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Message: <blockquote data-quote="mmu1" data-source="post: 1578671" data-attributes="member: 319">I think this sums up the reason I don't enjoy most anime very well - it has more to do with cultural differences than the anime style (although that has much to answer for as well, but many people have gotten into talking about the silly anime conventions in this thread already).I care about the story - and I find most Japanese stories to be either disjointed, nonsensical, stilted, uncomfortable or alien. (not necessarily in that order - nor am I suggesting the above adjectives apply to all Japanese storytelling equally frequently or interchangeably)The pacing is strange (or rather, it usually drags - unless there's a huge unexplained gap of days or years) the dialogue frequently seems forced (why is the obvious stated so often, and belabored ad nausem?), the humor too often escapes me... And it's not just Anime - the same holds true for me with Japanese RPGs, as well as Japanese books.  As far as the books go, this ranges from being able to appreciate the point the writer tries to make, but finding the presentation unnatural and artificial, and the characters alien (Yukio Mishima's Temple of the Golden Pavillion, for example) to picking up something like Battle Royale and finding what felt like an action anime set down on paper.Not surprisingly, perhaps, the anime I enjoy the most is one where the subtitles or the dubbing were done in a way designed for the sensibilities of an American viewer - abandoning complete accuracy for a more natural feel, better use of idiom, and so on.  For example - I love the dubbed Cowboy Bebop (American idiom, western speech patterns - at least in the DVD version), but if I try to watch it with the subtitles on, the dialogue makes me want to roll my eyes at how stilted it feels (to me).Aside from all that (or perhaps that's still a part of what I think of as a completely different storytelling style), there's the anime that simply Makes No Bloody Sense. Sometimes it's because (like in Akira) there's a huge and unknown backstory. Other times, (like in Evangelion, for example - IMO) the author seems to get lost in his own story, and isn't able to deliver on the greater philosophical message he was trying for, or even provide a coherent ending.  Or perhaps sometimes the director's just being too much of an artist to feel the need to respect his audience.  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f61b.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":p" title="Stick out tongue    :p"  data-smilie="7"data-shortname=":p" />  And too many people by far tend to give it a free pass a)Because it's anime and b)Because they think they "get it" (while in reality they simply let their imagination fill in the continent-sized plotholes and brush away the bad writing in one of the infinite possible ways - hardly a phenomenon unique to anime, of course... dare I mention... Star War prequels? <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" /> - but probably more common there than anywhere else), and you don't.</blockquote>

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