Is Mainstream Hatred Of Anime Growing?

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Oh another one for stump

Kids On The Slope

The beginning of summer, 1966; because of his father's job situation, freshman high school student Kaoru Nishimi moves by himself from Yokosuka to Sasebo in Kyushu to live with relatives. Until then, Kaoru was an honor roll student who tended to keep to himself, but meeting notorious "bad boy" Sentaro Kawabuchi starts to change him. Through his devil-may-care classmate, Kaoru learns how much fun it is to play jazz and finds the first person he can call a real friend.

music is real good
 
cosmicblizzard said:
"waifu" quirks are present in pretty much every female character to an extent. Really, everyone is tropey all around.

And ignoring that, we also have an importance placed on combat, has "badasses", some blushing, a character constantly being called a pervert, and is not targeted at adults.
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Yeah its really fucking hard to get away from this stuff. Does it also have "wacky character does something wild, rest of team makes loud groan while looking stylistically deformed in some way"?
 
Xamd Lost Memories should qualify mostly. Some of the female characters fall off later in the show but Nakiami is the best female in all anime so it has that going for it. It's got a bit of combat so it depends on how much of that he can take.
 
The Technomancer said:
Hunter x Hunter is probably the best large scale shonen work of all time (I'm really not exaggerating, I believe that) and would absolutely be my recommendation if someone wanted to only check out one example of that genre, but since it is basically focused on combat and fighting in a fantasy setting I probably wouldn't recommend it for Stump's interests
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It's up there as one of best , and easily the best anime shonen I watch only dbzkai can come close to it. It just is so good that I recommend it to everybody.
 
Stumpokapow said:
Please do. Here are my requirements:

- if it is a series, that it is short with no filler
- should not be built around fighting or combat
- should not contain robots
- should look good, with smooth animation rather than choppy stuff
- should treat women like human beings with dignity, equity, and rich inner lives and should ideally have female characters that are not merely love interests for male characters
- should engage with human, social, and political themes and preferably in a real rather than fantasy world
- should be targeted to adults
- character's eyes should be appropriately sized for their head
- if it has a theme song, the theme song should not overly earnest desperate generic Japanese pop
- should not be described as anyone ever as "badass"

- should not contain a young female character who is rude and abusive to everyone played for laughs
- should not contain a young female character that makes shrill, high pitched noises as a stand-in for actually expressing themselves with words
- should not contain soft focus shots where characters gaze longingly into each other's eyes
- should not contain that dumb blushing reaction where there's a sweat drop and the person screws up their eyes
- should not contain uguu or waifu or whatever other babble people use to express how they want to surround themselves with shrill excitable cute girls
- should not have extended details about how a male character is a pervert

- should be available legally for a reasonable price in North America, preferably dubbed. If it's subbed, the subtitles should be professional and localized, not merely translated

I've asked this before and got a few solid recommendations that I have enjoyed, but in almost every case people remind me that I'm really rubbing up major tropes and approaches used in Anime.

Edit: for example, without knowing anything about the shows, the summaries in the Anime of the Year 2014 results thread exclude most of those shows that made the cut. Not all, mind you.
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Well, I feel like a number of those stipulations, particularly the ones I bolded, and even some I didn't to a certain degree, have more to do with personal tastes than intrinsic quality. A number of widely praised works, even among non-anime fans, such as Spirited Away, Laputa, Wolf Children, Cowboy Bebop, Hyouka, etc., would be disqualified by one or more criteria.

But even so, there are still works such as Monster, The Wings of Honneamise, Bunny Drop, Time of Eve, The Garden of Words, Flowers of Evil, Paranoia Agent, Colorful(film), Only Yesterday, The Wind Rises, Mouryou no Hako, Harmonie, etc., which mostly or completely qualify. Many of them are fairly recent. Just this year, a film called Giovanni's Island, about the Soviet occupation of a northern Japanese island post-WW II, was released.
 
cosmicblizzard said:
"waifu" quirks are present in pretty much every female character to an extent. Really, everyone is tropey all around.

And ignoring that, we also have an importance placed on combat, has "badasses", some blushing, a character constantly being called a pervert, and is not targeted at adults.
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I don't think any of that is in GiTS...I would describe the Major as a "waifu" character in any way, although considering they're a paramilitary division it's hard not to be badasses. None of the other stuff you mentioned is present
 
The Technomancer said:
Yeah its really fucking hard to get away from this stuff. Does it also have "wacky character does something wild, rest of team makes loud groan while looking stylistically deformed in some way"?
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I always wondered if these "jokes" never get old. I mean after some time why would you reuse the same jokes over and over again since 20 years?
 
cosmicblizzard said:
For one, Log Horizon is waifu central.

Really, Stump's prerequisites are incredibly limiting, not just in anime but many mediums, western or otherwise. Nothing wrong with that, but he'd have A LOT more luck with manga over anime with a list like that.
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What about the original .hack//SIGN ? Despite its fantasy world being stuck in an MMO, they do delve into social interaction and have spoken about stuff relating to the real world. The main character Tsukasa is meant to be the epitome of despair and depression of someone who uses video games to escape all problems in the real world. There are people who actually do try to help and there's a small layer of politics when discussing the real world about the company, rumors and and some characters like Helba the hacker.

I don't remember it having any waifu quirks but there were good moments of bonding between characters.
 
The Technomancer said:
Yeah its really fucking hard to get away from this stuff. Does it also have "wacky character does something wild, rest of team makes loud groan while looking stylistically deformed in some way"?
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Still finishing up the last episodes of the first season, but I don't recall seeing that happen.

Hm, a lot of harsh assessments of Log Horizon, especially when I'd say it's pretty much the only good MMO-themed anime I've seen. That said, no, it still doesn't fit Stump's criteria.
 
Chairmanchuck said:
I always wondered if these "jokes" never get old. I mean after some time why would you reuse the same jokes over and over again since 20 years?
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I don't know, sitcoms have been reusing jokes from I Love Lucy (or if you want something more recent, Seinfeld) since forever, maybe some things are just culturally ingrained for whatever reason.

I'm just going to do what I always do and blame Evangelion for everything.
 
Heroman said:
It's up there as one of best , and easily the best anime shonen I watch only dbzkai can come close to it. It just is so good that I recommend it to everybody.
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As someone who's been a huge fan of the manga for close to a decade, I've just been thrilled to see the recent anime suddenly thrust it into more of the mainstream, at least on here, so that people can appreciate it.
 
I can't blame people for being suspicious of anime because of lolicons. That entire genre is fucking creepy. But anime is a medium that has a plethora of genre, so a blanket statement of "I hate anime" always puzzles me a little.
 
I do know there's a show called Huntix: Secrets & Seekers. It's not an anime (I'd put it in with ATLA and Korra). The animation is great, the story is really interesting, two of the four mains are adults, the females are amazing...

But it's got quite a lot of fighting so that disqualifies it.

Sucks too. It's pretty great.
 
Korigama said:
Still finishing up the last episodes of the first season, but I don't recall seeing that happen.

Hm, a lot of harsh assessments of Log Horizon, especially when I'd say it's pretty much the only good MMO-themed anime I've seen. That said, no, it still doesn't fit Stump's criteria.
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First episode was trash. Apparently it gets better but IIRC the ninja girl and her talking style with the master slave thing to the mc, the best friend and his perversion, and the guild house and whatever was going on there it told me to get out and save my sanity.
 
cosmicblizzard said:
"waifu" quirks are present in pretty much every female character to an extent. Really, everyone is tropey all around.

And ignoring that, we also have an importance placed on combat, has "badasses", some blushing, a character constantly being called a pervert, and is not targeted at adults.
Click to expand...
Combat is there but there is also it engages with human, social, and political themes. Sue it does it in an fantasy theme

The blushing isn't that bad. (probably because I'm used to seeing alot worse)

There's a character being called a pervert? I don't ever recall that. ok now I remember

Nothing for the badass (because there is, well is an MMo with maxed out characters) and targeted at adults.
EDIT: forgot tropes.....
 
See, glass mask would fit stump's requirements, except for the big eyes and gaze longingly thing, because it's shoujo.
 
madp said:
This.

Anime fans will swear up and down otherwise, but the truth is that I've never met one who wasn't creepy or severely maladjusted in some way and so it's pretty easy for me to dismiss them. All of the ones I saw in high school and college were usually unattractive/obese and awkward with poor hygiene, never had girlfriends, and were super obnoxious and wanted to shove all of their spiky-haired naruto ninjas and moe waifus down everyone's throats because they thought enjoying something "foreign" somehow made them edgy hipster connoisseurs when they were just circlejerking over cartoons.

It was always obvious to me that it was just a hobby for miserable, socially-stunted losers and emos who used Japanese cartoons as an opiate to distract themselves from being depressed and a shallow pretext for forming friendships with each other because they couldn't navigate normal human interaction otherwise. Everyone stayed as far away from them as possible, especially in college because watching cartoon as an adult (and not just that, but TELEGRAPHING it to other people as LOUDLY as possible) is the biggest red flag imaginable that you're a sexless manchild. There was a guy on the floor or my dorm that we would never invite to parties because he wore nothing but Dragon Ball Z shirts and smelled like he hadn't showered in a month and we all laughed at him behind his back over it.

With all the articles I've read on GAF about how Japanese anime and video games are catering to pedophiles and how anime fans have waifus and watch "moe girls" shit, I can't help but think that anime fans here are either in deep denial about their deviancy or straight-up lying about not jerking it to underage girls when they all have avatars of little girls. Just like every anime fan I've seen IRL they wear their "I watch shows about fucking cartoon children" badge on their sleeve but don't want to be called out on it. The kneejerk defensiveness from fans you see in every thread that exposes the depraved reality of anime is a dead giveaway.

It's creepy as fuck and if you have anime avatar, I'll ignore anything you type on your cum-encrusted keyboards because it's an admission that you don't actually know anything about real life and there's a good chance that you're a pedophile. You shouldn't be on NeoGAF, you should be in prison for CP. I'm glad that the GAF community has fostered an environment that promotes the marginalization and dismissal of fans of anime because they've earned it.
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Which planet are you from?
 
Nanashrew said:
Probably means "no shortcuts taken" with the animation.
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outside of OVAs/movies though that really doesnt exist due to budget constraints. there are occasional instances of it known as sakuga but those are done by one master animator and not the entire make-up of a series.
 
Nanashrew said:
Probably means "no shortcuts taken" with the animation.
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But almost no anime will fit the criteria, just by the standards of how anime are made. Mostly the episodes, even in 13 episode series, are made by different animators. So you can have 1 episode that looks great, then the next one looks bad, because it was cheaper to use aniamation studio xyz.

Long-running anime even have their own plan about this. Episodes which animate important chapters are made by good animation studios in Korea/China, while episodes where almost nothing happens are made by cheap studios.
 
The emphasis on moe and lolis has turned me off the whole thing. Especially since the anime I like tends to be the violent/hard sci fi and fantasy of the 80's and 90's. That shit was cool. Now? Moe and loli, high school crap, too much fanservice, and just general ridiculousness that's different from the type I enjoyed of anime past.

I'm sure there's good anime out there, but I'm not going to jump at the chance to see it like I would have when I was 14. Space Dandy and Attack On Titan is good enough for me to the point where I don't care what goes on elsewhere.

Also Naruto and Bleach lasted a bit too long, same with One Piece even if it's still good. I'm not a kid with too much free time anymore to follow any of them despite being a fan when they started.
 
Moral Panic said:
First episode was trash. Apparently it gets better but IIRC the ninja girl and her talking style with the master slave thing to the mc, the best friend and his perversion, and the guild house and whatever was going on there it told me to get out and save my sanity.
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I would recommend giving the rest of the series a chance if you have the time. Personally, it was just what I needed after subjecting myself to SAO (pretty much the antithesis to that show).
 
The last anime I watched

assistir-black-lagoon-the-second-barrage-episdios-online-1280x1024.jpg
 
Stumpokapow said:
Please do. Here are my requirements:

- if it is a series, that it is short with no filler
- should not be built around fighting or combat
- should not contain robots
- should look good, with smooth animation rather than choppy stuff
- should treat women like human beings with dignity, equity, and rich inner lives and should ideally have female characters that are not merely love interests for male characters
- should engage with human, social, and political themes and preferably in a real rather than fantasy world
- should be targeted to adults
- character's eyes should be appropriately sized for their head
- if it has a theme song, the theme song should not overly earnest desperate generic Japanese pop
- should not be described as anyone ever as "badass"

- should not contain a young female character who is rude and abusive to everyone played for laughs
- should not contain a young female character that makes shrill, high pitched noises as a stand-in for actually expressing themselves with words
- should not contain soft focus shots where characters gaze longingly into each other's eyes
- should not contain that dumb blushing reaction where there's a sweat drop and the person screws up their eyes
- should not contain uguu or waifu or whatever other babble people use to express how they want to surround themselves with shrill excitable cute girls
- should not have extended details about how a male character is a pervert

- should be available legally for a reasonable price in North America, preferably dubbed. If it's subbed, the subtitles should be professional and localized, not merely translated

I've asked this before and got a few solid recommendations that I have enjoyed, but in almost every case people remind me that I'm really rubbing up major tropes and approaches used in Anime.

Edit: for example, without knowing anything about the shows, the summaries in the Anime of the Year 2014 results thread exclude most of those shows that made the cut. Not all, mind you.
Click to expand...

None of my suggestions are perfect as they all struggle with one or two criteria, but here's what I would reccomend:

Summer Wars (a little far fetched, but a great time)

5cm per second (hard as hell to find the english release, bu oh so worth it)

Princess Mononoke (a little fighting heavy and a fantasy setting, but one of the best films I've ever seen, animated or not)

And not perfect, but show wise I would say Cowboy Bebop, Phantom: Requiem for the Phantom, and maybe even spice and wold or noein, but all of these fail on at least two catagories, regardless of thier care and maturity.

Unfortunetly, even coming from a fan, I don't watch that much any more, because I feel the qualuty and originality of the content is slowly slipping away. Can't so much more and if there are any errors, I blame my phone.
 
RE: Recommendations; thanks to anyone who offered any. I wasn't just trolling, I will do followup to look into the shows mentioned. I do find it interesting that even in this set of replies, a number of people have pointed out how some of the recommendations already given clash pretty badly with what I was looking for, which is a problem that recommendations have more generally.

RE: Specifics
I'm not entirely wedded on a real world setting, but rather that it needs to be grounded. I'm not super interested in very fantasy-oriented stuff. Cowboy Bebop is fine (although I'd note that Cowboy Bebop is like item #1 on the list of "Anime that are good for people who even don't like anime"

Chairmanchuck said:
But almost no anime will fit the criteria, just by the standards of how anime are made. Mostly the episodes, even in 13 episode series, are made by different animators. So you can have 1 episode that looks great, then the next one looks bad, because it was cheaper to use aniamation studio xyz.
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Well, I mean, it's not a dealbreaker that every shot doesn't look pristine and movie-like; conventional television has the same budgetary challenges. Rather, I hoped to express that the animation quality of much of what I've seen is a barrier to me. The same is true with "western" cartoons as well; I don't generally like animated stuff unless the animation is very vibrant.

cajunator said:
Is this saying no large eyes at all or just that the eyes look generally ok with relation to the size of the had? Because anime eyes are generally large as you know.
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I was trying to state in a very general way my distaste for what seems like a major component of character design in anime. Ultimately I'm not saying I wouldn't watch a show that has a shot with large eyes, but rather that people offering recommendations shouldn't uncritically accept common elements of the medium of anime when trying to offer recommendations to me as a stand-in for people who generally don't watch much anime because it generally isn't something they're in to. I probably could have tried to elaborate a little more or maybe said "no chibi, no hyper-exaggerated character design", etc.

cosmicblizzard said:
Gonna say that's going a little bit further than what people usually complain about.
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Sure, but since the Straw People aren't in the thread and I am I thought I'd take maybe 2-3 minutes to ballpark the things that bug me in response to the suggestion by the OP that there's tons of content out there to meet the requirements of skeptics. Many of the things I said I think reflect what the OP was trying to respond to; I'm sure lots of people wouldn't identify them as dealbreakers, but rather that they would contribute to an overall negative impression that people have. You see it in some of the other replies in this thread that share my general disillusionment, even if they don't identify it in the same terms.

Jexhius said:
As I believe I've said earlier (I can't be bothered to check my own post history), most of those requirements are kind of like asking for it not to resemble the culture that it comes from, or the business space that it's made in. That's just not going to happen very frequently, if it all.
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Yeah, I'm very cognizant of that--I do think we've specifically discussed it before. I don't begrudge that the content is made in those conditions or to reflect that audience. I'm very live and let live, you won't find me going on the offensive about how crap everyone's taste is or whatever.

I just felt that the OP's suggestion that there's plenty of anime out there that doesn't reflect the things that bug people about anime was maybe a little broad. Not that the content doesn't exist, because I know it does and I've enjoyed much of what I've watched. But rather that it occupies a very small niche in an industry otherwise calibrated to produce a very specific type of content, and thus it should not be surprising that people out there exist who "don't enjoy anime" in very general terms.

Moral Panic said:
Why limit yourself so much? Will the lack of political themes really kill an otherwise great TV show? Or does the presence of robots throw a competent drama into the trashpile? I can understand having preferences but I think you've taken it a bit OTT.
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Shows do not need to have political themes, but I provide it in the list as a way of causing people to gravitate towards content that asks questions, that tells us something about humanity, etc. I am not interested in dating shows or high school shows as a rule, and I am not interested in fighting shows as a rule. I am not interested in long, drawn-out plots; I am interested in theme. This is something that is true of my taste in other mediums to a degree, including in gaming.

And yes, I really am not interested in giant robots. I've got the Iron Giant. I have my fill and don't need more.

I don't think it really limits me, because I spend a lot of time reading, watching television and film, and playing games and I enjoy much of what I consume. It does limit my ability to engage with anime, which was the very point of my reply.

John Kowalski said:
I hope you can see the implicit contempt in your post.

It is, quite honestly, a ridiculous attitude.
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OK.
 
We had that amazing music in anime thread a while ago and then all of a sudden, people fall into generalizations.

I used to think anime was all Naruto and Dragon Ball Z and your typical loli-pandering games in modern, low-budget JRPGs.

Thank goodness I was wrong. There's so much stuff out there but people like to shame the easy target, and things just snowball from there.
 
Stump, have you ever seen Gokusen? It takes place in a school but the main character is the teacher, and also a woman who's the leader of a gang haha

It's pretty good.
 
Stump should get over his requirement that it has to be short and set in a modern world and go watch Legend of the Galactic Heroes.(its very grounded sci-fi)
 
Stumpokapow said:
About the first half as it was recommended to me and I enjoyed it a lot. That is a very reasonable recommendation.

Very thoughtful.
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Then the only other two series I can think of right now are Sweet Blue Flower (Aoi Hana) and Flower of Evil (Aku no Hana). Sweet Blue Flower was written by the same author as Wandering Son, focusing on female queerness, rather than male queerness. Aku no Hana is hard to classify. It's a coming-of-age story with elements of suburban ennui. The most flattering way I could frame this is that it's like a Murakami novel without the cats, talking to cats, vanishing cats, or any other magical realism stuff.

You'd have more luck finding things that fit your requirements in the realm of movies. Most of Kon's filmography will apply, most notably Millenium Actress and Tokyo Godfathers. From Ghibli, you have Whisper of the Heart and Only Yesterday, although I can only speak positively for the former. If you don't mind Asimovian robots, Time of Eve is a good choice. It explores human-machine relationships in a near-future world with android technology, and does it, I might add, with far more subtlety and depth than Asimov himself ever had.

And, if we're pushing boundaries, I might as well give a mention to Dennou Coil, which is also near-future sci-fi. Except, instead of androids, the main plot device is wearable computing and Augmented Reality.
 
Stumpokapow said:
And yes, I really am not interested in giant robots. I've got the Iron Giant. I have my fill and don't need more.
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What about humanlike robots?

Like I said. Maybe Eve no Jikan/Time of Eve might fit your requirements. And its really beautiful I have to add.

Then Tatami Galaxy, though it might get a bit too ridiculous, but they use the comedic effects as a plot-device, not just for cheap laughs.
 
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