Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[theinevitable]

Right before i moved to NJ, I was starting to become friends with an acquaintance who happens to be a beautiful woman who loves music and anime. She told me about her favorite show ever. I decided I should watch it, and I told her on this visit that I was close to the last episode. She not only doesn't remember that conversation, she also said she has never seen the show. I must have remembered wrong (this is totally possible, so many anime shows have similar un-rememberable names) but I did a bad job of pretending I wasn't disappointed.

Anyway, anime nerds love Steins;Gate and it is not that good. It drives me nuts when sci-fi-ish things set up rules for how the sci-fi-gadget works but then don't follow their own rule.

[Arachno-capitalist]

I was once a nerd and as a consequence there were people in my social orbit who would host anime movie marathons. I couldn't get into it to save my life so I asked the most sane person in the room why they liked anime.
"Movies in American theaters are just too overtly artificial. Boy likes girl/world is going to end/a group of dumbasses get up in hijinks/etc. At least with anime there is no pretense. It's cartoons about characters with superpowers and they do shit with their powers. That's it. That's the plot. Sometimes the superpower is that some evil gangster murdered their mom, but it is all out there in the open and no one is pretending."

I got what the dude was saying, but at the same time he's turning his back to fictional theater in favor of something so fictional they had to make it a cartoon.

TLDR: ACAP does not get anime and no number of girls in costumes will get him to attend their conferences.

[theinevitable]

Yeah, I think that is why most people like anime, and that is why it's hard to find anime I like.

I'm glad to be on the side of Hiyao Miyazaki-- he said the problem with anime is that it's made by people who love anime.

My experience so far is that with every show, there is some weird/creepy/too-cutesy aspect of it that you kind of have to get over, no matter how awesome the show is. It's hilarious but there are lots of up-skirt shots, or it's a cool sci-fi show with really annoying music, or it's about a dude with depression but sometimes little cartoon monster guys dance around him symbolically. I could do without that stuff. Weirdly, the two shows I've watched that didn't have that weird aspect you had to get over are controversial in anime circles for being "weird" or "too serious" or having "strange animation." Who knows.

While I was in St Louis my old roommates and I Consumed a Substance and watched Sailor Moon and I was yukking it up, so clearly I just need to get over my hangups and watch whatever goofy shit I want.

[wombat]

Weirdly, the two shows I've watched that didn't have that weird aspect you had to get over are controversial in anime circles for being "weird" or "too serious" or having "strange animation." Who knows.

I have to know what these two shows are which are so disorienting that they need a sentence with the word "weird" in it three times.

I can never figure out what to say when people ask if I am into anime. I seem to spend a fair amount of time watching Japanese cartoons. But they are never sci-fi or have up-skirt shots or characters with superpowers so I feel like we are not talking about the same thing and it would be misleading to say 'yes.'

[AugustWest]

Does this guy count as anime? 

[wombat]

Hey, I didn't know that was available in English. Do you actually watch it?

Anyway, yeah, that is exactly the question. Obviously it's Japanese animation, so yes. But when Americans talk about anime, I feel like that is not what they are talking about, they are talking about a certain kind of anime.

[AugustWest]

Hey, I didn't know that was available in English. Do you actually watch it?

It used to be on Cartoon Network, and I did.

[theinevitable]

People complain a lot about the animation in Ping Pong and Tatami Galaxy, which I think have been my favorites.

[pmcd9]

Right before i moved to NJ, I was starting to become friends with an acquaintance who happens to be a beautiful woman who loves music and anime. She told me about her favorite show ever. I decided I should watch it, and I told her on this visit that I was close to the last episode. She not only doesn't remember that conversation, she also said she has never seen the show. I must have remembered wrong (this is totally possible, so many anime shows have similar un-rememberable names) but I did a bad job of pretending I wasn't disappointed.

That is so Inev.

Anyway, anime nerds love Steins;Gate and it is not that good. It drives me nuts when sci-fi-ish things set up rules for how the sci-fi-gadget works but then don't follow their own rule.

Yeah, I kinda hate that too.

[pmcd9]

I'm not into Anime, but I'm also not a Japan-ophile. I don't know if that matters. I love cartoons so by rights I should love Anime, but I haven't seen any that made me want to watch more unless Totoro counts.

[wombat]

People complain a lot about the animation in Ping Pong and Tatami Galaxy, which I think have been my favorites.

I haven't seen Ping Pong but I loved Tatami Galaxy. It is definitely not the style Americans mean by "anime." That's exactly what I mean - American fans are only interested in a certain subgenre of Japanese animation.

I like this one, where the stories are in the style of traditional Japanese ghost stories and the animation is a sort of homage to an old style of street storytelling using paper illustrations. Go show them that one if you want to piss them off.

[wombat]

I'm not into Anime, but I'm also not a Japan-ophile. I don't know if that matters. I love cartoons so by rights I should love Anime, but I haven't seen any that made me want to watch more unless Totoro counts.

I feel like there are some anime fans who are not particularly interested in Japan, but Inev could probably answer that question better. But if someone is mostly interested in those sci-fi type cartoons, there's not much Japan in those really, so they wouldn't have to be.

I think Totoro counts as anime for Americans just because the studio is so massively successful and respected, even though the style is different, but just liking Studio Ghibli movies does not make you an anime fan. You should definitely go watch the rest of those though. Spirited Away is my favorite.

[wombat]

I just watched a few seconds of Ping Pong and if that style turns people off, they really do have narrow tastes. It does not seem particularly radical, unless it changes later.

[jaydub]

I had friends in college who were super into Anime.  Their addiction arc always went something like: exposure to Americanized version Macross/*****ech, Gatchaman/Battle of the Planets, and Space Battleship Yamato/Starblazers;, curious expansion to voiced-over Japanese orginal series, Bleach, One Piece, Ranma 1/2; frenzied consumption of subtitled Japanese language videos; attempt to learn Japanese so they could "catch the nuances" (about 1/4 succeed and progress to complete Japanophilia); culminating in viewing ancient roots like 3 Tales, Astroboy, and Kimba the white lion. In the early 2000's my niece recapitulated that arc almost exactly (she did not succeed in learning Japanese), but with newer titles of course.  She hasn't yet gone back to the early stuff though.

[theinevitable]

One thing a lot of anime dudes are into (if Reddit is to be believed) is "slice of life" anime. These are basically the Anime version of Friends, but with more Fake Philosophy and with Japanese tropes instead of American ones. I have not successfully watched any of these, so I don't have any more info than that.