Fate Kaleid Liner PRISMA ILYA 2zwei 03
This episode was super funny and cute.
Fucking Shiro. Density a block of Ichika and Haremmaker Noble Phantasm.
I guess I'd just be repeating what others said at this point, but saying that people watch certain shows just for the sake of appearances is a pretty broad generalization to make without naming names.
Anime can be enjoyable, stimulating, and fun in all sorts of ways. I'm sure some of the shows you find fun wouldn't be fun to me, and some of the things I find fun aren't fun for you. Calling out (some? most? all?) fans of a certain class of show for being insincere about their appreciation seems weird to me. What makes you think that?
I didn't call out all fans of a certain class... I think. That would imply that there are actual classes. I classified people. Which is maybe bad for itself, but it's something different. And as I said, I made my experience mostly in the german realm. So names or links I still can pull out won't help much. So you have to trust for now what I am just telling.
Let's get back shortly to classifying people. It's of course a mean thing to sort people into classes or categories since everyone is an individual, but it's possible to abstract certain elements to have categorize to work with. For example on the gaming side the distinction of casual gamer and hardcore gamer. It's something to work with.
Elitist is a positive term in itself. An elite is something special. A small group of people who are special in a way from other people who are not elite. But as the term is used (clarification: as I use the term) it's somewhat ironic in the use. That's why my use of the term is negative and doesn't refer to actual elitists, but fake-elitists.
Now, I am still not at answering the actual question, but please bear with me. People don't just consume media for personal satisfaction through the media itself. There are obvious events like being assigned to consume the media through work or school or needing to consume it to understand the truly desired media (I actually read Faust II while watching Madoka to make wild theories [that turned all out to be wrong]).
And then there are less direct forces that brings someone to consume a typ of media without the satisfaction of watching the media being the true desired satisfaction. That can be for example the will to be one of the one who know. Like watching anime classics, despite not liking theme, so one can join discussions.
And then there is of course the wish for greatness, to stand above others. Never heard anyone brag with any kind of medium or to be exact knowledge of a medium? "As it turned out Nietzsche has written exactly what I thought all the time", "What? You didn't know Carl Orff's masterpiece?", "You really don't know what this word mean, heh.", "I am not a dumb Call of Duty player, I only play mature games.". A bit of smug, a bit of faked triviality, a bit trying to look down on people.
And now we almost arrived at anime. I started watching anime when I was a grade schooler and enjoyed the kids anime on television and continued to watch and read anime and manga. But it was not until 2009, when I saw a german blog that trashed Angel Beats when I started to actively express my opinion on anime in the internet and looking actively on the opinion of others. I made my travel through german anime- and hentaiforums, an animechat and was about two years part of a connection of german blogs. Those are most of my references, since I aside from a few shows not actually engaged much in the talks on MAL.
So I met with certainty people who looked down upon those who didn't watch intelligent and different shows. It's the kind of people who throw around with scientific terms just for the heck of it. The kind of people who absorb opinions of others as their own. That take conclusions others made without understanding the reasoning. It's the kind of people whom you ask what they liked about Lain and their only answer is to repeat and repeat that is very deep and intelligent.
Let me empathize again, that I am talking about the "fake". There are a lot people who are "true", who actually like shows for their own reasons and explain it fine. In this thread there are a lot of nice long posts about intelligent anime that shows the understanding of show and it's merits by the posting user.
In short: the difference between a true elitist and an a fake one is that the "true" watches a show and enjoy it on his own accord. Maybe because he has fun with it or maybe because he loves specific aspects like the Shinkais backgrounds, the philosophical message or the screen composition. The "fake" will watch a show because he wants others to know that he watched the show. He or she will copy the praise of others and copy opinions as his own, instead of forming it him- or herself.
When I'm calling an anime "elitist anime", than it's not an insult to the anime itself. If anything it's a kind of weird praise. What I want to say with that is that said anime is an easy bait for fake elitist who want to be as smart as the "true" elitists, who started to make the show an desirable target in the first place.
Sorry, if my wording get's repetitive. At times like this, where I actually have to write longer texts, my lack of refined english is really showing. I am also aware, that I am kind of a hypocrite since presuming that one is able to write a text about classifying people isn't humble. Not even talking about my lack of language here, I don't think I am smart enough to do something like that and should've never wrote my original post to begin with, but it's something that humps my brain a few years already and it is what I think. So I am trying to explain it and you're free to criticize or ignore it, don't hold back on either, it's just my opinion which was wrong a lot of time in the past and will a lot of times in the future.
