Unpopular Opinions You Hold About Anime

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

Alright, I know that we're technically allowed to put unpopular opinions on anime in the same thread of this kind on the general animation forum, but I personally think that it just makes more sense to give anime its own thread in its own forum.

Anyways, here are some of my unpopular opinions:

-Anime isn't really in a rut. I know that I have kept saying that myself until recently, but taking a look at the bigger picture, its not really like there have been no good anime coming out in the recent seasons. I can acknowledge that there are good and intelligent series coming out still to this day among the anime community. The thing is that they are surrounded by a plethora of generic or downright terrible shit. That said, that has always been the case. People just don't remember the shit anime from the 80's and 0's (except for the infamously bad ones) precisely because they weren't worth remembering and faded into obscurity. Also, while there are still good anime being made today, a lot of the "good" modern anime isn't quite as appealing to most Western viewers as "good" anime of the past used to be. It doesn't mean that they are any less good for it, but rather than their appeal is a bit more restricted than some of the broader appealing anime of the past.

-Haruhi and her various anime series incarnations are boring (I haven't read any of the original light novels so I have no comment on those). I know a lot of people in the anime community love Haruhi (outside of Endless Eight), but I have tried to view the show and that one movie iteration of it with an open mind....and it just bores me. I don't find it to be funny, witty, or even amusing. It just feels like it tries way too hard to be over the top that it falls flat on its ass. To be clear, I don't think that its a bad show by any means, but I wouldn't say that its really a good show, either. I just don't get it, honestly.

-The first Full Metal Alchemist anime which deviates from the manga is a FAR better show than Brotherhood and completely surpasses its source material. The manga is just a glorified shonen that thinks its telling a grander story-line than it really is, and by extension that includes Brotherhood, as well. Really speaking, they are OK series. The characters are honestly very bland, though, and the villains are significantly less interesting than they were in the first FMA anime. And on that note, the first FMA anime is a good anime series but is far off from great due to long stretches of boring material in between the good stuff and some overly-emotional characters that come off as more whiny than actually being well-written and endearing. I do give the show credit for having great ideas and having some truly terrific episodes, and I do honestly like it, but it is also overrated, but just not as much as Brotherhood and the manga. The manga only gets the free pass because its "the original," and I used to say that it was better 2, but looking at both series without bias, its clear to me which one is better written and executed.

-Kyoto Animation's anime line-up sucks. I think most of its line-up consists of either boring moe shows or lackluster comedies and/or romances. Maybe I'm typecasting ti too much and I admit I'm biased but I don't give a shit. I have tried numerous highly praised KyoAni shows (and I watched more than just a single episode of each one that I tried to solidify my opinions on them) and none of them came even close to gaining just an ounce of my interest, except for one series, Full Metal Panic: The Second Raid. That is literally the ONLY good KyoAni production that I've seen, but in that regard its a REALLY good adaptation (in fact its one of my favorite anime of all time). Its a shame that KyoAni doesn't pursue more projects in that vein rather than going for their next boring school drama ore comedy type of show.

-Shonen series don't inherently suck. That is to say that the regular shonen formula is fine on its own. Most shonen anime suck due to being cheap and uninspired adaptations of cheap and uninspired source material. Truly good shonen series can thrive on following the shonen formula but executing it right with great writing, thrilling and strategic fights, and endearing characters who may fall into 1 or 2 cliches but who have a unique and captivating charisma all their own. Yu Yu Hakusho is to this day the best example of this kind of shonen anime.

-On that note, the Chapter Black/Sensui arc of Yu Yu Hakusho is a downright better story arc than The Dark Tournament arc (and believe me, I LOVE the DT arc, but its baffling to me how anyone can deny how superior the CB arc is).

-The Hunter X Hunter 2011 anime is about as good as the 1999 anime for very different reasons. This is an unpopular opinion in that most of the fan-base seems to prefer one show over the other and completely dismisses the other. Those who prefer the manga embrace the 2011 anime for being a much more faithful adaptations, while those who started with the 1999 anime feel that the 2011 anime is a huge step down. From what I have seen, neither side has ever come up with legitimately good arguments against one another, and just show that they are only good at spewing out blind fan-boy biased nonsense. The 1999 anime excels with better art direction and general flow than the 2011 anime (minus the fillers in the Hunter Exams arc which admittedly drags it down a little). It has quite a bit more subtlety to it and the changes that it makes suit the story and characters just fine. The 2011 anime on the other hand has a far sharper presentation and has mostly better pacing (that doesn't mean it feels like it flows as smoothly as the 1999 anime, but rather that it never takes too long to get from one point of the story to the next). The 2011 anime also has a better soundtrack than most people give it credit for, but the problem is how inappropriately the music tracks are used in many instances throughout the series so far. Also, where the first anime excelled in subtlety, the new anime drops the ball with an extremely over the top sort of persona to it. Overall, though, both are fine anime series for anyone who enjoys a good unorthodox shonen series.

[Dr. Insomniac]

I don't like any of Nisio Isin's shows. They are so fucking wordy, and none of the dialogue actually moves the plot or shapes the characters. They're just there because Nisio thought it sounded cool. People keep talking about how Bakemonogatari was a brilliant show. And I don't see that. It was just a harem with dazzling direction and arcs that could have been one episode enlarged into three due to all the talking.

And I also feel that the first FMA anime is better than Brotherhood. In fact, it kind of sucks how popular opinion considers the show on the same level as the Hellsing TV show instead of the series that got tons of people into anime in the first place. Just because something isn't faithful doesn't mean it's inferior.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

I know that I pick on Miyazaki a lot, but I respect the guy so I'll leave his grand lifetime works as a whole alone. I will however single out one title:

-Princess Mononoke: Even among Miyazaki/Ghibli films, this one gets absurd amounts of praise, and I honestly just don't get what's so appealing about it. Yeah, its a very adult and mature story, but I never saw anything about it that made it very interesting to watch and I couldn't identify with any of the characters (as is typical of any Miyazaki film for me, really). Maybe I'm missing the point entirely, but I just don't see the appeal in this one, whereas I can at least get why something like Spirited Away is so well loved.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

And I also feel that the first FMA anime is better than Brotherhood. In fact, it kind of sucks how popular opinion considers the show on the same level as the Hellsing TV show instead of the series that got tons of people into anime in the first place. Just because something isn't faithful doesn't mean it's inferior.

Its just crazy fan-boy/girl logic. "The original is always better than any different version of a story that spawns from it." That's there only logic to support their reasoning and its terrible logic at that. Plenty of great adaptations have taken tons of liberties from their original source material and actually benefited from it. Its called an "adaptation" rather than a "copy/paste" for a reason. The worst offense of people taking this to idiotic levels is with the Hunter X Hunter 1999 anime. Unlike FMA, it DID actually stick to the same general story-line and characters. Its just that its director Furahashi didn't agree with various writing choices that Togashi made and instead exhibited his own directional choices, and honestly, I think his changes worked out fine, and in some cases I would actually agree with him in how some of his changes were better than how Togashi wrote portions of the story. The characters in his version of the story-line were slightly altered but in return carried a noticeable amount more emotional depth to them than in the initial arcs of the manga, and he accomplished some great scenes without the use of excessive dialogue which Togashi loves to use at times (though to be fair, that works fine in the manga, but it was smart of Furahashi to have plenty of good subtle silent moments in the anime, in which you could sense character emotions through well-drawn and animated facial expressions and get a feel of the mood by the tone of the background art design and music). If you ask a fan of the manga, though, none of that matters because its "not how Togashi wrote the story." That's just plain ignorance and doesn't give credit where credit should be due, IMO.

The fact that so many people turned on the first FMA anime just because it greatly alters its source material is just a travesty, and it shows that the tons of people raving about how good it was before Brotherhood came out didn't even know WHY it was good. It also shows that they don't know WHY Brotherhood is good (or rather why they THINK its good). They just say that its better because it follows the "original," and they have no good reasoning as to why they actually think that it has better writing and characterization that the first FMA anime adaptation.

[Rynnec]

While I don't hate the first FMA anime, I do slightly prefer Brotherhood over it, simply because the latter is the type of story I prefer, and I like some of the manga's characterizations better.

I didn't mind giving Light a slightly more sympathetic send off in the Death Note anime. In the end, Light was simply someone with great potential who made the wrong choices with the power he found, and didn't really realize that until it was too late, and the anime shed more light (no pun intended I swear) on that.

Its just crazy fan-boy/girl logic. "The original is always better than any different version of a story that spawns from it." That's there only logic to support their reasoning and its terrible logic at that. Plenty of great adaptations have taken tons of liberties from their original source material and actually benefited from it. Its called an "adaptation" rather than a "copy/paste" for a reason. The worst offense of people taking this to idiotic levels is with the Hunter X Hunter 1999 anime. Unlike FMA, it DID actually stick to the same general story-line and characters. Its just that its director Furahashi didn't agree with various writing choices that Togashi made and instead exhibited his own directional choices, and honestly, I think his changes worked out fine, and in some cases I would actually agree with him in how some of his changes were better than how Togashi wrote portions of the story. The characters in his version of the story-line were slightly altered but in return carried a noticeable amount more emotional depth to them than in the initial arcs of the manga, and he accomplished some great scenes without the use of excessive dialogue which Togashi loves to use at times (though to be fair, that works fine in the manga, but it was smart of Furahashi to have plenty of good subtle silent moments in the anime, in which you could sense character emotions through well-drawn and animated facial expressions and get a feel of the mood by the tone of the background art design and music). If you ask a fan of the manga, though, none of that matters because its "not how Togashi wrote the story." That's just plain ignorance and doesn't give credit where credit should be due, IMO.

The fact that so many people turned on the first FMA anime just because it greatly alters its source material is just a travesty, and it shows that the tons of people raving about how good it was before Brotherhood came out didn't even know WHY it was good. It also shows that they don't know WHY Brotherhood is good (or rather why they THINK its good). They just say that its better because it follows the "original," and they have no good reasoning as to why they actually think that it has better writing and characterization that the first FMA anime adaptation.

Fanboys/girls who freak out over the slightest change in an adaptation are fucking annoying. I understand being upset if an adaptation changes a major character trait, or does something that clashes with the characters and/or setting, but freaking out over a change that fleshes out something that the original work didn't elaborate on? Come on.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

While I don't hate the first FMA anime, I do slightly prefer Brotherhood over it, simply because the latter is the type of story I prefer, and I like some of the manga's characterizations better.

That's a fair standpoint. I personally prefer the first anime because I felt that it kept the story more interesting and less predictable, and that the characters came off more believable to me, but I can at least see how you would prefer the manga/Brotherhood with your reasoning. Perhaps I came off too harsh against it with my post, but I'm just more angry at the blind and biased fans of that iteration of FMA than I am at the iteration itself.

I didn't mind giving Light a slightly more sympathetic send off in the Death Note anime. In the end, Light was simply someone with great potential who made the wrong choices with the power he found, and didn't really realize that until it was too late, and the anime shed more light (no pun intended I swear) on that.

I agree that the anime's more sympathetic ending was good. I will admit that I prefer the manga's cold-hearted ending (and believe me, I don't usually like cold endings, but in this case it fit perfectly and was really satisfying for me), and I find that I really like how Light in the manga clearly does not regret anything he has done when he realizes that he's about to die (other than getting caught doing it ). There's a really dark, twisted sense of humor to Light's death in the manga, what with him saying something akin to "shit...." before he dies, like the only real thing grating at him before his death was the mistake he made that lead to it and how he overlooked it, rather than anything else that one would normally consider to be more important final thoughts. In the end, Light was really just doing what he was doing to kill boredom, and he continued doing it because to him it was just downright fun. I feel that he always knew that subconsciously, but his higher level of conscience forced him to convince himself that he was doing what he did for the greater good. I feel that this was sort of true for the anime as well, but as you mentioned, the anime painted him in a far more tragic and sympathetic light at the end than the manga did. Overall, though, I like both versions of the ending.

Fanboys/girls who freak out over the slightest change in an adaptation are fucking annoying. I understand being upset if an adaptation changes a major character trait, or does something that clashes with the characters and/or setting, but freaking out over a change that fleshes out something that the original work didn't elaborate on? Come on.

If you ever read the Hunter X Hunter manga and then watched the 1999 anime and found out the types of changes that the hardcore fans were freaking out about, I swear you'd have yourself a good laugh. Its like if it doesn't follow the manga's story-line frame by frame and doesn't interpret the story the exact same way, then somehow its criminally bad. This is why I despite the hardcore side of the HXH fan-base.

[gunswordfist]

Ah, good. Just in time.

Inspector Gadget is the only anime comedy worth talking about. I hate the kind of humor that's in too many other comedy series. I guess that makes it 1 of the 3 non-shounen anime I like.

[Foggle]

...Inspector Gadget is an anime?

[gunswordfist]

...Inspector Gadget is an anime?

Yep. I found that out on some forum. I think it was tv.com. The fact that you can't tell it's an anime is probably why I liked it so much because it was the kind of comedy I liked as a kid (and still today)

[Dr. Insomniac]

Yeah, I remember hearing that Inspector Gadget was a replacement for a proposed Lupin III series set in the future.

[gunswordfist]

Ah crapcrapcrapcrap.

Lupin AND Inspector Gadget are my only liked anime comedies. Can't believe I forgot about the 3rd/

[Pharass]

Yeah, I remember hearing that Inspector Gadget was a replacement for a proposed Lupin III series set in the future.

Yeah, it was called Lupin VIII and Jean Chalopin, the man behind among others, Inspector Gadget, The Mysterious Cities of Gold etc worked on the script. There's some more info here . Apparently, Lupin 8th was supposed to be a detective instead of a thief. Reading about this 8th Lupin, despite my love for the shows mentioned above (well, perhaps more nostalgic fondness in the case of the former, I haven't watched Inspector Gadget since I was a kid, so I'm not sure if it holds up), I can't help but feel that perhaps it was for the best that the project was scrapped. Although, who can say for sure? I can't deny that the idea of a Lupin anime set in the future intrigues me a little bit.

[Avaitor]

Alright, I know that we're technically allowed to put unpopular opinions on anime in the same thread of this kind on the general animation forum, but I personally think that it just makes more sense to give anime its own thread in its own forum.

I'm sorry, but I don't. I thought it'd make as much sense to talk about anime in the regular animation thread, since anime is a form of animation.

But whatever.

[gunswordfist]

Yeah, I remember hearing that Inspector Gadget was a replacement for a proposed Lupin III series set in the future.

Yeah, it was called Lupin VIII and Jean Chalopin, the man behind among others, Inspector Gadget, The Mysterious Cities of Gold etc worked on the script. There's some more info here . Apparently, Lupin 8th was supposed to be a detective instead of a thief. Reading about this 8th Lupin, despite my love for the shows mentioned above (well, perhaps more nostalgic fondness in the case of the former, I haven't watched Inspector Gadget since I was a kid, so I'm not sure if it holds up), I can't help but feel that perhaps it was for the best that the project was scrapped. Although, who can say for sure? I can't deny that the idea of a Lupin anime set in the future intrigues me a little bit.

Veeeeeeeeerrrrrrrrrrrrrrrryyyyyyyyyyyyyyy enneresting. I'm reading this now. Thanks.

[gunswordfist]

Jigen the Sixth to trade in his cigarette and Magnum for a lollipop and laser gun that drew no blood from its target.