Anime Thigh Thread II

[Zatheyll]

Did you guys know every fantasy show is actually LotR in disguise but worse.

[BloodyAngel12]

[Val the Moofia Boss]

What is so hard to understand? My point is you're retarded for saying "almost every anime that has come out over the past ten years seems to be a variation on the same archetypes, same narratives, same dialogue, same cinematography, same musical score, and overall just the same ideas rehashed over and over." Making a blanket statement like that is fucking dumb when you don't even have much experience with the medium, you're the equivalent of a dude who read a few novels and suddenly thinks he's an experienced literary critic.

It was never my intent to come off as snobbish.

Let's look up a dictionary, shall we?

1. the expression of disapproval of someone or something based on perceived faults or mistakes.

By that definition, the only requirement to critique a work is to make the critique itself. One's supposed "experience" in the genre of the work has no bearing on whether or not their critique is indeed a critique. Roger Ebert proclaiming 2001: A Space Odyssey to be one of the greatest films of all time for it's "cleverness", is no more or less a "critique" than a casual moviegoer describing the ending of that movie as "stupid and pretentious". Yes, we do attribute merit to one's ability to judge based off of how much of that medium and or/genre they have consumed, but the definition still stands. Is a detailed explanation of one's issue with a work illegitimate because they haven't seen as many works in the same medium as the one reading the explanation?

The problem I'm describing isn't unique to me. It has existed for at decades, since the Golden Age of Television. I grew up absorbing television (I imagine many of you did as well, but who knows), of which there is so many that you had to pick and choose a handful to stick to. The "best shows" ran for long stretches of time, having explored so many storylines, that they eventually began reusing narratives and tropes from other series or even from earlier on in their own canon, and simply tinkering with them. Subverting the trope, double subverting it, inversion, and so on. The overuse of the same storytelling device over and over for decades is probably the number 1# contributor to TV Tropes' existence. We had seen it all, to the point we could predict the plot. Our suspension of disbelief had dropped, and we started nitpicking the shows, wondering why I'd even bother watching these shows if I wasn't really enjoying them anymore. We were sick and tired.

400 episodes of Bonanza. Every single Star Trek series, for 700 episodes (don't ever do that, you deserve better with your time). All three Stargate series', for 400 episodes. 500 episodes of Law and Order. 150ish episodes of House. Same for NCIS. Hundreds more for Dragnet, Little House on the Prairie, The Waltons. Dragnet, Leave it to Beaver, The Twilight Zone, X-Files, Babylon 5, The West Wing, Battlestar Galactica...

Not to mention, all of the other shows one took a look at to see if it was any good. Half the time, it simply didn't measure up to what you had seen before. The other half of the time, the episode you stumbled upon was following the same story you've seen dozens of times before.

Literal years of watching the same thing.

It's why I dropped watching live-action television altogether.

Now, over the years, I had seen of reruns of Pokemon, Yu-gi-Oh, Inuyasha, and Naruto, but never really thought much of it. I was unaware that anime was its own, distinctive medium for storytelling. Kind of hard when you start thinking these "eastern cartoons" as being just as samey as live-action. Once you've seen several hundred episodes of Pokemon and Naruto, you've pretty much experienced most storylines you'll see in the shounen genre. MC being an outcast, being talked down to everyone and trying to prove his worth. Training arcs. Pointless episodes camping in the woods or searching for lost cats. Characters of the day who never show up again or are reduced to glorified extras. Fights that last for upwards of twenty minutes, with characters screaming their attacks and speed lines, people monologue about their superiority, MCs with evil superpowers or evil monsters under their control, a journey that seems to last forever...

I contented myself with reading books and playing video games, occasionally checking Netflix to see if there was anything remotely interesting, scrolling through hundreds of boring titles. Continium, Caprica, Merlin, Dr. Who, half a dozen crimes shows, dozens more shows I can't even remember... when I suddenly stumbled upon this thumbnail. It caught my eye; I had never seen an image quite like it. It was staged like a grand-scale fantasy movie, like LotR, but it was drawn? The color palette was unlike I had ever seen in a "cartoon". I read the description.

"In modern day Japan, seven mages summon seven legendary heroes from ages past to fight to the death for the Holy Grail, which is said to bring about wishes."

I was intrigued. I dimmed the lights and started the episode.

In the first two minutes, you have a new father talking to his wife about he's going to kill her. She's absolutely fine with it.

WHAT AM I WATCHING?

The rest of the episode follows six teams as they prepare for their impending war. You have ministers who are supposed to arbitrate the conflict... colluding with one of the masters. There's a student in a Harry Potter-esque school who stumbles upon his master's plan to join the war, steals his equipment, runs off to Japan, and brainwashes a couple of muggles. You have an anti-magi, a sharpshooter so awesome, he can take on wizards with tripwires and firearms. There's this poor, dogged nice guy who is going to risk his life in this war just to save his pseudo-niece. And then there was the ending of the episode, with Back to Zero playing.

I binged the entire first season that night, finished the second the next day, and immediately scrambled to find more of this "anime" thing...

Thus, I was hooked on anime. The first two-three years were great, with pretty much each watch introducing me to new ideas I had never seen before. It blew my mind. Seirei no Moribito and its sincere story of a woman running from his past, a man trying to make end's meat, and a prince trying to make sense of it all. FMAB and its epic tale of redemption and self sacrifice. Aldnoah Zero as a greek tragedy with bombastic Sawano drops and crazed French aristocrats with mechs. Death Note with its philosophical and thriller story.

Eventually, the novelty wore off, as I slowly realized that anime wasn't immune to the same problem that plagued American live-action TV. Anime was simply drawing from a different pool of commonly used storylines and tropes. It became the most jarring when I watched Magi, when I started thinking "wait a minute, I've seen this before... in Pokemon, Naruto, and Yu-gi-Oh). With each successive shounen series I watch, I began sinking more and more into my old problem. Same with Barakamon, which was my first SoL, and then I watched Shigatsu, Flying Witch, Mahouka, Beyond the Boundary, Shounen Maid, K-ON, Kobayashi maid, Tanaka-Kun, Nozaki-Kun, Fruits Baskets, and on. There are only so many times you can laugh at the same school friends/house shenanigans.

For the past five years, the majority of the anime being brought to Netflix and CR with awareness falls into a broad category of homogenization, with a lot of crossing over between genres. SAO, Naruto/Boruto, Beyond the Boundary, Mahouka, Mahō Tsukai no Yome are not only SoL, but also magical shows, and there are only so many times you can enjoy watching the protagonist walk out of their SoL home and be awed by the new magical creature of the week that will never be seen again (or demoted to glorified extra). Oh wait.. It's even worse when you've already seen the same SoL tropes these series draw on for the SoL of the show.

Thus, for the past two years, I've been begun following new anime less and less, watching less anime at a time and looking more into older shows that are acclaimed by the Western fandom, shows said to stand up today's storytelling trends.

Now, I'm vastly oversimplifying what I mean by "reusuing tropes". It's a combination of problems: repetitive dialogue, inventive use of cinematography or blocking (relative to anime, ofcourse), the dictatorial use of orchestras, by-the-numbers scenes, and so on. I'm not going to jump off a bridge and write another half dozen paragraphs on that right now.

Obviously, there are far, far more anime coming out each season than what I just mentioned, upwards of fifty a season! That is also far, far too many shows to even possibly look into outside of a cursory glance on ANIchart. Each season, you have a couple of shows that are highly anticipated, be it because it is based off of acclaimed source material (AoT, Erased, MHA, Your Lie in April, Assassination Classroom) that everyone watches. Alright, that's good. Then you have all of the other adaptations, which production committees produce because they are safe. These vary in quality, from a few greats like 3-Gatsu no Lion and Seirei no Moribito, to "okay" adaptations such as SnK, Ajin, Barakamon, Tanaka-Kun, to forgettable like Robotic;Notes and Boruto.

Then you have the anime originals, half of which seem to be shows by Studio Sunrise (which I've already elaborated more than enough on), or a rare project like TROYCA's AZ and Re:Creators, or sometimes that very rare show like Dog Days. These are usually the most intriguing shows to watch in anime, as the creators are not tied down to retell a drawn or written story, but can instead fully take advantage of the anime medium and tell their own, wholly unique story. That's how you end up with Tatami Galaxy and Space Dandy. Such shows release few and far between.

Having exhausted the mine that is the modern anime releasing today, the only realistic option to find tales unlike you've ever seen or heard is start looking through shows that came from an entirely different era of storytelling. Would you ever see a scene shown like this in modern anime outside of a SHAFT show?

[Millhi]

Anime hasn't been original since its inception.

Having exhausted the mine that is the modern anime releasing today, the only realistic option to find tales unlike you've ever seen or heard is start looking through shows that came from an entirely different era of storytelling. Would you ever see a scene shown like this in modern anime outside of a SHAFT show?

"Video not available." You have a different video? Can't see it as im not from the US. At least thats what I think the problem is.
And I would wager yes but i need to see a vid of that scene first.

[BloodyAngel12]

Anime is Trash and so am I!

[Zatheyll]

It was never my intent to come off as snobbish.

Let's look up a dictionary, shall we?

[Schirmy]

-snip-

"You don't know what you don't know."

[Epuration]

It was never my intent to come off as snobbish.

Let's look up a dictionary, shall we?

[Val the Moofia Boss]

Anime hasn't been original since its inception.





"Video not available." You have a different video? Can't see it as im not from the US. At least thats what I think the problem is.
And I would wager yes but i need to see a vid of that scene first.

I cannot find it on Youtube outside of that video. I am pointing to a collection of scenes from Rose of Versailies episodes 3-5, specifically the confrontations between the Princess and the Countess. Rather than just having them argue with each other, the animators instead rely on symbolic animation to express their feelings of disdain towards each other, which makes for a powerful arc, even thought it's only a hour long. I can't think of anything like it outside of the Arslan OVAs, when Char fenced with Amuro in the third episode of MSG, Berserk 1997's abstract scenes, and a few SHAFT shows like 3-Gatsu.

[Millhi]

I cannot find it on Youtube outside of that video. I am pointing to a collection of scenes from Rose of Versailies episodes 3-5, specifically the confrontations between the Princess and the Countess. Rather than just having them argue with each other, the animators instead rely on symbolic animation to express their feelings of disdain towards each other, which makes for a powerful arc, even thought it's only a hour long. I can't think of anything like it outside of the Arslan OVAs, when Char fenced with Amuro in the third episode of MSG, Berserk 1997's abstract scenes, and a few SHAFT shows like 3-Gatsu.

Thanks, I'll see if I can find some of that series tomorrow and check it.

[Shinzai]

[Sesto]

snipped

See, here's the thing. Critique doesn't require extensive experience. You're right. But you're not critiquing a single work, or even a series, or even a single genre. You're critiquing an entire decade of fucking anime. And considering you've seen very little of it, even admitting you're only looking at a selection from a few sites, saying a blanket statement like that makes you look like an ignorant fool.

That's where I'm coming from with the book analogy. To use it again, you're a dude who walked in a small book store, read all the works there, then went on to complain about how literature just isn't how it used to be. Except you're even worse as you've only read a few books on a few shelves, and have already compared them to classics like Shakespeare when you haven't even read one of his plays yet.

I thought that would've been obvious. Clearly it wasn't as you went ahead and wrote a blog post about shit nobody cares about.

[Val the Moofia Boss]

See, here's the thing. Critique doesn't require extensive experience. You're right. But you're not critiquing a single work, or even a series, or even a single genre. You're critiquing an entire decade of fucking anime. And considering you've seen very little of it, even admitting you're only looking at a selection from a few sites, saying a blanket statement like that makes you look like an ignorant fool.

That's where I'm coming from with the book analogy. To use it again, you're a dude who walked in a small book store, read all the works there, then went on to complain about how literature just isn't how it used to be. Except you're even worse as you've only read a few books on a few shelves, and have already compared them to classics like Shakespeare when you haven't even read one of his plays yet.

I thought that would've been obvious. Clearly it wasn't as you went ahead and wrote a blog post about shit nobody cares about.

A more appropriate analogy would be that I walked into a small book store, walked over to a shelf that says "books that are popular in America over the past ten years", read them, began to get a little exhausted of them, and then decided to start looking at the other shelves.

"What's this? A 120+ episode long series about an intergalactic war involving hundreds of characters and the dichotomy between a corrupt democracy and a benevolent dictatorship, and the weight of lives? That sounds interesting!"

"A girl is born to a count in the year preceding the French revolution, who proceeds to her raise her as his son so that he might have an "heir" to his family. I want to see that!"

"Oh look, another mecha show... wait a minute, it follow the wife of a mecha pilot and how she deals with the stress that he may not return? Now that is an underexplored idea!"

"Huh, a story about a wanderer who is pursued by bounty hunters and strives to protect people with non-lethal force... except he uses a gun? How is he going to pull this off?"

[bals]

I really didn't want to add to this stupid conversation but you're basically saying you see some of the popular shows and label it as all the same but then go and look for highly rated older shows? I hate to break it to you but 90% of the popular shows in any era are shit.

Did you guys know every fantasy show is actually LotR in disguise but worse.

pfft you filthy casual. the epic of gilgamesh is the original. anything else is a fake.

[Sj]

[BloodyAngel12]

I really didn't want to add to this stupid conversation but you're basically saying you see some of the popular shows and label it as all the same but then go and look for highly rated older shows? I hate to break it to you but 90% of the popular shows in any era are shit.



pfft you filthy casual. the epic of gilgamesh is the original. anything else is a fake.

Gil a shit, Broskander was better.

[bals]

Gil a shit, Broskander was better.

me when i show up at a friends house

jk i don't have friends

[Yunru]

The most hot girl this season goes to:
http://shrani.si/f/3b/JX/2V4QVfUN/wa...oujo-site-.png

[bals]

The most hot girl this season goes to:
http://shrani.si/f/3b/JX/2V4QVfUN/wa...oujo-site-.png

q͚̫̯̊͐r̷̯̗͉͙ͮ̽̈́ͦͮͪE̡̳̱̜̘̭̅ͯ3͔̜͖̯ͪ̋̽̃ͭ̚T̵̹̬̹̉̂͐͑I ̧̣̥͉͔̝̞̬n̟̠͎͕̈́̽͌q͎̦̓ͥ͂̂̓̏s̟̹̪̅̽

[BloodyAngel12]

me when i show up at a friends house

jk i don't have friends

You have people on the internet, kind of the same thing :P

I wish Iskander was in Fate/Cooking.