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Shelf Life - Milos & Otis

Hypeathon wrote:

RyanSaotome wrote: Different cultures have different standards of what makes something good. Look at a show like Horizon... Completely hated in America, reviews were really low everywhere, but it was one of the biggest hits of the season in Japan. These kinds of shows just appeal more to their culture than they do to ours. Is it really that it appeals to all Japanese, or that it just appeals to otaku or whoever else is the more specified audience for Horizon? Also, here's a thought. Maybe people like me and Shenl742 (and they do exist if you take off the "western vs eastern appeal" lens) doesn't give as much of a crap about the genre or the cliches so much as whether the story in it can lead to a conclusion and make a point out of it and provide us a reason keep watching the characters who are suppose to move the story along. Not everything is a matter of "I like action shows only" or "I like male leads."

Exactly. Age? Race? Sexuality? Gender? Religion? Upbringing? Can these shape a person's tastes? Yes.

Should these be used to judge a person's taste? NO!

That is called stereotyping. That is called discrimination. That is just plain WRONG!

Oh for goodness sake! So are you people here that have been arguing this so far seriously trying to validate one's culture as the most important influence on one's taste or something and just flat-out believe every other factor Shenl742 applied doesn't matter?!

(I'm still waiting for an anime that has a primarily rap OST, Japan)

Oh for goodness sake! So are you people here that have been arguing this so far seriously trying to validate one's culture as the most important influence on one's taste or something and just flat-out believe every other factor Shenl742 applied doesn't matter?!

prime_pm wrote:

I passed up on Forte mainly because they didn't include the Blu-Ray in the package.

I was wondering about that! At first I thought maybe my copy was a screener or something. The DVD menues looked gross on my PS3, too.

KLAC wrote:

are you serious bro?

I am no bro!

KLAC wrote:

come not like you're against anime with like that give worse fears that manyuu hikenchou get a dub someday?

Just reading the Wikipedia description it sounds alarming... but if it was well-made it could still be good. You never know.

One reason Heaven's Lost Property is so irritating is because it's almost good. There are a lot of scenes that are almost funny, but for every time I chuckled there were about three scenes that made me cringe.

Animegomaniac wrote:

I'll just say they're robots created by and for that blonde evil guy with wings and leave it at that. At least the chibi forms weren't described as "limited animation" this time around.

Oh, I know the difference between chibi and limited animation. Some of the chibi scenes in the first season also used pretty limited animation. Other scenes were really well done with excessive animation.

geishageek wrote:

Erin has love for Meet the Feebles? I thought I was the only oddball in the universe that loves this movie!

I never said I loved it. I respect it.

Shippoyasha wrote:

2- Perverseness is 100% natural regardless of gender or orientation.

Whoa whoa, that gets back to a point I was trying to make originally. The definition of "Perverted" is "abnormal". It's totally normal to be interested in sex (regardless of gender or orientation). That's not "being perverted," save, perhaps, in a middle school slang sense of the word, where even a boy interested in kissing qualifies as a "pervert". For those interested in a truly "perverted" dark comedy, I'm going to recommend John Water's film Pink Flamingos. (I didn't make it through the first 10 minutes, but the Wikipedia description sounds hilarious...)

Shenl742, you need to chill. From what I've read, no one is trying to be racist here. It is a widely-known fact that certain series fare far better in the Japanese fan base than the American one and vice versa. Some of that's because of cultural differences and some is because of differing expectations. Frankly, I gave up long ago trying to figure out why certain series that flop over here are quite popular over there (like the aforementioned Horizon, for instance). It's just the way it is.

Funny enough, all that talk of 'differing cultures' is precisely why stuff like Sora no Otoshimono isn't being taken in a proper context in this thread.

For the Japanese, having fun with portrayals of sexuality is just entertainment. Nothing more, nothing less. There's no morality aspects to it unless it involves some kind of illegal coercion or something like that. While Westerners put all kinds of weird and overtly complex subtexts to sexuality all the while demonizing sex as something intrinsically to look down upon. All the while they show all the violence without restraint and it's perfectly fine.

As it were, it could explain why stuff like adult modeling in Japan is so prevalent and there's no real outcry over it. In fact, a whole swath of the population dabbles in modeling of any sort (even nude/sexualized stuff) and it's just seen as entertainment, nothing more.

Funny thing is, I wasn't even introduced towards fanservicey/sexy anime from male fans. I was introduced them from a lot of female friends who took the genre the way it's supposed to be: Just entertainment.

Funny enough, all that talk of 'differing cultures' is precisely why stuff like Sora no Otoshimono isn't being taken in a proper context in this thread.

For the Japanese, having fun with portrayals of sexuality is just entertainment. Nothing more, nothing less. There's no morality aspects to it unless it involves some kind of illegal coercion or something like that. While Westerners put all kinds of weird and overtly complex subtexts to sexuality all the while demonizing sex as something intrinsically to look down upon. All the while they show all the violence without restraint and it's perfectly fine.

As it were, it could explain why stuff like adult modeling in Japan is so prevalent and there's no real outcry over it. In fact, a whole swath of the population dabbles in modeling of any sort (even nude/sexualized stuff) and it's just seen as entertainment, nothing more.

Funny thing is, I wasn't even introduced towards fanservicey/sexy anime from male fans. I was introduced them from a lot of female friends who took the genre the way it's supposed to be: Just entertainment.

Everyone who preaches about this sort of thing seems to have an incredibly poor grasp of mainstream Japanese culture.

Shows like Sora no Otoshimono are not mainstream fare accepted by the mass public in Japan. They are oversexed otaku bait that sells to a very specific, very small audience there. And no, not a "whole swath of the population there is involved in modeling". That is simply not true. It'd be like looking at an issue of Vanity Fair and concluding that a big chunk of Americans are involved in fashion modeling. Japan might seem superficially less uptight about sex gags in mainstream entertainment but I'd argue it isn't nearly as permissive and open about sex as anyone seems to be suggesting.

And this isn't knowledge based on something someone told me on a message board or something I'm assuming based on the anime I've seen, this comes from very long conversations on this issue with the many people I know who have lived and worked in Japan for a very long time, in addition to visiting the country several times myself. I'm no expert, but most of what you're saying is flat-out wrong and seems to be coming from the anime you watch, not the actual culture itself.

Remember, you're watching a bunch of late-night or internet-only sexed-up shows for otaku. It'd be like watching Showtime and HBO original programming only and coming to the conclusion that America must be A-OK with rampant nudity on mainstream network TV.

The thing that gets me about a lot of these arguments is that what you're really saying is "the reason you don't like this show is because you don't get it and you don't have the same deep understanding of Japanese culture as I do and if you did you'd totally like and accept this show just the same as me". Lots of people don't like shows like this because they're pandering as hard as they can to the horny teenage boy market and have little else of value or interest in them - someone earlier described it as a "dumb titty show", and that's accurate. You may like the story, and that's fine, but there isn't some secret Japanese culture aspect to it. The appeal of these shows is not at all difficult to figure out.