It’s worth noting right of the bat that the whole “anime was a mistake”
meme was based on a misattribution of a Hayao Miyazaki quote/interview, so
it’s not as if the whole medium is being condemned by the most notable and
credible geniuses in the field. Well,
not directly, at least. Except
when they kind of are. But not
really! But sort of?
Well, let’s cut right to the heart of the
matter. No, anime was not a
mistake. I know it’s easy to be down on
anything and everything these days and seek solace in the past, but even if
anime has its problems these days, it’s not as if the medium is worthless. Or, if you prefer, DOOOOOOOOOOOMED.
That all said?
MAN, are there some serious issues.
So let’s talk about them -- by which I mean it’s time to vent my
frustration over the severe lack of little brothers. Seriously, anime. Why only little sisters?
Pffft. Little brothers can be cute, too.
I’ll be upfront: I don’t watch every anime every
season. Maybe one or two, but these days
I’m more likely to watch Kamen Rider or
some Sentai fare (or more frequently, the LPs of guys like the Super Best
Friends) than some good ol’ Japanimation.
It’s not that I don’t recognize that there’s good stuff out there -- far
from it -- and I can’t judge how bad the bad shows are if I haven’t watched
them. So A) you should know right now my
opinion isn’t the final verdict on matters, and B) even if what I’ve heard is troublesome, I’d prefer to
reserve judgment.
Still, I do try
to keep a pulse on anime blogs. My three
personal favorites: Moe Sucks, Tenka Seiha, and SeventhStyle. Each of them offers different things, but
each of them has plenty of merits, albeit in their unique styles -- and it’s
thanks to them that I can understand modern-day anime by proxy. But as of late, I’ve been noticing a trend
between the three of them. It’s almost
as if the three blogs are in collusion -- as if they’ve all been comparing
notes and coming to the same conclusions.
Or to put it bluntly, it seems like anime is
driving them insane.
Well, not actually insane; it’s more like they’re
getting fed up with anime. They’re tired
of the failings, the banking on conventions, the inability to offer up anything
substantial or of merit despite the inherent potential and the triumphs of series past.
So you’ve got one guy who rightfully
explains how much one anime screws up, another guy who practically breaks
character to explain
the concept of clichés to people who already understand that (except the
creators of the show, natch), and a third who for weeks on end has found enough
material to point out something wrong with the industry, again,
and again,
and again.
That’s some dedication bordering on madness,
though. I mean, who in their right mind
would feel so wronged by a piece of entertainment that they would spend so much
time trying to point out every little fault and --
Let’s just move on for now.
Sure, you could argue that they (we) are too
easily butthurt about things that don’t really matter in the long run. So what if bloggers complain about this show,
or that concept? They can’t do anything
about it; the show’s already out there in the wild, and by the time they type a
word it’ll have already made it to thousands upon thousands of eyeballs across
the planet. By default, it’s a losing
battle -- an exercise in futility.
On the other hand?
It’s not like they’re trying to
win a war. It’s not like they’re out to
sabotage efforts to produce a show and pull earnings from it. Rather, they’re fighting for ideals. They do what they do to help people
understand that there IS a problem -- or, they do it to give a voice to the
voiceless. To explain, however futilely,
what went wrong and why it needs to stop -- even if it won’t for the
foreseeable future. Their words are
there for the sake of understanding; they rightly feel that people need to know
the issues, and I’d bet on some level they do it to express themselves -- not
just to explain why they like/hate this thing, but for the sake of
catharsis. Release. Freedom.
Purity of the mind.
So. What’s
wrong with anime these days? Let me put
it this way: I was thinking about tossing up a picture that would symbolize
“everything wrong with anime”. But then
I realized that there were too many
pictures to choose from. As such, I’ll
just go for the cop-out answer and repeat myself.
Soul Eater used
to be this.
And then it got spun off into this.
I know I shouldn’t hate on it, but…shit on a stick.
A while back, the Best Friends took time out to talk about Gundam SEED (and its sequel, SEED Destiny) and just how bad it
was. Notably, Pat cut into that
discussion to mention that they all hit a point where they said -- and I quote
-- “fuck this entire medium”. I think
that’s a point that some people are getting close to, if they haven’t reached
it already (anime blogger or otherwise).
I think that’s a point I’m getting
close to -- because even if I don’t watch a lot of anime, the fact that there’s
only about one out there right now that’s a must-watch (JoJo, from start to finish) probably isn’t a good sign.
Also, I haven’t forgotten about Kantai Collection and how utterly
repulsive it was for me. I tapped out
after one episode, and after a point I alternated between having that episode
play in another window while I did other stuff and skipping through whole
minutes of stuff that didn’t matter. I
did eventually take peeks at a much later episode to see how the animation
handled the supposed fleet girl evolutions (through the magic of scene change,
as it turns out), and I read the posts made by other bloggers, but nothing
about that anime suggested that it had a right to exist. For die-hard fans, sure. But even then, to me it felt like it
compressed every modern-day vice -- genuine, stereotypical, imagined, or
otherwise -- into a single series.
There are a lot of grievances I could bring up,
but plenty of them orbit a single idea that anime -- the worst of it, at least
-- keeps pushing: girls are idiots. (And/or babies.)
If anyone were to take the lessons of bottom-tier
anime at face value -- as a one-to-one reproduction of the real world -- then
it would have a hell of a lot of bad lessons to teach about the fairer
sex. Such as:
--Girls are the clumsiest creatures on the planet,
capable of tripping on nothing.
--Girls are hard-wired to turn into blubbering
messes when someone says the password “you’re cute”.
--Girls are either always blushing, or always
ready to blush; in the latter’s case, that rule extends to knees, shoulders,
and breasts, along with weird white splotches.
--Girls only have body types distinguishable by
bust size.
--Girls are always a brush away from indulging in
buried lesbian desires. Failing that,
they will immediately attach themselves to the main character, regardless of
his merit (or lack thereof).
The list goes on and on. I said as much when I talked about Type-0, and it extends to this; sure,
not every anime is guilty of creating characters (girls) like this, but enough
of them are. Enough of them bank on cute
girls doing cute things with no conflict; on undercooked romances that grate
rather than endear; on well-worn archetypes (tsunderes and imoutos all
day erryday) that constantly detract from the story; on characters that aren’t
so much characters as they are mouth-breathers.
I look at Kantai
Collection, and outside of a scant few -- the only ones who seem to
remember they’re fighting against soldiers from the depths of the ocean -- I
don’t even see characters. They can
walk, and they can talk, but they’re a bunch of babies. And anime at large seems to imply that that’s
the end goal. The point everything
should aspire towards.
Characters create opportunities. But when an entire gender is regularly
misrepresented, and that gender sees much more screen time/promotion/existence than the other, then it’s
gonna create some problems. And then
there are plenty of instances where the guys are just as bad, if not worse -- where
they’re rendered as non-entities, or made so ridiculously overpowered that they
might as well be writing the stories themselves. So there’s a problem with characters on all
fronts…but problems with characters aren’t the only ones out there.
Wasted time.
Go-nowhere plots. Padding. Angst on angst on angst. Unwelcome fanservice. Archetypes and clichés played dead
straight. Stories in general that, taken
as a whole, imply that their creators didn’t understand what the fuck they
wanted to do. And even from a visual
standpoint, it seems as if anime is faltering -- lots of shortcuts and
cheapness, which isn’t helped by some less-than-stellar designs (twintails,
anyone?) I don’t want to keep picking on
Type-0, but if I didn’t know any
better, I’d say that Type-0 isn’t a
consequence of every bad anime ever.
It’s a reflection of it -- a symbol of what’s become the new par.
I can’t help but see parallels with the anime
industry and the video game industry (if not every industry, film included, but
let’s leave that out of the discussion for now). More can be done now than ever before, but
either the efficiency can’t match up with the technological advances, OR
there’s just so much work to be done that something has to give. Either way, it leads to this nasty situation
where big budgets cripple the product on every level, the actual story well
among them.
It’s a shame.
There’s so much potential and so many possibilities that can be
explored, yet not enough people can or will -- because doing so means blowing
an investment. So companies are forced
to either go with what works, or not go at all; because of that, there’s no
shortage of derivative fare out there, to say nothing of the problems and nasty
subtext regularly exposed. And then you hear
about poor conditions for
those who actually are a part of the industry, and then you start to
realize it might be a marvel that we get anything at all. Something is better than nothing, right?
That’s not a good situation to be in, but I don’t
need to tell you that. There’s evidence
all over the place; we live in a world where one of the biggest success stories
around right now is Sword Art Online,
a multimedia franchise which adds
in naughty tentacles without a shred of restraint -- despite being
ostensibly about playing MMOs. I’m
already guessing that if you’re reading this, you can name several more
examples…and that wouldn’t even be a full list.
Is it a sign that anime just isn’t what it used to
be? That it’s being geared toward a
different (and paying) audience? That
those who liked it before are just mad because they can’t cling to the
past? That the medium was never really
all that good in the first place, and people are only now realizing it? Hard to say for sure. Answers may vary from person to person, so
based on that alone it’s impossible to come to some ultimate answer. With that understood, it’s obvious that there’s
nowhere near a clear solution to this
problem.
But if you don’t mind, I have a suggestion to
make. Anyone who says anime is dead or
dying needs to shut the hell up and watch Gundam
Build Fighters.
I don’t have any problems admitting that Gundam Build Fighters is one of my
favorite anime series ever. First or
second season, take your pick; it’s a show that has no right to be as good as
it is. And this is despite the fact that
it aired in -- gasp! -- the past year or so.
So that means that even if there are some bad shows out there right now,
that doesn’t mean that there aren’t good ones, either. Far from it.
It only takes a willingness to explore, and not assume that everything
in the present is garbage.
I said earlier that the only anime I consider a
must-watch right now is JoJo, and I
stand by that. (Gotta start powering
through it so I can be ready for Diamond
is Unbreakable.) But here’s the
thing: even if that’s the only one that’s a top priority, that doesn’t mean
there aren’t other shows I’d like to check out…and on top of that, shows that I
want to finish, even if I never touch them.
So off the top of my head, that list includes: Heroman, Kamisama Dolls, Horizon in the Middle of Nowhere, Baka and
Test, Durarara, Ano Natsu de Matteru, Tiger and Bunny, Garo, Rage of Bahamut,
Death Parade, Samurai Flamenco, Gundam Unicorn, Kill la Kill, Little Witch
Academia, Bokura wa Minna Kawaisou, Ninja Slayer, and Gatchaman Crowds. Gotta
represent that Tatsunoko hype...even though the new anime has a completely different sort of Gatchaman, but whatever. Close enough.
Again, it’s exactly like the modern-day game
industry. Yes, there are a lot of
problems. Yes, it shouldn’t be that hard
to find quality products. Yes, there’s a
deluge of awful things that somehow manages to find an audience and succeed and spread like a fungus.
But we haven’t reached a point where it’s time to retreat to the bomb
shelters. There is still good out there
in the world -- and even if the bad would convince you of otherwise, that just
makes it all the more important to hold onto what you cherish.
And that doesn’t just mean “retreat to the safety
of the past, where nothing can hurt you and nostalgia will sing you to
sleep”. Yes, you can like those things
you liked before -- and extensively, at that.
But there’s more out there. There
may be something even better out there.
So be willing to look for it; sift through the garbage so you can find
something that’ll shake you to your core.
Chances are it happened before. And as long as it has -- as long as the
potential still exists, from individual stories to the medium as a whole --
then anime will never be a mistake.
There.
Maybe now I can finally start watching JoJo in earnest. I’ve only
seen like, four episodes as of this writing, and already I can find myself
saying “Yep, this is pretty good.” Also,
that Dio is a real bugabear.
Also, also?
I’ve found it easier to go “MUDAMUDAMUDA” than
“ORAORAORA”. Probably because the former
has more consonants to keep things distinct.
…What?