Forum - View topicQuality and Entertainment: A Fine Line.
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Touma
 Posts: 2651 Location: Colorado, USA |
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What are they judging? To repeat a question that I asked in my previous post, if it is not entertainment then what is it? People are saying that something can be good without being entertaining. I am asking what it is good for if it is not good for entertainment. I am not saying that anime cannot be good for something else. I just do not understand what that something else is. |
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Alan45
 Village Elder Posts: 9877 Location: Virginia |
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@jl07045
I'm being dismissive because, as I said above, you're asking the wrong person. I realize that at some level the quality of the story and artwork of an anime will effect my enjoyment. However, at a conscience level, it is not a question I care to ask. Even if I did want to discuss quality in art, I lack the critical tools for the purpose. You are aware, are you not, that the question of "what is art" much less the question of "what is good art" is one that people can discuss for hours without any agreement or resolution? I'm sure that in some place someone has made animation with stick figures and some one else has called it good. However, no professional anime that I am aware of uses stick figures which makes it a rather odd place to start a discussion of quality in art. Touma wrote:
Anime has been used for propaganda, safety messages, commercials and to teach. I suspect a lot of that has not been very entertaining. However I am aware we are mainly discussing anime that is intended for entertainment purposes. What I'm saying is that anime can be good with out being entertaining to me. I don't speak for the whole world on the subject of quality entertainment. I doubt you do either. I learned early in life that my taste in most things, including entertainment, differed from most people. That is probably why I like anime. When it comes to judging anime, I mostly don't. I decide if I like it or not and let it go at that. This is, however, a fairly limiting approach. You will not see me rating an anime show or recommending one on the basis of quality. My basic take is that even the worst anime can be entertaining to someone and the best will not entertain everyone. Whether a specific anime entertains me or you is not binding on the audience as a whole. I'm not actually the center of the universe. |
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jl07045
 Posts: 1527 Location: Riga, Latvia |
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I'm not talking about the quality of art in anime, it's about the reasoning someone goes through when they judge some art based on quality. I used stick figures, because they're simplistic and shouldn't require much consideration to judge. I'm asking whether the person knows what 'quality' is, what it entails, and if they can't answer that question, they'll have a problem explaining how they would distinguish 'good' from 'entertaining'. If the person comes up with a definition of quality, the next thing is to check where that definition goes. Whether what is good still doesn't end up getting reduced to what is entertaining to someone. Only when people are clear on the concepts that are used can there be a productive discussion. Not that it will resolve everything, but that it hopefully could at least clarify the issue a bit. If you're not interested that's fine, I was putting the question out in the thread, not pushing you specifically to answer it. I apologize if I made it look like that. But the thread does dance around a philosophical question even if the RL application is insecure net people harping on critics. |
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Aylinn
 Posts: 1684 |
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I judge anime this way. Let us say there is an action anime. If done well, a lot will be happening and there will be a logical sequence of events that happen one after another. So, for example, any series that has a lot of scenes that slow down the action unnecessarily will be an action anime with a bad-writing.
An example for a good action anime is Parasyte -the maxim-m, at least for the most part of the series. Sure, I might have liked to have the main character’s girlfriend to be more developed. A study of her character might be interesting, but such a deep characterization would be in the way of pacing. Similarly, from a good romance anime I expect a gradual development of relationship that is presented in a way that would make the romance look believable, as far as emotions of both parties are concerned. An example of good romance is Nodame Cantabile, Sailor Moon SuperS - the relationship between Chibiusa and Helios is well done. An example of a badly done romance would be something like that: 1. They meet each other and almost instantly come to hate each other. 2. For a long time nothing significant happens between them. 3. All of a sudden, they end up in a bed. The author may try to explain it by saying that they are destined for each other, etc., but it would still be a badly-written romance that awkwardly tries to cover its serious shortcoming. One may even like this awkward explanation, but it doesn’t change the fact that it is just a poor explanation why there is no romance in a romance story.
I had similar feelings. I think that as far as Ikuhara’s shows are concerned, the longer his shows are, the better they turn out. He can do complex characters and complicated relationship, so the more time he has for them, the better. In Yuri Kumi Arashi everything was just to compressed for me. |
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Kruszer
 Posts: 7987 Location: Minnesota, USA |
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If I had to explain what makes a bad story to me, I'd be here all day, because there's a whole list of ways I've seen them go wrong, and I'm sure people would disagree with me on several points.
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Night fox
 Posts: 561 Location: Sweden |
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To me, quality can be found in the complexity of the characters, as well as in their credibility, and the consistency of their behaviour in relation to their personalities. The more complex a character is, the more it can contribute to a show, but it also makes it harder for the script writers to decide how said character would act in any given situation.
Complexity + Credibility + Consistency (CCC) = High Quality Take Coopa, from The Tower of Druaga, as an example (Why 73 people gave the show a Masterpiece rating is beyond me, btw.) Her personality isn't very complex, and a typical conversation would be: "Since you're unable to take care of yourself, Melt-sama, I'm preparing food that I know you hate, and I also cleaned your golf clubs earlier gozaimasu." Even though her behaviour is consistent she's also incredibly simplistic, and doesn't really bring anything to the show. Simplicity + Incredibility + Consistency = Low Quality You can also apply this concept to the plot as a whole. The Future Diary is an example of a show that has a fairly complex, and interresting story, but I'm put off by the characters often erratic behaviour, and the many plot holes that appear throughout the series. A story doesn't improve simply by adding complexity to it, if the plot is too confusing to make sense of. Complexity + Incredibility + Inconsistency = Low Quality Now, to the discussion of whether or not quality is synonymous with entertainment. I'd say that it's not. Entertainment comes from recognizing the quality of something, and is strongly infuenced by personal interest, knowledge, and experience. Let's say you're watching a game of chess between two grand masters. If you don't have an interest in the game, or know the rules, and how to evaluate different moves, would you still find the game entertaining? However, if you do have an interest in the game, you might even enjoy watching a school tournament even though the skill (or quality) of the players is low in comparison. |
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CoreSignal
 Posts: 727 Location: California, USA |
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Quality or Entertainment? It's tough to say, but I'm slightly leaning towards entertainment. Of course, the best shows are both. As Alan45 mentioned, if something is entertaining, you'll usually know right away and I think being entertaining contributes a lot to quality. That said, there plenty of anime "masterpieces" that I personally don't like or find entertaining. On the other, you could argue that appreciating quality requires some effort that being entertaining doesn't . There's also been many shows that I've initially disliked but then changed my mind on a rewatch. In general, I do look for both. While I think that nitpicking every little thing is a show is pointless, I do believe in analysis to a certain extent. If you really like a show, then analysis can help by explaining what is it about the show that makes good.
As an Eva fan, let me elaborate on a couple points. There are many people who cannot stand Evangelion, so I don't know if I'd call Eva "objectively" good. And the schizophrenic personalites and inconsistent tones are exactly what made show stand out from other shows at the time and even now. As for poor production values, bad animation/art, etc. I think inconsistent animation is a better description. As Key mentioned, the staff were smart and saved their budget for the parts that you want to look good, aka the action scenes. The non-action parts of the show have limited to non-existent animation but the mecha-action sequences still hold up, imo. Ironically, the budget problems with the show is what forced Anno to develop his visually striking, minimalist directing style. @Aylinn, you have a really interesting approach that makes sense. For an action show, the way the plot hangs together is more of an issue than if you're watching a slice-of-life show, and for a romance show, character interactions are very important. It's a pretty neat idea to analyze a show differently depending on what genre you think it falls under. |
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Night fox
Posts: 561 Location: Sweden |
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@Aylinn
You're saying that one should rate an anime based on how well it fits into a certain genre, but who decides which genre(s) an anime primarily belongs in? Do you determine that yourself, or do you go by what label others have put on it? E.g. using ANN's genre tags as a starting point can be problematic at times, since some genres by default exclude other genres. Action excludes adventure, and drama excludes slice of life etc. At other times an added genre have very little impact on the anime in question, which makes it kinda pointless to rate it from that perspective. Hunter x Hunter 2011 is an anime in which every other character is either a trained assassin, a maffia member, or a man-eating monster. Tragic pasts are revealed, limbs are torn off, children are murdered, and heads are crushed and sometimes eaten, but it also has a comedy tag... Now, if you were to rate this show as a comedy, you'd probably be quite disappointed and give it a low rating. So, if you think that an anime doesn't deliver e.g. good enough romance, why not rate it by what it does best? Perhaps it works better as a slice of life show, or a drama? Wouldn't that approach make the review more objective? |
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Key
Moderator
 Posts: 18252 Location: Indianapolis, IN (formerly Mimiho Valley) |
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The problem with the genre tag system in ANN Encyclopedia is that it allows people to tag series with any genre/theme that is represented even slightly in the series and provides no way to delineate what the primary genres/themes are. In a series like Dusk Maiden of Amnesia, which is a (genuinely) roughly even balance of comedy, drama, romance, and horror, that doesn't matter as much, but what about something like DBZ? It has substantial comedy elements and could be considered both fantasy and sci fi, but its primary genre is action. So if you're going to evaluate a series' merits on how it represents its genres then considering anything other than its primary genres is intellectually disingenuous.
And for the record, I have been known to evaluate series both ways (i.e., both on general merits and how it stands within its genre) and typically try to make clear which way I'm going. |
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BodaciousSpacePirate
 Subscriber Posts: 3018 |
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It might also be important for viewers to consider how a show is meant to be enjoyed by its audience - not in terms of "turning your brain off", but in terms of "speed of consumption." This was a thing people talked about a lot when the fourth season of Arrested Development was released on Netflix. The creators intended the show to be watched a bit at a time, but all the critics watched the entire season in one sitting.
Shows with predictable plot developments like Seraph of the End are more enjoyable (for me, anyway) if you're watching a huge chunk of the show at a time. When you're introduced to a whole bunch of characters in a single sitting, you're more likely to forgive stuff like "this is Bob, his sister likes pizza, he wants to kill all the vampires because they stole his sister's pizza... that's all the backstory you're getting for Bob". On the other hand, something like HeartCatch Pretty Cure might have better characters, but if you try to watch eight episodes in one sitting, you won't care that "Jane suffers from gender identity issues related to self-imposed feelings of responsibility towards her family" when she ends up overcoming her problems the same way everyone else in that show does (i.e. her gender identity issues become a giant monster that Erika has to eviscerate with her Marine Tact). |
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Kruszer
Posts: 7987 Location: Minnesota, USA |
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Any episodic show, slice of life in particular, is pretty much impossible to marathon for me. I just get tired of it real fast and have to watch something else. Whereas, I can sit and watch something with a linear storyline that's arc based or stretches across the entire show all day until I finish it without tiring of it.
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Akane the Catgirl
Posts: 1091 Location: LA, Baby! |
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I'm glad to see so many interesting responses here! So far, so good. Keep at it, guys!
Now, I think it's time to discuss how to criticize something. A while ago, I had a small debate with someone over an anime that while I liked, he did not. I don't really care about his personal feelings towards it. What bugged me were his "criticisms", so to speak. As in, they were more like personal pet peeves or biases. For example, his grievances with the main character were so generalized and broad that it sounded less like a criticism of the writing and more that he just didn't like the archetype. And yes, he did use the "personal preference fallacy". An important part of criticizing something is setting aside personal biases to judge something. You need to acknowledge if (not what- IF) there is good in the bad, and if (not what- IF) there is bad in the good. Not everything you love is going to be a perfect sacred cow, and not everything you hate is going to be irredeemable garbage. For example:
It's important to really figure out what works and what doesn't. There is no such thing as perfection, as we all know. To me, a masterpiece is something where you have to resort to nitpicking or personal bias in order to find something wrong with it. But now is not the time to start listing our favorites, hmm? |
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Touma
Posts: 2651 Location: Colorado, USA |
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I do not think that it is necessary to put aside your personal biases as long as you acknowledge that your criticism is based on your personal preference**, rather than giving the impression that you are stating objective facts. **Perhaps "opinion" would have been a better word for me to use there. |
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Akane the Catgirl
Posts: 1091 Location: LA, Baby! |
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^ That is true to a certain extent. What I mean is that you can't say X is bad because there's a trope you personally dislike involved. If an anime has a cat-girl main lead and you hate cat-girls, you can't say the character is bad because she's a cat-girl. It would be better if you acknowledged that you just personally don't like the character, then see if she's likable or well-written outside of that.
The inverse is just as true. Say an anime you're reviewing has a girl with glasses as the lead, and you LURV girls in glasses! Does that make the main character the best character ever? Not necessarily. That just means you like girls in glasses. She might be a Mary Sue or just really obnoxious, so if she is, it's important to note that. Another good example is the ever so classic "genki" archetype. You know, characters like Radical Edward or Tamaki Suoh. Genki might be one of the most divisive archetypes you will ever see in anime. Some people love it (like me), and others can't stand it. It's very important to acknowledge whether the character is badly written or if it's just a trope you don't like when it comes to such base breaking examples like genki. Those are just my thoughts, though. |
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Dessa
 Posts: 4438 |
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For me, I watch stuff that I recognize as being badly written/animated/whatever, and still enjoy for a variety of reasons (no, I don't subscribe to the "so bad it's good" idea, but there are a few bad shows I've watched for hilarity's sake). And there's others that I love to death, but I can still find problems with.
There's a number of shows that I could name off as examples on both sides, but probably the best to bring up would be Sword Art Online and Log Horizon. As people probably know, if you've read the SAO thread, I'm not really a fan of it. I watch it for its entertainment purposes, and the overall idea of the story is interesting, but it's got huge plot holes you could fly a Gundam through, and many aspects of poor writing. The entire series hinges on the idea that the Japanese government would allow a product that could fry a consumer's brain onto the market. And the author has a horrible time writing strong women, and falls back on attempted rape whenever he needs a female character put in a dramatic situation for Kirito to have a Big Damn Heroes moment with. These are major problems (amonth others) I have with the show, and while the artistic quality is quite high, it lowers the overall quality of the show. Do I still watch it? Yes. Do I still enjoy watching it? If I didn't, I wouldn't still watch it. Does that mean I necessarily like it? Not really. As people probably ALSO know (just look at my avatar, for crying out loud!), I'm a Log Horizon fan. I love the show. I've got the manga in both Japanese and English, I have the 2 BD sets, I've got the English light novel, I have the first artbook, I've preordered the second, I've got the TRPG book that I can't read, and I basically pressure everyone I know into watching it. It's my favorite series. Does that mean I can't realize there's problems? Of course not. LH is definitely a different kind of series than most mainstream shows, so I won't talk about things that may be problematic for some but not others, since those go to personal preference (the episode-long monologue, for example), but there's definitely others. I just finished reading the first LN, and the author repeatedly explains the same things over and over. I get that's partially due to it being the first volume, as well as how the series was originally published (chapter-at-a-time web novel), but some of that even carried over into the anime. Yes, there are things that you need to understand about Elder Tales and MMOs in general to fully grasp the series, but sometimes it's too long-winded. As well, the way the anime handles concurrent novels is awkward much of the time (for example, in season 2, the Akiba Raid was volume 6 of the novels, the Gold of the Kunie raid was volume 7. The anime started off mixing them together until the climax, then focused on one, then the other. I believe volumes 3 and 4 of the novels are also mixed like this in season 1, but I haven't read those ones yet). There's others, too, that I notice while I'm watching/reading, but it's honestly very hard to come up with them on the spot. And I think that's something that lends to the quality of a series. Even the highest quality show will have problems, or lower quality aspects. But because the overall quality is so high, it glosses over those parts, and you find it harder to notice those things unless you're looking right at it. I think I'd compare it to 2 cars that have gone into the shop for body/paint work. When they're done, both will have flaws, because you can never fully restore to factory condition a car that's been damaged. The higher quality job, if you look closely, you might see tiny spots where the patched paint doesn't quite match, or you can see a seam where the metal was hammered back out. But looking at it from a distance, it looks perfect. The lower quality job, on the other hand, you can see more problems. Maybe there's some hammer marks, or the paint wasn't matched nearly as closely as it should have been. The car still looks nice, and it drives just fine, but it obviously wasn't done as well as it should. |
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