So folks what are some anime and/or manga you hate, just don't find fun, etc? I want to watch or read stuff, but feel like taking a different tack for recommendations.
(Posting it here instead of in both threads because double posting is effort on mobile.)
I've heard interesting defences for both of those, funnily enough, but both rely on looking at the shows in question in very different ways from what most people seem to look at them as.
Personally, I just don't like Death Note. I appreciate the mechanical aspects of the story but the characters are flat as cardboard cutouts, the premise is melodramatic in a way that I found dissatisfying, and I just could not get into the art style. The direction and acting were fine, the plot was addictive, but it all rang hollow for me.
On that note, shows I've never approached because I know myself well enough to sense that I won't really like or "get" them: Attack on Titan, Elfen Lied, One Piece, literally any magical girlfriend show and most harem comedies.
If we want to talk *bad* shows, and I mean rank... Nico from THEM Reviews and I have fairly similar tastes—although she is self-proclaimed shoujo trash and I am a very different sort of trash—and she's written some astonishingly caustic reviews of some lesser-known "gems." A few come to mind, although most I cannot directly vouch for.
I dunno. Rin is like Shigurui in that it's one of those labour-of-love art shows where it's horrifyingly violent but basically everyone I can think of who watched it said the direction and writing was otherwise fine.
Elfen Lied isn't quite so disgustingly graphic but it's apparently way more, uh, insulting. Ditto a lot of '80s/'90s OVAs like Genocyber and Violence Jack, although those strike me as even worse, which is almost better, paradoxically.
Gakkou Gurashi is the worst thing ever made in any medium.
Cool, now that I look it up I remember it as being a quietly divisive show. Adding it to my PTW list.
Death Note
I've already seen it, heh. I still find the art nice, though I also like the art for Hikaru no Go so there is that.
Attack on Titan, Elfen Lied, One Piece, literally any magical girlfriend show and most harem comedies.
First isn't fresh to me, second is sadly already on my PTW list (so I think I'll bump it up now), and the last I would act on except it feels like it'd be all-or-nothing for me, you know? It's sort of like if someone recommended me Bleach Because It's Bad or whatever (as I've heard before); I'd appreciate it but I doubt it'd lead anywhere personally meaningful due to how darn long it is, never mind the fandom to a meager extent. Thanks for reminding me of the last two genres though, I should scan through those with my MAL account.
Mnemosyne/Rin
Also this! Making sure it's on the PTW list too.
Ditto a lot of '80s/'90s OVAs like Genocyber
Those would be weak spots, particularly Genocyber, so I'll give that and similar media priority.
Maybe a better approach would be anime you think I'd hate, within reason. Side eyes Eiken and other such bland tedium I also don't want to give off the idea of being thankless, since anything is fine, but no one's a mind reader and sometimes you get recced stuff that's not fresh to you. Which, oops, yannow.
I actually know almost jack about this anime so that's good!
Maybe I didn't clarify, but: Far as anti-recommendation recommendation goes, I'm fine with it being Stuff You Loathe long as that part is clear, or something you just thing is bad, sorry for any confusion. I was kind of leaning the first way, until my mind got onto the second, and stuck.
I've heard interesting defences for both of those, funnily enough, but both rely on looking at the shows in question in very different ways from what most people seem to look at them as.
Personally, I just don't like Death Note. I appreciate the mechanical aspects of the story but the characters are flat as cardboard cutouts, the premise is melodramatic in a way that I found dissatisfying, and I just could not get into the art style. The direction and acting were fine, the plot was addictive, but it all rang hollow for me.
I never really got into Death Note for similar reasons. It just didn't quite do it for me. I can understand the appeal, but it just didn't draw me in for the above reasons.
An anime that I personally wasn't huge on was Psychopass. I mean, it wasn't bad, and I can see the appeal - but it seemed sorta generic. It was clear from fairly early on what the nature of the Big Bad was, at least to me. It was a "man I'm really bored and it's on netflix, sooooo" kind of anime for me. The characters weren't engaging enough to keep me around just for them, and the plots weren't *quite* there where storyline was concerned. It had some good points, but most bits were solidly mediocre in my opinion.
They took what was a fairly interesting premise for a slice of life/comedy show and started flip-flopping between that and really generic shounen. They also had no idea how to switch between the two tones, so you had a lot of moments of comedy where there really shouldn't be any.
It was just a mess of a show, really.
Very similar story with Is This a Zombie? Started with a reasonably funny premise, then started taking itself too seriously and went in the shitter quickly.
Am I weird in having more of an imagination than the average person or something?
Because I feel that Neon Genesis Evangelion works perfectly fine with episodes 25-26 and without End of Evangelion, even without "explicitly showing" what happened to lead up to that, yet one of the main criticisms that people have of eps 25-26 is that they show no details of what happened.
But I feel that EoE's presentation of what happened was unsatisfying, failed to top the dramatic ramp-up implied by the rest of the series, and if anything just drifted into the realm of self-parody.
It might have shown what happened, but the presentation was just...unsatisfying and cruddy, in my opinion. I had a much better time simply going with the flow and not asking how it happened.
Or maybe I'm weird in that I value emotional satisfaction over exact plot details?
I felt that 25-26 were a good hard look at the story's core theme of Shinji's character development by means of wandering the desert for a couple episodes, followed by a satisfying resolution, while EoE was basically "the world goes to hell in spectacular fashion, show's over, go home".
I felt that 25-26 were a good hard look at the story's core theme of Shinji's character development by means of wandering the desert for a couple episodes, followed by a satisfying resolution, while EoE was basically "the world goes to hell in spectacular fashion, show's over, go home".
I've never been able to understand enough of either 25-26 or EoE to feel much of anything from them, so I appreciate the latter actually finishing the story
I think 25-26 ultimately make a more fitting ending, because they drop every one of the plot's facades and slam down some raw character resolution. In being consistent with the plot of the series, EoE has to harp on about a bunch of stuff that doesn't matter, but 25-26 is the subject matter of NGE without much in the way of filters or, for that matter, the pretense of the show's many red herrings.
In being consistent with the plot of the series, EoE has to harp on about a bunch of stuff that doesn't matter...
Uhhhh.
No.
You are actually wrong here. Confusing and dense as it might be, if you're paying attention, EoE pays off on basically every theme addressed in the main plot where the television ending only tackles one or two of them and glosses over at least one vital element (children being raised to repeat their parents' mistakes) almost entirely, not to mention excising Kaworu from the proceeding entirely which, in context, makes barely any sense.
I think they're both neat in different ways. 25/26 (which i haven't watched in years, full disclosure) are like a bunch of written elaboration on psychological states of so and so. EoE is like Inane said.
People always* say 25/26 is way abstract and EoE is the material events, usually to say one is better, but that only works as a matter of degree. I mean, the movie has come sweet death and all. It's pretty fucking out there and most of what happens doesn't even make sense within the previously established in-universe rules, so it's more like more metaphor**.
Anyway no discussion of EoE is complete without that stupid eye thing. Do you all know the stupid eye thing? No? I'm not even going to tell you, it's better to just imagine. Imagine why comparison of fucking animation cels for the last scene would be all over the place. Iiiiiimagine
Spoiler:
*talking about nge is one of the first things i did on the internet
**I got into religious esotericism a bit from NGE, as per several comics etc. making fun of people doing that. I got this book once from a used bookstore, called, uh, "God Is A Verb". Written by a rabbi who knew a lot of Hasidism (so sometimes "rebbe") and hung out with Sufis for a while bla bla bla. Completely fucking crazy book. Just nuts. All over the place, all this junk that was probably partly from the Zohar and partly something the author made up himself, written for people like me who don't have the dedication to be Gershom Scholem. Anyway, there's this bit where it talks about the Garden of Eden, and explains that what Genesis is saying is that Adam and Eve were originally a singular hermaphroditic being, but that was dull/improper/whatever so God "cleaved a rib" but cutting it in half. Also this being was six thousand kilometers tall. I remember sitting in my room reading this and thinking oh shiiiiit, the animes
In being consistent with the plot of the series, EoE has to harp on about a bunch of stuff that doesn't matter...
Uhhhh.
No.
You are actually wrong here. Confusing and dense as it might be, if you're paying attention, EoE pays off on basically every theme addressed in the main plot where the television ending only tackles one or two of them and glosses over at least one vital element (children being raised to repeat their parents' mistakes) almost entirely, not to mention excising Kaworu from the proceeding entirely which, in context, makes barely any sense.
I think that very much depends on which themes were gathered from the main plot, especially given that the show went off the rails for more than budget reasons. EoE itself flashes death threats from fans on the screen, which leads us to question the kind of psychological conditions EoE was based on, too.
NGE has lots of room for interpretation, and Hideki Anno has copped to including red herrings, so I prefer to stick to the thematic through-lines that seem most clearly intentional. The fundamental one is the transition from child to adult, which we constantly get reminded of as the Eva pilots enter the womb-like enclosure of their cockpits and are sustained on the fluids within (while literally piloting their mothers). Kaworu might be an avatar for Shinji's desperation for external validation, but that aspect of Shinji's character is commonly expressed in a variety of ways throughout the show. What would make him such a crucial avatar for Shinji's need over, say, Misato? Asuka? Rei? Gendou? Shinji seeks validation from all of those characters, after all, so I'd consider that behaviour an element of the central theme rather than an independent theme itself.
In being consistent with the plot of the series, EoE has to harp on about a bunch of stuff that doesn't matter...
Uhhhh.
No.
You are actually wrong here. Confusing and dense as it might be, if you're paying attention, EoE pays off on basically every theme addressed in the main plot where the television ending only tackles one or two of them and glosses over at least one vital element (children being raised to repeat their parents' mistakes) almost entirely, not to mention excising Kaworu from the proceeding entirely which, in context, makes barely any sense.
I think that very much depends on which themes were gathered from the main plot, especially given that the show went off the rails for more than budget reasons. EoE itself flashes death threats from fans on the screen, which leads us to question the kind of psychological conditions EoE was based on, too.
NGE has lots of room for interpretation, and Hideki Anno has copped to including red herrings, so I prefer to stick to the thematic through-lines that seem most clearly intentional. The fundamental one is the transition from child to adult, which we constantly get reminded of as the Eva pilots enter the womb-like enclosure of their cockpits and are sustained on the fluids within (while literally piloting their mothers). Kaworu might be an avatar for Shinji's desperation for external validation, but that aspect of Shinji's character is commonly expressed in a variety of ways throughout the show. What would make him such a crucial avatar for Shinji's need over, say, Misato? Asuka? Rei? Gendou? Shinji seeks validation from all of those characters, after all, so I'd consider that behaviour an element of the central theme rather than an independent theme itself.
So the whole thing with Shinji's problems mirroring Gendo's, Ritsuko's struggle with her mother's legacy, and Asuka's inability to properly relate to and care about other people after her mother went crazy are all coincidental because you, personally, didn't notice the throughline? I see.
Kaworu is not the only example of how screwed up Shinji's idea of love is, but he is the first person in his life to tell him that he is loved, and to do so unconditionally, since his mother's death, and the way that he latches onto him is fairly unique. I have talked about this here before, but I really think that whole plot point got exceedingly short shrift in the series itself—perhaps because they had to throw so much out in the wake of the subway attacks—precisely because it finally crystallises something that is just kind of ambient up to that point. Sure, there's Misato, but Misato's role is very different from Kaworu's in that particular equation. On top of that, ignoring an episode immediately before the finale where the main character is finally completely emotionally destroyed when that's kind of the crux of what happens to him in the next two is just stupid.
The first paragraph is a disingenuous strawman with a sarcastic quip. It's not meant to engage with me, but belittle me, and that's not good discourse whether I'm wrong or otherwise. Your suggestion that I'm not being forthright isn't very helpful, either.
Here's my problem: I'm not saying that you can't prefer one to the other. Each one vibes with different people for different reasons. But your approach to argument here seems to be one of dismissal: "These points are just red herrings; they're not important," which tends to imply, "You are dumb and wrong for prioritising these things." Aside from taking *that* personally, I feel like you made a value judgement framed as an objective statement rather than as an opinion, which is never a good way to start a discussion.
The reason why I posed the question as sarcastically as I did is because you dismissed a huge chunk of the story as trivial, and I'm not sure how you squared that. I could have been more polite, but you have this bad habit of glossing over arguments that you don't want to confront rather than answering them directly, and it bothers me.
Here's my problem: I'm not saying that you can't prefer one to the other. Each one vibes with different people for different reasons. But your approach to argument here seems to be one of dismissal: "These points are just red herrings; they're not important," which tends to imply, "You are dumb and wrong for prioritising these things." Aside from taking *that* personally, I feel like you made a value judgement framed as an objective statement rather than as an opinion, which is never a good way to start a discussion.
The reason why I posed the question as sarcastically as I did is because you dismissed a huge chunk of the story as trivial, and I'm not sure how you squared that. I could have been more polite, but you have this bad habit of glossing over arguments that you don't want to confront rather than answering them directly, and it bothers me.
and this is why every argument about interpretation of fiction should be ended with "different people paid attention to different things and it's okay to do so"
PMMM didn't resonate with me a whole lot... I enjoyed the ride a whole lot, but have ended up thinking more on my differences from a fair amount of others than the series itself, so you're not alone I guess?
^ I agree with that comment, it just strikes me as sort of missing the point.
Then it's better to say that directly, because what you just said was infinitely more productive and much less caustic, despite being a much more direct criticism of what I said then and previously.
I do regret if I communicated anything particularly belittling in my own posts, but it wasn't intentional in the slightest. NGE is a show where there's some very broad room for interpretation, though, and the show's significant changes in the later half (motivated by a variety of factors) caused differences between what we got and the originally intended shape of the story. It becomes difficult to discern Hideki Anno's compromises or whims from continuations of previous content, and given the existence of remakes, I'm not sure whether death of the author or its inverse is a more appropriate approach to take to the show. Anno has also copped to, for instance, using the religious iconography as purely aesthetic window dressing, so I'm also aware that he chooses to include content that isn't necessarily intended to represent anything.
Given how much I knowingly can't say about NGE objectively, I'm drawn to the content and themes it wants to draw the most overt attention to. There's more that could be interpreted from NGE, and I don't at all mean to dismiss your experiences or interpretations, but I spoke about its barest central themes in the first place specifically to avoid overextending.
And I think that's fair. You just... sort of stepped on a nerve there. Or a bunch of them.
Maybe it's best if I just explain why I like EoE in the first place.
EoE is one of the most uncomfortably accurate depictions of the kind of experience that I have had with depression that I have ever seen. I also feel like it follows up on all of the story beats that I personally found important far better than the series ending did—again, making the Kaworu thing relevant, and in a really interesting way, but just the tying up of loose ends in general—while managing to smoothly integrate the metatextual elements that made the show ending so striking in a number of interesting ways. Both are heavily abstracted and metaphorical, but I feel like the show ending is more idealistic where the film is more uncompromising and honest. It's still kind of scattered, but that feels more intentional than in 25/26; it's also less... monologue-tastic, or rather, the monologues feel more natural and less didactic.
(Additionally, with respect to story beats, I really love how EoE follows up on just how alike Shinji and Gendo are in some ways, and how the father's failings have directly precipitated his son making many of the same mistakes. That final scene with Gendo is seriously reminds me of the last scene in the first half of Goethe's Faust—cf. Madoka Magica here—and it has the same chilling sense of finality. He is judged.)
I think I understand. EoE's comparative aesthetic extravagance sells the notion of a psychological episode with much more visceral effectiveness (ignoring the literal viscera) than any other chapter of the story, so I can see how its approach could be considered especially honest as these things go. That sincerity helps compound the impact of its gentler segments, too.
What I was initially referring to with EoE being tied to extraneous elements of NGE's plot was predominantly to do with how SEELE's otherwise hollow involvement was used to motivate its literal events, and I've always found the SEELE stuff to be the most empty of any NGE content.
Now, that I can buy. But at the same time, I see it as making up for the fact that SEELE were supposed to be much more important to the series itself than the final product would suggest—and even so, they're *always* hanging in the background. Is bringing them back in that way jarring? Sure, but consider what SEELE represent here: Another power that Gendo thinks he can use to his advantage that he does not fully understand or respect that ultimately comes to bite him, like everything else he's meddled with. It's just that in this case, they're fanatical devotees rather than actual dark forces—but devotees with astounding quantities of cash and clout. And in the end, Gendo has to pay the piper. Again.
I think EoE's aesthetic extravagance was misspent on visual appeal rather than setting atmosphere properly.
Maybe I just care too much about atmosphere and too little about textual details, to the point where I'm okay with the former basically overriding the latter when they conflict.
i wonder if it's just that i'm sorta more sensitive to emotions and atmosphere and less sensitive to specific story details
and coming up with emotional meaning from something is a much less detail-oriented process than picking apart a story, and naturally and automatically involves a lot more patching things over and error-correction, and besides, it also includes an interpretative component, to determine the meaning of the events to myself, to decide what's important, and in interpreting and coming to a holistic understanding of the material, inferring themes and identifying motifs
whereas other people probably pay more attention to the text, and also have a greater tendency toward emotionally distancing themselves because they probably watch anime in greater volumes per unit time than i do
^^ I think you're gleaning some mixed conclusions here: The subtext and emotional resonance of an event with in a story are frequently far more important to me than the "plot relevance" of that event.
What I think you're getting at is that you prioritise how a series appeals to your personal aesthetics of character, mood and tone over things like theme, subtext, dramatic progression and cinematography—which is to say, the stuff I take deadly seriously—or more mechanical matters like plot consistency and worldbuilding which a lot of people like to geek out about. Which is fine, but it means that unless you meet someone with similar aesthetics and priorities, it will be hard for you to really talk about what you liked and why without confusing some people, or, frankly, making some uncharitable fellow think that you lack standards. This would be unfair and inaccurate, but not incomprehensible.
^ Pay attention.
Also, in EoE, note the name on the dummy plugs. Or look it up. It's a neat blink-and-you'll-miss-it detail.
Comments
(Posting it here instead of in both threads because double posting is effort on mobile.)
Personally, I just don't like Death Note. I appreciate the mechanical aspects of the story but the characters are flat as cardboard cutouts, the premise is melodramatic in a way that I found dissatisfying, and I just could not get into the art style. The direction and acting were fine, the plot was addictive, but it all rang hollow for me.
On that note, shows I've never approached because I know myself well enough to sense that I won't really like or "get" them: Attack on Titan, Elfen Lied, One Piece, literally any magical girlfriend show and most harem comedies.
If we want to talk *bad* shows, and I mean rank... Nico from THEM Reviews and I have fairly similar tastes—although she is self-proclaimed shoujo trash and I am a very different sort of trash—and she's written some astonishingly caustic reviews of some lesser-known "gems." A few come to mind, although most I cannot directly vouch for.
Elfen Lied isn't quite so disgustingly graphic but it's apparently way more, uh, insulting. Ditto a lot of '80s/'90s OVAs like Genocyber and Violence Jack, although those strike me as even worse, which is almost better, paradoxically.
riddle of devil
They took what was a fairly interesting premise for a slice of life/comedy show and started flip-flopping between that and really generic shounen. They also had no idea how to switch between the two tones, so you had a lot of moments of comedy where there really shouldn't be any.
It was just a mess of a show, really.
Very similar story with Is This a Zombie? Started with a reasonably funny premise, then started taking itself too seriously and went in the shitter quickly.
I was willing to forgive it for being a mess up until that point
Because I feel that Neon Genesis Evangelion works perfectly fine with episodes 25-26 and without End of Evangelion, even without "explicitly showing" what happened to lead up to that, yet one of the main criticisms that people have of eps 25-26 is that they show no details of what happened.
But I feel that EoE's presentation of what happened was unsatisfying, failed to top the dramatic ramp-up implied by the rest of the series, and if anything just drifted into the realm of self-parody.
It might have shown what happened, but the presentation was just...unsatisfying and cruddy, in my opinion. I had a much better time simply going with the flow and not asking how it happened.
Or maybe I'm weird in that I value emotional satisfaction over exact plot details?
And even without looking at budget I think 25-26 were pretty great, if unrefined
Uhhhh.
No.
You are actually wrong here. Confusing and dense as it might be, if you're paying attention, EoE pays off on basically every theme addressed in the main plot where the television ending only tackles one or two of them and glosses over at least one vital element (children being raised to repeat their parents' mistakes) almost entirely, not to mention excising Kaworu from the proceeding entirely which, in context, makes barely any sense.
Meanwhile, EoE is primarily about showing the in-setting physical "real world" events, while 25-26 shows the psychological contemplations.
People always* say 25/26 is way abstract and EoE is the material events, usually to say one is better, but that only works as a matter of degree. I mean, the movie has come sweet death and all. It's pretty fucking out there and most of what happens doesn't even make sense within the previously established in-universe rules, so it's more like more metaphor**.
Anyway no discussion of EoE is complete without that stupid eye thing. Do you all know the stupid eye thing? No? I'm not even going to tell you, it's better to just imagine. Imagine why comparison of fucking animation cels for the last scene would be all over the place. Iiiiiimagine
**I got into religious esotericism a bit from NGE, as per several comics etc. making fun of people doing that. I got this book once from a used bookstore, called, uh, "God Is A Verb". Written by a rabbi who knew a lot of Hasidism (so sometimes "rebbe") and hung out with Sufis for a while bla bla bla. Completely fucking crazy book. Just nuts. All over the place, all this junk that was probably partly from the Zohar and partly something the author made up himself, written for people like me who don't have the dedication to be Gershom Scholem. Anyway, there's this bit where it talks about the Garden of Eden, and explains that what Genesis is saying is that Adam and Eve were originally a singular hermaphroditic being, but that was dull/improper/whatever so God "cleaved a rib" but cutting it in half. Also this being was six thousand kilometers tall. I remember sitting in my room reading this and thinking oh shiiiiit, the animes
So the whole thing with Shinji's problems mirroring Gendo's, Ritsuko's struggle with her mother's legacy, and Asuka's inability to properly relate to and care about other people after her mother went crazy are all coincidental because you, personally, didn't notice the throughline? I see.
Kaworu is not the only example of how screwed up Shinji's idea of love is, but he is the first person in his life to tell him that he is loved, and to do so unconditionally, since his mother's death, and the way that he latches onto him is fairly unique. I have talked about this here before, but I really think that whole plot point got exceedingly short shrift in the series itself—perhaps because they had to throw so much out in the wake of the subway attacks—precisely because it finally crystallises something that is just kind of ambient up to that point. Sure, there's Misato, but Misato's role is very different from Kaworu's in that particular equation. On top of that, ignoring an episode immediately before the finale where the main character is finally completely emotionally destroyed when that's kind of the crux of what happens to him in the next two is just stupid.
The reason why I posed the question as sarcastically as I did is because you dismissed a huge chunk of the story as trivial, and I'm not sure how you squared that. I could have been more polite, but you have this bad habit of glossing over arguments that you don't want to confront rather than answering them directly, and it bothers me.
why other people prefer EoE
why i didn't enjoy MadoMagi
Maybe it's best if I just explain why I like EoE in the first place.
EoE is one of the most uncomfortably accurate depictions of the kind of experience that I have had with depression that I have ever seen. I also feel like it follows up on all of the story beats that I personally found important far better than the series ending did—again, making the Kaworu thing relevant, and in a really interesting way, but just the tying up of loose ends in general—while managing to smoothly integrate the metatextual elements that made the show ending so striking in a number of interesting ways. Both are heavily abstracted and metaphorical, but I feel like the show ending is more idealistic where the film is more uncompromising and honest. It's still kind of scattered, but that feels more intentional than in 25/26; it's also less... monologue-tastic, or rather, the monologues feel more natural and less didactic.
Maybe I just care too much about atmosphere and too little about textual details, to the point where I'm okay with the former basically overriding the latter when they conflict.
why I like Coppelion
and coming up with emotional meaning from something is a much less detail-oriented process than picking apart a story, and naturally and automatically involves a lot more patching things over and error-correction, and besides, it also includes an interpretative component, to determine the meaning of the events to myself, to decide what's important, and in interpreting and coming to a holistic understanding of the material, inferring themes and identifying motifs
whereas other people probably pay more attention to the text, and also have a greater tendency toward emotionally distancing themselves because they probably watch anime in greater volumes per unit time than i do
What I think you're getting at is that you prioritise how a series appeals to your personal aesthetics of character, mood and tone over things like theme, subtext, dramatic progression and cinematography—which is to say, the stuff I take deadly seriously—or more mechanical matters like plot consistency and worldbuilding which a lot of people like to geek out about. Which is fine, but it means that unless you meet someone with similar aesthetics and priorities, it will be hard for you to really talk about what you liked and why without confusing some people, or, frankly, making some uncharitable fellow think that you lack standards. This would be unfair and inaccurate, but not incomprehensible.
^ Pay attention.
Also, in EoE, note the name on the dummy plugs. Or look it up. It's a neat blink-and-you'll-miss-it detail.