Is it just me, or has the overall quality of anime decreased horribly in the last four or so years? I used to watch anime all the time, loving the thoughtfulness of series like Lain, NeiA_7, RahXephon and such, and avoiding series like DBZ... but these days, every series which even slightly catches my attention seems so generic and just... stupid. I don't think this is me just 'growing out' of the medium, as I still adore the series of old, but why is none of the 'fresh' stuff appealing? I took one look at Naruto and scoffed, got bored of Shinobuden in two episodes, and was disgusted by the stupidity of many other series out there.
Who agree's with me, and who thinks I'm just being a prude?
RahXephon, Lain and Utena will always be my favourites.
Lain: I watched 2 eps, felt asleep. F---
NieA_7: I forced myself to watch it to the end in the hope it would pick up speed - it didn't. Niea was more annoying than amusing. Nothing explained. D-
RahXephon: confused and confusing meaningless wander. One great episode with the blue-blooded runaway girl. Ending doesn't resolve the important questions. C+
Utena: I tried to follow for a few episodes but gave up. I couldn't care less for any of the characters. C-
This season:
GunBuster2 ep1: great, I watched it 3 times.
School Rumble: great, watched ep3 3-4 times (when she throws love letters.)
Grenadier: great, I can't wait for the subs so I watch the raws as soon as they are out + the subs when they are out.
Rozen Maiden: ep1 shows promise.
Bleach: great but I was expecting greater.
Last season:
DearS: was very good.
Aishiteruze Baby: some very nice episodes.
Keroro Gunsou: insanely great.
Melody of Oblivion: very good.
Samurai Champloo: good.
Full Metal Alchemist: good.
Hi no Tori: was okay.
Midori no Hibi: good.
And so on and on.
In summary, they are great shows today out there.
And a load of crap shows too.
Problem is, what I consider great may be viewed as crap by some other people.
Solution: maybe in some of that crap, there are shows those other people think are great. ^_^
From that list, an example.
>Full Metal Alchemist.
>Midori No Hibi
I have mixed feelings for MariMite. Some eps were good to very good, some were very boring (for me). But the SD shorts were all great.
Some episodes of the second season of Marimite were bad. You could feel that in some episodes the creators just wanted to get done with with some plot from the novels / manga, so they crammed it into one episode. But all in all Marimite is a very enjoyable series.
Here's a question: have you actually seen as many series that aired in Japan in 1998 (when Serial Experiments Lain first aired) as you have of those that aired in 2003/2004?
>Felt like Yet Another Random Shounen Anime right from the first five episodes I watched.
I've seen quite a number of series from 1998, and with a very few exceptions, they sucked horribly. Lain and Utena are almost the only shows from that time that are worth watching at all.
Anime is definitely getting better.
Also, judging from the Newtype coverage, FMA is the new Gundam. Take that as you like.
More fansubbed anime = Percived increase in bad anime.
Wannabel33t fansubbers = Actual increase in the fansubbing of bad anime.
Also, needs more "post deleted by moderator" cause I didn't delete shit.
>>12
I didnt delete it, and no one else I know has the key..
Interesting... eh, post sucked anyway.
It seems a couple of posts were lost when you moved over the files. Did you grab old copies from somewhere?
Some good and _original_ series with excellent atmosphere from the last four years or so:
Haibane Renmei (obviously)
Kino no Tabi
Stellvia
Hundred Stories
Fumoffu (very well made slapstick-style comedy)
Noir
Princess Tutu
I'd include Last Exile too, and quite many would probably list the very recent Tsukihime. Last season also brought forward the incredible MoO. I'm too amazed by all the cool stuff to see any reason to complain.
>>12 speaks the truth.
It's also like the "good old days" syndrome. You only keep the good impressions (or the ones that really sucked), but if you actually went back you'd find how much the "good old days" really sucked compared to now.
Remember when it used to snow on christmas?
In the good old days, it rained bombs, not this pansy snow thing
Yeah but in the good old days we were using RealVideo for digisubs :(
Please... don't remind me...
shivers
Ctrl-P for pause... the worst possible combination.
trying to decypher the text...
bleeding eyes...
rm player crashing after a long session...
crashing for no reason...
rm player trying to phone home at every occasion...
a very narrow slide bar...
Gee I wonder why I hate RealMedia today.
And what did MS copy from RM? Yes, Ctrl-P and a narrow slider.
If a Rahxephon or Lain type show came out every season you'd get bored and bitch about it. Every season has its gems and its duds. Get over it. If you think anime is going downhill then go watch Friends or something.
in the good old days you traded vhs tapes because if you found something on the internet it was a 20mb realmedia file, and vhs quality was far better ´∀`
Half of the fun of this hobby is to sort throught the garbage to find the good stuff.
Anime is much better now than it was even last year.
>>1: Old thread, I know, but I just now bothered to check out the Anime board for the first time, and had to speak up on this.
I don't think anime has gone downhill. Truth be told, it has always sucked. Yes, you heard me. And I don't mean in that "well, 90% of everything sucks" way; I mean that, except for a few notable exceptions, anime sucks.
It just takes us a while to realize it. When we first see a cartoon about twenty-story robots that do battle in space or a timid guy who somehow ends up shacking up with six curvaceous chicks who all have the hots for him, we're so blown away by the coolness and the different-ness of it all that it's easy to say "so this is anime, eh? KEWL!"
But then you watch more anime, and more, and eventually it comes to you. You knew the animation is pretty sad -- if you were familiar with cartoons from just about any other country on the planet, you were probably bothered at first by the fact that Japanese cartoon characters don't lip-synch; it looks like they're just saying "a ba ba ba ba ba" -- but in some anime productions, it's just pathetic. And let's talk overly-recurring themes... your first harem anime might be an eye-opening event, but by your tenth, you can probably predict the entire plot after you've seen the first two episodes. Oh gee, another onsen scene in which the geeky teenaged male lead trips and falls right in between the physically impossible boobs of Bimbo #4... didn't see that coming.
It also doesn't help that, besides the rise of digisubs and fan subbing in general, actual commercial distributors are releasing more and more mediocre or just plain bad stuff into the market, because they know it will sell anyway to the newest generation of "Anime is SOOO KEWL!" suckers. I can't blame them -- this is capitalism -- but even as recent as a decade ago, something had to be pretty good in order for a company to bother bringing it over the pond and releasing it here.
I'm not ragging on all anime, of course; there's some stuff I like. I'm nuts about FLCL, I enjoy me some original Gundam, and there's no stopping Miyazaki. But the fact remains that the vast majority of anime is crap, and always has been. It just sometimes takes a while for those new to anime to become jaded enough to notice.
This is also in part due to the fact that we are finally starting to see more of the actual anime spectrum that wasn't really visible until now. There are a LOT of anime series that never made it stateside simply due to their mediocre nature, and with the rise of fansubing, we are getting past the better series and see more of those so-so series....
That, and as Albright said, the importing of mediocre series....
I think anime is going downhill.
...in a balloon.
... on lolerskates
Well I'm not sure about it on a season-by-season basis, but in terms of the quality of anime changing annually, I'd say it's improving. It's true that there a lot of bad anime out there, probably now more than ever, but the majority of my favourite anime has come out only quite recently.
We could be experiencing a lapse in quality, but with people like ABe and Satoshi Kon out there, I feel we will see some unique material.
I want another series like Paranoia Agent to come up. Something both original, well-done and actually intriguing above all that is wapanese.
Can't be too original, now, or all the audience would stare dumbstruck at the screen wondering how they're supposed to relate to any of it.
Recyclable plots are recyclable precisely because many people can relate to them without much thought. I find that the most emotionally striking stories (for me) take familiar elements and twist them just a bit harder than run-of-the-mill stories.
Anime is mass-produced mass entertainment, just like American television. And, like American television, a very small proportion of it is breathtaking, a little more is good, and the rest is unspeakable crap.
This is the way it's always been.
Until very recently, Americans never had a chance to see around 99% of the anime made, and were generalizing on the basis of the 1% or so that got dubbed or subbed and imported and/or shown on American television. That was a little like saying all British television is great on the basis of Masterpiece Theatre and Monty Python.
When anime is great, it's great. Most of it is not great and never was. When television is great, it's great. Most of it is not great and never was. When movies are great, they're great. Most of them are not great and never were. See what I'm saying here?
> See what I'm saying here?
i c, i c
>>41
What about integrated circuits?
> Until very recently, Americans never had a chance to see around 99% of the anime made, and were generalizing on the basis of the 1% or so that got dubbed or subbed and imported and/or shown on American television.
Considering the altered--oftentimes negatively--nature of most English broadcast anime, I would think that the masses would be pleased to have access to a wide assortment of material that hasn't been rewritten to make it more conformant with the kind of tripe that's deemed acceptable for American children.
TV series like Paronia Agent, Lain, Boogiepop or Utena are some kind of accidents. What the producers want are shows that sell; what most people want is something to cool off at the end of the day. Artistic considerations are not meant to enter directly into the equation, it's just an afterthought.
Albright, loved your intervention. ^_^
"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times."
There will be anime that you like and anime you despise. Filter it for yourself.
I agree with >>16 . I like just about the same stuff.
Whoever said FMA is the new Gundam, it will never be the new Gundam. Not until it spawns a sequel, and then another sequel, and then a few related OVAs down the road and a few alternate universes as well. And Seiji Mizushima and Hiromu Arakawa become cult personalities.
Only more recently have I realised a lot of anime sucks because of increased exposure (like everyone and their mother has been saying) and what people call maturity of taste. 4~5 years ago when I started watching anime I'd have been completely completely completely head over heels over Gundam Seed. When I watched it last year I enjoyed it. If I watched the original Gundams before that I'd be dissing it.
hay guys. anime from 1998 isn't really that old. just FYI
I have never appreciated Gundam, and I never really understood the big fuss about a cheap ass Neon Genesis Evangelion copy like RahXephon. FMA, Samurai Champloo and Hellsing are some of my all-time favourites, and I can't wait for Hellsing Ultimate to come out next December...
Anyways, a lot of crap has been published, and a lot of good stuff too. There will always be a number of sad, sad anime, but I'll be keeping an eye open not to fall for the worst shit available.
Anime is getting better and better.
<<29, <<40 Agreed.
Before Digisubs were that big, most Americans only heard of the best series. The ones that were likely to be licensed, sold at video stores, shown on TV, and overall, be hyped up.
Sure there were mediocre series licensed and released in America, but most of those were obscure, and hard to find.
I want to see more USA releses of series like Lupin, Cutey Honey, and umm... Mazinger Z!
Ignore the fact I failed a bit there.
I will help you not fail KJI!
American anime companies used to only license the anime that had the most chance of selling. Therefore they only got the best of anime, the cream of the crop.
But nowadays there is too much anime licensed and all of the older good anime have already been seen by Americans so therefore we now see a couple of good anime plus lots of shit. Also digisubs help us see good anime sooner but also a lot of nonsense.
Maybe this helps the conversation.
Oh I have another thing to bring up!
An increasingly high number of anime these days are based off of Japanese romance games (visual novel, bishoujo games, hgames, etc). This is a recent trend.
The anime based off of these seem to be really generic and perhaps only popular to fans of the original games (which most are Japanese only so there are no fans in the US for it).
Perhaps if more romance games get translated then we can enjoy these series better. There are a lot of series like this though! A ton now!
There was a magical time, in the fall/winter season 2002-2003, when the romance game anime suddenly didn't suck. We got Kiminozo, the second half of Da Capo, Yamibou, Kita He, and they were all very good.
Then they started sucking again.
<flamebait>
I think this huge moe fad and the influx of anime adaptations of (largely) awfully flat, unimaginative and generic bishoujo games is making anime much less varied and is leading to a decrease in quality. Of course some of them are nice and well-done (AIR) but many of them have, to be polite, a very specific fanbase. (Of course in Japan they're the majority of anime-watchers, but here I'm basically dissing their taste.)
There's just too much anime out these days. HOWEVER, while this may be bad in that you get lots of generic moe stuff, you also get much more opportunity to produce gems that wouldn't have survived the cut if only prime-time slots were left for anime.
</flamebait>
Dunno, Bishoujo/Erogames always seemed sort of slow and boring to me.
I'm not the kind of guy who would really sit around playing a game, choosing between options like "Yes" and "No." (And "Put it in," lol.)
Though my impression is pretty much based on the only game I ever bothered to attempt to play (since I was told it was the best one translated into English) Kana ~Imouto~.
I am, however, looking forward to mirrormoon's translation of Tsukihime to try out.
Yep, I remember watching Kiminozo, Tsukihime, Yamibou, Kita e, and Green Green around that time. All of them had interesting premises, IMO.
I was actually planning to stop watching Kiminozo before finishing episode 2... the end of that epsiode is pretty much what hooked me.
And Green Green, even though it had the normal ecchi anime formula... it had a weird turn of events toward the end. That, and practically set a new ecchi standard for upcoming harem-type anime.