Anime musings...

[Millardo]

I recently found an old external hard drive with about 70Gb of anime I havent laid eyes on in 2-3 years. In that stumble down animation lane, I found some old Gundam and realized just how cookie cutter and predictable the anime seasons have become.

I have heard arguements that anime was influenced by western culture and Hollywood, now there are trends that anime and gaming is influencing pop culture. Is it just me or has anime finally hit the same wall Hollywood did with remakes and stale ideas.

 

[Tartarga]

Anime has been that way for a while, and these days its practically impossible to come up with something 100% original. All you can do is watch it and hope you see something you've never seen before.

 

[Erana]

Find me one truely original story.

In general, its not that everything's stale, its that with more money in a form of media, the more mediocrity there's gonna be. I hate to say, "Just deal," but honestly, the only way I cope with pop culture is to shut myself off from as much sub-par rifraff and lower my standards.

 

[Daystar Clarion]

Find me one truely original story.

In general, its not that everything's stale, its that with more money in a form of media, the more mediocrity there's gonna be. I hate to say, "Just deal," but honestly, the only way I cope with pop culture is to shut myself off from as much sub-par rifraff and lower my standards.

Star Wars! Wait...Eragon! Wait...

 

[Gigaguy64]

Its been like that for years.
Just look at the newer Gundam (Seed, Seed D, 00).
Its the same Emotional people doing Emotional things that's been popular the last year or so.
And before that Psycho Horror Anime was whats popular.

And its hard to come up with something Original nowadays, almost every Plot/Character Type/Setting has been done before.

And im fine with themes being reused as long as its done well.
Which unfortunately its not always done well.

But this up coming Winter Season looks promising as far as Anime Goes.

 

[xavierxenon]

Is it just me or has anime finally hit the same wall Hollywood did with remakes and stale ideas.

Yeah, its just you.

 

[Casual Shinji]

Anime has gotten extremely stale. Why? I can't say for a fact.

But one thing is for sure; the Akira's, Ninja Scroll,s and Ghost In The Shell's have been gone for a long, long time.

Atleast we still have Studio Ghibli...for now.

 

[Addendum_Forthcoming]

I don't know ... there has been some gems of directorial genius that I remark as some of the absolute best in Hollywood that have only appeared in the last 15 years.

Wes Anderson who created (in my opinion) the brilliant and Godlike 'The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou' and 'The Royal Tenenbaums' for example.

Whereas I think Japanese anime has somewhat stalled since the 90's. The closest thing I've found to interesting in anime and manga as of late is Lucky Star and Haruhi Suzumiya o.o I mean I quite liked the Angelic Layer manga, and I was delighted that the anime then deviated strongly from the manga so that it made me more interested in it.

I quite like the early xxxholic stuff, but then fell out of favour with it as they kept trying to creat evermore connections between tsubasa and it .... I know they were meant to be twin series and there's a lot of 'continuity' in Clamp's stuff (for example the aforementioned Angelic Layer and Chobits) ... but it got to a point where I ended up hating both for purposely making it hard for me to focus on the story of the characters I liked for the sake to make me look into the twin story to figuere some of the stuff out.

So I gave up on both.

It felt a chore.

Anyways ... I don't really watch much anime or read much manga nowadays ... I have a couple of stories I like to catch up on, but I just find it difficult to get back into anime.

It seems as all the stuff people bang on ab out is all the archetypal stuff I've already seen a hundred times recycled from the 90's and earlier that you tend to miss out on alot of the cooler stuff ... like 'Paprika'. Of which I only got around to recently watching.

So I suppose the trick to finding good anime is to not listen to 99% of anime buffs?

It seems to me that alot of anime buffs tend to force themselves to like anime as a cultural exchange of entertainment ... so they'll tell you about any run-o'-the-mill anime that just happens to be popular in Japan at the time. In the end forgetting that the primary audience of anime in Japan are jobless children or otakus with nothing better to do.

Do you really want to take advice on your viewing habits from either types?

 

[mazeut]

I have been having a hard time finding a good anime myself. Lots of anime now a days seems in a hurry to get to the pay check of the creation process and just sorta shrugs off the whole story and character portions of a show. Then there's the ones that rush out the anime when a manga gets popular and end up with a bad case of the fillers. Its just a mater of profits over product unfortunately.

There are a few shining stars out there but they tend to be a bit art house sometimes (Time of eve, paprika, etc).

 

[Hollock]

I've heard that Gundam series can be either very good, or painfully bad, so it's probably just a bad gundam series. And you probably shouldn't judge the current anime scene based on stuff you found in your old harddrive.

 

[SnootyEnglishman]

There are some anime's that are very enjoyable and some that arent' (mainly anything that 4kids gets their grubby hands on and censor's the shit out of it), you just gotta go out and look for them.

 

[Ironic Pirate]

Maybe you just didn't save any shitty anime on your hard drive, and have thus forgotten all the shitty ones of yore.

Because trust me, there was shit back then. I don't even watch Anime, but with anything like this (Music, games, movies), people will pick and choose examples spanning ten or fifteen years, and then say that there are only a few non shitty things now.

Also, things tend to fluctuate, with one year having tons of good music/movies whatever, and the next having nothing but shit. People will emphasize the bad of the moment, but in 30 years, when their trying to justify bitching about how the past was better, they'll only bring up the good stuff. Really it's not their fault, because you're more likely to remember something awesome then something shitty.

Anyway, bottom line, it's just you.