Why the hate for anime? (Y da hat 4 anime?)

[takyris]

I liked Princess Mononoke and Spirited Away, thought Ninja Scroll was moderately overrated and somewhat unappealing, and have had about equally "Eh" experiences with Giant-Robot anime, Harem anime, Sex Horror anime, Macross-related anime, and People-Fighting anime. I may not have seen the best of these fields, so I'm not up to judge. That's just my experience.

To be perfectly frank, I generally don't like anime because it's set to the wrong cultural frequency. I could possibly learn to acquire it as a taste, but when I read a book or watch a television show, do you know what my favorite bits are? Dialogue. Wordplay. Witticism. Celebration of movement and banter and cleverness. You know what the least important factor for me is? Visual effect. I could really care less about how it looks, as long as the dialogue is crisp and clean and people are having interesting character development.

Now, in a non-judgmental way, I would like to assert that most anime is either:

a) dubbed, which even the anime people will tell you is usually not a great idea, or
b) subtitled, which can be better but which changes the pace of wording and loses much of the poetry of sound

Anime tends to have beautiful painstaking visuals -- which don't impress me, not because they're not good, but because that's not what I care about -- and, relative to the average American show, less dialogue (I'm sure exceptions exist on both sides; I'm making a general statement). The emotional relationships of the characters often seem strained, muted, or cut off in some way. probably involving a cultural difference in terms of expression of emotion or something like that. It's not bad == it's just not what I've been raised to appreciate.

I could, if properly motivated, learn Japanese and approach anime like I approach going to a museum -- a chance to be educated instead of entertained. Kind of a character-building thing. Maybe eventually I'd like watching it. However... that seems like a lot of work. I don't have a ton of incentive. It's not like I have ten hours of spare time a week sitting around going, "Oooh, Tacky, learn Japanese and buy lots of anime!"

So, that's the big reason I don't generally dig on anime.

Reason two is (insert obligatory story about having some white dude tell me repeatedly about the inherent awesomeness of DBZ as the best that anime had to offer, followed by scene of said white dude becoming amazingly uncomfortable when I started to watch it with him and point out the homoerotic subtext).

 

[Desdichado]

Or do you have them mixed up? As I said before, anime is as much a cartoon as Heavy Metal is a cartoon. A cartoon is an animated show that is humorous in nature and mostly for children. While anime can be humorous or for children, it can also be neither. Neon Genesis Evengelion is not humorous or for children, neither is Vampire Hunter D.

A medium is the way through which something is transfered. That medium for both cartoons and anime(which are both different) is animation. Or if you prefer to be more generalized than that TV, movie, OAV, etc.

It's probably pointless to argue semantics, but a cartoon is typically hand-drawn animated video media. Humorous and aimed at children have nothing to do with it. To say that anime and cartoons are different, and that even an OAV is a separate media isn't using the word any way that I understand it.

 

[LightPhoenix]

First off, by the strict definition of the term, "cartoon" refers to any animated style, in a variety of mediums.

Also, the connotation of "cartoon" as childish is strictly a US cultural definition. Anime is a form of cartoon that can be both childish and not. In fact, even so in the US - you would be hard-pressed to find someone to argue that Doonesbury is childish... and in fact, the term came forth with the idea of political cartoons. So saying that "cartoon=childish" is semantically, culturally, and historically flawed.

I too would argue that in the instance of anime, television is the medium, cartoon is the... genre, for lack of a better term, anime is the style, and then there are various sub-categories within anime. To provide more examples... "drama" is a genre, "one-hour" is a style, "crime drama" is a sub-category; "comedy" is a genre, "sit-com" is a style, "urban" is a sub-category; "fantasy" could be argued as a genre, in which case "sci-fi" might be a style, and "star trek" might be a sub-category.

Do I particularly like anime? No, I don't. Am I so quick to write it off? Of course not. My dislike of anime comes from a general dislike of cartoons (as represented in the medium of television ) overall. I'm much more fond of it in comics and especially movies. More so than I dislike anime or cartoons in general, I like good stories. And for the record, I fall squarely into the camp that feels Evangelion does not fall into the good-story category.

No small part of my dislike is also the way that the "Japanophiles" act - while I know not all people who enjoy aspects of Japanese culture conform to the stereotypes, a good majority of them do. Especially in the sense that they often seem to dismiss any other opinion than their own as "wrong" and any cartoons other than anime as "crap". Not that some of the posters in this thread haven't done the same.

It's amusing though, as I type this up I can really understand why people can be less than fond of roleplaying...

Anyway, I think a big part of the general dislike even among those that give or are willing to give it a try is two-fold. The first problem is that generally what we get in the US is crap. I'm sorry, but Cartoon Network is not the savior of anime in the US, given that the vast majority of what they show is (from what I've gathered) generally considered to be in that 90% crap-range. The second problem is that the good stuff is generally difficult to get ahold of, if you don't know how to go about looking for it... especially fan-subs. Compounded with this is the fact that it's hard to find the 10% that isn't crap without some help.

 

[Desdichado]

Although I must say your condescending attitude about this topic does make it difficult to keep my opinions level. My apologies if that is insulting, perhaps both our attitudes are a result of the way online conversations take place.

That's one of the biggest problems I have discussing anime -- I can't dislike it without being "condescending" apparently. Let me just summarize by saying takyris summarized more clearly than I did what I was trying to get across by not "getting it" with anime, and never finding one that I thought was better than mediocre -- I don't regret watching it once, but I would never own it and in fact am discouraged from trying other anime's based on the several that I've seen while trying to grok the whole scene.

 

[Green Knight]

I got nothing against anime, just the .... damn, I can't remember the word for it. The trappings?

Specifically, I prefer cartoons where the people look as realistic as possible. So I tend to dislike cartoons were people have huge eyes, weirdly drawn lips, ridiculous hair, etc. I also dislike things like a giant sweat drop on someones face when they're embarassed. Or people constantly striking a pose whenever they're about to attack (Dragonball Z took this to absurd levels, with one guy turning around and bending over, looking at the good guy with his head peaking out between his legs). And last but not least, I don't like it when someone's going to attack someone else, but first they gotta jump a thousand feet in the air, with all kinds of swishy lines behind them. If they're gonna attack, then just have them attack. We can live without all the fanfare.

But I got nothing against Japanese Anime, though. Robotech, for instance, is one of my favorite shows (And fortunately, the only thing on the above list that it suffers from is giving the characters ridiculous hair). Meanwhile, Teen Titans is busy apeing the most annoying aspects of anime.

All-in-all, I'll take a Justice League, Batman: The Animated Series, He-Man and the Masters of the Universe, and Robotech, over a Dragonball Z any day.

 

[Green Knight]

Reason two is (insert obligatory story about having some white dude tell me repeatedly about the inherent awesomeness of DBZ as the best that anime had to offer, followed by scene of said white dude becoming amazingly uncomfortable when I started to watch it with him and point out the homoerotic subtext).

Homoerotic subtext? I never noticed one. Then again, I was bored silly while watching it. I only kept up with it as long as I did because the sadomasichist in me wanted to see how long that damned fight between Goku and Frieza would last. If I remember right, it actually took 16 episodes (Cartoon Network was showing the series every weekday, at the time). ANY other show could've handled a fight like that in no more then 3 eps, possibly doing the big fight in one ep. Yet the DBZ people, for some interminable reason that I'll never understand, managed to stretch it out for 16 episodes. Most of which involved the two protagonists grunting, talking trash, and occasionally throwing a punch. They turned what SHOULD'VE been a climatic turning point in any series, the hero confronting the main villain, into a painful and annoying chore. There was more action, tension and emotion in the two-part X-Men: Evolution finale then there were in the entirety of those 16 episodes. Only reason I tuned in was to find out why so many people liked the show. Well, after seeing a large number of episodes of it over the course of a month, I came to the conclusion that all those people were just flat-out nuts. :\

 

[TheAuldGrump]

Why do I hate anime? (Well, most anime, anyway)

Poor frame rate. Worse than Saturday morning cartoons. Even the movies generally suffer from poor frame rates.
Bad or nonexistent plot lines. (In this they differ little from many American cartoons, but I don't like a lot of them either.)
Poor shading.

And quite often the people who tell me how awesome Dragonball Z/Sailor Moon/Patlabor is.

On the other hand I have liked just about everything by Studio Ghibli. (I was introduced to Miyazaki's work under protest, but was very happy to be proved wrong. )

The Auld Grump

 

[diaglo]

In short. It's cartoons.

Mostly--in my experience--it's not very good cartoons.

i think i agree with Teflon Billy on something.

i also don't like how it bleeds into other aspects of culture for some of the same reasons.

crappy artwork on T-shirts.. with poorly chosen or quote dribble. and the obvious influence on my favorite hobby.

 

[Psion]

Now, in a non-judgmental way, I would like to assert that most anime is either:

a) dubbed, which even the anime people will tell you is usually not a great idea, or
b) subtitled, which can be better but which changes the pace of wording and loses much of the poetry of sound

Wanna know something.

Whenever I watch Anime (or Wuxia, for that matter) on DVD, I watch it both dubbed and subtitled. It's interesting when the interperetation diverge, I sort of get a more complete picture of what they are trying to say.

 

[s/LaSH]

These are things endemic to anime and manga (which are tied very closely). They're not present in all anime, for which I count my lucky stars.

- Visual shortcut lexicon: big sweatdrops, the 'wavy tearstream', mouths bigger than heads, blue wavy lines and all sorts of things that have meanings but are not immediately apparent and are blatantly unrealistic. I hate this stuff, even though I've learned to read it like the heiroglyphic system it really is. It breaks suspension of disbelief: you're supposed to be watching moving entities, not codified terms that might as well be printed a hundred to the page. (American animation is just as guilty of this. When was the last time you saw a Looney Toon's eyes pop out of his head? Or seen eyes perfectly white against utter darkness? These, however, are implemented more dimensionally, with motion, without abrupt transition. So I don't mind 'em quite as much. Grossout Nick cartoons and their ilk are, conversely, utterly abhorrent to me. I will never willingly watch Spongebob Squarepants.)

- Drastic economy of motion. Animation is the presentation of sequentially altered images to create the illusion of motion. Anime will often not take advantage of this, simply because it costs more to draw multiple versions of the same thing - and the preponderance of manga-based stuff means there's an abundance of still images to redraw once, colour, and twitch a little on a bright blurry background. Of course, when they do deign to implement motion, it's often pretty fantastic, but it's all too rare in most fare.

- Shouted attacks. We all know this one. Heck, the Japanese all know it too, and timestops during the shout are getting rarer. Good.

- Different goals. This is a big advantage of anime - the willingness to think outside the box. Often, they don't. Huge chunks of anime are just 'if we all work together, we'll overcome our enemies!'. Sometimes, however, they'll try to evoke a different mood, show you something different. Consider Ghost In The Shell, which you'd think was a cyberpunk story - but according to the Japanese voice actors, it's a love story. Yeah, I think they're on something too, but I'm now willing to alter my mindset and see different things in there instead of 'cool, shooting stuff, yeah'. It doesn't have to be about entertainment so much as experience. Subtle, but some of the time they achieve what they're setting out to do.
This also ties into the fact that anime really does have every genre under the sun somewhere under its umbrella. (Woo, mixed metaphors.) And then it gets funky and comes up with stuff you can't get anywhere else - for a novelty junkie like myself, that's great. For someone whose xenophobia instinct (a vital part of every living being - not an insult here) is stronger than mine, maybe it's not so great.

- Different story paradigms. Western entertainment tends to go 'heroes suffer great trials and overcome them to win the day'. Anime can easily go 'heroes suffer great trials, one of 'em dies, the others win the day and he stays dead', or 'heroes wander the world, doing stuff in alignment with their philosophy, stuff happens, the end', or something else that isn't formulaic. I've caught flak in the past for suggesting that people are too conditioned to the Campbellian Journey of a very specific type, but that's just what I think may turn people off to a lot of anime. For example, I liked the Final Fantasy movie and the Matrix sequels, and they weren't typical 'good guys save the day and live happily ever after' fare.

There's a blurry analysis of anime for you. Most of it is, indeed, crap. But some of it isn't. I've seen stuff so simple you could replicate it in five minutes with some cardboard, a ruler, and a knife (Pokemon, frex). I've seen stuff that puts any Western comic to shame (manga, mostly; there's one passing shot of aircraft undercarriage in Kia Asamiya's Batman: Child of Dreams comic that is both in-style and so detailed it looks like a photo - it probably was, once, but it's there, it fits, and I've never seen anything so well-integrated in Western stuff).

So, in the end, I hate stuff that's stupid and try to catch the good stuff. But then, I always do.