What a discussion I sparked, makes me feel powerful.
"Why people subject themselves to trash instead watching blahblablah"
Mushishi is really really good but don't hate on other people's anime interests.
Don't get why people like to be anime elitists, some people just like watching shows that are dumb fun.
Shit, I loved Ping-Pong, and I loved Kill la Kill. You can like different types of anime, there's no need to shit on other people's taste in things.
You misunderstood me. I didn't mean to hate on anyone's taste. I just got the feeling many anigaffers watch shows they know are, or are considered to be, trashy/mediocre. It's mostly the mainstream and modern infamous stuff too, like SAO and AZ. That makes me assume some people here know little about and/or have little interest in older or more obscure titles, which would be a shame.
If one wishes to be a passive and indiscriminate consumer of media, that is of course their perogative. And most everyone likes to engage in mindless fun now and then. But that doesn't change the fact that there are standards of good and bad, standards by which you can judge works independent of individual taste. It's good to be able to recognize those and have some critical engagement with what you watch - in the end, as long as you don't go overboard, I think it leads to a richer viewing experience if you are able to determine why something does or doesn't work.
Standards are malleable precisely because they're connected to individual tastes. There's a difference between indiscriminately loving everything and enjoying things agreed to be "lowest common denominator dreck" while disliking more well-made stuff. Some aspects that may be considered negative by the wider audience could be positive for the individual, and vice versa. Life's too short to put a ton of effort into understanding why you're supposedly "wrong" about your likes and dislikes.
Of course if you enjoy critically examining a work to the point of acknowledging all its flaws, then no one should be able to tell you that it's a waste of time. It's just when that view is pushed onto other people via spamming the same "this is why something is bad" gif over and over or vehemently arguing with fans of said work. People like what they like, which really shouldn't be a point of conflict when it comes to fiction IMO.
I think there are objective qualities to observe in any creative work. However the subjective appreciation of those qualities vary wildly, as they should. And some anime emphasize animation quality (Redline), others are more high-brow (Utena) and others rely more heavily on music and actor's performances (Giant Robo). Every work should be evaluated on its own merits instead of some generic "Animation, Music, Story, Characters" metric.
Can't we all just go back to calling each others anime shit and knowing we aren't completely serious?
I'm always completely serious when I call your favorite anime shit.
I loved Attack on Titan, so my taste is the shittiest of all except you're taste.
I'm not even looking forward to catching up with my backlog. *sigh*
If you're catching up on your backlog you're likely doing it wrong.
