Anime fans and their recomendations

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

This isnt’ a pit, but mroe of a WTF? post.

In a recent thread, a fellow doper asked for anime reccs. No problem.

What bothers me is that people immediately jump in to telling him to watch Akira, Neon Genesis Evangelion, Grave of the Fireflies, and so on.

No way! Aside from the suspect quality of several of the mentions, they were mentioned because they were/had been important at some time in the past, not because they were entertaining. And I’ve seen several people make just this sort of reccomendation in the past.

My reaction here is sort of like someone asking me what to see; they’ve in a foreign country without TV all their lives and have never seen movies or nothing. What should they watch?

Suffice it to say I don’t reccomend Citizen Kane to them. Citizen Kane is a good movie if you want to understand the origins of modern filmmaking. It’s a very terrible movie if you want to get to know a genre or style. Aside from that, note that the specific selections have serious issues: Akira is totally incomprehensible unless you read the Manga (I’m not sure why some peope make excuses; the movie just plain sucks). Frankly, I find NGE plain boring and won’t watch it. Maybe I should have started as a whiny teenager myself. :rolleyes: Grave of the Fireflies isn’t bad but it’s definitely a little too serious.

So, I’m totally confused: why even mentioned these works? Give something which is first and foremost fun, like Slayers, Trigun, or Outlaw Star. Cowboy Bebop, maybe, but major warning about the half-arsed ending. Some people did just that, bt it seems really freaky to me that the immediate responses incluse NGE and Akira, both of which are rather likely to turn off anyone who isn’t 13 anymore.

2

The what now?

3

I should elaborate. I found Akira entertaining, as has anyone I know who has seen it. I found Grave of the Fireflies entertaining too but in a different way as did many of my friends. I thought someone new to anime might also like them. I don’t really understand your gripe. These films were made in the late 1980s, which unless you’re 13 years old isn’t all that long ago. The quality of them has not diminished much in the intervening years and there are few anime that match Akira in quality of both writing and animation.

4

I’ve seen Akira periodically since I was about, maybe, 12 or 13? So that’s multiple viewings over the last 12 to 11 years. I’ve never read the manga so my imagination has pretty much filled in any gaps in the story for me.

Actually, a lot of anime is that way with me. It gets edited and translated when it comes overseas, sometimes to its detriment. Macross is a great example of not just editing but smashing together three different things. A lot of imagination goes in to it for me.

One reason I always recommend Akira to people who want to see anime is how beautiful it is. The backgrounds are always highly detailed and the action sequences are more fluid than in many other programs. It stands head and feet above the majority of anime movies and series in terms of quality of animation, IMHO.

5

If you think NGE is boring, then you’re not thinking enough.

Anyway, everyone has different tastes in anime, so the series you mentioned are usually listed as they represent some of the best in the genre. I dont see anything wrong with that.