What makes an anime pretentious?

FunkyNano said:

I do piano performances and I can tell you that is a 100% realistic portrayal of what audiences can be like.

masterofgo said:
First, this is wrong. Criticism can be synonymous with critique, and literary criticism has a longstanding history of being analytical and interpretive in its evaluations as opposed to taking needless binary positions. Secondly, the way that most mainstream reviewers do criticism irks me because it violates the inherent relationship between work and audience and turns it into an adversarial showmatch for supremacy, which I find misguided and too egotistical to foster anything worthwhile.

Chiibi said:
[snip]

Did I mention that all the male characters are assholes who treat girls like crap? Except for little Miki who has a hard-on for YOU GUESSED IT. HIS SISTER.

masterofgo said:
That is certainly not the point. The first episode certainly turns away viewers, but so does the second, third, fourth, fifth, and so on.

In addition, being purposefully offsetting is not even remotely close to being pretentious. There are plenty of authors who snobbishly select out who they want to read their work, but that does not make their works any more pretentious.

TheBrainintheJar said:
I don't see how scaring viewers on purpose, making your anime difficult on purpose benefits the story. A story shouldn't be difficult to experience for the sake of difficulty. It should be difficult if the content demands it.

Whether I jump through one hoop or 20 hoop isn't going to affect the value of the reward, if in both cases I only win 20 dollars.

masterofgo said:
There is a misconception, it is true, that difficulty is seen as good, when in reality it is not necessarily the case. However, I think there is still merit in saying that there is nothing wrong with trying to make things difficult, because the experience of unlocking something that is more complex and sophisticated can be extremely rewarding. If the end result is something very simple and not particularly engaging, then your analogy of jumping through loops and hurdles would be true.

In addition, bear in mind that the story of an anime is not the end all be all goal of all authors and directors.

emobuttercup said:
UBW fandom. Nothing smart about two people just standing around and talking about different opinions. Any moron can write that shit.

robiu013 said:
Is it? I get the concept of a transcendental experience through art. But having to listen to the cheezy poetry those kids are spouting out, is really ruining my experience of an otherwise interesting story with good music.

TheBrainintheJar said:
How is difficulty in and of itself a virtue?

masterofgo said:
Because being difficult is incredibly hard to pull off. It is not like people who create anime automatically know how to make an experience a difficult one. If people are being purposefully difficult, rather than criticize them for it, why not ask why do people make things inherently difficult to understand? Why do people like Mamoru Oshii make films that seem purposefully obtuse, or why does the author of Blame provide us a manga that is almost completely silent and devoid of dialogue as to provide little to no context? I certainly believe explaining things would have been far easier for both of these people, but in certain circumstances, creating a work that is difficult to unravel can be both enjoyable for the viewer and a demonstration of technical skill by the creator who packages it well.

But this question in turn begs a number of questions that are silly slippery slope arguments. How is any of the things that we usually judge in storytelling a virtue? Why are stories important? Why are characters important? For every reason you list for these elements, I can probably list a direct counterargument as to why stories and characters can be practically irrelevant in making great art.

masterofgo said:
Your hypothetical answers itself. If something is not needed, then it is unneeded. You have not really demonstrated under what specific context this applies and your example is too vague to be of any help in the matter.

TheBrainintheJar said:


Let me borrow an example from cinema: Inception.

The story is complicated because of the dream layers, but that's it. These layers don't add anything beyond complexity. Dreams aren't explored - they're all generic action pieces, people in suits shooting other people in suits. Characters don't have a deep psychology (besides the MC, typical women-in-refrigerator which Nolan already did in the fantastic Memento). There are no clever symbols.

These dreams aren't used to explore who these people are and they don't even have cool atmospheric ideas. It has zero atmosphere compared to other 'weird' films, like Jacob's Ladder or Dark City or Lost Highway. There is the question of 'what is real?' but the film never addresses why the question matters (something the Matrix did in contrasting two worlds and asking us which is better. The Machinist also does something similar, the 'fake world' is an extension of the MC's guilt).

Moneta said:
I am guilty of being inclined to label something pretentious when a league of people rush to philosophize an anime that contains no substance.

Still, I would hardly levy the label on many anime I hate. It seems like such a worthless identifier. At least with other negative words, you get a semblance of what might be expected. If I hear that an anime is pretentious I just chuckle and move on.

mrcmc888 said:
So the word pretentious is, in fact, pretentious?

Jureonable said:
Pseudo intellectual language and long monologues using it and forcing down ideals and killing off characters just because of the shock value.

Matthew_Summons said:
E.g Akame Ga Kill

Matthew_Summons said:
E.g Akame Ga Kill

tsudecimo said:

Wait what? they do add more than complexity, they are not just there to look complicated and exciting. It has a big relevance to the plot, with each layer they go, time flows differently, the defense mind of the target become more defensive, in order to reach his deepest memories of his father to implant the idea and make him trust them, they need to go further and further.

A lot of people complain that inception dreams aren't real dreams because they are not weird, bizarre or over the top while completely ignoring how if that happened it would contradict the whole plot of inception. It needs to be just mundane buildings and normal backgrounds because the whole idea is to plan an idea in the target's subconscious without him realizing that he is in a dream. So they need to be as realistic as possible, hence the need of the girl architect.

They don't explore who these people are because it's beside the point..It's like people think inception is about dream exploration while it's not. It did address why it matters. Cobb and his wife stayed for so long there, that she started to not understand what's real and what isn't, in the dream world it matters if it's real because they can't age, at first that seemed like a good thing but it started to become suffering and confusion. They don't get to experience the perks of living in a real world, they only know that they have each other but nothing else.

The Machinist didn't do something like that. The fake world as you put it, was just suffering for Bale's character, he only wanted to escape from it and find the truth in all his concpiracies which is why

masterofgo said:
Inception is not "complicated." It is also not difficult to follow. In fact, I would say one of the faults of the movie is precisely because Nolan provided a very structured composition to the dreams rather than the ambiguous nature of dreams. I do not think you have provided a good example of a "difficult" work.