Forum - View topicWould you step out of your comfort zone?
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yuna49
Posts: 3804 |
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In terms of both subject matter and time slot, I would nominate Uchuu Kyoudai ("Space Brothers") which airs at 7 am on Sunday mornings in Japan as perhaps the most "mainstream" current anime show. The main character is thirty-one, his brother a couple of years younger. Once in a while there is a joke aimed at the adults in the audience as in the opening to episode three, but otherwise it is just an uplifting (no pun intended) story about a misfit guy who wants to join his brother and become a Japanese astronaut.
This show routinely draws an audience rating in the threes, about double the viewership for most late-night offerings. Chihayafuru, as an example, aired at about 1:00 am on Wednesday mornings and was normally viewed in about 1.5-2.0% of television households. Like many shows its final episode had the largest audience, 3.3%. |
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ikillchicken
Posts: 7272 Location: Vancouver |
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You're contradicting yourself. A minute ago you insisted that... "There are always a few quality series every year. Some years are not as good as others, but many anime fans, I notice, always reach a point where they just get cynical about everything." So which is it? You really can't have it both ways. You can't make objective claims that I'm wrong and that there are quality series with one breath and then claim that quality is subjective with the next. Either there are, in fact, high quality shows every year and I just can't appreciate them because I'm cynical/biased/whatever OR quality is in the eye of the beholder and my subjective opinion that there is less of it these days is just as valid as yours to the contrary.
Absolute nonsense. Being intelligent and open minded enough to simply appreciate quality without being tied to any particular genre is not a bad thing and really has nothing to do with personality. In fact, anyone who defines their personality as a product of "what type of shows I like" has little of it. |
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nobahn
Subscriber
Posts: 5120 |
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For whatever it may be worth, I am a fan of both Citizen Kane and Pulp Fiction..... |
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Bonham
Posts: 419 Location: NYC |
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I really haven't watched anywhere as much anime as I did four years (although I've been watching more recently), but I've felt for a while that 2007 was the end of a fun ride. The anime bubble that had been building seemed to burst with 2008 or 2009. Shows that wouldn't get produced in poorer economic, or just experimental works that clearly inspired by everything but anime* seem to be come out throughout the last decade. There was a chart posted in an old thread where it showed the overall number of anime series produced each year for the past two decades, and I recall the time from 2003 to 2007 (give or take a few years) seem to be aberrations in the big picture. In less words: the economy, due to the worldwide economic recession, change in media (DVD not selling as well, introduction of Blu-ray, etc.) and other factors have dictated that it's not financially sensible to spend money on a lot shows that (likely) won't make a profit.** There are still plenty of quality shows being made. There have been plenty of good anime series that have come out in past four/five/whatever years. But personally, there haven't been any series, with a few exceptions (for me, that would be Madoka Magica and Kids on the Slope), that I would consider truly excellent/great. That's my primary issue. I admit that I still need to catch up on a few -- dtm42 has mentioned some in a previous post -- but I'm not sure how many unwatched series have really tried for something different.
I can attest to this. I've tended to watch my favorite series at least couple years after they come out -- the exceptions to this are in 2007. A lot of the series I was into as a pre-teen and young teenager -- which would include Toonami and [adult swim], as TitanXL mentions -- really have not held up well. Some others have stayed the same, while a few have improved. It's a matter of changing (and for some, maturing) tastes. It also doesn't help that, since studying film in college, the world of entertainment has really opened in a big way. My tastes and standards have changed along with it. I'll admit it's arguably an unfair comparison. Live-action film isn't restricted to a very slow development of 40 year in one country, typically catering to a very niche audience with little interest in different or challenging works. It's a difference of a century and an amazing amount of countries contributing to world cinema.*** Yet at the same time, I don't think it's ridiculous to want high quality anime series and films in the face of such economic demands. A lot of my favorite anime series and films can be compared in quality to the best of live-action film and television, so it's certainly not as though those expectations cannot be met -- it's just that they often aren't. *This is a bit of an exaggeration, but I feel that a lot of anime is too insular. This isn't a wish for anime to be "more Western" or whatever nonsense, but rather to take influences (animation, film, novels, music, painting) outside of anime. Miyazaki, Takahata, Anno, Ikuhara, Hamasaki, Nakamura (both Ryutaro and Kenji), Hosoda, Yuasa, Kamiyama, etc. are directors that don't confine themselves to that bubble. But they are exceptions to all of this. A lot of anime seems to be predominantly influenced by other anime, which just seems to create incestuous creativity. I liken the effect to Tarantino's films where his works (and the man himself) seems to be about nothing but films and references/homages to them. (Mind you, I really do like Pulp Fiction and Jackie Brown a lot, and feel that Death Proof is his only "bad" film, so I'm actually a fan.) **Of course, the irony here is with some outliers. Mononoke, Kenji Nakamura's consensus masterpiece, is also his best-selling title (and one of the best-selling noitamina shows ever). Everything he's done since then (Trapeze, [C], Tsuritama) has been a step down, and is far less unique and experimental than what he was doing in Mononoke. I feel the same applies to Yuasa's work, as well... ***Not that anyone cares, but I do like Citizen Kane a lot, as well as Vertigo. |
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dtm42
Posts: 14084 Location: currently stalking my waifu |
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Shows don't have to try something different to be good. A simple story told well can still be be effective. Usagi Drop and Chihayafuru don't do anything all that new, they just tell their respective stories fantastically well using great casts. There's virtue in focusing on the basics and getting them right. Last edited by dtm42 on Sun Sep 16, 2012 9:25 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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Bonham
Posts: 419 Location: NYC |
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Oh don't get me wrong, I like a lot of things that are "conventional" and "simple." (Edit: Kids on the Slope is a recent example of that, and at its core Madoka Magica is reaffirmation of the magical girl genre.) But an industry also needs variety to really thrive. I wouldn't want it all the time, but every year or so I wouldn't mind if anime broke out and produced something new/different like what American television does with The Wire, Deadwood, Mad Men, etc. |
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The Third Doctor
Posts: 70 |
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This is basically my take. There are tons of old titles I have not seen. |
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ikillchicken
Posts: 7272 Location: Vancouver |
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Ah yes. I was actually the one that posted that and you're correct. We basically saw the quantity of anime steadily increase from the early 2000s up until 2007 and which point it went into decline. (Although I think we've seen positive growth since 2010). This is pretty much exactly in line with conventional wisdom that the anime boom began in the early 2000s as anime exploded in popularity (due in no small part to that insanely popular first wave of AdultSwim anime) and eventually burst in late 2007/early 2008 as Geneon/ADV melted down.
For what it's worth, I really really recommend you check out Kaiba and/or House of Five Leaves if you haven't already. Those two and Madoka are the only post 2007 series I really felt were truly excellent.* *Of the stuff I've seen anyway. Again, I have a pretty big backlog.
Yes, I'd agree with that completely...
...I'm not entirely sure about this comparison however. There's a fairly significant difference between being being influenced (exclusively) by other anime/film and being about anime/film. The prior tends to be excessively derivative and just generally apes what has already been done but the latter actually tries to say something about the medium and examine aspects of it. Meanwhile, homage I suppose falls somewhere in between, more deliberately making reference rather than just generally mimicking but without really actually saying anything. I'd agree that limited influence tends to lead to stagnation and that's a major problem in anime. I'd also agree that, while homage and reference can be fun and I think have their place, they aren't usually excessively creative. Being "about" anime/film on the other hand I view as a positive thing. I mean, it could be a negative in so far as anything can be a negative if done in overabundance but otherwise I wouldn't lump it in with the other two. |
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Bonham
Posts: 419 Location: NYC |
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Right. And really, I can't necessarily blame the anime studios and production committees too much. When times are tough, why stick your neck out when you can just produce safer titles?
I agree with the overall point, even though I was a bit murky in my statements on Tarantino. I would say the latter point of your first sentence primarily applies to Inglourious Basterds, which seems to be his first real step in an original screenplay to really saying something about film and its relationship to society. (Jackie Brown is adapted from a novel, iirc.) His other films deal with plenty of themes (redemption, loyalty, motherhood, greed, etc.) but I don't really get a sense of who Tarantino is as a person outside of how much he loves film. (Which is necessarily a negative, but for me it leaves his stuff kinda empty once I get past his skill of being able to assemble a collage of disparate film ideas and moments into a cohesive, accessible plot.) I find the meta-fictional moments of Godard's '60s films more thoughtful (even if his movies are not as conventionally entertaining), and even some of the more meta moments in Hollywood studio era films to be more interesting (two favorite examples being Rear Window and The Lady Eve). But that's neither here nor there as far as the topic is concerned, even though I'm up for continuing it, if you want.
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TitanXL
Posts: 4036 |
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By this logic K-ON is more mainstream than Dragonball or Fairy Tail due to it's design and execution, since it's more 'family friendly' and has a more accessible execution to it. (As if 'family friendly' means much in this instance. Watching a guy get cut in half and his blood spill out all over the place in Detective Conan is family friendly after all) There's quite a lot of buzzwords being thrown around here in generalizations which kind of defeats the whole purpose of wanting a specific type of anime. What exactly is a 'typical otaku late night anime' that these shows aren't like? Outlaw Star? Kuroko no Basuke? Persona 4? K-ON? Queens Blade? They're all late-night otaku series, but they're clearly not the same, so who says those two don't belong in this list either? 'Otaku anime' is one of the most grossly misused terms here. Kind of funny, given the whole 'stepping out of your comfort zone' the topic was originally about, but we're all so quick to shoehorn labels onto everything.
Given it's based on a visual novel, you can't really say you're surprised it might have some 'otaku elements' to it. |
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dtm42
Posts: 14084 Location: currently stalking my waifu |
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Well, take a look in the mirror, because you're so quick to shoehorn Chihayafuru and Usagi Drop in with other late-night Anime just because of the timeslot in which they aired. You say that timeslot doesn't matter and yet you claimed that the two shows weren't mainstream just because of their timeslots. But please, keep contradicting yourself. It makes it easier to rebut your arguments. |
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naninanino
Posts: 680 |
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There is however, a way how people should not be open minded. Like that you shouldn't pretend you like a show just because of courtesy. That's just a big waste of time and only worth it for the people who really enjoy meta-watching activites, like talking about it in forums, writing reviews or blogging. Of course it is reasonable that something like that could happen a few times when experimenting around, but the purpose of experimenting is to learn and not just growing your watching list. In a way, expanding your horizons can even make you more specialized once you can understand and accept the things you like (or don't like). |
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Animegomaniac
Posts: 4070 |
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So you must pray to the deity of your choosing that they don't make the second season followup? As for me, the original Bunny Drop made my skin crawl and my face twist. Prior to the this series, I didn't even know I had lines that couldn't be crossed. And if the producers just wanted to do this kind of heartwarming "man-child rasies girl child" story, there are other titles that are less spoiler[incesty]. The topic thread isn't about that kind of comfort zone though. I guess I have lower standards and as long as I get my money's worth {I only watch new subbed anime free through Hulu so my overhead's very low. Zero, really.}, I'm fine with the quality. Binbogama-ga! is a fantastically fun show, as well as Future Diary and I'm enjoying Accel World and Lagrange {now that I finally figured out the subtitles are controlled through the CC function}. The Anime Network offerings are almost unwatchable, unfortunately; They're still getting the hang of the "posting shows so people can watch them" aspect of posting shows so people can watch them. Even with all that, I liked Another and Waiting in the Summer. I'm still waiting for the missing episodes of Listen to Me, I'm Your Father! as well as other shows of theirs to be finished if not updated. At all, even. Why only Hulu? I've been using the service since it started and I'd rather stick to series that have the greatest potential for physical releases. |
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dragoneyes001
Posts: 873 |
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I also have no "my anime" why? because listing even a fraction of the three tera-bites of anime I have on file or the countless series I've watched but don't have on hand would become a full time job. as for steins gate found it an annoying series the running jokes were so forced as to be pitiful the characters were nearly as empty as eden of the east's. fate zero was a remake of a popular series which falls under the OP's "safe for production" criteria. usagi drop was an excellent series not only for the style of animation used but the story had depth however simplistic a young childs life would be deemed. my personal criteria is pretty simple I want to be entertained with a series. doesn't mater what setting. or character type or type like action drama comedy...etc.. if they follow or copy "the format" so to speak but the writing is well done to my tastes I wont care that its a format. its the series who not only follow the rubber stamp method and have weak writing that I toss to the side. in the last few years the writers seem to be stuck trying to add psychological depth to everything they touch (which in most cases turns the series to garbage) its pathetic when characters in grade school are pondering psychology's they wouldn't even know about before university but continuity aside only a few writers are any good at that aspect of writing most simply end up having to use cheap shortcuts out of the holes they dig in the story lines. |
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Chagen46
Posts: 4377 |
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Uhhhhh...no, it wasn't. Fate/Zero is a canon prequel to Fate/Stay Night, not a remake. |
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