Harsh times
Having been caught up in the euphoria of the spring season, I tried a lot of new anime, probably too much. None of it was abject, but a lot was mediocre and dull, and having since procrastinated over them for a number weeks, I’ve decided to cut my losses and dropped seven that I can no longer even bring myself to download.
Allison & Lillia and Amatsuki are prime examples of what I’m talking about above, as both were about as exciting as staring at a brick-wall for 20 minutes. The first episode of Golgo 13 may as well have been its fiftieth, because I can’t imagine its formulaic plot will end with anything but a poorly animated head-shot. ‘Serious crime drama’ Himitsu - Top Secret lost all its allure when the two male leads were introduced to each other like it was some cheesy yaoi romance, and talking about anime with homosexual subtext, Nabari no Ou didn’t fare much better, yet most frustrating of all was its incoherent (more like schizophrenic) stabs at characterisation. To be honest, I feel like I should be willing to give a bit more time to anime with the pedigree of Real Drive, but for all its big-name recognition, such a boring aesthetic style and some surprisingly high levels of fan-service put me off in a big way. That leaves just Itazura na Kiss, which was probably the one series I’m most loathe to quit and most likely to try again, but, at least for now, its generic premise, archetypal characters and repellent male lead managed to kill my enthusiasm for its latter episodes.
All that and even Toshokan Sensou is hanging by a thread, but something about it (probably just Jen’s enthusiasm) is urging me to continue.
15 comments
You know, I’m starting to regret taking on so many shows too because, now I’m over five or six episodes into many of them, the sheer amount of time required seems a bit daunting. The problem is, there’s only a small amount of must-watch stuff so I started watching the ‘average’ grade to compensate. Since it’s all of that same average grade, I can’t bring myself to drop just some of them if that makes any sense at all.
I’m halfway through Tokoshan Sensou for instance and it’s fun…probably the similarities to FMP and ROD are keeping me hooked on that one though. Golgo 13 got dropped as soon as I got a grasp of how it would pan out (i.e. ep 2!).
Toshokan Sensou is also hanging by a thread, for me. I have also been waiting like, a month for ep. 7 of nijuu mensou [...]. Of course I have to keep up with geass/kaiba/kurenai.
This season I dropped Allison & Lilia, Amatsuki, Kanokon, Soul Eater, Macross F, and, uh, that’s it I think. Given this is the first anime season I’ve been blogging in.
Here’s your problem:
Allison & Lillia - “light” novel adaptation
Amatsuki - manga adaptation
Himitsu - Top Secret - manga adaptation
Nabari no Ou - manga adaptation
Itazura no Kiss - manga adaptation
Golgo 13 - manga adaptation
Tokoshan Sensou - “light” novel adaptation
Only Real Drive is an original work. All the others have ulterior motives for existing as an anime.
For example, Golgo 13 exists because it’s the manga and Big Comic’s 40th Anniversaries this year. It has 40 years of accumulated readers’ expectations it has to please within the confines of a TV network’s standards and practices (it’s historical & iconic status seems to have gotten it a lot more leeway on the usually more censorious TV Tokyo. ).
As big fan of the manga, it meets my expectations given those confines, my only small reservation is the decision to try and give it a timelessness, rather than feel more of it’s time as the manga does.
But all of this means it’s an adaptation first, an anime second (if that), and that goes for most the titles you list. They are either aimed at not upsetting fans of the original work or acting as an advert for the original work. Which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, I’m enjoying Golgo 13 and Chi’s Sweet Home precisely for the quality of the adaptations, but you aren’t going to end up with a truly great show this way.
I’d have agreed wholeheartedly with you regarding this post (dropped every single one of those above), but something tells me you’re missing the entire point of InK — especially since the rest of us seem to be enjoying it just fine. Or maybe you’re too new for old-school style shoujo sensibilities.
I don’t know about TS, though, since subs are lacking and I refuse to watch the speedsub ones.
I watched none of these, and have dropped nothing from this season (only 4 shows seen). Honestly I don’t see how you guys get the enthusiasm needed to give a chance to so many semi-promising series. Personally I’m in the process of finding an ideal weekly watching program - 1 longterm shonen, 1 thought-provoker, 1 silly adventure, 1 slow drama etc., and wouldn’t want to let what’s on now in Japan decide my schedule for me. Maybe this is just because I’m still watching the older series, and can look to the classics for my kick of choice.
@Martin: I’m pretty surprised you’re lasting as long as you are with the likes of Allison & Lilia and Itazura na Kiss. Given you’re in a situation that’s very similar to my own (i.e. you’ve got a full-time job and all the rest), the fact you’re keeping up (and keeping your eyes open!) with so much anime is to be commended. Personally, I thought about it for a while and decided to stop wasting my time on things I couldn’t really care less about one way or the other.
@Lelangir: You’re watching almost exactly what I’m following (with the exception of Soul Eater and Macross F), and I’m impressed that you’re keeping up with The Daughter of Twenty Faces too; if there was ever an underrated gem, it was Nijuu Mensou. More people need to blog about it.
@Brack: I didn’t see that connection until you pointed it out… It all makes sense now. Even though the occasional good adaptations pops up to break this rule, I’ve always enjoyed original anime over them. I think it’s just because these particular adaptations are so low budget, so, while I can take a lot of shit concerning story developments, if something looks genuinely dull, I find it hard to watch.
Also, thanks for the info on Golgo 13… I’ve been reading your blog for a while now and it seems like you’ve been an anime fan longer than I originally presumed. Memories of the anime community from September 1993! Indeed, that’s awesome.
@Owen: Missing the point? That Irie is *supposed* to come across as an unlikable bastard, perhaps? It’s not really anything to do with that, as there are ways to handle ‘difficult’ people in anime, I just don’t think ItaKiss does it especially well, but my general ambivalence extends to the whole cast of rather generic personalities, especially the school-mates. To be honest, rather than dropped, it’s ‘on hold’ until I see some reviews or images that reignite my enthusiasm.
@coburn: I won’t deny it, I found it incredibly hard to watch as much of the spring season as I have. I don’t recommend it; I’m just a bit paranoid about missing out on something of genuine quality, because there is always something people forget to watch or don’t write about. Last year, it was Toward the Terra, this year, it’s The Daughter of Twenty Faces. Honestly, it’s amazing just how often they seem to fall through the cracks, but it happens every time. Kurau: Phantom Memory is another brilliant anime, this time from 2004, that absolutely no-one watched. Even ADV forgot that had they it; only took 3 years to release it on DVD after first announcing the license!
Read more. Either you haven’t been reading good anime blogs recently, or you haven’t been reading enough, period!
Ugh, thatlink appears to be broken.
That blog is on my feed reader, though, like with anything, it’s just a case of wondering whether or not the guy’s taste in anime falls in line with my own. Generally though, I get the impression from things I’ve read over there (and seen you saying on your MAL blog too) that ItaKiss gets much better. I’m most interested in seeing what happens to the couple after school/college, so I might hang on and see until then. Of course, I’ve not forgotten about true tears either, which I’m planning on previewing the first four episodes of at some point soon. Rest assured, I won’t let myself forget it until I’ve made good on that promise, especially since you posted about Shigurui (out of interest, see our Shigurui posts got linked in a thread on the ANN forums?
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I can reasonably say with some authority that, no, your tastes do not line up with mine, but then no one’s taste ever lines up with mine in anything, ever, so that’s a fairly meaningless statement. The quicker way would be to visit my MAL profile and view the list contained therein, and marvel at my totally illogical, random, spastic, and ill-thought-out arbitrary ratings I have assigned there, and subsequently [make fun of/praise] (select whichever is appropriate) them as “base”, “vulgar”, and “unappreciative of fine art”, of which the latter is certainly true because I hear the words “fine art” and immediately find the nearest door.
I have not seen Kemonozume, which seems to be your benchmark for good anime taste; this is a wholly deliberate move on my part and results from 1) the aforementioned tendency to walk out on “fine art” 2) really hating this guy in an IRC channel who spent months and months and months lecturing everyone who cared to listen about how awesome and cool and artsy and better than every other anime series ever Kemonozume was and 3) other, more reasonable and friendly people in said IRC channel liking same series but not really having taste that aligned with mine in any meaningful way. I have, though, seen the first episode of Kaiba in an attempt to see if I will be able to enjoy Yuasa’s work, and the reports are still vague and undetermined: the 24 minutes of the episode passed in what I term “Gundam Compliation Movie Time”, which means that I was like “surely 3-4 minutes have passed by now” and then checked the time elapsed and only 30 seconds had gone by.
That said, I found what I saw objectively good, but I wouldn’t say I liked it. It’s the same as when I tried to watch indie movies in my younger years because they were at the library; I’d check them out, thinking that they’d be great fun, and then stubbornly watch them to the end even though I was incredibly bored the entire time. Also see my experience with The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, which made me want to tell Chabon “Great, you won a Pulitzer Prize, you clearly deserved it, now learn to actually write!” but I will temper that bit of literary blasphemy by stating that at the moment I am reading Time Cat by Lloyd Alexander, and enjoying it.
I would go into why I suspect I don’t like “high art” but this comment is long enough already and if you really wanted to know, you’d ask me after this comment. If there is a disparity, your taste is probably better than mine, but I still haven’t been able to figure out the difference between “good” and “bad” taste, and there probably isn’t any.
@OGT: Woah, thanks for taking the time to explain your tastes in anime so thoroughly. For a start, I don’t think liking Kemonozume is a benchmark for good taste in anime, but I’m more interested in the reactions it forces from people because, in particular, Yuasa’s visual style just totally throws down the gauntlet of anime. I find it’s revealing to see whether the viewer has it in them (or not) to look beyond their beloved big-eyed aesthetic and enjoy something that doesn’t pander to their superficial attractions. So, it’s not really anything to do with chin-stroking “high art” and all of that high-falutin’ nonsense, all I want to watch is good anime, regardless of how it looks, and that’s why I often reference Yuasa, because his anime doesn’t look anything like, for example, Code Geass.
Just looking at your MAL list, we do fall in-line with a lot of anime, like Terra e…, Hajime no Ippo, Toki wo Kakeru Shoujo, Baccano!, Planetes etc. You’re one of the only bloggers I know that actually watched Terra e, so that makes you fucking awesome in my book anyway. Your Cowboy Bebop rating is a bit baffling, but then, with that opinion, I suspect you’ve had many an argument about the series already!
Also, I do totally recommend you (and really would like you to) persevere with Kaiba until episode 3, which is the moment the series jumps from being mostly just visceral awe and develops into a heart-felt potential-masterpiece. I can’t complain if you still aren’t feeling it after that, but, if just to really try and embrace a series that’s daring to be different, at least give it the benefit of the doubt until then. Regardless, thanks for such an interesting and eloquent comment.
In regards to Kemonozume, if I actually sat down and watched it, I wouldn’t care about the art style too much, or at least I think I wouldn’t–whille I admittedly love the “anime style” in general, I don’t think that every series need look that way. I may not actually like the Kenonozume art style that much in the end, but I don’t think it would actively enrage me either. And I know that Kemonozume is a retelling of sorts of the story of Momotaro, and that aspect of the series interests me, so I’ll probably give it a shot, assuming I end up liking Kaiba. The deal with Kemonozume, with me, is that I’m extremely unsure whether or not it’s going to appeal to me on a storytelling basis–I am pretty much dead set on becoming a children’s librarian at this point, and I’ve always felt a certain kind of resonance with “children’s literature” and other stories in that mold in general (I think, actually, that’s part of what dictates my rather large interest in anime: they seem to share many traits in common with children’s stories, even when they’re quite clearly targeted at adults. Hell if I can tell you what they are off the top of my head, though), so with a series that’s billed to me as “adult” in terms of storytelling, I’m kind of wary–again, I’ve been burned through my natural curiosity by working at the library, checking out books on a random whim because they seem interesting and taking them home and either never working up the will to read them/starting them and going “This is garbage”.
My Cowboy Bebop rating is hilarious and in no way reflects any remotely accurate perception of its quality, enjoyability, or anything like that. It was actually the very first anime I watched on purpose–my friend convinced me to give it a shot when I was 18 and about to enter college, and I grabbed it and watched it all in one day (it being summer and not really having anything better to do with my time) and came away pretty blown away, if I remember correct–I do know that I cried like a baby when Ed and Ein left the Bebop, and didn’t feel much of anything when Spike died. At that point, I probably would have given it a 10 or a 9 if I had actually been assigning ratings at that time. This was followed by an instant submersion into the world of fansubs (ironically, my membership on the SA forums, now infamous for their rampant anime hatred, bequeathed me exactly one good thing: my deep-set love for anime. I take great relish in saying that), which, as the friend who persuaded me to watch anime in the first place said “you know, it took me two months to get you to watch Cowboy Bebop, and now in a week you know more about anime than I do” which just goes to show that when I get into something, I quite literally get into something and start digging for things hidden under the surface that no one else really knows about.
The problem with Cowboy Bebop, however, is that a couple years ago, as part of a library program, I got roped into chaperoning a showing of Cowboy Bebop the TV series (it was supposed to be the movie, but at the last second they realized that the movie was rated R, and, this being listed as a children’s program, they couldn’t legally show the movie, so they showed the first disc of the anime, which has nothing the movie doesn’t have, but it has a 13+ rating, so it’s all good! The audience for this showing, by the way, consisted of a couple teenagers, and what I think was a babysitter who’d brought her somewhat young charges to the library for some good ol’ cartoon fun). I jumped at the chance, because I hadn’t seen an episode of the series in a long time, and decided to use this as an excuse to watch the series again–and I’m not entirely sure whether it was just that it was the first five episodes, the public setting, or a cosmic shift in what I was looking for when I sat down to watch anime, but I was sitting and watching and thinking “why the hell did this get me into anime?”
My theory here is that, over the course of the three years between watching these same five episodes, I had come to expect something quite different from what I watched. I’ve never really been much of an action movie/series fan (I passed over Black Lagoon and Golgo 13 for this very reason, although I wouldn’t really call either of them “bad series”), in the sense that I enjoy things that exist purely for watching things explode and people kick ass and generally be sharp dudes. After the showing, I even checked out the DVD that had Mushroom Samba on it (which I had always loved) and watched that episode again, and felt…nothing.
Sum point: the rating is totally arbitrary, assigned for no reason, and exists there purely because I haven’t bothered to remove it. Do I think it’s a good series? Yes. Do I like it now? Who knows. And I really haven’t gotten into many arguments about it. Rest assured that I don’t really hate the series, I just…don’t know what to think of it any more. I’ll probably go and delete the rating, because it’s one of those series that I just can’t decide if it’s good or not. The movie rating will stay, because I did not like the movie even when I liked Cowboy Bebop.
And I fully intend to watch Kaiba at some point in time, possibly this weekend, as I have no work.
I’d definitely agree with the labelling of Kemonozume as ‘adult’, and would even go so far as to call it ‘blue’/erotic. There’s a lot of demonic monster slaying, crude jokes and passionate sex! So, indeed, it’s not really high-art at all, it’s just tagged that because of the superficially artsy aesthetic. In terms of comparison, its a slightly more philosophical\romantic take on Yoshiaki Kawajiri’s ‘Wicked City’. Anyway, watch Kaiba before Kemonozume, as it’s already a better series; not nearly as vulgar and far more evocative.
Also, thanks for the interesting anecdote re: Cowboy Bebop. I do think watching it with a group of children probably soured the experience somewhat, if just because, in that kind of atmosphere, the pressure is on you (as much as the show itself) to entertain the audience. For me, the series is as close to perfection as anime can get, so trying to discuss it objectively is fairly difficult. There’s certain things about it, its attention to detail, Yoko Kanno’s soundtrack, even the way its drawn. It’s as if it has such a sense of authenticity and attitude that I don’t even think of it as anime in the same way that I might discuss other, lesser series.
For example, take Code Geass… there’s a very palpable sense of being pandered to, so much so I often feel like I’m being forcibly removed from the story because of the blatant “THIS IS FANSERVICE!!” sign-posting. That’s not a natural feeling, so I’m suddenly out of the story and the enjoyment suddenly feels so… shallow, ephemeral. In something like Bebop, its different, all of the laughs and tears are genuine, born from immersing yourself in the story, getting a real feel for the characters, how they talk and the way their body language might change. I guess this is why I’m more likely to really enjoy something like Nijuu Mensou no Musume or Terra E, because their stories offer a straight-laced authentic reality that’s far easier to completely immerse myself within.
To clarify, before I begin, I don’t see the word “pandering” as this horrible thing that describes everything that’s wrong with entertainment today, so I’m using it devoid of its negative connotation.
Fun fact about pandering: everything panders, and this is a good thing. I’ll probably go into more in-depth detail about this when my vaporpost about fanservice stops being a vaporpost, but, put simply, the very act of targeting a work at a particular audience is, in a sense, catering to their tastes, which is the definition of pandering, is it not? Kanokon panders to fans who want to see a lot of tits and hot girls, Golgo 13 panders to fans who want to see badass emotionless men be badass emotionless men, Cowboy Bebop panders to those who, to use your way of putting it, want “authentic reality”. Just because a work has broad appeal doesn’t mean it’s not pandering.
I know what you mean, but I wouldn’t say something like Cowboy Bebop is actively pandering to an audience. The likes of Satoshi Kon and Shinichirō Watanabe just happen to be an anime auteurs and use their animation as extensions of their feelings and art. When I think of pandering, it is, at its basest level, a kind of pornography, and though it sounds sensationalist, I would suggest that Code Geass is pornography for otaku. There’s no subtlety to it. It is what it is; fast food, and the irony of it being sponsored by Pizza Hut isn’t lost on me, because that’s all it amounts to; fast and cheap food that tastes fine, but it’s hardly home cooking. I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with being so fan-friendly, but it doesn’t work for me in a dramatic sense because it blocks me from feeling any real empathy for the characters.
Also, I’m saying all of this as an ardent fan of Gorō Taniguchi, but Code Geass is no Infinite Ryvius or Planetes. I probably wouldn’t be such a detractor of Geass if there wasn’t so many people watching, blogging and talking about as if it’s some modern masterpiece, especially since the same people will often go around using words like ‘Narutard’ without a second thought.
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