First, some background on why we got into this now very popular form of entertainment. Way before anime, we were obsessed with anything fantasy-related. We read all the fantasy books in our tiny village library and then, after moving, raided the city library for all the rest. Also, we were practically raised on Disney & other quality Western animations. After a few years of our fantasy period, the two finally merged in the form of anime. Fantasy + animation - how could we, in our early teens, resist the temptation? We couldn't, thus we spent the better part of our teen years obsessed about anime. This was also way before anime became popular in the European mainstream and was mostly only known either in the gamer or art movie circles. We've always preferred liking things that were more unknown or weren't the most popular in our immediate circle. So, anime fit like a glove in that aspect as well. Then, some time passed, we got a little older, anime became more popular in Europe, and we had been burned by so many anime shows, that we just naturally lost interest in it. Miyazaki, of course, was never really anime to us, so he stayed as the only reminder of, to us then, our embarrassing anime years.
Along the years, we re-watched all of our old favourites, and came to the conclusion that Trigun is actually one of the best shows ever, so we couldn't include it being anime. Because anime was something shameful. And then came corona and returned us, like a time machine, back to our teen years (well, that and Hollywood's complete creative bankcruptcy). It has forced us to come out of the anime closet and admit to ourselves that we actually like this shit, embarrassing or not and no matter how much anime still has things that we absolutely hate (which we will go over in detail). The point of this post is to clarify to ourselves why we still like anime, while also still hating anime at the same time. We have a history of loving fantasy (as noted in the beginning) and the first anime anything we saw was Princess Mononoke. It had something that Western cinema never had for us (especially the fantasy genre) nor do we believe will ever have. Epicness tied with deep and thoughtful material. We'll divide this post into two - first we are going to go through what we consider to be singular in anime and which we find fascinating. Second, we are going to look at aspects that we absolutely loathe in anime.
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| Mononoke - epic and deep |
If it hasn't become abundantly clear from our previous posts, we are indeed bleeding-heart pacifists and this particular theme pops up surprisingly often in anime. Not only that, but other themes related to pacifism, like war and violence, also feature heavily in anime that we fancy. Themes are one of the biggest reasons why we like a film or a show and especially tying a theme to a character's narrative grabs our attention. These themes also greatly appeal to us because we hail from a nation where the devastation of war is still somewhat fresh in our national consciousness. The war stories are also passed down from generation to generation, since pretty much everybody's grandparents served in the war. We assume some of this might have some similarity to Japan (after all, we were both allies to the Nazis) and especially the dropping of the atom bombs have clearly affected the Japanese psyche, which is pretty clear from the numerous examples of nuclear imagery that is presented everywhere in anime. Continuing on the theme alley - anime has some of the most fucked-up shit you could ever witness anywhere. In the best possible way. Seriously, Game of Thrones has nothing on anime. The most vile disgusting person may find redemption, you might cheer on a relationship where the couple consists of a wife beater and his abused wife or a psycho brainwashed kid unhealthily obsessed with a girl. And then you end up liking characters that are ambiguous if not straight up unsavoury. This is not something one often finds in Western entertainment - you have your share of fucked-uppedness, anti-heroes and even somewhat sympathethic villains but not to the degree that we have found in anime. Anime often has the whole "two ideologies clash against each other", whereas Western films or shows are mostly focused on proving the "good guys" right.
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| Vash - probably the most subversive male character ever |
Probably one of the reasons we've been drawn to visual medium is because it has to combine so many different forms of expression - picture, words and sound. Sound for us has always represented music and a film's soundtrack can greatly sway our opinion on the movie as a whole. Anime has gone downhill the same way Hollywood has in original score material but in the 90's and 2000's anime truly had some of the most awe-inspiring soundtracks one can find anywhere. Anime also had a longer time to hold on, since Hollywood started to suck in the music department once Christopher Nolan showed up. It's not only that the music was great during those heydays of anime, but how they used the music in the shows. Combining visuals and music expertly will get us interested. The 90's and early 2000's anime really excelled at this storytelling via music and visuals (our favourite female composers, Yuki Kajiura & Yoko Kanno, also come from this era). Another thing that anime has is, of course, the animation itself - we are old-school and do not find nearly as much value in CGI that many others do. No, we've always admired hand-drawn animation more, whether it's the very time-consuming actual hand-drawn animation or its modern variation, 2D. Anime also has some of the most memorable character designs. Anime that we would unreservedly recommend to anyone that fullfill the aforementioned requirements are eg. - Trigun (duh!), Evangelion (no anime has looked better and don't @ us), Noir (excellent in both the music and visuals department, plus the complex female characters), Koe no Katachi (for a modern anime it has amazing storytelling visuals) and obviously, anything by Miyazaki. Unfortunately, the festering of CGI has infected most of modern anime as well and this started around 2004-05, and the time before that (2000-04) is something we like to call a "transition period" when anime was gradually changing in style and substance.
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| Evangelion - beautiful yet disturbing imagery |
Now here comes all the painful stuff we've come across in anime so, so, so, so very many times. Number one issue - female representation. Jesus Christ, anime is filled to the brim with these big-tittied worshipful teen girls who are continuously sexualized while simultaneously remaining utterly sexless. It's amazing, really. Anime has truly taken to heart the whole "sexy virgin" trope. Also, women (or girls) who have sex being punished by death or torture, is a little something anime clearly stole from the horror genre. Note here, that we mostly saw anime that was directed to boys, ie. shonen as it's generally called, and surprisingly, once we started to watch stuff directed more to girls, ie. shojo (and not the magical girl kind), we were shocked to discover that shojo often treats its male characters much better than shonen does its females. The men in shojo at the very least are usually given something of their own, separate from the main character, whereas women in shonen barely ever have anything separate from the main character, not to mention a narrative arc of their own. The one trope that raises our blood pressure the most in this department is a phenomenon we have dubbed as " the worship girl". She is something one comes across quite frequently in these boy animes - a (main) female character whose only purpose is to focus on the boy hero, they have no other life besides the man, nothing of their own that would be separate from the main character, they do not challenge the male lead in any way and their thoughts pretty much revolve around the main character. They also rarely have anything significant to do in the story. It does not matter whether the female character is physically strong or her personality is different from the usual "cheerful anime girl", these traits make her a "worship girl" and ultimately entirely unrelatable. You have a myriad of examples to choose from but if we had to put down our most hated ones, they would go thusly - Kaoru and Misao from Kenshin, Mikasa from Attack on Titan, Sakura and Hinata from Naruto and Uraraka from My Hero Academy. And that's just a tip of the iceberg.
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| Kaoru - the original "worship girl" |
Another trope that one sees in anime is "power accumulation" and with that the "big bad evil" because a story always needs an antagonist. "Power accumulation"is mainly the main hero continuously getting more and more powerful, often in order to match the "big bad evil". The "power accumulation" boy character (and it is far more often a boy than a man) is also frequently a very boring character, who has no other motive than wanting to be powerful or a hero just because. They are often endlessly optimistic as well. Also, in these stories, one is usually promised more intrigue from the villain but then in the end it's just a "big bad evil" that must be defeated. The female character in these "power accumulation" shows is also quite often a busty "worship girl" who is pretty much presented as a prize to the boy for his hard work. So basically, a male power fantasy. Shojo does have the "undying love from an older man" female fantasy too, they just give their male characters a personality, if nothing else. Something else that plagues these "power accumulation" stories as well, is that their main stories, much like their main lead, is a total borefest and instead their side stories (and minor characters) usually end up being far more interesting than anything else in the show. Examples of these kinds of series are again, found in abundance - most famous one probably being Dragon Ball Z and close behind it, Naruto.
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| Currently the most popular "power accumulation" series - My Hero Academy |
And now probably comes our most hated trope in all of anime - which we are calling "destiny love". Anime can't do romance. There, we said it. Seriously, try to prove us wrong - with the endless love triangles, forced conflict and "worship girl" syndrome, how CAN one write a good romance? Romance in anime is unfortunately the kind we have termed "Luke and Leia" ie. boring and obvious. The romantic couple often has some supernatural connection that lazy writers come up with when they can't bother to write and create actual dialogue and chemistry between the couples. Our most hated example of this trope is, you guessed it, Kimi no nawa. It's a bad sign if your hentai (ie. porn) has better romance than your actual shows. The last trope that inhibits especially the more serious anime is something we've dubbed "bleak as fuck". This term means basically nothing means anything, everything is shitty, in a word, nihilism. We can be okay with this, but we must say that for especially series, we couldn't be bothered. After all, watching a movie that is all nihilistic is completely different than watching a show where nothing means really anything that lasts double or triple the time. In anime, this bleakness can sometimes also come out of nowhere which then fucks both the characters and the story (like for example, El Cazador, where the bleakness was not warranted). Also, a big problem for us in these "bleak as fuck" shows is that they frequently lack a character narrative and focus more on concept - we do like concept driven series (like Evangelion) but the bleakness often also makes the characters more distant and unrelatable, so in the end one is left with just the concept and that ain't what we look for in fiction.
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| Kimi no nawa - destiny love at its cheesiest |
In the end, the reason why anime still has its hooks on us, is because it has themes and characters that Western fiction just wouldn't come up with. Whatever else, anime is unique, and why our interest continues is because it gives you something amazingly different but then at the last minute punches you in the gut and fucks you over. We hate it. It's torture, but we can't seem to give up hope that someday one of these shows will deliver.
