Poll: Problems With Anime?

[ohellynot]

It's all the same. They are all rehashes and copies of each other, almost to a tee. The ones that happen to be innovative and well written usually tend to be labeled as "classics", since you know.. they're not painful to watch.

If thats the case try bakuman, it's still only in comic form, it's by the guys who did death note, completly driven by plot and a completely original plot. 10/10 in my book.

 

[mr_rubino]

Some anime are good (FlCl, Cowboy Bebop), some are bad (Naruto, DBZ).

Interesting. I've heard some bad things about DBZ, but Dragon Ball seems to be a classic.

Mind clearing that up?

Dragon Ball Z dissolved into an uninteresting, repetitive, action anime that just went on for far too long... IMO
Dragon Ball on the other hand was fun, fresh, original and had a lot of charm... and most of all it didn't draw all of the attention to the battles, though they were entertaining in their own right, but rather the quirky and fun characters...
Though Dragon Ball Z isn't Teh worst show evar... it's just not that good and most of the problem is that it's paced horribly and filled with way too much filler... Though I heard Dragon Ball Kai is just Dragon Ball Z without filler...

OT: Anime is like any other form of media and is subject to Sturgeon's Law, that states 90% of everything is crap...<.<

Namek exploding was the longest 30 seconds of my life.

OT: The fans. The retreaded ground. It's called "Sturgeon's Law", not "Sturgeon's Excuse". If anime is truly the golden messiah that will lead us to the promised land that weeaboos claim, it should have so much more potential than every other form of media, so to say "Yeah well Hollywood and FPSes lol" is hardly any excuse. In fact, this makes falling into ruts worse, no?

EDIT: And of course most of the people who whine about English dubs (and never met an interchangeable MeguHaya clone they didn't like) are about 12 and have no concept of the actual bad (and some weren't even that bad... just very flat) dubs that came around when anime was gaining its foothold in America. They've been getting absolutely spoiled with good dubs in the last decade, just saying they hate English dubs because that's just what weeaboos are supposed to do, eh? Then to prove their point about "all" dubs, they post random clips from a no-money project noone saw. (Whatever noobs. "Nicole" was awesome in Chaos Wars.)

 

[cabalistics]

Okay most of anime is clichéd rubbish but so is most of music, most tv shows, most cartoon, most books and most movies you just have to use your common sense to screen out the crap for instance i mostly avoid anything set in highschools or with very young character if the plot description is something like finding love/ inner power with self belief/ robot/ magic powers I usually don't bother.

Here's my general list of stuff that doesn't fall into those traps and are worth watching

Black Lagoon
The story follows a team of pirates/mercenaries known as Lagoon Company, that smuggles goods in and around the seas of Southeast Asia in the early 1990s.[4] Their base of operations is located in the fictional city of Roanapur in Thailand, and they transport goods in the 80-foot (24 m) Elco-type PT boat Black Lagoon. Lagoon Company does business with various clients, but has a particularly friendly relationship with the Russian crime syndicate Hotel Moscow. The team takes on a variety of missions?which may involve violent firefights, hand-to-hand combat, and nautical battles?in various Southeast Asian locations and when not doing much, the members of the Lagoon Company spend much of their down time at The Yellow Flag, a bar in Roanapur which is often destroyed in firefights.

This is my favourite at the moment. It's a very gun heavy combination of 80's - 90's American and Asian action and gangster movies.

This is a pretty good sample of the action

Berserk
Born beneath the gallows tree from which his dead mother hung, Guts has always existed on the boundary between life and death. After enduring a terrible childhood, he spends his adulthood in brutal combat, pitting his strength against others in order to build his own. Life is simple enough for Guts until he meets Griffith, the inspirational, ambitious, and beautiful leader of the mercenaries, the Band of the Hawk. When Guts loses to Griffith in a duel, he is forced to join the Band of the Hawk, and, despite himself, finds a sense of camaraderie and belonging amongst them. However, as Griffith leads his soldiers from victory to victory, the bloody wars and underhanded politics reveal a side to him that nobody quite expected. Very soon, what seems like a straightforward march for conquest becomes a harrowing struggle for humanity and life itself. Can Guts, a simple warrior, defend those who have come to mean the most to him, all the while struggling not to lose to the darkness he has carried with him his entire life?

Kind of like an epic dark Conan the Barbarian

This is pretty good sample of the action

Witch Hunter Robin

Witches are individuals with special powers like ESP, telekinesis, mind control, etc. (not the typical hogwart and newt potions). Robin, a craft user, arrives from Italy to Japan to work for an organization named STN Japan Division (STN-J) as a replacement for one of STN-J's witch hunters who was recently killed. Unlike other divisions of STN, STN-J tries to capture the witches alive in order to learn why and how they became witches in the first place.

Starts of as a sort of police procedural with powers but develops into something much deeper

Intro

Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex

The world in the future is a place filled with crime made easier and harder to track with cybertechnology and cyborgs. This is where Section 9, a secretive agency dedicated to keeping public peace from behind the scenes, comes in. Major Kusanagi and her team explores and uncovers the truth behind some of the strangest crime puzzles in each episode... each of them a 'stand alone complex

Basically a much more technologically advanced intelligent 24 with great action

Intro second season

Hellsing Ultimate (OAV)

Vampires exist. It is the duty of Hellsing, a secret organization sponsored by the British government, to hide that frightening fact and protect the blissfully unaware populace. Along with its own personal army, Hellsing has secret weapons. Alucard, an incredibly powerful vampire, has been controlled by Hellsing for years. It is unclear how he feels about being a servant to the Hellsing family, but he certainly enjoys his job as a vampire exterminator. Seras is a fledgling vampire and former police woman. Although reluctant to embrace her new self, she is a valued member of the organization. Integra Hellsing, the current leader, is usually fully capable of fulfilling her duty, but lately, vampire activity has been on the rise. Unfortunately, the cause is more alarming than anything she could have imagined. A group long thought dead has been plotting in secret since their apparent destruction over 50 years ago. Plotting to plunge England, and perhaps the entire world, into war.

A great vampire show with properly monstrous vampires probably great for messing up Twighlight fans

Favourite bit slightly edited for spoilers
[/quote]

 

[[.redacted]]

I like anime. and for me, people saying anime is bad is like saying halo is bad; doesnt affect how and when i watch/play it, i just deny watching/playing it

The plain and simple truth (minus the halo).

Edit: Cabalistics, I notice you're missing Claymore from that list. For shame.

 

[instantbenz]

I enjoy anime ... enjoy is different than those freaky furries ... I think there are extremes on both ends ... I just don't get the white white ... the gray area makes science.

 

[cabalistics]

Edit: Cabalistics, I notice you're missing Claymore from that list. For shame.

I thought about adding Claymore but it's too similar to Berserk and although Claymore is amazing and looks a lot better Berserk made a bigger impression on me.

 

[SushiJaguar]

As a kid, watching Mighty Morphing Power Rangers, I was shocked to learn it was actually a huge rip-off of a whole group of Japanese TV shows. Since then, I've watched a whole load of anime, and the thing that annoys me the most is dubbing. Really, it contains the most terrible voice acting. Some people claim it's because the English-speaking VAs can't sound good enough because it's a different dialect and accent, but that's no excuse not to do the best job you can, instead of hiring the ones that sound furthest from their original VAs.

 

[[.redacted]]

Edit: Cabalistics, I notice you're missing Claymore from that list. For shame.

I thought about adding Claymore but it's too similar to Berserk and although Claymore is amazing and looks a lot better Berserk made a bigger impression on me.

Hmm, be that as it may, nigh everyone has heard of Berserk, Claymore is buried gem.

 

[mr_rubino]

As a kid, watching Mighty Morphing Power Rangers, I was shocked to learn it was actually a huge rip-off of a whole group of Japanese TV shows. Since then, I've watched a whole load of anime, and the thing that annoys me the most is dubbing. Really, it contains the most terrible voice acting. Some people claim it's because the English-speaking VAs can't sound good enough because it's a different dialect and accent, but that's no excuse not to do the best job you can, instead of hiring the ones that sound furthest from their original VAs.

The term is "voice actors", not "impression specialists."

 

[Dezmond]

I usually dislike the English dubs, but I really hate the fact that most of the time, it's kids that can apparently over-power adults and are the "heroes".

 

[Wintermoot]

just Narutards and Weeabo,s ,nuff said
PS
if you dont know what a weeabo is. Its a person that,s convinced that he/she is Japanese simply by watching Naruto and eating Pocky
a Narutard is pretty much the same but in stead of being Japanese being a Ninja the only cure ot htis is fire/lots and lots of fire

 

[Srdjan]

Anime itself, the drawing.

 

[tautologico]

I have many issues with it, Mainly:
-The voice acting, both Japanese and English (the English actors suck and I hate the sound of tonal languages).
-The over-sexualization, It breaks the immersion for me, and is just sick in some cases.
-The art style, it just does not work for me, everything is too bright and exaggerated
-The drawn out drama, it is painful and slow in many situations. ex. dragon ball
-Cultural difference, many Japanese cultural symbols / references are lost or misunderstood on me
-The music, I just hate the soundtrack of all the anime pieces I have seen

I would say story, but I can not judge the storytelling of a medium by a few examples

Just to clarify: OH GOD THOSE VOICES! THEY ARE LIKE NEEDLES FILLED WITH H2SO4 IN MY EARS, IT HURTS, IT Hurts....

I like some Anime, there is good anime and bad anime (maybe most of it nowadays). I don't mind the Japanese voice acting, but I understand why people may find it annoying.

However, the Japanese language is not tonal (the Chinese languages are, Japanese and Korean are not).

 

[CitySquirrel]

The problem is the fans.... in college I quickly realized that I did not want to be associated with them.

 

[MEEBO17]

It gets really complicated, really fast. And I hate the lip-syncing, espically in the old pokemon cartoons.

 

[Terrik]

The People Who are Obsessed with it Turn Me Off

Some of my friends just wont leave it alone, I used to watch some with them a couple of years back trying to understand what all the fuss is about. The whole style isn't doing it for me, police officers looking like a mix between schoolgirls and strippers, how can anyone take that seriously? There is just so much stuff similiar to that that doesn't make any sense, which ruins it for me.

Btw, from what I understand there are many different shows/series/movies whatever that is anime. But are still very different from each other, yet I often hear people say that they "like anime". What, do they like everything that is anime just because of the art style?

 

[Gordon_4_v1legacy]

Anime has it share of baggage just as any other medium does. I watch it when I want some real escapism, cos American TV is just some combination of shitty sitcom, NCIS/spinoff, Law and Order, CSI, etc etc. At least in an anime sitcom I run the risk of a Panda done up like RoboCop shooting off a few rounds to make domestic life seem less dreary.


Also, its economically viable for telling epic stories: Neon Genesis Evangelion would be prohibitively expensive to make in live action without some serious fucking decay of the characters, concepts or locations. For a Western Animation example, see Green Lantern: First Flight. I doubt that the Ryan Reynolds movie will have a showdown half as a cool as Hal Jordan using two PLANETS (in finest Lensman tradition) to crush Sinestro's Yellow Power Battery. Cos rendering that would probably cost more than the entire process of creating First Flight.


Plus, in no other medium can I enjoy the sheer spectrum of interesting things that anime provides. Sort the wheat from the chaff and you can have a jolly good time.

 

[Rouse]

recently I had a thought that anime is kinda like Supernatural - it has good ideas in it, very good even, some pretty original, but the way they do it... Is it for fanservice? Is it for girls obsessed with watching gay men sucking their dicks (which is my opinion is the worst of all)? Or the people who create these stuff go out of ideas, see how retarded SOME of the fans are and please their sick imagination with stupidity. I can't think of a lot of new animes who don't have some, even small hint of yaoi stuff, too much fanservice, total weird randomness that doesn't even make sense or just something we've seen so many times already...

Ironic you say that because they are gonna make Supernatural an anime. Here is the trailer:

holy shit.
I had no idea. :O

 

[Jesus Phish]

I treat anime much the same as I treat any other TV show or film, whether it's from Japan or not.

Anime is like any other form of media and is subject to Sturgeon's Law, that states 90% of everything is crap...

Glad to see some other anime fans who aren't blinded by devotion and are able to point out the flaws in their hobby.

This pretty handily summarizes the text wall I wrote earlier. Just like any other form of media, there is good anime and there is bad anime. The problems and stereotypes occur when bad (or just mediocre) anime become insipidly popular and color the public's impression of anime as a whole.

Here is an interesting thought experiment. Imagine that you live in Japan and decided to watch a popular American television show to see what the fuss is all about. You decide to watch Family Guy. How would your impressions of American television be affected? What if the show was a documentary on Astrophysics on the History Channel? What if it was a trashy 80s sitcom filled with sexism and implied wife beating?

I will admit that there are plenty of people in the anime community that are incredibly obsessive and blindly devoted to their chosen hobby. These people exist in every hobby, from gaming to gun ownership and there is nothing anyone can do to prevent these people from influencing the public perception of that hobby. Level headed and mature anime fans are just as embarrassed by their actions as you would expect. Gamers are embarrassed by the cursing 12-year-olds on Modern Warefare and Christians are embarrassed by WBC. There will always be fanatical sociopaths in any hobby.

Nice avatar. oh! and good point

If my avatar is good, than the image I cropped it from might make your head explode : )

Spoiler

yup, I've seen it before. Personally, i like him as regular Alucard a little better than as Genya

Have you seen this?

http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://static.dailystrength.org/groupfiles/9/1/7/0/10000719/g_1068542096.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.dailystrength.org/groups/anime-club/media/499086&usg=___qvr6HYNq55kFVvWEFU0TE_fKaM=&h=414&w=600&sz=86&hl=en&start=0&zoom=1&tbnid=xvB4aw_z_ydPTM:&tbnh=169&tbnw=225&prev=/images%3Fq%3Djuste%2Bbelmont%26hl%3Den%26biw%3D1142%26bih%3D860%26gbv%3D2%26tbs%3Disch:1&itbs=1&iact=hc&vpx=597&vpy=135&dur=414&hovh=186&hovw=270&tx=167&ty=145&ei=Qh37TJ3zEofAsAPfren3DQ&oei=Qh37TJ3zEofAsAPfren3DQ&esq=1&page=1&ndsp=22&ved=1t:429,r:3,s:0

Favorite Castlevania art ever. it's of Juste Belmont from Castlevania: Harmony of Dissonance

P.S. how do you put pictures into your posts like that? or videos? sorry i just never learned this

I believe there's already a thread for forum guides here in the Escapist.

Thanks. Btw, Felix from Golden Sun: The Lost Age? sweet. haha i have that game, never got around to beating it.... *runs to get gameboy*

Yeah he's my fave character in the series and too bad he didn't appear in Dark Dawn physically, only on flashbacks and if you want to beat it try watching walkthroughs on Youtube.

Yeah I liked Felix a lot too. I don't have DS, so i can't play the new one :/. Still, my favorite JRPG character is Ashton Anchors from Star Ocean 2/ Second Evolution/ Star Ocean EX (the TV show)

Back to the topic i already posted a thread 2 months ago about anime cliches that angers people and here it is. [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/18.234792-Your-most-hated-anime-cliche?page=1]

Seriously when will anime studios, writers, seiyus can come up with something that breaks from stereotypes with an interesting story.

Another reason why i like ashton. Unlucky swordsman with two dragons fused to his back and a wooden barrel fetish. I've never heard of anything like it. Plus, Star Ocean 2 had a good, complex story with complex relationship mechanics that lead to over 80 different endings or something. Problem is, i haven't met too many people who know of star ocean. just another example of how good japanese media is usually more under the radar.

well golden sun is also one of those good japanese media that well i can't say under the radar but rather didn't get proper advertisement. still it took six years to make a fucking sequel. and yes the anime that are good i know are like you said easily forgotten or flew under the radar.

Problem is, I haven't seen any of those low key animes haha (unless you count interstella 5555 as low key). I've only seen more popular shows like pokemon, Dragonball, DBZ, FMA, Bleach, etc. Basically whatever stuff was on toonami and some stuff that's on adult swim i have seen at least 30 seconds of

isn't that what the american anime market is. release the things that are guaranteed or have a high chance for profit and forget about the quality. well that's also what's happening to hollywood too. one or two good movies along with 15 or more concentrated feces.

Amen. it's a sad, sad truth.

not just sad, the ugly truth. anyway speaking of movies. most movies based on comics are getting good (ironman 1 and 2, batman begins and the the dark knight etc.)
btw speaking of ironman last night i watched the ironman anime and i could say it pretty good.
and the wolverine anime is especially facepalm worthy, trust me the wolverine anime will just disappoint you.

here is the iron man anime trailer:


and the wolverine trailer:


tell me what you think.

Wow the Ironman one looks good. I gotta check that out. Yeah Wolverine does look pretty lame, which is a pity.

The ironman one looked good until about 55 seconds when that sterotypical cocky "i stand in the shadows with hair over my face and a smug look on my face in a long jacket" guy showed up.

Pepper also looks like a ditz in the anime and I fear what they make Tony look like. The scenes of him in the suit though look amazing.

 

[UnderCoverGuest]

Problem #1) It exists?

Other than that, I choose...all of the above? (except for 'none' obviously)


I'm feeling rather cynical today.