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+1 for Death Note. Better FTW?! plot twists then anything else I've read/watched ina long time.

I'd also reccomend Ghost in the Shell (The films were ok, but imo the first season of the TV series was amazing, and the 2nd was pretty decent too. There's a lot of sideboob from the Major character.). I'd also reccomend Helsing and Last Exile (The first 2 or 3 episodes of Exile are a combo of huh? and meh..., but it gets really good after that).

When reading manga or watching anime its helpful to have at least a vague understanding of the culture. Alot of the subtlety becomes lost because of a differance in culture not just translation. fun fact the film akira made use of 327 individual colours during night scenes

CiaranAnnrach wrote:

chaos0xomega wrote:
My pretentious list:
Serial Experiments: Lain
Inuyasha
Jin-Roh *
Bleach

I'm sure there are others, but those are just off the top of my head. Pretty much anything involving teen angst is almost guaranteed to strike me as pretentious...

*While watching this I did my best to overlook this, because again, I enjoy the setting more than the characters and/or theme themselves.

As for Death Note, I actually liked it, then again I've only ever seen the live action films (which I thought were well done).

Ahh. I've not seen Jin-Roh or Serial Experiments: Lain, so I'll take your word for it. But Inuyasha and Bleach both rank pretty low on my list of "good" anime/manga. They just get a whole lot of publicity by virtue of being battle series that are popular with children.

Unfortunately stuff like Bleach/Inuyasha is the kind of anime that the anime fans I associate with enjoy watching, and I am thus forced to put up with it. To its credit, while I find Jin-Roh nauseatingly pretentious, it does have some interesting themes and ideas that are actually worth consideration.

Lain just infuriates me to the point of homicidal tendency.

And I DEFINITELY recommend you see the live action Death Note (preferably subtitled). I thought it was great, and L was definitely a very engaging and interesting character, and is what sold me on the story overall. I can't really comment on how his similarity ot the anime/manga, but he was certainly very nuanced and quirky.

It's funny, when I first thought about anime in the context of this thread Miyazaki didn't even cross my mind.

I love Spirited Away and Princess Mononoke.

Monster Rain wrote:It's funny, when I first thought about anime in the context of this thread Miyazaki didn't even cross my mind.

I love Spirited Away and Princess Mononoke.

YES! I FOUND ANOTHER!

No-one seems to have seen Mononoke. And everyone in Castle in the Sky is a pedophile.

Aren't the Transformers anime? Before Michael Bay turned it into a hated movie franchise it rocked just about everyone's world as long as you were a kid at heart. Just for those robots alone I can't dislike anime

Monster Rain wrote:It's funny, when I first thought about anime in the context of this thread Miyazaki didn't even cross my mind.

I love Spirited Away and Princess Mononoke.

Princess Mononoke was a pretty trippy experience!

Albatross wrote:

CT GAMER wrote:

dogma wrote:

Ahtman wrote:I do not care for most of it. Enjoyed it when I was younger but as I got older I found it repetitive and even a bit nauseating: similar animation styles, similar mile wide inch deep philosophical spouting, similar misogyny, ect ect. The rare gem that is good is very good, but I rarely find it to be worth the trouble to be honest. If someone I trust makes a recommendation I will watch it. Probably the biggest problem with anime is, of course the fans, who tend to confuse obsession for enthusiasm.

Word.

+1

Doesn't really interest me at all.

Room for one more? Absolutely fething hate most of what I've seen. Blegh. Latent paedophilia FTL.

...And I'll just be joining this fine group..
While I have on occasion seen some anime I like, I find the vast majority either don't interest me in the least or are so intent on their "seriousness" they become laughable...
..Plus, I really dislike the overall " style' of animation.

Ahtman wrote:I do not care for most of it. Enjoyed it when I was younger but as I got older I found it repetitive and even a bit nauseating: similar animation styles, similar mile wide inch deep philosophical spouting, similar misogyny, ect ect. The rare gem that is good is very good, but I rarely find it to be worth the trouble to be honest. If someone I trust makes a recommendation I will watch it. Probably the biggest problem with anime is, of course the fans, who tend to confuse obsession for enthusiasm.

Translation "I'm not 10 any more and what used to excite and thrill me is now revealed as repetitive and mundane." Well that and some bits about similar animation styles and whatnot, but then half the posts in this thread are a bit trollish so it would be a shame if this one missed the boat.

Most of you are adults. The vast majority of anime is made for children. You can cut and paste the word "Anime" for the word "cartoon" and it's the same gak. Every post will still apply. You don't like it now because:

A. This is not an anime forum and most socially akward gamertypes revel in getting to mock anything that is somehow as nerdy or nerdier then what they do. They need to do it. It's like its the only thing keeping them from drinking themselves to death.

and

B. Most anime in America is fairly repetitious since it's designed for a specific audience, age, and gender. Most of what makes it over here is adolescent power fantasies that can merchandized easily. These aren't made for the age group that is most vocal in this thread.

you could replace most of the instances of Anime with Metal here and it still works, but then no one is allowed to insult the golden calf of the gamer, despite how artless and childish it typically is

Ahtman wrote:I do not care for most of it. Enjoyed it when I was younger but as I got older I found it repetitive and even a bit nauseating: similar animation styles, similar mile wide inch deep philosophical spouting, similar misogyny, ect ect. The rare gem that is good is very good, but I rarely find it to be worth the trouble to be honest. If someone I trust makes a recommendation I will watch it. Probably the biggest problem with anime is, of course the fans, who tend to confuse obsession for enthusiasm.

While I agree to an extent, imo just about all of that can be applied to nearly any style or genre.

For example most animation films today are repetitive, wannabe Pixar CGI abominations and even Pixar themselves have been slipping in quality. But then there are those that are definitely worth the experience like How to Train your Dragon. Carry on.

Cane wrote:Aren't the Transformers anime?

Depends on which version of Transformers you are talking about. Just coming out of Japan doesn't make something anime. G1, Beast Wars, the newer stuff are not anime at all, whereas the comics the last few years use anime style to some extent, even though the comics themselves don't follow most manga conventions either.

There are two strange ideas that seem to be floating about here.

One is this idea that anime is so broad it can't be defined. Load of crap, sorry. Anime very much has visual motifs and tropes that define it as anime and make it instantly recognizable. No one saw the title and though "I wonder if he is talking about South Park, or the Venture Bros.?" You either like those general motifs and style or you generally do not. It isn't as diverse as people are portraying. Just coming from Japan does not make something anime, nor does it being animated.

The other is that perhaps if you keep doing or watching something that you have not liked that somehow it will radically change your opinion. Even though you watched multiple types of animes and found them all lacking or just not appealing if you just....watch...one....more...it will change. If I hit myself in the head with a hammer 10 times and it hurt every time I doubt if you offer me a hammer with a different coat of paint on it I'm going to assume that one will not hurt. It will still hurt because it is another hammer, not a flower. This idea that it is the viewers fault is some grade A self delusion.

Metal sucks, except Iron Maiden (UP THE IRONS!).

But cartoons? No way man, I'm 21, still watch Spongebob, love catching old reruns of Looney Tunes, Invader Zim, Rocko's Modern Life, Hey Arnold!, Catdog, etc. All shows I grew up with as a small child. Now, had you said Monty Python, I would have to agree with you. I used to think it was hilarious, tried watching some stuff the other day, and I had to scratch my head and wonder what I saw in it in the first place (although Holy Grail is still good), same with Dragon Ball Z.

GalacticDefender wrote: I prefer a more traditional and no weird eyes style..

stop watching DBZ then, its very simples people, stop watching crap anime made for children and stop going on 4chan and thinking men groping children is normal, its giving you all a very weird outlook on life, your sounding like 40k players......................oh wait

Ahtman wrote:

Cane wrote:Aren't the Transformers anime?

Depends on which version of Transformers you are talking about. Just coming out of Japan doesn't make something anime. G1, Beast Wars, the newer stuff are not anime at all, whereas the comics the last few years use anime style to some extent, even though the comics themselves don't follow most manga conventions either.

There are two strange ideas that seem to be floating about here.

One is this idea that anime is so broad it can't be defined. Load of crap, sorry. Anime very much has visual motifs and tropes that define it as anime and make it instantly recognizable. No one saw the title and though "I wonder if he is talking about South Park, or the Venture Bros.?" You either like those general motifs and style or you generally do not. It isn't as diverse as people are portraying. Just coming from Japan does not make something anime, nor does it being animated.

IIRC G1 had Japanese and Korean animators and its style was distinctly anime (design of robots and humans, animation, etc) but the property was owned by Americans. The CGI series definitely were more Western though.

Your point about "just coming out of Japan doesn't make something anime" is one I'd like to add upon for the hell of it since it goes both ways. For example the American cartoon Samurai Jack could be seen as an anime work or at least one heavily influenced by such; FWIW

Stella Cadente wrote:

GalacticDefender wrote: I prefer a more traditional and no weird eyes style..

stop watching DBZ then, its very simples people, stop watching crap anime made for children and stop going on 4chan and thinking men groping children is normal, its giving you all a very weird outlook on life, your sounding like 40k players......................oh wait

this person just won.

i can list more bad animes than good ill admit...actually i cant because i try to forget about the bad ones.

ShumaGorath wrote:Translation "I'm not 10 any more and what used to excite and thrill me is now revealed as repetitive and mundane."

Thanks for the terrible post and awful attempt at translation.

I don't know where the tangent on insulting other things and other gamers came from, other than perhaps it is something you do that you don't like about yourself so now you are projecting.

Im not a big fan of it. :/

generally not a fan. I liked Outlaw Star, Evangelion, Trigun, and Gundam Wing, but that's about it, and even then, I merely like them. That was like eight or so years ago, and I haven't really watched any anime since. I wasn't crazy about them like a lot of people get about their anime and I wouldn't buy them on DVD. Or download them for free, for that matter.

Oh, and Samurai Pizza Cats, because if I'm not mistaken, when it was sent to the US, they got the videos but no scripts so the entire thing is practically ad-libbed (and hilarious).

SAMURAI PIZZA CATS!!!! Had one of those video tapes, loved it to death.

I've seen less proselytizing in religion threads than I have in this one. I don't understand why the idea that something doesn't appeal to some people is so complicated.

I'm not a big fan of horror movies either, whether they are sci-fi, slasher, zombie, fantasy, ect ect. That doesn't mean I have never seen any horror movies or that I have never even seen any horror movies I like, just that in general I do not care for them. The same is true with anime. I have seen a few good ones but most of it does nothing for me and I find it less than engaging, even when I was younger. I haven't told anyone they are not allowed to like it or called anyone names for liking it. All I have done is say why it doesn't do much for me.

I will add that I've tried to watch other anime, but other than the few I mentioned above, I just don't like the majority of it. I can't explain why or how, and... well, basically what Ahtman said. Just not appealing to me.

Ahtman wrote:

ShumaGorath wrote:Translation "I'm not 10 any more and what used to excite and thrill me is now revealed as repetitive and mundane."

Thanks for the terrible post and awful attempt at translation.

I don't know where the tangent on insulting other things and other gamers came from, other than perhaps it is something you do that you don't like about yourself so now you are projecting.

I like anime, it's a non guilty pleasure. I understand why I like it, what I like, and what it is. It's not something I bitch about because I feel the need to be superior to something to validate the other nerdy parts of my life. I dislike threads where the 40k community tries to imply they dislike something because it is:

childish
repetitious
poorly made
foreign
ugly

Frankly, most of those are not only subjective, they conflict with the fact that the games this website is based on are also fully covered by those sentiments. You know whats childish, repetitive, poorly made, foreign, and ugly? Warhammer 40 thousand. It's also fun.

Half the posts here either complain about the art style (hurr durr, anime all looks the same) or they say that the current state of anime is lame and what came before was great. Guess what, transformers was terrible. The plots were bad, the voicing was bad, the animation was bad. You were a kid. Spongebob? Bad plots, voicing, and animation. Very few works made on the cheap for kids are good, but this community and this site tends to take shots at other peoples passtimes with a regular basis because it's fun to do so. I dislike bullies, especially hypocritical ones.

Disliking anime as a genre is firstly kind of inane given that the majority of animation is done in korea at this point regardless and the amount of globalization in the cartoon market makes the term practically meaningless. Secondly anime as a genre is intensely diverse, it covers everything that is animated and comes from asia which is tens of thousands of works by hundreds of thousands of different people.

Ahtman wrote:I've seen less proselytizing in religion threads than I have in this one. I don't understand why the idea that something doesn't appeal to some people is so complicated.

I'm not a big fan of horror movies either, whether they are sci-fi, slasher, zombie, fantasy, ect ect. That doesn't mean I have never seen any horror movies or that I have never even seen any horror movies I like, just that in general I do not care for them. The same is true with anime. I have seen a few good ones but most of it does nothing for me and I find it less than engaging, even when I was younger. I haven't told anyone they are not allowed to like it or called anyone names for liking it. All I have done is say why it doesn't do much for me.

Exactly, just because I don't care for anime in no way indicates that I don't recognize others find it appealing..hell,My Missus and my kids all enjoy it, it's just something I myself don't care to watch.
...And how can you NOT like zombie films Ahtman?...Can't you see how Brilliant they are?...wait maybe if you just watched one more...hold on..I'll be right back..

Ahtman wrote:I've seen less proselytizing in religion threads than I have in this one. I don't understand why the idea that something doesn't appeal to some people is so complicated.

It shouldn't be complicated, but it's lack of complication grammatically doesn't mean the underlying thought is simple or logical. It's like saying "I don't care for animated works done by asian people". Anime is not a genre. It's the word animation with an E instead of TION.

Ahtman wrote:

ShumaGorath wrote:Translation "I'm not 10 any more and what used to excite and thrill me is now revealed as repetitive and mundane."

Thanks for the terrible post and awful attempt at translation.

I don't know where the tangent on insulting other things and other gamers came from, other than perhaps it is something you do that you don't like about yourself so now you are projecting.

FITZZ wrote:

Ahtman wrote:I've seen less proselytizing in religion threads than I have in this one. I don't understand why the idea that something doesn't appeal to some people is so complicated.

I'm not a big fan of horror movies either, whether they are sci-fi, slasher, zombie, fantasy, ect ect. That doesn't mean I have never seen any horror movies or that I have never even seen any horror movies I like, just that in general I do not care for them. The same is true with anime. I have seen a few good ones but most of it does nothing for me and I find it less than engaging, even when I was younger. I haven't told anyone they are not allowed to like it or called anyone names for liking it. All I have done is say why it doesn't do much for me.

Exactly, just because I don't care for anime in no way indicates that I don't recognize others find it appealing..hell,My Missus and my kids all enjoy it, it's just something I myself don't care to watch.
...And how can you NOT like zombie films Ahtman?...Can't you see how Brilliant they are?...wait maybe if you just watched one more...hold on..I'll be right back..

Yes, there are some good zombie films but even I, the biggest horror fan I knew of before I ran into FITZZ, is getting a bit burnt out on them. Same goes for vampires, alas.

ShumaGorath wrote:

Ahtman wrote:I've seen less proselytizing in religion threads than I have in this one. I don't understand why the idea that something doesn't appeal to some people is so complicated.

It shouldn't be complicated, but it's lack of complication grammatically doesn't mean the underlying thought is simple or logical. It's like saying "I don't care for animated works done by asian people". Anime is not a genre. It's the word animation with an E instead of TION.

"Anime" may simply be the Japanese word for animation, but in the context it is used by any Westerner in the history of ever, "anime" specifically refers to Japanese animation, which is decidedly different from Western animation in both style and substance.

But yes, I don't particularly care for most animated works created by Japanese people, nor that created by Westerners in a style similar to that utilized by Japanese people. Except the Teen Titans which, in terms of facial expressions, borrows heavily from Japanese animation. I like that show.

Saying you dislike anime is closer to saying you dislike hollywood films then it is that you dislike zombie films. One is a medium and the general vicinity of that mediums creation. The other is a genre.

ShumaGorath wrote:Saying you dislike anime is closer to saying you dislike hollywood films then it is that you dislike zombie films. One is a medium and the general vicinity of that mediums creation. The other is a genre.

... But..I do dislike the majority of "Hollywood" films...in most cases I'd rather sit around and lick a razor than go see a " Summer Blockbuster"...same applies to most Anime...with an E.

Clearly, FITZZ, you didn't see Sex and the City 2, or you wouldn't be making disparaging comments about the film industry.

Also, there is still a marked difference; Hollywood films draw upon cultural artifacts that Americans (and other Westerners, for that matter) can relate to, whereas anime draws upon cultural artifacts relevant to Japanese people.

I, in fact, have to wonder how popular Western animation is in Japan. I assume it's fairly niche, possibly even more niche than Anime is here. I was in Japan once, and there was exactly one TV channel that showed Western shows, and they were all either dramas or sitcoms aimed at adults (Curb Your Enthusiasm (They called it "Larry" something), Two and a Half Men (They called it "Parker Boys" or whatever the characters' last name is), Heroes, Knight Rider, and some British show about the S.A.S. that they called "S.A.S." but has a different name in the UK, I think it's called "Ultimate Force" or something, are the ones I remember off the top of my head). Never saw the Simpsons or South Park, not even merchandise. Perhaps because, like Anime is to many Westerners, they find South Park or King of the Hill or Family Guy difficult to understand or relate to.

Monster Rain wrote:Clearly, FITZZ, you didn't see Sex and the City 2, or you wouldn't be making disparaging comments about the film industry.

Ahh, Right you are Monster...I didn't see it, and even though I know that that sort of film would not interest me in the least ( having seen bits of the HBO series), perhaps I should view it...as it may be the "one" that changes my mind.