The appeal of Anime

[DocAscii]

Since I'm only in it for the girls, I give you four words:
Big Eyes, Small Mouth.
Makes everyone look like dolls.

 

[concrete89]

To me. it's mainly the visual styles and dynamics. There are actually series I watch unsubbed, because I hate the dialouge.

 

[hypovolemia]

The medium itself doesn't say much about a show. My advice would be the following:
If you come across a show/game/book that seems interesting, watch/play/read it.
Bonus points if you don't immediately drop it after the first episode/chapter/whatever.

Simoun, for example, is one of my favorite shows, but starts off with aircraft powered by lesbians. It gets significantly better later on, but the first impression is kind of weird. Puella Magi Madoka Magica is my favorite show this season and also takes three episodes to really get interesting.

Also, obligatory recommendations (most of which have been mentioned before):
Ghost in the Shell
Baccano!
Cowboy Bebop
Mushishi
Monster
Kino's Journey
Eden of the East
Kara no Kyoukai (gets a bit "deep" sometimes - not in a good way)
Kaiji
Darker than Black
Black Lagoon
Detroit Metal City
Cromartie High School

 

[Jatyu]

I just find it wierd people consider anime to be a genre.

It's a medium.

 

[JediMB]

I just find it wierd people consider anime to be a genre.

It's a medium.

This. It's just cartoons made in Japan.

If all anime you (OP) watch look the same, it's probably because all anime you watch are targeted at the same demographic. There's a wide array of genres within the medium, with films and series aimed at a near-equally wide array of demographics.

 

[Steven Shipway]

Any show that goes for too long I find painful, I can watch VERY few 45 minute shows, 20 minute shows I can sit through, 10 minute shows are ideal. Anime movies are brilliant in most regards (Mononoke, Howls, Street Fighter 2) because you can get into them, enjoy and be happy without having to devote TOO much time to a plot. The worst animes are stuff like Bleach, Naruto DBZ Pokemon etc because they just go for too long, and by about 4 episodes in I want to suffocate them all.

Mind you, this applies to everything, as there are VERY few TV shows worth devoting more than a sideways glance of attention (except quantum leap, Scott Bakula <3).

 

[moretimethansense]

Boobs. It all comes down to the boobs. I started watching anime because I saw a Sailor Moon transformation scene in 1998. I started watching Inuyasha because I saw Kagome swimming naked in the lake. I started watching FLCL for Harahara Haruko. By that point I was hooked.

I applaud your honesty, sir.

...Correct me if I'm wrong though, isn't Sailor Moon the one with a bunch of 12 year old girls fighting monsters? Which makes that statement a little on the weird side.

You are wrong, and shall now be corrected, as per your request.

Sailor Moon is about a bunch of 15 year old girls. With breasts. Because apparently puberty happens several years earlier in Japan. Although, to be fair, they're like 17 by the time the show ends.

Edit: Ah, ninjaed. With the same info. ^^;;

Card Captor Sakura is the one with flat-chested 12 year olds. Ick. I could never get into that one - it just sort of creeped me out.

You realize that most females are pretty well developed by 14 most of the world round right?

OT:
Either you're watching the wrong anime for you OP or you're a shallow sod that can't get over it's art style and Japanese...ness,
If it's the latter there's nothing antone can do do convince you you small mainded git

However as I'd like to think that since your responces so far haven't been troling or random attacks you just haven't found one you like, try listing the ones you've seen and didn't like so we know what wouldn't interest you, in the mean time check these out on wikipedia or something and see if they'd interest you.

Princess Mononoke
Spirited Away
Grave of the Fireflies
Great Teacher Onizuka
Samurai Champloo
Cowboy Bebop
Baccano!
Monster
Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagaan
Death Note
FLCL (though not really for beginers this is pure fun condensed in to six episodes)
Ghost in the Shell
Ghost in the Shell: Stand Aloone Complex
GitS: SAC 2nd Gig
Hellsing Ultimate
Planetes
Outlaw Star
Read or Die
Trigun


Except for the first three I avoided anything with teen or child protaganists since you said you didn't like them, which is a shame as there are some truly great ones out there.

Also, the dialogue being bad is half because of it being lost in translation and half because most dub jobs suck, a lot.
Though there are plenty out there that are just bad, how is that diffeent from anything else.

 

[ZiggyE]

This would be much easier if OP had given us something to go by. Favourite genres would be useful and anime he has watched and didn't like. As he has chosen to ignore such requests I am inclined to believe he is trolling.

 

[EllEzDee]

Channel 4 in the UK seems to have replaced the late-night-early-morning Bollywood films with Anime. The first i saw was pretty good, it was that (i think) famous one about a young boy and his little sister after the nuking of Hiroshima. That was worth watching...

The rest have been pretty crap.

 

[Bakuryukun]

I just don't see it. Aesthetically it all looks almost identical to me, the dialogue frequently seems overwrought, and poorly written, and the delivery is melodramatic at best, and cringeworthy at worst. The stories seem to never make sense to me, yet they almost always seem to feature some array of teenagers, each with their own flavor of angst. I suppose my overall attitude can be summed up with one word, namely stale. Then, perhaps I'm being close-minded. If anyone can sway my thoughts to the contrary, I would more then welcome it.

So you watched a bunch of similar anime, and then you were surprised that they were similar? *shock* I wouldn't doubt that you are trolling

But seriously there's way more to it than that, there's always way more to a media than what is currently the most popular style, and it baffles me that people can't get around this in like 2 seconds of thought.

It's like saying "I played Killzone , Halo, CoD, and Resistance, why are all videogames ever based on machomen killing stuff with guns?"

 

[fulano]

I don't get it. Why do people argue about something there is no consensus about? We all know that 'anime' means basically 'animated caricatures from japan'. That's it. How anyone can make any kind of broad statement regarding that is mind numbing, especially considering how the industry works over there.

It would be like saying HBO has shows about nothing mobsters. Always. No exceptions.

 

[ZiggyE]

I don't get it. Why do people argue about something there is no consensus about? We all know that anime means basically animated charicatures from japan. That's it. How anyone can make a broad statement regarding that is mind numbing, especially considering how the industry works over there.

It would be like saying HBO has shows about nothing mobsters. Always. No exceptions.

Welcome to the Internet. It doesn't matter what you say, to the other person you'll always be wrong.

 

[fulano]

I don't get it. Why do people argue about something there is no consensus about? We all know that anime means basically animated charicatures from japan. That's it. How anyone can make a broad statement regarding that is mind numbing, especially considering how the industry works over there.

It would be like saying HBO has shows about nothing mobsters. Always. No exceptions.

Welcome to the Internet. It doesn't matter what you say, to the other person you'll always be wrong.

It's the IRL-Noobs. Those guys that haven't grown up yet in the larger discussion forum that is life.

 

[Hosker]

It sounds like you're generalising what you saw in one or two animes to all of them.

 

[FredTheUndead]

I think the one thing that ruined the anime as an industry for me overall was that EVERYTHING became a DBZ franchise. Now granted back when anime was unpopular in the states we pretty much got only the good stuff with some experiments with Toonami, and the original adult swim. It was even great dubbed. Same was with the movie channels, great anime there as well.

However the flood gates have opened with the internet and globalization of media and now television companies are all trying to find the next big thing to import to the USA for profits. This results in saturation of the market. I like DBZ and was okay with it going 400+ episodes. However, I cannot be committed to EVERY show having 600+ episodes running for 9 years.

The thing I loved about Anime was their ability to tell stories in either the "okay here is a problem, and we return to the status quo" episode or tell a story in a certain episode length like 25 to 50 episodes. An anime when I was growing up going 50 episodes was considered long, now it's nothing.

I should also mention that age is another factor. When you have a lot more access to other forms of entertainment you naturally seek those that are more complex and the majority of anime has a very basic formula that isn't worth one's time who has seen multiple series like us older folks. Not to mention there is a gap between what a teenager would watch and the pornographic adult material that one would watch. There used to be an area for that but it has much like edutainment games and the rest of the games industry have one nice big chasm.

Most anime literally do not pass 13 episodes.

 

[StormShaun]

Clannad, enough said.....seriously go watch it!