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I wouldn’t outwardly say that I hate anime but I definitely assume the worst when I hear a show is one. I automatically start thinking it’s going to be style over substance with unnecessarily long fight scenes, unrelatable characters, gross sexualization of female characters (if not child characters), and awkward dubs.
There are obviously exceptions to this. Serial Experiments Lain was my PFP here on Lemmy for a while and it’s one of my favorite shows ever. Within the past month I binged all of Chainsaw Man in two nights and thought it was great. But it was great in spite of the fact that it’s also an anime
Sorry, I know that this is a thread for people who dislike anime to voice their reasons, but do you mind some rec? Based on what you said, I feel like you’d enjoy Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood quite a bit:
- there’s a lot of substance in FMA:B in the theme, worldbuilding, character interactions.
- there are fight scenes but they never overstay their welcome. They don’t feel tiring like in Dragon Ball Z or similar.
- characters are relatable. For example, the two protags fuck it up big time, right at the start, and yet can you really blame them? You’d probably do the same in their situation.
- there’s practically no sexualisation of female characters. Arguably only one of the villains, but that’s done for characterisation and it would feel off otherwise, it isn’t there for fanservice.
[Note: I’m not recommending this to change your views or some crap like that, it’s just that as I was reading your list of issues I was thinking “true that… wait, FMA:B doesn’t do it!”]
To be fair,
spoiler
How else would you portray Lust if not hyper-sexualized?
+1 for FMA: Brotherhood though, that shit slaps and given the above commenter’s statement I also think they’d like it
may i recommend monster. its 76 eps and more a murder mystery with a hitchcock vibe.
edit - the dub is really good but a little harder to find…
Monster is so fucking good.
i just finished my third viewing and my wife’s first… she was enthralled and I keep noticing small details that come back later… I wish it was more well known…
Oversexualization. Panty shots, ass shots, boob physics, the same old jokes from the ‘80s about a guy “accidentally” groping a woman, guys peeping into a girls’ space, suggestive poses, barely-disguised fetishes (included, but not limited to, harems, incest and pedophilia).
It got to the point where a friend would recommend an anime, I’d watch it, and walk away halfway through the first or second episode because it was just unbearable. Friends would tell me to turn a blind eye, but why the fuck should I put up with sexualizing minors in a show? I’d rather spend my time doing something that doesn’t make me feel sick.
It also attracts the wrong kind of audience. Since the medium is so keen to produce oversexualized content, that’s all people look for and talk about. Any anime discussion thread degenerates into gross memes about “flat is justice”, “twincest is wincest”, people patting each other in the shoulder while calling the other “man of culture” for sharing their kinks, and shit like that. It’s so extenuating that, back when I was interested in the medium, I still actively refrained from interacting with fellow fans because I felt grossed out by them. Fun fact, I had a female classmate back in highschool who was interested in anime, and I thought that I could find common grounds with her, but no, it was the same thing, just reversed (she would only watch anime with sexualised boys).
The medium also forgot what its name stands for. I haven’t seen “animation” in “anime” in years. It’s just still frames and more still frames and whenever there’s an action sequence, the characters will constantly interrupt them to explain or think about the thing that I’m already watching and needs no explanation, or having flashback sequences, because it’s cheaper to animate. The fact that Ghost in the Shell and Akira from thirty years ago had better and more fluid animation than the shit they produce now is just sad.
I agree with you, but I have to say that sexualization in anime rarely comes as a surprise. Its usually clear from the very first second that an anime has zero substance beside fanservice.
I’d say there’s a right way to do sexualization and a wrong way, 99% of the time it’s done the wrong way. The wrong way would be all those panty shots, underskirts etc. But take a character like Faye from Cowboy Bebop, while her being all sexed up is part of her character, it does not take away from her position on the raster. She’s essentially a artifact of the 90’s rapid evolvement of western and eastern fashion. This is supported by the fact that she has a completely new outfit in almost every episode, an animation effort that you rarely see in modern anime. Furthermore the whole art style of Cowboy Bebop is very reminiscent of fashion illustration, meaning long legs and extremely thin bodies.
I’d say this is what led to the current fan service situation in the first place. People used to think “we can’t show somebody with this outfit on film, but we can on paper”. The supermodel lookalike characters have become a trope in 90’s anime and over the last 3 decades have been distilled to just their sexiness, not their actual cultural meaning.
If you’d like to give it a shot, I’ve found bocchi the rock to be a wonderful story about an introverted high schooler looking to join a band to meet people that has pretty much no sexualization at all.
100% agree with your points and would onley add that WHY THE FUCK would anyone draw a child and say that she is actualy 1000 years old. Almost all the top season anime was harem, pedophilia. Cant stand it, I cant even count how many good concepts were ruined by these sick “kinks”.
The sexualization is to a point where I genuinely think lower of someone if I find out they like anime. Barely closeted pedos, the lot of them.
While I don’t agree, I used to spend a lot of time on /r/OnePunchMan. OPN is kinda a gag anime in that it plays on many stereotypes to comedic effect. One of the main characters is a woman that is very petite and didn’t grow up, and is also one of the most powerful heroes - alongside her sister who…did grow up.
The reason I mention it is because that sub is 90% suggestive fan art of the girl that the show literally points out looks like a child. It’s a trope on the “sexualised minor” thing, but they’re fucking falling for it again! When you call them out for noncing, they argue “she has adult features” or “she’s in her twenties”.
I’m also an avid lurker of r/onepunchman and I have to say, Tatsumaki fanart is fairly tame compared to Fubuki. Fubuki is also used in the exact same way as Faye in Bebop. Her sexiness is the antithesis to the main characters general indifference. Her being on most of the mangas cover art sporting different outfits in each is another parallel to that. She’s essentially the artists creative outlet for fashion. As for Tatsumaki, Murata (the artist) himself, said that he doesn’t really like drawing petite women, but her appearance is in theme with the rest of the manga, being that the weak looking characters are usually the strongest.
Does her looking like that drive the sales up? Sure.
Does it taken away from the story? No.
That’s why the straight up rapey approach from Ugly Fuehrer during the Monster Association arc was so impactful, because beside her sexualized outfit she is usually treated respectfully by the other characters.
What i mean by “taking away from the story” is if another anime has a girl in a small skirt face a tentacle monster, oh jeez, I wonder what will happen next? This is a story that is being told 100s of times and doesn’t have to be told again. That I completely agree on.
I’d say One Punch Man, is a good example of how to use attractive characters to attract viewers, given that men and women are represented equally attractive and especially the men with a large variety of bodytypes. Saying that Tatsumaki is the only character looking like that and being sexed up is a bad thing should also imply that the Fat Guys superpower being able to eat everything, or Speed-O-Sonic the Twink Ninja wearing skinthight spandex is equally bad. It’s just packaging and appearance.
The problem is that most other anime’s/mangas have only packaging with not character behind it. The fact that people in the subreddit are mostly discussing power levels, possible theories, story implications, etc.instead of simply drooling over the women means that the characters and story is fleshed out enough that the fan service is beside the point. You usually won’t find whole communities like that for run of the mill echi series with zero dept.
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I don’t think people straight up hate anime, nobody is going to pick up a remote and turn of the TV if they see somebody else watching it and angrily leave the room.
It’s just, for the most part (and this is also true for non-animated movies or series), you’ve seen one you’ve seen them all.
There are only so many times you can tell the story of boring guy gets put in fantasy land and is not boring anymore, or mysterious things happen at school and the afterschool mystery club has to solve them.
So what do you do? You cling to what you know is good. Studios, directors, etc. If Miyazaki makes an anime movie you watch it, if Quentin Terentino makes an action movie you watch it. This is also partially why anime’s are less popular than mainstream movies and series. You can watch a movie solely because you like an actor/actress, regardless of whether they play the same character or somebody else. In anime, each new series has a new set of characters, so each time a new personal connection has to be built.
Other than that, a good measure of “is this worth my time?” is pop cultural representation. Rule of thumb, if an anime spawns memes, it’s usually half decent.
But just like with movies and series, there are timeless classics. Like, who hasn’t seen or at least heard of Cowboy Bebop, Evangelion, Trigun, Dragon Ball Z, etc… Even my parents know Pokemon. Those have been around for so long and been shown on mainstream western channels during prime time slots, that they were impossible to miss. I think people who aren’t familiar with those are just not that interested in motion picture as a whole, regardless how its presented.
I’d say without overeaching, anime’s can be put in just a few categories:
- Artistic, Philosophical, Experimental, Parodies: Those are your Miyazaki films, Ghost in the Shell, Evangelion, One Punch Man, Full Metal Alchemist, Attack on Titan, etc.
- Long running: Like, Pokemon, One Piece, Naruto, Dragon Ball, the Fate Series
- Trying to sell you something: Again Pokémon, Yu-Gi-Oh, Gundam, Beyblade, etc.
- Mass produced trash: All the ones where the title spreads 3 lines and tells you 90% of the story
- Otaku soap operas: The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya, the Monogatari series, Nagatoro, Komi-San
But those categories are not evenly spread in appeal, quality and quantity. While the first 2 categories have barely any presence but arguably the most cultural impact, the later ones have the most presence but are individually culturally insignificant. But quality is harder to judge than quantity is to see. So people tend to see the mass produced trash and ignore the good stuff that is being overshadowed. With classical film, a movies intention can usually be discerned with just one look, if for example a modern movie is black and white, its usually artistic. But looking at things like Evangelion, or the Ghost in the Shell Series, you couldn’t guess the deep philosophical implications on first glance. People tend to see cutesy anime art style and associate it with either the mass produced trash, or shows made for children. What makes a film/series good is the intention and execution, if it happens to be animated this usually doesn’t take away from the underlying message. See old animated Disney Movies - Lilo and Stich is about Family Values, Monetary Struggles, Loss and Friendship. Adult topics packed in a medium that both children and their parents can enjoy.
People tend to hate anime for the same reason they hate superhero movies, they see the overarching medium, but not the individual pieces. You can’t compare the significance of Iron Man 1 with Thor 2, or Infinity War with The Marvels, some of these movies are good in a vacuum, without the whole Cinematic Universe attached to them. Same goes for anime, some are simply good stories regardless of them being animated.
This needs to be higher up. Really well put
Thank you.
I can’t stand fight scenes where people are flying through the air at each other doing stupid poses and making sounds. They usually have some special power, and it’s all so meh.
I really liked Pantheon and then cringed when it resorted to that near their end. There’s lots of exceptions, like princess mononoke.
It’s weird that the Japan - the country which arguably had the most positive global influence on how fight scenes are filmed and choreographed in movies has had a complete devolution in fight scenes in animation.
Like look at this fight scene from Ghost in the Shell (1995). Look how calm and harmonic it is 99% of the time, followed by quick bursts of action.
Or this scene from Evangelion (1999), Bebop (1998), Hellsing (1999).
There are some memorable modern fights that push the envelope of animation in modern anime like, Madara Uchia from Naruto (2016), Mob Psycho 100 (2019) or Castlevainia (2021).
But overall modern anime fights are composed mostly of flying, still images screaming “HEYAAA”, internal monologues and 3D explosions.
One Punch Man mercilessly made fun of these things… one hero gets clocked one sentence into his “on the fly plan” mid-fight monologue.
I don’t but I hate anime that rely on awful tropes like exploiting underage girls or the typical sister incest stuff (I would say brother-sister but this also applies to sister-sister)
I also find powerfantasy isekais boring
The Isekai thing is so fucking played out, Its possibly the laziest writing trope ever.
Funnily the only Isekai that was somewhat interesting and realistic “Drifters” still doesn’t have a season 2. It’s basically powerful and influential political figures and warriors from random time periods get transported into a medieval fantasy world after their death. All I want is to see is WW2 anime Hitler take over a fantasy kingdom and get killed by Ninjas, is that to much to ask for? It’s realistic in the sense that the main characters are 10 minutes into a fantasy land with magic and beautiful nature and of course they’re already started making guns and bombs.
I disagree. It can be made good. Good examples are Overlord and jobless reincarnation.
Just because it can be done well doesnt mean it isn’t a shortcut around good writing for a LOT of these stories.
It hands the writer a blank cheque for exposition and worldbuilding because the main character needs to have everything explained to them or figure everything out and it excuses any form of set up as to the how and why the character is in this situation.
Because most of it uses overly simplistic characters. There’s no depth to them. They’re good because they’re good, they’re bad because they’re bad.
No nuance!
The stories are overly simplistic too.
Not all of them are like this, but enough of them are that I’m just tired of the genre.
i love One Punch Man because it exists to make fun of this exact story style.
… while making its story exactly the style they are making fun of in the most boring way possible. feels like watching a regular shonnen.
To be honest, that sounds exactly like american comics/films.
Why is he bad? Because he hates everything!!
Kill him, he’s bad!!
He’s good. Why? He killed guy that is bad!
Etc.
Gotta pander to the masses and exhausted people I guess.
Most western cartoons are self contained episodes tho, while there is a general recurring antagonist, the conflict has to arise, develop and be resolved within the same episode. Very rarely you get multi episode arcs. Sometimes you get overarching storylines as a driving force that span whole seasons, but the main conflicts remain episodic. Spongebob is still working in the Crusty Crab by the end of the show, Kim Possible is still fighting Dr.Draken and Shego by the end of the series, Homer is still working in a Nuclear Powerplant, etc…
Anime is different in that regard because the story is laid out from start to finish usually over the course of 10-20 episodes. Whether the story has actual substance is a different question. But the thing is, anime can get away with an episode were nothing happens as long as it drives the plot towards a conclusion. But a children’s cartoon where for a full episode nothing interesting happens usually won’t even leave the storyboard.
That’s why “filler episodes” are usually an eastern anime instead if a western cartoon trope.
And most of those episodic shows are just there for the humour. They don’t have an arc because they’re just there to make fun of something for 20 minutes and move on.
Yep, there are a ton of those too.
I have to agree with you. That is a very common trope in anime, sometimes they deserve it but most of the time they are Mary Sues, and it rankles me.
That being said, it’s escapism, it’s fun, it’s like, what would I envision heaven to be like.
That being said, I do wish writers would focus more on having actual problems to solve and that there would be real stakes in the storyline for the main characters to overcome where there is a real risk of loss.
Being OP is super fun for one season but when season 2 rolls around it’s not fun anymore.
I disagree with you but you answered the question, so take your upvote.
Still, anime is just a medium, and there is wide variety of content, some with simplistic characters, and some without.
Oh for sure, there’s some really great ones that don’t fit my generalisation.
The problem is that too many do fit it. And all the biggest ones seem to.
Anyways, you’re right.
If you draw women like children, and then give them high pitched voices, like children, and have them act girlish and foolish like pre-teen girls, and then sexualize them…There is something very very fucking wrong with you. Anime “purists” can deny it all they want, but it’s inherently tied in/related to fake waifu girlfriends and lonely neckbeards drawing naked waifus all over DeviantArt.
It’s skeevy as shit and I refuse to pretend otherwise.
I think it depends on the genre you watch of Anime. Watch berserker (if you can stomach it, cuz it’s really fucked up in a different way) or the new terminator zero anime on Netflix. There’s also a ton of other anime like that as well.
The facial expressions and the constant noises. It’s like a food dish with too much salt, doesn’t matter what the other flavor is once you decide you can’t stand the overpowering vibe of the thing.
I’ve never heard it described better in my opinion. It’s perfectly fine for others, but for many it’s simply too overpowering.
Not enough propane or propane accessories (except for King of the Hill, best anime ever).
Do you prefer the dub or sub of propane genesis evangelion?
I would pay good money for an alternate dub track of KOTH by a voiceover cast with strong Japanese accents, reading Japanglish approximations of the original script with same inflections they’d use if it was a standard anime.
Boomhauer alone would be a fucking blast.
Not quite your ask, but there’s a Japanese dub floating around somewhere…There are a few links in the comments.
Unfortunately boomhauer didn’t carry over well.
This is close enough. Thank you!
I generally don’t talk about it, but because you asked, I have seen a lot of anime and hate most of it. I have seen Hellsing, Hellsing Ultimate, about 9/10 of the OG run of Fullmetal Alchemist, a lot of Ranma 1/2, Serial Experiments Lain, Akira, some Death Note, La Blue Girl, some tennis one I can’t remember the name of, Castlevania, a few Studio Ghibli movies, Attack on Titan S1 & 2, random episodes of Samurai Pizza Cats, all of One Punch Man, Interspecies Reviewers, Slayers, some DiC Sailor Moon, some early Pokemon, and a few Dragonball, YuGiOh, Digimon, and Naruto episodes.
I don’t count early GI Joe or Transformers even though they’re technically anime, but I didn’t like those either.
Of those, I liked Interspecies Reviewers, about 1.5 seasons of OPM, 1 season of Castlevania, and Hellsing Abridged (because it’s fucking hilarious).
Here’s a random top 10 of reasons:
- Anime has a horrible habit of having a great premise, a lot of repeated setup, and then zero payoff followed by a new season escalating with the same. In short, great at premise, poor at developing it into a story. And endings? They have no idea how to end a series except for fighting bigger bad guys…
- And that’s IF they can even be arsed to finish a series. I’m aware of the timeframe dynamic between manga and anime. It fucked over Game of Thrones too. Maybe we just agree not to start a show before the source material is done?
- Much of the animation looks abysmal and the “serious” ones seem to have an awful habit of just… panning over a background or frozen characters in a scene for fucking ever to fill time. I made note of this during Serial Experiments Lain to my friend who was making me watch it and it basically ruined the show for him. It completely wrecked the pacing and was done CONSTANTLY. There were 45 second pans (which I would start audibly counting after 10 seconds) while the main character just monologued “I’m 12 and this is deep” bullshit that was nearly completely disconnected from the plot. There was no reason to do this. Even recent shows like Castlevania did this.
- Shit just happens that doesn’t make any sense in context of the world they’ve set up. This is endemic from anime I’ve seen. Anime fans think that randomness is “creative” instead of just “throwing shit at a screen because the writer had a fever dream and it doesn’t matter at all if it makes any fucking sense”. Spirited Away is basically just this. No, randomness is not creativity, Katy the Penguin of Doom.
- They’re just a different set of tropes than American cartoons, many of which I find to be nonsensical, twee, or cringe-inducing. Bloody nose when you get a boner trope, I’m looking at you.
- I fucking hate Japanese voice acting (and often for the most part the Americans who dub it, especially in kids shows). This started when Sailor Moon came over and I wanted to kill everyone in the immediate vicinity whenever most of the characters spoke. That shrill panic screaming that was in SM and Pokemon was awful.
- In the same vein, I also can’t stand constant “reaction sounds”. Someone saying something mildly surprising that you should have easily realized 10 episodes ago isn’t an excuse to stare blankly and make an “AH”, “OH”, or “UH” noise (sometimes followed by a small choking sound) roughly four hundred times per episode. Humans don’t do this.
- They make movies that just do random shit and don’t have anything to do with the show (if not outright contradict the show). Dragonball is especially notorious for this.
- A really weird number of them throw in Nazis seemingly at random, appropriate time and setting be damned. Need a bad guy? Fucking Nazis!
- I am constantly inundated with friends that like anime telling me that I should watch whatever their new anime obsession is despite it conforming to 3/4 of bad things on this list because obviously I just haven’t watched the right anime.
Considering most anime is low effort schlock that contains episodic plots that get nowhere (and even linear narratives tend to progress at the speed of molasses), if somebody tells me they “like anime” without elaborating, I think less of them then if they told me they “like music.”
Not in the “hate” camp, but I’m very picky with anime. I recognize it’s a wide genre with tons of legitimately great productions.
There’s a lot of anime stuff that just irritates me for reasons I’ve not been able to put into words other than “it makes me cringe from embarrassment.” Female characters that are less an interesting or fun character and more like an endless void of cutesy vibes and nothing more, the anime pratfalls to punctuate a joke, weird creepy stuff towards women, laughably edgy characters, changing art styles to something tonally clashing for comedic effect (only example I know off the top of my head is in Hellsing Ultimate, which I’ll admit I’ve only seen in the form of the abridged series), overtly blatant fan service, all the characters being teenagers, etc. Tropes like these tend to irritate me to the point of getting in the way of my enjoyment of a show and it kills a lot of anime for me.
Motherfucker preach!
I like some Anime because I get bored with Hollywood, and I really just want something different, I hate most anime because the 16yo boy who is thrust into the role of the hero surrounded by attractive half naked women with huge tits and is constantly embarrassed but yet somehow manages to constantly save the day because reasons is even more played out than the NCIS writing room.
Tropes, filler, sexualization, the need to categorize or name things and stick to that strict hierarchy (ie. power levels), and laat but not least, the surrounding culture. Probably some other stuff I’m not thinking of as well.
Notably, the anime which doesn’t include these problems can reach some pretty high highs, because anime excels at motion and emotion.
I get asked this question a lot, because I love many traditional Japanese cultures, but not anime. First of all, I don’t hate it, I still respect it, but it’s simply not my cup of tea.
I often find it to be overstimulating and sexualized. someone said it’s like food with too much salt, that perfectly describes it for me. It’s just too over the top sometimes. The sexualization is also off putting. It’s a constant distraction from the plot and undermines the rest of the characters and story.
I also don’t like the voice acting style, where it is again overbearing, especially for women characters. That’s not what people sound like. It’s way too high pitched and trying way too hard to sound “cute”.
I never got into it and people online make it seem cringy. I know there’s probably good stuff out there but weebs are just so weird to me. Love Studio Ghibli and Akira. And used to love Dragon Ball Z and Pokemon - but as an adult never got into the shows.
I am a massive anime watcher and I have this problem too. I used to binge watch a lot of shows, but as I’ve grown older I find I can’t project myself onto the characters anymore and I can’t relate to any of them. There is a severe drought of adult-targeted shows that aren’t pornographic or tragedy/horror in nature. It’s like adults are not interesting unless they are sexed up or murdered.
A lot of the good stuff has already been adapted (most anime are adaptations of some form of light novel or comic book), so in the past few years the production studios have been scraping the bottom of the barrel just to release something. It has resulted in a higher than average set of subpar works every season (3 months, 12 or 13 episodes).
I hadn’t made this connection, but you hit the nail on the head. I’m a little past the point where I’m identifying with the local high school bully victim. In my own analysis, I concluded that much of the problem with the vast majority of modern anime is what comes across as very awkward pacing. At least that’s the way it seems from an American point of view such as my own, I can’t speak for anyone else. I see that theme across many many series that I’m unable to finish after starting. I feel like 10, 15, 20 years ago it was it was very different, in terms of the stories that were told, how they were told, and how they were paced. And plotting was either more universal, or more accessible to a western audience than I feel much of what is put out today is.
Same. I have very cautiously taken some recommendations from my brother and liked them. But for every one I liked, there were 100 I didn’t and the online weirdos who got way too intense about them.
