Is Japanese Animation not shit? An honest question

harshtruth said:
Who in their right mind is going to read that wall?

S-quare22 said:

You keep on insulting ppl instead of writing a summary for all thsi thread

The MAL shitposters crease to amaze me

Takamura-sama said:


I read it and he just basically said an ime girls are repetitive and the people that watch it should kill themselves. And said that you need to like hentai in order to like anime

It's bait; low quality bait.

Zeruk said:

Long running shows are much more of an experience for kids growing up then short ones, so shounen having the format is not something I consider bad (shame they barely exist anymore).

Mooncake said:
As you're probably painfully aware of, pretty much everyone outside of the anime fandom considers the genre infantile, stupid, and nothing but loli fap material for emotionally stunted teenagers and half-adults. In general, fandom responds to these accusations "they're just prejudiced"/"if they only knew"/"just wait until death-note becomes popular" etc. The assumption is always that people who rag on anime are actually ignorant of them. I think this is a fair assumption to make about most Kotaku commenters etc., but...

for one reason or other, I subscribed to this forum and decided to check out a few of the titles that were getting recommended like crazy... and, well. TL;DR: The more I've learned about Anime, the less I like them. And... I think this mainstream breakthrough some of you guys seem to be hoping for (correct me if I'm wrong) won't ever come as long as the ware you're peddling is stuff like Death note, Higurashi and Code Geass

So let me just explain a little about where I'm coming from - I'm a long-term resident of Japan and I speak Japanese fluently. Though I'm a big fan of animation in general (including some hentai), I really can't stand the teen/YA TV anime broadcast at night over here. I still watch them occasionally, to my wife's chagrin, kind of fascinated over just how horribly wrong things can go. Never mind the horrible animation (God, if things could just be more like in the 60's-90's when "limited animation" didn't mean you had to strip the soul out of your drawings) - the horrible tropes, the squeaky voices that sound nothing like how people speak in real life (the girls especially!), and the super-samey female characters.



What I'm trying to say is, I of course had loads of prejudices about the genre before I fired up Higurashi no Naku Koro Ni, but I was at the same time better informed then most. I did half expect anime's to be like cheap late-night hentai, but because of the praise I had read for certain titles, I also assumed the writing had to be really good, I mean, that there had to be something redeeming about it.
Well, turns out I was wrong. After loading up Higurashi and watching it for half an hour, I deleted the show. No. No. No. "This isn't good writing," I thought to myself. "Even if I play along with what fandom says and assume the intro is just slow - it's infantile, repetitive and typical anime fare resorting to the most irritable and unbelievable hentai stereotypical female characters, topped with some incredibly grating voices. Is anybody seriously suggesting that there will be even an ounce of 'great writing' hiding behind what seems like hours and hours of characterless otaku loli "slice of life", before you get to the mysteries?"
But... I'd be a fool if I judged the entire genre just on one title, as highly recommended by the fandom as it may have come. So... I check out another highly recommended title.
Sword art online.
Oh my God. I forced myself to stick with this one a little longer, but after an hour, I threw in the towel. A "Gary Stu" protagonist? Check. A completely unbelievable and nonsense setting? Check. Grating voices? Check. Stereotypical anime girls behaving like stereotypical anime girls? Check. A armor wearing a maid uniform for no good reason??!?! Check. I'm sorry guys, but there's no way there's a gem of highly accomplished anime in any genre with an intro like this. I've read comments here saying it says things about the "human condition" etc. - but seriously, from what I've seen, I cannot be brought to believe that a writer who can't depict girls except using the worst of the worst anime stereotypes to introduce them can do anything for me.
I'm stubborn. I'm crazy, probably, but I didn't give up. I checked out other shows like White Album 2, Monogatari, and some other title I can't remember... but all of them seem the same. I can't get past the stereotypical anime women.
The more I learned about anime, the more I grew to dislike them. The only exceptions to this were Western takes on the genre - I watched through Avatar: The Last Air Bender and even bothered looking up fan theories to truly understand the show. While the writing was shit, the story had me hooked. I finished all the seasons. One episode spoke more to me than I imagine hours of sitting through the more canonical Western show would (though this is only a guess of course, as I gave up on them). I don't remember "Legend of Korra" too well but I did read it several years back and I have somewhat fond memories of it. The hamfistedness of the Japanese shows, the hentai stereotypes, the unbelievable female characters... yes, they were technically more accomplished than any of the western cartoons I watched, but the stories were just... shit.
I began formulating my own theories why people still enjoy these titles and even suggest they're comparable to other Japanese literature in terms of enjoyment and quality.
Firstly, you have to enjoy hentai to enjoy Japanese medias. Again, I'm not referring to Studio Ghibli but the kind of late-night programming/OAV I've previously referred to. This seems like an absolute must. If you can't stand the worst of the hentai tropes, you won't be able to stand anime. Period. Any recommendation of a Japanese anime should come with a big disclaimer - "If you don't like Hentai, you won't like this."
Secondly, the length of the praised shows lead me to believe... the lure of the soap opera. Over and over again, I see people saying the anime actually NEED to be verbose, repetitive and overly long, for you to bond with the characters. You need to go through the painstakingly slow slice of life of "Higurashi" to fully appreciate them being offed, etc. Well, no. Good writing/narratives can make you bond with and care about a character in a couple of minutes at most. Look at Pixar's "Up". Yes, I cried in the first 5 minutes, and so did you. Using length to accomplish the same thing is nothing but a staple of bad writing. Yes, telenovelas are probably fun and rewarding once you've invested hours of your own time following the lives of the protagonists. They're still intellectual wastelands however and frankly, shit, when compared to stuff like "Breaking Bad", "Mad Men", "Sopranos" and I will think worse of you for wasting your time on it, and worse still for suggesting I should get into it too, that I just need to do the time like you have, that I shouldn't criticize it util I'm as involved as you are...
(I'm aware of the irony in me criticizing anime for length while writing a wall of text myself, but I feel it doesn't invalidate my criticism)
Am I wrong? Or are you guys wrong? Are the shows you tout as "great" in all actuality "shit" to people outside of anime fandom? I hope I haven't been too aggressive in this post, my goal has been to respectfully but honestly state my opinions, even though they will obviously be offensive to some. I look forward to being corrected and have my points refuted. Thanks

AltoRoark said:
I can't believe this thread is still up. And it's also a duplicate of another thread from about a year ago, like @Cactii pointed out.

harshtruth said:
Who in their right mind is going to read that wall?