Controversial Anime Opinions

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Postby FreakyFilmFan4ever » Fri Apr 14, 2017 6:50 am

The complains lobbied against Akira are very interesting. Akira was the first movie that got me to actually appreciate anime when I first saw as a 19-20-ish year old film student back it in 2007. Prior to that my only exposure to actual anime TV episodes or movies were the animated commercials for A Children's Card Game and the like. The only actual credit I gave the art form was creating such an enormous marketing god as Pikachu. When I first saw Akira, I was astounded as to what the medium could actually accomplish within terms of narrative and content.

Though, I will admit that I saw Akira while studying films such as Koyaanisqatsi, Russian Ark, and 2001: A Space Odyssey, masterpiece films that boast of unconventional narrative flow and dominant visual style. I'm not saying that Akira is on that same level as far as masterpieces go, but it certainly does fit the description of "unconventional narrative flow" and "dominant visual style." Comparing it to the other Japanese animated titles I've seen since 2007, I must confess that I've watched Kiki's Delivery Service more often than I've watched Akira.

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Postby RadicalRandy » Fri Apr 14, 2017 11:56 am

I absolutely understand that Akira was a definite breakthrough for anime, but I think put it simply: t'was not my jam.
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Postby Alaska Slim » Sun Apr 16, 2017 8:37 pm

View Original PostFreakyFilmFan4ever wrote:The complains lobbied against Akira are very interesting. Akira was the first movie that got me to actually appreciate anime when I first saw as a 19-20-ish year old film student back it in 2007. Prior to that my only exposure to actual anime TV episodes or movies were the animated commercials for A Children's Card Game and the like. The only actual credit I gave the art form was creating such an enormous marketing god as Pikachu. When I first saw Akira, I was astounded as to what the medium could actually accomplish within terms of narrative and content.

Though, I will admit that I saw Akira while studying films such as Koyaanisqatsi, Russian Ark, and 2001: A Space Odyssey, masterpiece films that boast of unconventional narrative flow and dominant visual style. I'm not saying that Akira is on that same level as far as masterpieces go,


But as Pause and Select points out, Akira is more than just a technical expression of filmcraft or something meant to provoke an idea or realization.

It is the distillation of a zeitgeist in time, of Japan laboring under the ramifications of cultural discontinuity; itself a long term effect from soundly losing a war, then being rebuilt by an external power whose values don't quite align, spurring corruption and abuse in its institutions.


When you leverage that aspect of Akira, I'd really only call Russian Ark equivalent or better, since it was also trying to convey the real life experience of a people. Though in Russian Ark's case, it was less through allegory, and more through actual events.
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Postby FreakyFilmFan4ever » Sun Apr 16, 2017 9:38 pm

^ Yeah, I certainly wasn't aware of the cultural environment that Akira was responding to when I first saw it. The only thing that stuck out was the eye-popping animation, grotesque mutation designs, and, as stated above, the "unconventional narrative flow." Now that I know more about modern Japan and how it influences their media, I can appreciate certain things about it a bit more than I could before.

View Original PostRadicalRandy wrote:I absolutely understand that Akira was a definite breakthrough for anime, but I think put it simply: t'was not my jam.

Oh, I'm not dismissing anyone's claims or opinions about art. I just don't usually hear complaints lobbied against Akira, especially from fans of various Japanese animated titles. It's certainly a new perspective for me.

...I'm not sure how I feel about it, though. It's been a few years since I've watched Akira, so a re-watch and a reevaluation is definitely in order for me.

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Postby El Squibbonator » Wed Jun 28, 2017 6:05 pm

I'm probably going to get some flak for this, but I never liked The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya very much. For me, it's the definition of a show that doesn't age well. Not only is the main character kind of a jerk, but pretty much everything in it is a reference to slice-of-life anime cliches that were popular when it came out. Why its fans have pretty much built a religion around it, I'll never understand.
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Postby FreakyFilmFan4ever » Wed Jun 28, 2017 7:53 pm

I saw that movie once, out of context of the actual show. It was insufferable.

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Postby esselfortium » Wed Jun 28, 2017 8:10 pm

View Original PostEl Squibbonator wrote:I'm probably going to get some flak for this, but I never liked The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya very much. For me, it's the definition of a show that doesn't age well. Not only is the main character kind of a jerk, but pretty much everything in it is a reference to slice-of-life anime cliches that were popular when it came out. Why its fans have pretty much built a religion around it, I'll never understand.

While Haruhi definitely has a lot of problems, I think it basically created a lot of the cliches you're seeing in it. Haruhi's massive popularity helped usher in the tidal wave of shows about do-nothing school clubs, and many of those shows have easily bested it, though it had its own charm as well.

It's been a few years since I watched Haruhi, but I remember finding the TV series to be extremely hit or miss, with a fair share of both wonderful and awful moments. The movie, on the other hand, was a 10/10 masterpiece.

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Postby El Squibbonator » Wed Jun 28, 2017 8:35 pm

View Original PostFreakyFilmFan4ever wrote:I saw that movie once, out of context of the actual show. It was insufferable.


The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya is the title of the whole series.
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Postby Mr. Tines » Thu Jun 29, 2017 12:51 am

I watched the original series back in the day, and felt that it was just an exercise in throwing as many clichés as possible up against the wall to see what stuck. I did finish it, but it was never high on my watch list, and it was my first real experience of the assertion that /a/ never talks about good anime.

Watching the reactions to S2 from the first announcement, then that it would be a rebroadcast then that it would have new material and finally through Endless Eight was way more entertaining. KyoAni were master trolls throughout.

View Original PostFreakyFilmFan4ever wrote:I saw that movie once, out of context of the actual show. It was insufferable.

The movie was The Disappearance of ..., adapting the LN of the same name (each having a title "The [whatever] of Haruhi Suzumiya").
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Postby pwhodges » Thu Jun 29, 2017 3:09 am

In all fields of art there are works which one can keep going back to like old friends, and there are works which make significant contributions but whose point once made is made. I feel that Haruhi is rather of the second kind. That emphatically does not mean it is a less valuable contribution to anime than other more watchable examples - but for all the defence I'll make of the endless eight, I also know I'll never again watch it end to end as I did once.

The film is superb, of course, but it doesn't really work unless you've seen the series first for the world-building.
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Postby Alaska Slim » Thu Jun 29, 2017 5:49 am

Hell, I watched halfway through The Disappearance of Nagato Yuki-chan before I saw the film.

I have no clue why I watched the former. I was even telling myself "You're watching a mediocre love-triangle show, whose only novel point is that it's a riff on another show you only kind of liked."


As to the film; sleeping Haruhi-in-sleeping-bag-face FTW. The heavy use of mood lighting and a visceral color pallet also got me to buy into the atmosphere. Sort of like what Mamoru Hosoda does... until he ruins everything for me...
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Postby Ray » Sun Jul 02, 2017 7:32 pm

Is there any particular reason Loli character designs started exploding as of late? I mean, looking back through animes history there were Loli characters, but it was usually only one character design for every five or six series. Now, it seems like EVERY anime has some pedo-bait character design for a character who is 'really a three billion year old space demon! Honest!"

It's really hampering my ability to enjoy some series. I want to enjoy some slice of life comedy romance, but then in comes the thirty year old mom who looks like shes ELEVEN!

What is it with Japan? Aren't they the least bit concerned about this?

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Postby El Squibbonator » Sun Jul 02, 2017 7:48 pm

I hate to say it, but I think our beloved Evangelion started this one. You all know the story: Anno wanted to show anime fans what a bunch of sickos they were by imagining how disturbing their "ideal waifu" would be as an actual person, which is how he created Rei. But all those anime fans didn't get the message. They took it at face value. . . and loved it.
Cut to today, where those same people are now making anime of their own and taking all the wrong lessons from the shows they watched as teens in the 1990s. Think of it this way. If you gave a six-year-old who loved Star Wars an unlimited budget and studio to make his own Star Wars movie, it would be nothing but wall-to-wall lightsaber battles and be virtually unwatchable. That's what the current generation of anime makers are like. They're inspired by shows like Evangelion, but they don't get what actually made them tick. They just think "Sexualized teenage girls= success!" And today's anime viewers are going to look at what shows are doing well (hint: it's the ones I just described) and make even more like them.
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Postby pwhodges » Mon Jul 03, 2017 2:26 am

Mary Whitehouse was an English lady who so hated sexuality in the media that she constantly sought it out so that she could hate it some more, with as much publicity as she could.

You can follow her line of making a public show of hating things in order to save the rest of society (but observe she became a laughing-stock for many people); or you can note, as most people do, that there are other shows which are not like that (the distinction is usually perfectly obvious), and watch them instead, thus saving yourself a lot of angst.
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Postby El Squibbonator » Wed Jul 05, 2017 10:21 pm

I know I already mentioned that I hate Haruhi Suzumiya, but there's actually another popular high school-based anime that I find I really can't stand. And that would be Lucky Star. To be blunt, Lucky Star is what you get when a TV show is designed by committee, and based on cliches and stereotypes. Literally every character in the show is a stereotype: Konata is the nerd, Kagami is the asshole, Tsukasa is the idiot, and Miyuki is the girly-girl. And they're all designed to look like small children, despite being high schoolers. This is the kind of show that seems clever and funny when it first comes out, but when you look back on it, it's REALLY bad.
Even leaving that aside, the plots are simply uninteresting. Often all the characters do is stand around and talk about random, everyday topics, which makes you wonder why this needed to be a TV show in the first place--it's literally a show about nothing. Compare that to, say, Azumanga Daioh!, which also has a cast of high school girls, but makes sure to have an entertaining, engaging plot and memorable characters. Lucky Star isn't like that. Where Azumanga Daioh! is goofy and fun, Lucky Star is just dull.
In fact, I'd go as far as to argue that it was responsible for the decline in popularity of anime outside of Japan in the late 2000s: with so many shows like this one being made, the market was flooded and the truly good ones got buried. That's sort of let up nowadays, but even today there are a lot more of these otaku-bait high school anime than their were ten years ago. They basically are to anime what gross-out comedy shows are to American cartoons. And the blame for this glut of mediocrity can be laid at the feet of Lucky Star.
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Postby Tankred » Sat Jul 08, 2017 3:12 pm

View Original PostRay wrote:Is there any particular reason Loli character designs started exploding as of late? I mean, looking back through animes history there were Loli characters, but it was usually only one character design for every five or six series. Now, it seems like EVERY anime has some pedo-bait character design for a character who is 'really a three billion year old space demon! Honest!"


I don't know about the current explosion, however I do know that Cream Lemon and Mobile Suit Double Zeta Gundam is where it originated proper. ZZ gundam in particular, the Elpeo Ple (lemon people = cream lemon) character and her clones are used up as child soldiers operating special psycommu equipped mobile suits, probably one of the darker themes of UC gundam alongside colony gassing and colony drops. Despite the characters darker elements she and her clones were quite popular then and still are.

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Postby Tumbling Down » Sat Jul 08, 2017 7:57 pm

I don't know if this is controversial, but I can't find anywhere else to post this, soo..

Funimation makes some of the highest quality dubs out there, but when I subscribed to their service, I saw they were mostly doing things that were recent and generic-looking. Not classics. What's up with that? I'd love to watch Tokyo Godfathers or... Space Runaway Ideon. Which hasn't been licensed at all, dub or sub.

Why are these companies licensing/dubbing anime that's recent, instead of stuff I've heard of and want to see? Miss Machinko only just got a sub, but I'm glad it did.

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Postby FreakyFilmFan4ever » Sat Jul 08, 2017 8:12 pm

Funimtion just licensed Speed Racer, so.....

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Postby Dr. Nick » Sun Jul 09, 2017 12:04 pm

View Original PostTumbling Down wrote:Why are these companies licensing/dubbing anime that's recent, instead of stuff I've heard of and want to see?


Because retro anime is niche business, and the largest profits are obviously in the newer stuff. The best you can do is support the current retro releases, because that way we might get more, and pirate the things you can't buy.

Tokyo Godfathers is getting a BD release soon, by the way.

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Postby GAP » Mon Jul 10, 2017 6:02 pm

If you hadn't heard this already, I am really developing a bit of contempt for Dragon Ball Super. It feels like it is using my own nostalgia against me and it is doing so in an ironic manner. It caused me to be strangely existential as I wonder if I ever was fan of the series although that has more to do with my interactions with other fans if anything.

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