How much of your personality and self-expression is related to anime?

"personality"

I mean, nobody takes me for a weeb, they treat me as a random prick...so not much of a prominent public trait. Also I am more of animation addict, than anime supremacist, even less a connoisseur.


"self-expression"

I try to push my favourite shows into everybody's face, but they ignore it 120% of the time...so it's not much of expression.


"I just wasted months on"

Naaah, time spent on escapism is time gained from "thinking about the doom".


"becoming a cinephile"

Movies nowadays suck even worst than anime adaptations of korean comics and I don't see you watching the remastered 4K version of The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920).
Keep choosing the moderately exotic stuff.

Anime is all scams anyways. Does anyone even take it seriously?

I even asked how to get into movies on /tv/, so they sent me a list of "greatest movies of all time".
The problem is that whenever movie that I picked and asked "Can I start with this one?", the answer was a variation of "No, you first need to be well acquainted with this director/this genre/this era/etc".

When I say I don't watch movies at all and am pretty illiterate about the medium... I really mean it, so you're not wrong that I would likely not understand why Citizen Kane is so well regarded or the genius of Felinni's 8½ (I would like to, though) if I ever were to watch them.
If something, I would also love to be able to grasp this kind of more analytical lens regarding anime, though I don't know where to learn it.

Please, just watch the thing that interests you.

Whoever tells other people what hoops they need to jump through first before they can "properly" watch a movie really grinds my gears. Perhaps they'll also tell you to take a bubble bath first, put on a kilt and meditate for 2 hours before watching the movie?

Learning stuff about the movie is optional, not a pre-requisite (or even a post-requisite).

Why would it work any different from watching anime?

@perseii

Well, there are two situations where I might say to someone to NOT start with a certain anime:

1. It being heavily reliant on either references, parodies of subversions of a lot of tropes (A lot of narou-kei and otaku-oriented media might fall here), I would highly recommend for them to watch more anime before.
   
2. Those which you CAN perfectly watch being new to the medium, BUT you can only truly appreciate them if you watched a lot of anime before, because that one in specific does things either BETTER or DIFFERENTLY.
   

Granted, with time I began to enforce number two less and less because I remember that the person can simply REMEMBER the anime in the future and be able to appreciate how good it was (And why not re-watch?).

For me, it's important that I understand why people LOVE something. A few years ago I would hear lot's of praises for David Fincher's "Seven", so I went to watch it and... it felt like a normal movie to me. I feel that if a cinephile was next to me they would start enthusiastically talking about a myriad of little things that make it incredible that I simply don't have the eye to see.
And I feel I'm the same with anime: There are some that are great to me, but that for someone not well acquainted with anime might seem as simply "normal anime".

That's why whenever I teach people how to get into anime, I don't do it in a way that will make them "like" anime, I do it in a way to make them "LOVE" anime.
Same goes with movies: I want to be able to LOVE them, and because of that I'm afraid that if I don't ask people for guidance, I might do something wrong.

Some people gave me the tip to start with well-regarded blockbuster directors: Ridley Scott, Stephen Spielberg, James Cameron, Francis Ford Coppola, Martin Scorsese, etc
Then move on to things like the Kurosawa Akira and Park Chan-wook movies.

The good old indoctrination.
It should be your decision if you want to be a casual cinephile or "elitist" cinephile (not unsimilar to anime)


This is kind of valid for anime too, observing how certain author evolves with the time (plus the obligatory decline) can be fun...if you care about legacy and influences.


I think he has movies which are more entertaining to watch (like Roma, Prova d'orchestra and E la nave va), but if you really want to understand 8½ you need to start with theNeorealism and Fellini's participation in it.


Yeah, such places existed on internet in the 00s, but I didn't care (on arrival they would shove Myazaki, Dezai and Oshii in your face), but kind of disappeared around the 10s.
Maybe they still exist somewhere in some form, but personally I care even less.



Ewww. He is as interesting as autopsy. You need to have some morbid curiosity in you to enjoy his movies.
Similar thing with David Fincher, but maybe he is a bit tamer in comparison.

I understand that you wish their experience to be "perfect," but I don't think this is really necessary or even reasonable.

What's wrong with just liking an anime, rather than loving it? Actually watching the anime and getting some kind of enjoyment is still better than not watching it at all, no? Then, they may come back to it later with a different mindset and love it more on second viewing (as you already mentioned). I actually love it when I re-discover things.

It's also unreasonable to ask them to listen to a lecture and do homework before they watch something. What would even motivate them to put in the time and effort? They don't even know anything about the anime to know if it's worth doing the work! They just wanna watch anime...

Even if they learn everything "about" the anime beforehand, they could easily decide it's all a load of bull and make up their own minds.

The same goes with movies, I believe.


Sure, that's not a bad recommendation. But...

I personally think David Fincher falls into this category, and I sympathize with your experience; I'm not really blown away by the few movies of his that I've seen. The impression I get from "cinephiles" is that he's such a genius, meticulous director that his movies feel effortless and "normal." Maybe I'd feel different once I actually study or try directing, but I'm fine with lightly enjoying his movies and moving on.

I think it's fine (maybe even better) to just start with the more "challenging" directors. Even if you don't understand certain parts, the movie probably won't feel "normal," which will more easily pique your interest in movies.

By all means, watch Park Chan-wook if he sounds interesting. Even if you don't get it, or even hate it, it got a reaction out of you, you learned something about your own tastes, and you might gain some ideas about what movies to try next or what to read up on.