely female in appearance and behavior), you can find an anime series unabashedly prostrating itself before a picky audience. It's embarrassing.

Despite this, I still continue to view anime, both airing and older series. Being the (hipster) critic that I am, I believe that newer shows are increasingly bland, having perfected the model of producing "refined garbage" for their target audiences. But not to throw the baby out with the bathwater, I still manage to find those gems occasionally that remind me why I keep watching.

[BuckSparkles]

Some anime I can get behind, like Trigun, or Hellsing, or maybe a few older ones.

ANY anime with giggly high pitched school girls or perverted topics, no thank you.

Needs to have action or an interesting plot. Or just ridiculous power ups or transformations.

Also number one rule about Anime, don't tell IRL people you like it. Keep that shit hidden.

[BuckSparkles]

Why on Earth would I hide my hobby?

Negative stigma. I keep it hidden. I try to keep gaming as a hobby hidden too until I can trust somebody.

[Beardless Man]

[Animalhouse]

The only anime I have ever liked is Voltron.

Honestly, I think it is weird AF. Especially the sexualized stuff, it is just a way pedos get away with their fantasies as they all look like preteens with big boobs.
Every anime nut I run into are just odd. Whatever, do your thing...but do it over there.

I have always assumed it came about because the Japanese have a round eye fetish. It is odd to me that most their cartoon characters don't look Japanese but Caucasian.

[Dispraise]

I don't like it, so I don't watch it. I don't watch it, so I don't have a strong opinion on it.

That's pretty much it.

[gyrados]

some are good

[Lex Icon]

Not my cup of tea...

not sure why you added a "but it's alright" there at the end though.

[Kallisto]

I have always assumed it came about because the Japanese have a round eye fetish. It is odd to me that most their cartoon characters don't look Japanese but Caucasian.

http://kotaku.com/5627268/why-do-jap...ers-look-white is generally the reason why. (TLR they look Japanese to Japanese people but white to white people)

As for liking/disliking anime. To me that's like asking do I like TV or Films or Cartoons or video games or books? The question is so broad there is no real yes/no answer. Each anime has their own genres that overlap with TV shows. There are good anime and terrible anime, good cartoons and terrible cartoons, good tv shows and terrible tv shows, etc.

[Daedius]

I enjoy them.

There's a whole variety of types and styles for them, they're just a medium.

Granted, there are more tripe than good ones due to how increasingly popular they are becoming... especially to the west.

It'd be very narrow minded to just label it all if you find it distasteful.

[Holofernes]

i think its very weird when adult straight males watch this weird japan cartoon stuff. I think you have to be some very special kind of person to actually enjoy this medium.

I have only seen the final fantasy movies, and jesus this stuff is so clichee and boring, i think i needed 5 evenings of falling asleep to finally complete one movie.

I think guys who like anime are also those folks that are totally awed by the diablo3 story.

And in most of europe, if u tell your workmates that u are a anime fan, you are offically the pokemon retard at work. If u are not totally braindamaged, and like anime, keep it a hidden pleasure for the sake of your social /work environment.

[Lotus Victoria]

Some anime (Bebop, FMA, Berserk, Monster, Akira, etc) are great examples of what that media can achieve. But there is a lot of awful anime out there. And I still don't get the "cute girl-ish" kind of anime. It's clearly not for girls, that's for sure. They have 0 plot, and serves no purpose other than making cute 2d drawings do cute things.

[Lorgar Aurelian]

Anime seems like a waste of time to me when I can get much farther into the story much faster by reading the manga of most anime. The anime I watch is dragon ball super because theanga comes out at a snails pace and even that I skipped every thing before the atleast arc and read the manga when it comes out.

[Daedius]

Anime seems like a waste of time to me when I can get much farther into the story much faster by reading the manga of most anime. The anime I watch is dragon ball super because theanga comes out at a snails pace and even that I skipped every thing before the atleast arc and read the manga when it comes out.

Take as an example; Lord of the Rings was a novel, would you say it was a waste of time to bring it to life onscreen ?

[Independent voter]

I'm always tempted to reply to these, and coming in on page 4 I suspect nothing I write here will be read, but here it goes:

I think anime is an unusual medium, full of great ideas and fantastical premises. There is something curious about the Japanese imagination that seems to inspire the strangest of settings, a sort of latent mysticism that is both alien and resistant to rational thought. When it is at its best, it surprises me in a way that Western works never do. I look desperately for such series, for those that encapsulate the unusual, insightful, or sublime.

Beyond the conceptual level there is also the art. Some posters above criticized anime's style, its usage of stills and minimal movement. Perhaps this is just due to exposure, but over time I've come to see this as a pleasant aspect of the medium. While originally developed for monetary reasons (it's not economical to fully animate every frame), over time it has become part of the artistic ethos, and in the best it shines, the scenes capitalizing on the feeling of flowing from panel to panel. Also, rarely, there is to be found a beautiful ultra-realism, the appreciation of the small details. On these occasions the nature of drawn art becomes apparent, and it cannot be regarded as a poor second to traditional cinematography.

However, after spending many years with anime, I've also become disgusted with its excesses. If the highs of anime are pronounced, so are its lows. The utter drivel that is peddled in the medium is astounding. The flagrant sexuality, excessive to the point of grotesque, saturates many series. Its overweening emphasis on adolescent emotionalism is also pronounced, whether it be in romance, action, or comedy. One has to only observe the average age of anime characters to see how pervasive this tendency is. These two things combine give much of anime an off-putting sheen, an expression of pure wish fulfillment and male fantasy, completely unmasked.

There is also the disturbing catering to niche fetishism. I'm unsure why this is. It may be the byproduct of a business model that relies on secondary merchandise purchases to continue, thereby forcing it to continually court its customers in any way it can. From the disturbing extremes of incest and pedophilia to the blander idiocy surrounding "best girls" and traps (males who are entirely female in appearance and behavior), you can find an anime series unabashedly prostrating itself before a picky audience. It's embarrassing.

Despite this, I still continue to view anime, both airing and older series. Being the (hipster) critic that I am, I believe that newer shows are increasingly bland, having perfected the model of producing "refined garbage" for their target audiences. But not to throw the baby out with the bathwater, I still manage to find those gems occasionally that remind me why I keep watching.

I agree. The artwork and composition is almost always amazing so even if the story is off and it frequently is sometimes I watch an anime just for the visuals.



To think that a human sat down and drew all that out, animated it is one of the reasons I watch anime. Just stand alone a lot of the scenes are works of art.