Controversial Anime Opinions

[Alaska Slim]

The Ultimate was trashy fun,

This, & I fully support the Airborne Crusade. It was high time those Brits were made to account for their bastardization of "apostolic succession".

Regenerating, teleporting, bayonette swinging priest is justice. OTOH, Blue Excorist's stealth bomber was just ridiculous. Completely breaks with all sense of plausibility. The Vatican clearly wouldn't have the space for a runway.

[chee]

I genuinely can't tell if the artwork in Attack on Titan is an attempt at stylized grit, or if it's just plain shitty.

[Rosenakahara]

Manga? just kinda shit, the author has admitted to not being the best artist.
The anime? i like it, the thick outlines give it a unique look.

[Enki v.2]

More controversial opinions about raildex:

- While it's OK that railgun & magidex exist in the same universe, absolutely nothing worthwhile has come from them interacting. The Imagine Breaker is stupidly overpowered, which is compounded by the fact that even people who know about it proceed to attack Touma with either magic or ESP, instead of just (you know) shooting him or something; this is OK for magidex because stupidly-overpowered-outsider-defeats-magicians is sort of an established genre, but in most of railgun he appears only rarely, which makes him seem more like a deus ex machina. The interactions also infect the generally well-constructed, well-plotted, and well-paced railgun with the general greater stupidity of magidex (which, although amusing, is not a masterpiece of storytelling -- lots of plot threads are painstakingly set up and then either have minimal payoff or never lead anywhere, characters are introduced and then their potential is wasted as they just become more Touma groupies and lose their original attributes). The only slightly valuable thing that the crossover produced is a canon Touma x Misaka pairing, but that's pretty much explicitly designed to produce a love triangle with Index (and geez, she's like 12, physically and mentally, with like 1-2 years of memory not related to grimoires; she can't compete with a sexually repressed teenage tsundere), however, any protagonist-kun type character would do in this case -- she likes him because he's kind, honest, forthright, kind of dumb, and keeps on making lame jokes, which means that basically any other character from his genre would do -- and even if they never met don't think for a minute that the fandom wouldn't pair them anyway. Over time the crossovers make less and less sense, and the whole science vs magic angle was played out years before the show even started -- which, again, would have been just fine for magidex because magidex was staying firmly in well-tread territory.

- Magidex probably should have stopped before the Vatican arc, because literally nothing salvagable happens after that. Evil-sexy-nuns is a cliche, and magidex manages to screw it up in such a way that it isn't even satisfying. The idea of a magical war between sects of christianity isn't innately terrible, but magidex doesn't really manage to do it entertainingly, in part because every female character has to fall deeply in love with Touma. The movie definitely should have never been made.

- The best thing to come out of the whole of raildex is Last Order, but I feel like even her existence didn't justify me having to see basically the entire Accelerator arc twice.

[Alaska Slim]

More controversial opinions about raildex:

- While it's OK that railgun & magidex exist in the same universe, absolutely nothing worthwhile has come from them interacting.

I never really saw what was worthwhile about the shows in any case. I tried to enjoy them as lol!Japan, just yet another way they both misunderstand & reinterpret Christianity through a trashy, action-anime lense, but even that grew tedious as the powers made less and less sense, and it felt like no rules were being followed.

Imagine breaker is as you said, overpowered, and I didn't understand why Accelerator accelerating objects were not just stopped by that power, but teleported back to their last location. Inertia should still have been thing.

Also, blatant sexualization of prebuescent girls. Granted, at least it's largely with kids their own age, but that doesn't stop it from feeling highly disingenuous. It's gratuitous pandering meant to objectify, not add any real "depth" to who the characters are. That's hard to watch whenever it's put into a narrative where we're supposed to take characters seriously, but considering that they're just kids...

Also, nuns. Can't buy a kid as one, it just looks like she's in costume for a convention that never ended.


Strangely, I think the final straw for me was watching Misaki play the violin. It was an apt metaphor for the creative air the show whiffed of to me. "We're not actually going to bother with substantive details, like finger placement, or timing bow strokes with the notes, just the broad strokes. All that matters is the spectacle that we know you'll eat up regardless."

[Enki v.2]

I never really saw what was worthwhile about the shows in any case. I tried to enjoy them as lol!Japan, just yet another way they both misunderstand & reinterpret Christianity through a trashy, action-anime lense, but even that grew tedious as the powers made less and less sense, and it felt like no rules were being followed.

Imagine breaker is as you said, overpowered, and I didn't understand why Accelerator accelerating objects were not just stopped by that power, but teleported back to their last location. Inertia should still have been thing.

Also, blatant sexualization of prebuescent girls. Granted, at least it's largely with kids their own age, but that doesn't stop it from feeling highly disingenuous. It's gratuitous pandering meant to objectify, not add any real "depth" to who the characters are. That's hard to watch whenever it's put into a narrative where we're supposed to take characters seriously, but considering that they're just kids...

Also, nuns. Can't buy a kid as one, it just looks like she's in costume for a convention that never ended.


Strangely, I think the final straw for me was watching Misaki play the violin. It was an apt metaphor for the creative air the show whiffed of to me. "We're not actually going to bother with substantive details, like finger placement, or timing bow strokes with the notes, just the broad strokes. All that matters is the spectacle that we know you'll eat up regardless."

Magidex was just dumb fun, and not particularly heavy on the fun either. I'd put it into the same category as Rosario+Vampire -- except that Rosario+Vampire was both more self-aware and more entertaining.

Railgun, on the other hand... the characterization was consistent, the characters were interesting and charismatic, the plot made at least a certain amount of sense, and it was an interesting exploration of the setting -- which I personally found the most interesting. It felt like ESP was being an excuse to show off an interesting planned city / arcology project. The coolest thing about the whole franchise was an interesting 'planned science city' with realistically flawed public-service automation. I would have watched a whole show about, like, the people who designed Academy City and their utopian dreams and how they came to decisions about zoning and such. I'm always a slut for arcologies.

[Defectron]

I think Rumiko Takahashi seems to be caught in a sort of idea loop where she has trouble coming up with anything new. Granted her new series Rinne does try harder then Inuyasha did but at the same time...

We have Rokumon who is a less annoying version of Shippo from Inuyasha who in turn was a more annoying version of Ten from Urusei Yatsura. Also all her stories are about people who have love misunderstandings that never seem to go anywhere, only watched about 11 eps of Rinne but I can't help but feel that when it gets to 100 their relationship will not have really gone anywhere.

That being said there does seem to be some improvement here, Rokudo isn't a dumb tough guy like Inuyasha or Ranma so at least she didn't recycle his character type. Sakura kinda reminds of Kagome a bit but isn't annoying like she was. The biggest thing that Rinne has going for it though is I think Rumiko isn't trying to make it serious like Inuyasha was. Inuyasha convinced me she can't do a good job telling stories that are both long and serious. She did alright with her mermaid series but those were short, thats why they worked. On the other hand her long comedy shows are also good for the most part. She only falls on her face completely when trying to do a long serious story. So far Rinne has been mostly comedic with a serious moment now and then so I have some hopes that it wont fall into the Inuyasha trap where nothing new ever happens until the end of the anime. I mean her comedies are like that too sometimes, but that can be forgiven because really you can't expect much plot development in say urusei yatsura for example which is more about goofy situations happening then actual story. Inuyasha on the other hand actually seemed to promise some sort of character development and story developmentish things, but none of that of that actually happened until the end of it.

Oh well at least Takahashi seems to care about her work unlike the micheal bay of anime/manga *cough* akira toriyama *cough*, she just doesn't seem to be very good at coming up with new ideas. But she's trying in Rinne, she does seem to be trying, at least I hope she is, ten episodes is a bit soon to say, but so far there does seem to be some improvement.

[Monk Ed]

I was under the impression that it was more of a sobering exercise in why slavish adherence to the source material is a terrible idea. I found it unwatchable. (And I was able to get through the original anime, somehow.) If I wanted the manga, I'd just read the manga. Glorified motion comics can die in a fire.

As a non manga reader who enjoys faithful anime adaptations, I could not disagree more. The lifeless stillness of manga just does not sing to me the way motion, music, color, and the vox humana can. Hellsing Ultimate was an experience for me that the manga would not have been able to replicate, and the same was true of FMA Brotherhood.

[GAP]

Regarding To Aru:

I pretty much despised To Aru because Touma was something of a preachy, overpowered protagonist who somehow attracts girls with his 'bad luck'. I'll admit that I don't really care for the manga anymore considering that I only saw a few episodes but I do like the opening. I pretty much don't care for it nowadays but touma still makes me cringe.

Regarding Rumiko Takahashi:

I'll that she has some trouble ending her stories as seen with Inuyasha and Ranma. I am not sure but it is kind of a bad habit of hers as she seems to pad out the plot of her stories to the point where she seems to reuse plotlines. I'll give ehr this though, she does know how to construct a world and plot.

[Reichu]

As a non manga reader who enjoys faithful anime adaptations, I could not disagree more

Well, this wouldn't be "Controversial Anime Opinions" if everyone agreed with everything that was posted, now would it?

But, yeah, ugh. Ultimate was so damned boring. The pacing was shit. The humor was injected at the most shit times. The action was completely unengaging, because I was so bored that I didn't care about anything that happened. The only part I had any fun with was playing "Spot the Seiyu". I haven't read the Hellsing manga yet, and when I do I'll be able to say how much of the shit lies with Ultimate and how much innately with Hellsing. Can't wait!

[Ray]

Ranma started out funny, turned to crap when Happosai showed up.

Ugh. He's the Jar Jar Binks of Anime. Only I can tolerate Jar Jar and he's only in one movie. Happosai was in most of the series!

[Alaska Slim]

Well, this wouldn't be "Controversial Anime Opinions" if everyone agreed with everything that was posted, now would it?

But, yeah, ugh. Ultimate was so damned boring. The pacing was shit. The humor was injected at the most shit times. The action was completely unengaging,

Blackbirds at Mach 3 are not boring. Blackbirds at Mach 3 are justice, THEY'RE JUSTICE!

Did AMV Kolossal teach you nothing?!?

Holy crap, that's what Parasyte reminds me of, Gendo's F****** Adam hand!

[Enki v.2]

I won't argue that Hellsing Ultimate is a good show. I'll only argue that it's way better than the original. Because it actually had content.

The original had exactly all the problems that Ultimate did, plus a bunch more.

[Defectron]

I couldnt really get into the hellsing manga, but I did enjoy ultimate. I dunno I think the overly complicated action scenes in hellsing just translate better to animation then still manga format.

[Enki v.2]

I recall glancing at the manga and considering the art to be too frenetic/incompetent to be easy to follow in any kind of intense action sequence. (I had the same problem with the Trigun manga -- I paid like $20 for an omnibus and couldn't finish it because I couldn't tell what was going on; whole pages looked like the author was making random scribbles.) Neither show had that problem, and most of the characters ended up being fairly visually distinct (although Integra Hellsing and that blonde bloke were absolute doppelgangers).

[cyharding]

I knew I made some opinions on this thread before, but now I thought of a new one: I believe that Nadesico can almost stand on the same level as Eva as both deconstruct the mecha genre, but both shows deconstruct in different ways.

[Alaska Slim]

I knew I made some opinions on this thread before, but now I thought of a new one: I believe that Nadesico can almost stand on the same level as Eva as both deconstruct the mecha genre,

But Evangelion was doing more than just deconstructing. It isn't simply like, say, Bokurano, which treated it's characters terribly because **** those guys. Evangelion wasn't meant to shock for its own sake.

Rather, deconstructing was the means Hideaki Anno used to draw the viewers attention to a dialectic on filtering reality, the hedghog's dilemma, and the solution he distilled for solving them.


Meanwhile, Nadesico can be complimented for rejecting cynicism (though of course, Nadesico's case is complicated by its film, which is exactly that ) and simply presenting a good-nature ribbing that springs from genuine affection of its material, much the same way Galaxy Quest did for a certain franchise.

Nadesico at its core, is a love letter to its genre, and I certainly hold that in higher esteem than works that opt to parody through a mean-spirited lens. I'm looking at you, Shrek. Still, I can't put that on the same level as Eva, as Eva is trying to be more than just a work of fiction.

[Kazuki_Fuse]

Psycho Pass 2 (while of course not as great as the first season) was still highly enjoyable and not deserving of all the hate.

[Enki v.2]

Eva is trying to be more than just a work of fiction.

I'm not really sure intent matters here. Many crappy shows have incredibly high aims. Even good/competent shows aim higher than being just a work of fiction and ultimately fail ('Bebop will become a genre unto itself' -- but the only show in the Bebop genre other than Bebop is Space Dandy!)

I'd argue that a deconstruction necessarily aims higher than fiction -- it aims at critique. Evangelion is worthwhile not insomuch as it attempts deconstruction but instead insomuch as it succeeds as deconstruction; but any change in the formula can be read as an attempt at deconstruction, if read charitably. (To recontextualize, think of extruded fantasy product -- the fantasy genre is full of templated unoriginal Tolkein clones with plots taken directly out of Campbell. When something comes along and switches up the templates -- like Jim Butcher's Dresden Files -- it's hailed as really revolutionary even though Dresden Files is just swapping out Campbell with Spillane and swapping out Tolkien with something closer to a modern mythology. Dresden Files was more interesting than extruded fantasy product, but it could not reasonably be considered to be intended as more of a deconstruction than Spinrad's Iron Dream, which is exaggerated pure fantasy product recontextualized by attributing the most typical fantasy book in existence to an alternate universe version of Hitler, and thus laying bare its authoritarian and reactionary tendencies.) Ultimately, a successful deconstruction cannot come out of a place other than one of respect except accidentally. A cruel attempt at deconstruction by someone who can't stand the genre is a strawman attempt -- the principle of charity must be employed in order to deconstruct a genre successfully, so actual fans are the best people to be making such deconstructions. You need to be in a place where you love the thing and know it intimately and want to destroy it because you recognize its flaws. You need to be Valentine Michael Smith, basically.

[Alaska Slim]

I'm not really sure intent matters here. Many crappy shows have incredibly high aims.

True, but by virtue of the response both from fans and works seeking to imitate it, we can say Evangelion not only had that aim but was successful in getting it across.

I'd argue that a deconstruction necessarily aims higher than fiction -- it aims at critique.

Critique Of fiction in Nadesico's case

Evangelion, much more than mecha genre alone, deconstructs something that occurs not just within cells of animation, but in real life.


The only Mecha anime I'd put on the same plane is Flag. It subverts the genre even further by invoking mecha simply as trappings, not the focus (even those who pilot them are simply side characters), while using both their actions and the person observing them as a tool to comment on issues that impact the real world.

In its case, War Journalism, and circa 1990s U.N. Peacekeeping.


For an example of a Mecha anime that does parody, subverts its premise, and dabbles in commentary on the real world, Dai Guard is certainly a series that gets around.