I’m a 20 year old Canadian who is currently employed in retail and trying to find direction in my life (In terms of schooling). I’m an aspiring Author/Mangaka and Editor (as I don’t have anything published.) I use a majority of my free time watching anime series that I’ve had backlogged for far too long or random titles I’ve come across where the premise has quickly drawn me in. I enjoy casual conversation and I’m not afraid to debate my thoughts and opinions openly about Anime/Western Television/Movies/Music.
Outside of Anime, these are my top fives:
Movies: 500 Days of Summer, Seven, Fight Club, The Devil’s Rejects (As it has one of the best ‘badass’ endings of all time) and Casablanca.
Television: American Horror Stories, Adventure Time, The Food Network (No particular shows, I can simply watch TFN all day), Clone High and Game of Thrones.
Musicians/Bands: Barenaked Ladies, Panic! at the Disco, Prozzak, Alkaline Trio and Almost Anything ‘Classical/Orchestrated’.
Novels: The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho, The Outsider by Albert Camus, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce.
If you’re interested in knowing anything about me, I’m fairly open to talking about anything you may have questions about so don’t be afraid to ask! I don’t bite often.
Being Rebuilt
What I look for in an anime
Story
The hardest thing to disguise as a masterpiece within a series is the story, as an aspiring author I focus most of my attention towards how a story progresses. This includes but is not limited to:
Setting - Where the story is taking place, when it is taking place and how well the atmosphere matches it’s intended timeline.
Character Development - Character growth is astoundingly hard to accomplish and this is why I find it hard to give a 12 episode series a highly rated score, although I try to be fair and grade an anime on what they were able to accomplish in the time given to them.
Plot - This is by far the hardest part for any anime to successfully accomplish. This deals with both the Setting and Character Development as well as smaller aspects such as pacing and progression; It is the overall picture to be looked at once the anime is complete - did it achieve what it was intended to achieve? If so, I look deeper into the series to see the holes that needed to be filled.
Examples of well put together Stories within an anime:
Monster - Slow paced and definitely not for everyone, it is a psychological thriller that to this day has not been topped by any other. Each character wears their personality on their face, allowing you to have some background insight into the characters themselves without really noticing it.
Perfect Blue - Perfect Blue is another psychological thriller that remains at the top of the charts, although unlike monster it is not slow paced (seeing as it is a movie as opposed to a series). Perfect Blue has laid influence within western culture - or at least it has left its mark in the minds of filmmakers subliminally. In fact, Perfect Blue is often questioned in regards as to why it was made as an animated film under the belief that if it were live-action it would have won over a more responsive crowd in a worldly fashion.
Great Teacher Onizaku - Finally! A title that isn’t a psychological thriller (unless of course I’ve been terribly misinformed.) GTO is amongst the leading titles of anime (of all time) it brings together character development and a storyline that rivals that of even Monster. From a no good, run of the mill ‘clown’ we get to experience the change of a roughhousers’ life from troubled to ‘enlightened.’ Without giving too much away it’s fair to say that the experience and affect that simply watching GTO will have on you emotionally is overwhelming, it is a perfect example of how to execute a slice of life story where you’re intrigued to keep watching yet you never want to see the series end.
Art
Art is something I’m not overly fond of, as I myself am no artist. Yet as a mere plebe it’s easy for me to tell when an anime is animated exceptionally and when it is animated poorly. Things that I constantly look at in regards to art:
Consistency - My biggest problem with ‘The Big 3’ (One Piece, Bleach, Naruto) is the inconsistency in the art department. Often times you’ll find one episode out of every five to be noticeably better animated than the others (this is often found in ‘climactic’ fight scenes.)
The Details - Whether it be hands, eyes or the gestures of the mouth; it’s small details within all anime that really make them stand out.
The Background - As irrelevant as it may seem, can you see that bird flying in the sky? No? It’s supposed to be a beautiful mid summers day without a cloud in the sky yet when I look into the sky, there’s no nature and there’s no contrast. The Background is heavily related to the ‘details’ however it’s much easier to notice when the background was given lackluster effort.
Examples of good art within anime:
Gankutsuou - The styling within this anime is not for everyone (I did this with Monster as well) but for me it truly hit home. I continually found myself lost within the artwork of the series, often zoning out of what was actually happening to catch glimpses of the ever changing backgrounds and scenery. It’s truly fascinating how the artwork in Gankutsuou changed my view on the title itself as it truly pieced together the anime as whole.
Redline - We’ll go with another movie as a second example. Redline potentially has the greatest animation within the anime world, it is truly captivating to the audience and to those who don’t have any experience in viewing anime, leisurely or critically. It accomplishes what many titles fail to do and that’s leave a ‘wow’ impression factor. It is consistent, it acknowledges the fine details and the background is constantly well drawn. Redline is the pinnacle of animation within the anime world (in my opinion) and more titles (both series and movies) should make attempts to live up to it’s expectations.
Anything Makoto Shinkai - 5 Centimetres Per Second, Voices of a Distant Star, Children who Chase Lost Voices and The Place Promised in Our Early Days. All of Shinkai’s work is above and beyond your ‘average’ or even ‘great’ anime, it truly captures the emotion that the characters are trying to demonstrate. If you haven’t seen any of his work, it’s something you must invest your time in as I lack words to express just how beautiful his works truly are.
Our group exists for that cause. We live in mutual enlightenment. To enlighten, and to be enlightened. So if you got a recommendation, I'll be sure to try it out eventually.
That's great to hear. Since you've been away, I've been recommending it nonstop to some of the other members (Valk, Mango, Zeru) and they fell in love with it too. I'm glad to see that it has the same effect on you. It's a truly amazing show, and you're words only further cement that.
I've been quite well. About to start school again, though... I see. I generally don't follow much of the new seasons, anyway. Too busy catching up on the older goodies that I missed...
I'm currently watching LotGH: Spiral Labyrinth, Gintama', Honey & Clover, Princess Tutu, Aria the Natural, Haibane Renmei, Mononoke, Yojouhan Shinwa Taikei, Nodame Cantabile Paris, and Zeta Gundam. I'm quite liking them all, to say the least.
By the way, what are your thoughts on Serial Experiments Lain?
That's good, I was afraid you weren't. :/ I'm doing fine as well. I'm just getting ready for the semester to start so my anime watching won't be as frequent as it was earlier. What about you?
All Comments (108) Comments
Regardless of birth dates, try and have a good time. Seriously though, how could you not with that Machoke?
Nothing really happen recently, and Fall's been alright. Much better than the seasons before it.
Our group exists for that cause. We live in mutual enlightenment. To enlighten, and to be enlightened. So if you got a recommendation, I'll be sure to try it out eventually.
How have you been?
Hope you enjoy it as much as I did!
I'm currently watching LotGH: Spiral Labyrinth, Gintama', Honey & Clover, Princess Tutu, Aria the Natural, Haibane Renmei, Mononoke, Yojouhan Shinwa Taikei, Nodame Cantabile Paris, and Zeta Gundam. I'm quite liking them all, to say the least.
By the way, what are your thoughts on Serial Experiments Lain?