Mar 19, 2018 4:34 PM
(forum repost) from a thread asking whether one's opinions of early series involves "rose-tinted glasses".
Anime Relations:
Shinseiki Evangelion, Mahou Shoujo Lyrical Nanoha, Mai-HiME, Uchuu no Stellvia, RahXephon, Noir, Kiddy Grade, Stratos 4, Pokemon, Digimon Adventure, Mugen no Ryvius, Hyakujuu-Ou GoLion, Rocket Girls, Sky Girls, Kagaku Ninja-tai Gatchaman II
My first few series are as follows:
* Eagle Riders - I watched one episode of this, which I barely remember.
* Voltron - I watched the "New Adventures", which I think are the episodes Toei expressly made for WEP. I enjoyed them as a kid, though I haven't been as key on watching the Voltron series as a whole. Instead, it's the kind of show that's nice to watch a random episode of just to see what adventures the team has gone on. I admit to being less enthused about the show now as an adult than as a kid.
* Pokémon - I loved this show as a kid, but the sheer number of episodes that got shown in a week made it difficult to keep up with. And that was back when I was also playing the show, and found it interesting to see stuff in the game that I'd seen in the show. Nowadays I've long since fallen off the Pokémon train, even though I still like it -- I still haven't played the gen 2 games, which I really want to get around to doing. Anyway I really liked what I saw of it, and in an ideal world where I had all the time in the world I would have followed the show, or at least bothered to watch all of the first few seasons, and played their corresponding games. But in an ideal world, the Orange Island league would actually be represented in-game, and Pokémon would be the most glorious and longest-running MMORPG ever, and so on and so forth. TL;DR yeah I still like the show, or at least what I saw of it, and also what I heard of it (I love the show's music). (I don't know what it's like now.)
* Neon Genesis Evangelion - I appreciated this series quite a lot when I watched it, and I still do.
* Kiddy Grade - I appreciated this series quite a lot when I watched it, and still do. Incidentally it was with this series that I thought was great, then found other people saying that it was flawed, and gradually I started thinking it was flawed, but then one day I looked at myself and said, why do I think it's flawed only because other people "revealed its flaws to me" or something? What happened to how much the story meant to me? If I genuinely enjoyed it, then that's obvious evidence that I enjoyed it despite whatever alleged "flaws" it has...or perhaps even because of these "flaws", considering that different people have different tastes.
* Noir - I was a little meh on this series when I watched it, though I rated it highly at first, mainly because it struck me as sophisticated and "artistic". Since revising my rating system, however, its rating now more accurately reflects my opinion of it -- I definitely enjoyed some moments of it, but it wasn't the life-changing thing that NGE and Kiddy Grade turned out to be for me.
* Stratos 4, Rocket Girls, Sky Girls - a trio of series that MAL recced to me from Kiddy Grade, and I ended up enjoying them too, and I still do. In a way I think my stated opinion of them similarly increased over the years, like it did for KG -- in particular, I used to criticize Sky Girls for its not being an action series despite having a theme song that suggests it, and for its fanservicey costume designs...but later I realized that those things didn't really matter to me and were more part of my attempt to describe the series to other people for the purpose of recommendations. On the other hand I just really enjoyed the heartwarming story Sky Girls tells, and that's what I remember of it, so I bumped it up to a 9.
* Stellvia of the Universe - I remember hoping to enjoy this as much as I did the other three shows I mentioned just above, but some of the character interactions felt a little hard-to-understand at times, even though the music is still excellent.
* Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha - the first magical girl series I actually watched. I knew of Sailor Moon for years, but never watched it seriously. Nanoha, on the other hand, thoroughly impressed me, and it's among my favorite franchises, because I really like its recurring theme of understanding others as people, even one's enemies, and reaching out to them.
* Mai-HiME - I remember watching this, not knowing much about it, and kinda vague liking it -- I liked some of the characters -- but it definitely wasn't something I was wholeheartedly enjoying, and I ended up dropping it by accident at some point. I still haven't gone back to finishing it yet either. From my analysis, I think I disliked the mood whiplash that the show does sometimes, juxtaposing high drama and romantic comedy, and also its sort of kitchen-sink treatment of various plotlines.
After that I basically just accumulated various other shows to watch. I also think I picked up Infinite Ryvius and RahXephon shortly afterwards, but they have sort of gotten stuck in backlog hell.
I think this probably influenced my tastes for what sorts of anime shows I like. Specifically, I tend to enjoy shows with female protagonists who do awesome things, as well as generally more optimistic/idealistic stories with brighter aesthetics. I also care a lot about the music, as well as the emotions in the story. On the other hand, I've never been much into anime comedy -- the only comedy here is Rocket Girls, and it's definitely not a stereotypical exaggerated slapstick anime comedy. The others are all adventure/action/drama shows (and even Rocket Girls has some drama), where I get to take the story and characters seriously, and they're enjoyable that way.
And given this taste, of course I still like these shows a lot, because a number of these shows are just really strong examples of these sorts of traits. They may be "rose-tinted" to a small extent, in that I remember things in a show I enjoyed more than things I didn't enjoy, so my long-term memory of a show tends to be more pleasant (unless I started out hating it). But I think my opinions of these shows, that I watched early on in my anime-watching journey, is still largely rooted in my tastes, which happened to be strongly influenced by these shows.
(By extrapolation I think that others who got into anime through shows like Bleach and Death Note are probably more accustomed to looking for more typical shounen action and seinen drama elements with darker aesthetics, simply because that's what got them into it. Similarly, people who came in with stuff like Lucky Star are probably more likely to enjoy comedy, compared to me.)
(One trait that's part of my anime tastes, but that I haven't mentioned, is my enjoyment of swords-and-sorcery fantasy. This most likely comes from my enjoying various JRPG videogames from the SNES era.)
Curiously, this also means that many of the shows that frequently top rec lists tend to be a bit second-tier in terms of how interested I am in jumping on board with them. Partly because my "anime development" didn't go through a lot of the more famous shows that other people have watched. (I didn't like DBZ's art style, and was meh on Sailor Moon, YuGiOh, and other kids' shows of that time. The only exception is Digimon, which I've always been interested in but never got around to watching.)
* Eagle Riders - I watched one episode of this, which I barely remember.
* Voltron - I watched the "New Adventures", which I think are the episodes Toei expressly made for WEP. I enjoyed them as a kid, though I haven't been as key on watching the Voltron series as a whole. Instead, it's the kind of show that's nice to watch a random episode of just to see what adventures the team has gone on. I admit to being less enthused about the show now as an adult than as a kid.
* Pokémon - I loved this show as a kid, but the sheer number of episodes that got shown in a week made it difficult to keep up with. And that was back when I was also playing the show, and found it interesting to see stuff in the game that I'd seen in the show. Nowadays I've long since fallen off the Pokémon train, even though I still like it -- I still haven't played the gen 2 games, which I really want to get around to doing. Anyway I really liked what I saw of it, and in an ideal world where I had all the time in the world I would have followed the show, or at least bothered to watch all of the first few seasons, and played their corresponding games. But in an ideal world, the Orange Island league would actually be represented in-game, and Pokémon would be the most glorious and longest-running MMORPG ever, and so on and so forth. TL;DR yeah I still like the show, or at least what I saw of it, and also what I heard of it (I love the show's music). (I don't know what it's like now.)
* Neon Genesis Evangelion - I appreciated this series quite a lot when I watched it, and I still do.
* Kiddy Grade - I appreciated this series quite a lot when I watched it, and still do. Incidentally it was with this series that I thought was great, then found other people saying that it was flawed, and gradually I started thinking it was flawed, but then one day I looked at myself and said, why do I think it's flawed only because other people "revealed its flaws to me" or something? What happened to how much the story meant to me? If I genuinely enjoyed it, then that's obvious evidence that I enjoyed it despite whatever alleged "flaws" it has...or perhaps even because of these "flaws", considering that different people have different tastes.
* Noir - I was a little meh on this series when I watched it, though I rated it highly at first, mainly because it struck me as sophisticated and "artistic". Since revising my rating system, however, its rating now more accurately reflects my opinion of it -- I definitely enjoyed some moments of it, but it wasn't the life-changing thing that NGE and Kiddy Grade turned out to be for me.
* Stratos 4, Rocket Girls, Sky Girls - a trio of series that MAL recced to me from Kiddy Grade, and I ended up enjoying them too, and I still do. In a way I think my stated opinion of them similarly increased over the years, like it did for KG -- in particular, I used to criticize Sky Girls for its not being an action series despite having a theme song that suggests it, and for its fanservicey costume designs...but later I realized that those things didn't really matter to me and were more part of my attempt to describe the series to other people for the purpose of recommendations. On the other hand I just really enjoyed the heartwarming story Sky Girls tells, and that's what I remember of it, so I bumped it up to a 9.
* Stellvia of the Universe - I remember hoping to enjoy this as much as I did the other three shows I mentioned just above, but some of the character interactions felt a little hard-to-understand at times, even though the music is still excellent.
* Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha - the first magical girl series I actually watched. I knew of Sailor Moon for years, but never watched it seriously. Nanoha, on the other hand, thoroughly impressed me, and it's among my favorite franchises, because I really like its recurring theme of understanding others as people, even one's enemies, and reaching out to them.
* Mai-HiME - I remember watching this, not knowing much about it, and kinda vague liking it -- I liked some of the characters -- but it definitely wasn't something I was wholeheartedly enjoying, and I ended up dropping it by accident at some point. I still haven't gone back to finishing it yet either. From my analysis, I think I disliked the mood whiplash that the show does sometimes, juxtaposing high drama and romantic comedy, and also its sort of kitchen-sink treatment of various plotlines.
After that I basically just accumulated various other shows to watch. I also think I picked up Infinite Ryvius and RahXephon shortly afterwards, but they have sort of gotten stuck in backlog hell.
I think this probably influenced my tastes for what sorts of anime shows I like. Specifically, I tend to enjoy shows with female protagonists who do awesome things, as well as generally more optimistic/idealistic stories with brighter aesthetics. I also care a lot about the music, as well as the emotions in the story. On the other hand, I've never been much into anime comedy -- the only comedy here is Rocket Girls, and it's definitely not a stereotypical exaggerated slapstick anime comedy. The others are all adventure/action/drama shows (and even Rocket Girls has some drama), where I get to take the story and characters seriously, and they're enjoyable that way.
And given this taste, of course I still like these shows a lot, because a number of these shows are just really strong examples of these sorts of traits. They may be "rose-tinted" to a small extent, in that I remember things in a show I enjoyed more than things I didn't enjoy, so my long-term memory of a show tends to be more pleasant (unless I started out hating it). But I think my opinions of these shows, that I watched early on in my anime-watching journey, is still largely rooted in my tastes, which happened to be strongly influenced by these shows.
(By extrapolation I think that others who got into anime through shows like Bleach and Death Note are probably more accustomed to looking for more typical shounen action and seinen drama elements with darker aesthetics, simply because that's what got them into it. Similarly, people who came in with stuff like Lucky Star are probably more likely to enjoy comedy, compared to me.)
(One trait that's part of my anime tastes, but that I haven't mentioned, is my enjoyment of swords-and-sorcery fantasy. This most likely comes from my enjoying various JRPG videogames from the SNES era.)
Curiously, this also means that many of the shows that frequently top rec lists tend to be a bit second-tier in terms of how interested I am in jumping on board with them. Partly because my "anime development" didn't go through a lot of the more famous shows that other people have watched. (I didn't like DBZ's art style, and was meh on Sailor Moon, YuGiOh, and other kids' shows of that time. The only exception is Digimon, which I've always been interested in but never got around to watching.)
Posted by
GlennMagusHarvey
| Mar 19, 2018 4:34 PM |
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