Original Post: K-on! Season 2

Ryan A

January 2, 2010 at 12:58 pm

Enjoyed melforaine’s perspective that everyone should not be concerned/care about others’ preference for experience, my response:

… I’m not sure the popularity aspect is what causes the flaming, rather I think it is fans being sucked in and then “overly vocal” about their interest in the series (blind hype).

With this stimulation, a number of [likely nonconstructive] blogs posts, fan art, etc manifest. So, many who don’t like the overhead (K-On! getting 1000 posts in a season) are going to easily get negative on it in hopes that people will just watch (or not) and shut up.

Viewers can experience a series and it is a “closed” event (viewers are not relying on other viewers to have the experience… they do it on their own). Anything beyond the experience isn’t necessarily needed, nor should it be voided (we need a balance of post content in the community… see my writings on redundancy for more info), but with viewers drunken on hyper-moe-kawaiisum there tends to be pointless overhead en mass. There may be correlation with popularity, but generally it is the fans dumbing-down and expressing themselves illogically which is the catalyst.

The constructive perspective: can we identify with both sides and find a solution which satisfies all sides?

I feel most of the community can identify with both/all sides in the general case, though not the specific case of Moe-ON! But what is a solution? If we don’t want to see/hear something on the interwebz, then avoid it. Unfortunately, some outlets do not allow unspoiling, unspamming, or general categorization when subscribing to content updates; you either get all or none, and that is a major issue imo.

Update: Seems I touched on this before.

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Original Post: Moments of 2009: Please Don’t Call This a Comeback (Gundam 00 Finale)

Crusader

Submitted on: December 17, 2009 at 4:59 am

[...]The middle ground that Gundam now sits is much more of a double edged sword since I have trouble digesting super robot and real robot cocktails. It just doesn’t go far enough in either direction to be terribly satisfying as say Mazinger Z which was an unadulterated celebration of Super Robot tropes. I think had they kept it more in line with real robot that any political message they had in S1 when they tossed around conflicts that were then ongoing they probably would have been more successful.

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Original Post Here: Moments of 2009: A Definitive Portrayal How Mecha Can Rule the Battlefield

Kaioshin Sama said:

December 14, 2009 at 3:59 am

[...]I think MS Igloo 2 like the original series does a great job of showing that in the deaths and personal sufferings of each main character of the episode even as they afforded less screen time than the average Gundam lead. So at the end of it all I have to say that MS Igloo 2 does a great service to not only the war epic and tales of heroism, but also the mecha genre. For it shows what I’ve always felt about war, and that is that even the greatest of men is powerless without the weapons with which to wage a just war at the same time as a weapon is useless without the courage of a hero to put it to use properly in that just war.

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Orignal post : Anime and Manga Related Moments 2009: Those Who WON’T Make the List

kadian1364

December 2, 2009 at 10:38 pm

[...]

This is a terribly obvious thing to say, but watching great shows regularly has been incredibly rewarding. Right now, everyone’s bemoaning the crap seasons, how the economy and moe is declining the industry, even predicting the death of the medium itself. And right now, I love anime more than I ever have, with a reverent knowledge of the classics and deeper appreciation of the trailblazing efforts of those that pioneered the medium in the past, and those that continue to test the boundaries of visual storytelling today. [...]

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Original Post: Anime is Serious Business Because Guilt is Serious Business

DonKangolJones

Submitted on 2009/10/30 at 9:50pm

[...]

But you know I swoop to material that I can directly relate to. As far as I’m concerned feeling guilty doesn’t apply (at least for me) to most media. Unless I’ve wronged anothe human being in some way playing a video game or watching something on TV I can’t really see the point in guilt.

Taste in anime boils should equate pretty well to taste in music or other mediums. Just because someone likes country music, death metal or german folk songs & I don’t find it desirable doesn’t mean they should feel awkward about it. Same with the whole argument about “pop” songs being crap & lesser known, more underground material being more quality. The initial reaction may be to feel some awkwardness and guilt because a group you associate with doesn’t enjoy it. And that’s natural, but so was the enjoyment you had when you listened to that song without anyone to tell you about it.

When I use anime in my examples some shows IMMEDIATELY come to mind. Most any long time anime fan can think of the contraversial & contentious choices. Naruto, Bleach, Code Geass R2, Evangelion, even Death Note & Lucky Star have been big fat targets. I keep asking myself, “if these people hate the series so much, why have they stuck around for 20 episodes/300 chapters?” I honestly think it’s to cement the fact that they have BETTER taste than those who say they enjoyed or even LOVED the popular material. I don’t care for that. The contentious comments don’t do much to further community or helpful dialogue. Nor does a person’s guilt about such a simple thing. Leave guilt to the matters of real live people.

The only times I can really remember feeling guilt (it was more like embarrassment) was when I had been clinging to a positive opinion of Maria+Holic. I saw something I thought was superior, the first season of Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei. I felt a little silly for considering that show to be of good quality after I saw something that clearly gave me a better idea of what a good dark comedy should be. I got over the guilt and moved on to other anime related matters.

P.S. And no one’s EVER going to make me feel guilty for enjoying R2

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Original Post: Anime is Serious Business Because Guilt is Serious Business

OGT

Submitted on 2009/10/29 at 4:42am

The phrase “guilty pleasure” is the worst phrase in the English language and I exhort all of you to remove it from your vocabulary post-haste. If something is pleasurable to you, then you shouldn’t feel guilty about it. There are some things that you probably shouldn’t pleasure yourself with in public (double entendre intended), but certainly not because you feel guilty about enjoying it. One of my greatest pleasures is seeing other people relish the experience of (very obviously) enjoying something they love; one of my greatest pains is seeing other people relish the experience of hating something they dislike.

I get the feeling, in the Western world especially, that “quality” in the case of fiction is defined by intelligence being inherent to the work. It appears to be of no use to be intelligent about fiction that is not considered “intelligent” since, as there is no intelligence inherent in the work, there is nothing to be intelligent about. This is patently ridiculous, of course.

It follows, then, that you’re left with little recourse in this kind of environment: 1) and 2) above are literally all you have to work with for most of the time, and most of what you like. Simple enjoyment becomes an impossibility, and you must continually justify what you like (and what you do not like) along one of the three options given above.

Like most things pertaining to fiction these days for me, there’s a G.K. Chesterton quote for this: “It is ludicrous to suppose that the more sceptical we are the more we see good in everything. It is clear that the more we are certain what good is, the more we shall see good in everything.” (read the whole essay/chapter/conclusion, it’s my personal pick-me-up). In other words, it’s what I’ve always believed: the surest sign of maturity is being able to see the world as a child again. Adolescence has a disturbing tendency to kill off curiosity and wonder.

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Original Post: Anime is Serious Business Because Guilt is Serious Business

relentlessflame

Submitted on 2009/10/29 at 3:03am

This topic comes up from time-to-time (moreso recently?), and I’ve given a great deal of thought over the years. My conclusion basically boils down to the following:

1. Sturgeon’s Revelation applies to a work’s objective qualities.

2. One’s personal enjoyment is not merely a function of a show’s objective qualities.

3. Personal enjoyment is ultimately more important than objective goodness.

(And there are few conclusions that you could draw from this, the pointlessness of the “guilty pleasure” concept being one of them.)

The most common cause for arguments tends to be tenet 2 above because people struggle with the dichotomy between their enjoyment and a show’s objective traits. People who like a show sometimes struggle to deal with its objective flaws, or sometimes disagree with the importance/value of said flaws; sort of an “I enjoy it, therefore it can’t be bad” opinion, in violation of tenet 2. People who dislike a show sometimes struggle to consider the way their own personal biases or feelings impact their “objectivity”, and tend to assume that their lack of enjoyment is *simply* or *entirely* due to “obvious” (or objective) problems, *also* in violation of tenet 2.

There is a small grain of truth to the “you’re watching it wrong” argument, but only in the distant and abstract sense that a different person could watch the same material and have a different opinion or level of enjoyment. “You’re watching it wrong” is accusatory nonsense (and argumentative rhetoric), but “you’re seeing it from a different perspective” is a fairly self-evident truth. When two people watch the same show and come to opposite opinions, it is *not necessarily* the result of ignorance or a lack of critical thinking (important!); two reasonable people can have different opinions about the same subject and both be right in some cases and senses. This is the central point of tenet 2.

So, all that said, when you come to the point where you realize that you have your own reasons for liking the shows that you like, and it ultimately doesn’t matter whether those reasons are common or unique, then you can see the concept of “guilty pleasure” for what it is: an excuse or rationalization. And further, when people can get over their constant need to “excuse” or “rationalize” their like or dislike of a show, I would suggest that it will probably lead to greater personal enjoyment (see Tenet 3). The most important thing, it seems to me, is understanding why you like or dislike what you do so that you can find more spend more time on the things you like, and less on the things you don’t. That’s all operating under the premise that enjoying anime and manga is more important than simply being able to argue about it, but I don’t necessarily pretend that’s the case for everyone.

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Original Post: Loving Someone Down: Letter Bee (04)

Deckard

2009/10/27 at 12:53pm

Seem that among many fans and blogers exists a tendency to call “fanservice” anything that involves exposed flesh, sexual innuendos, etc. Given that when applied to serious (i.e. not Needless type) show “fanservice” has a negative connotation, the audience’s approach becomes “Guilty until Proven innocent”. This puts before the director/writer a dilemma: to limit one’s storytelling and narrative elements to those that will not be labelled fanservice or to suffer the accusations. Self-imposing limitations surely can’t consistently produce a better story than is possible without the restrictions. Of course, Bakemonogatari is a brilliant example of (hypothetical) third choice, but one has to wonder if the success of Bakemonogatari was achieved through design or luck. I personally wish for it to be design.
Of course, there is also, as maAkusutipen guessed, the desire to sell DVDs. However, if that is the intention of the director/writer than one is justified in criticising and disliking fanservice in the same way one can criticise the shallowness of soft cover romance/fantasy/crime/etc novels. These type of fanservice has its place (Needless), but mixing Dostoevsky with Sidney Sheldon is like mixing all the fruits and vegetables in the kitchen in hope that the result would be good since the ingredients are good individually: you may be lucky, but no more than once.

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ghostlightning (in response)

2009/10/27 at 1:46pm

Good stuff.

As I mentioned to maAkusutipen, it might be helpful to do some genre-based analysis. I’ve only hinted on it there, but I think it’s good to try to get into the bones of it here.

While I can’t say that Dostoevsky (who I love btw) didn’t attempt to be a popular novelist by including tropes and devices that appeal to his contemporary readers (Shakespeare was more blatantly service-y, being generous with innuendo and ribaldry) for the purposes of this comment I will assume that he was aiming for posterity above all things, the kind of timelessness liberal humanist critics love.

Let us assume Dostoevsky never existed. A ‘trashy’ novel writer (those with Fabio covers) can, while risking commercial success, write a Brothers Karamazov of a romance novel… with Grushenka as the lead, torn between Vladimir and his father… while a incestuous homoeroticism simmers between Ivan and Alyosha. The prose is borderline purple at times, and the sexual content is gratuitous.

It won’t win prizes, but I daresay certain mature fans of the genre will be riveted… after all, ‘The Grand Inquisitor’ ended with a kiss between brothers…

Verily this particular novel would be well, The Brothers Karamazov of its genre: a fanservice delivery novel, that has uncommon wealth of material relative to its peers. Should anyone be bothered by the heaving chests, the heavy breathing, and the general lack of clothing in how both Vladamir and old Karamazov himself bare their souls to our Grushenka?

To a (small) degree this is how I feel about Fate stay/Night the visual novel (I’m in the middle of completing the Unlimited Blades Works route). It is an erotic game that has uncanny awesomeness in it.

But this example doesn’t really describe Letter Bee does it?

I sometimes suspect that both the panty shot obliquus and the mounted licking scene are wink wink nudge nudgeto older viewers who may not be interested by the (shonen) story alone, but can be persuaded by the charms of a loli furry and her cute little fang.

Further Reading (because I wrote a fakken editorial in this comment section wwwwww)

http://www.animenation.net/blog/2009/10/26/ask-john-why-do-americans-resent-fan-service/

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Original Post: There’s Something Refreshing about Kimi ni Todoke

animewriter

October 22, 2009 at 6:29 pm

I think that Sawako’s not in denial about other peoples’ behavior towards her but I go more for “the self-defense” line of thought, because if Sawako really let how other people treat her become her reality than life would really suck. Sawako would have to give up the hope that when people get to know her better she can have friends and maybe a boyfriend, her future would look bleak and lonely.

I also have to say that you can’t underestimate the importance of the seating chart/seating arrangement in Japanese schools. A few years ago, I met a girl at college that spent her last five years of middle school and high school in the Japanese school system and she told me how big of a deal it was. She told me that because of the structure of the schools it was quite possible that you would have the same homeroom and homeroom teacher for all three years of high school, so she said that setting the seating chart was one of the most important social events of the year, and that most of the time it was left up to the class reps. She also said that the wheeling and dealing around this event was massive, you wanted to be next to your friends or others you want to become your friends, remember you might be spending the next three years next to those people.

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Original post here: Oh Macross, It’s Just a Popular Song, of Course it Was a Love Song: Do You Remember Love?

mechafetish

October 17, 2009 at 11:17 am

Its interesting to remember that DYRL is actually a movie within the macross continuity. Hence, it is actually a work of fiction as compared to the reality that is the TV series. Whats interesting to note here:

The songs in the TV series (actual history) are all Minmay’s songs, composed by her or for her by other human beings.

On the other hand, in the fictional movie, DYRL is a song created by the mysterious progenitors of both humans and the zentreadi.

Songs in macross are merely representations of culture. In actual history, the zentreadi were defeated by/succumbed to human culture.

On the other hand, the deliberate inclusion of the detail of DYRL as a song belonging to the progenitors of both races changes a lot of things.

In actuality, the zentreadi accepted and tried to adapt to an alien culture that was, for all intents and purposes, anathema to their own.

On the other hand, DYRL posits the zentreadi acceptance of culture “remembering love” as a reclamation of their own lost heritage. The zentreadi are no longer discovering a new way of life, but are rather REdiscovering a way of life lost to them since time immemorial.

As such, it may be interesting to think of DYRL as a form of propaganda to ease the cultural tensions that were prevalent on post war earth and to stem the zentreadi rejection of human culture as alien to them.

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