I used to like anime
I used to nerd out about new episodes and new powers and stuff like that
But then, I started to realize that they're all just one big circle jerk of fan service, same goddamn characters in each show, and unoriginality.

So I'm here to make a list.

1. If your anime needs to make a face to tell you it's time to laugh, your anime a shit.
2. If your slice of life anime has people with superpowers, your anime a shit
3. If your anime needs to have someone explain a new power every episode, your anime a shit
4. If the hero of your anime is super strong but is powerless to the new villain of the week your anime a shit.
5a. If your anime has unnecessary sexual tension, your anime a shit
5b. If your anime has a minority for the sake of having a minority, your anime a shit.
5c. If your anime has fanservice in the majority of episodes, your anime a shit.
6. If the meekest character is secretly the strongest one in the group with no proper explanation for why that is, your anime a shit.
7. If your anime NEEDS to have a fight scene in every episode to be interesting, your anime a shit.
8. If the student never truly surpasses the the teacher, your anime a shit.
9. If a character "dies" and comes back due to some arbitrary reason, your anime a shit
10. If any given character can be considered "Evil" for no reason other than the sake of being evil, your anime a shit.
11. If your anime has Maya in it, regardless of it breaking these above rules, it's ok.

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Last edited by DoMaya on Thu Sep 17, 2015 9:20 pm, edited 2 times in total.

Dare I ask what exactly led to this epiphany of yours?

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You would love what Satoshi Kon used to do. Hell, every normal person would love what Satoshi Kon used to do.

I stopped watching most new animes since Death Note finished.
All these people start suggesting new animes and they're the exact same shit

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Couldn't this really be applied to any media? Most original things that are out there have to have gotten some inspiration from somewhere, whether they be anime/manga, movies, TV, video games, books, music, etc.

I'll also be one of the few who will say I didn't like the Death Note anime. The manga was good up to a point, but I just didn't like the anime.

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I agree nothing is ever original so what pretty much is stated by DoMaya can be applied to anything which in a sense means anything DoMaya likes is shit

I was going to say the same thing. Also, I don't like Death Note, either.

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None of those really applied to the anime I was thinking of... far as I know. Then again, as previous stated, barely anything is original anymore. It's not 'Anime' but even the Airbender cartoon. Everybody says it's awesome and great, and all I see is the same stuff done in American animation what I have seen in Japanese animation years ago.

I should check out Death Note, at least the manga... all I know about the Death Note anime is the hilarious Potato Chip eating line.

C-A

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I think OP's point wasn't about originality, but about how the same handful of tropes systematically find their way into most animes, though.

Which is the same thing. As time goes on, things pop up that are similar to other things. You just run out of original ideas. And even if you have original ideas, you gotta watch out how you do those - Zombie Robot Cat Ninja In Space may sound original, but it also sounds freaking stupid, so it'll be ignored and never a success, despite the potential of being original.

Plus, it's not just anime. I have read so many Shoujo Manga where all of it is just one blur of the same stupid "drama" crap that nobody in their right mind actually goes through, in western or eastern teenager years, with ideas that are insane. So this girl is no longer going after an unrequited love, but is now in a relationship with a guy that she does not like in the romantic sense. How is that any better?

C-A

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It's not just anime though because these tropes are pretty prevalent in most forms of other Japanese media. Much like tropes that oversaturate Western media market. Originality is hard to come by these days, so I think it's all a just matter of execution that determine's a work's quality.

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Couldn't agree with you more. There's only so much that people can do before it starts becoming repetitive, but how the execution is handled is what determines whether things will stand out or just make it feel stale.

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As an artist I see that what we often consider an original idea is usualy a revamped idea of something that we saw before and got interested. As an example, we had an oral presentation about a fictional game that the whole class wil make next semester. If we had to go for originality, not a lot of us would even pass. Also, often producer/ editor pass behind the artist and tell them what to do or if it's ok or change it. After all we can't blame them to want to make money, when so much money is involved. Yes I'm sure it cost a lot to produce an anime or a manga, both money wise and reputation wise.

(Let's my bashing begin, I will be outside.)

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But that's the thing : most examples quoted by the OP are execution tropes, not basic ideas tropes (for lack of better word ). In theory one could do a super sentai series that doesn't use any of the super sentai trope. Also as I've pointed out earlier, Satoshi Kon managed to avoid nearly all recurring tropes in japanese fiction, not just in one of his works, but in all of them ! That can't be due to sheer luck.

My only response to this whole thing:

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I facepalm at you trying to upload an image like this

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Do you have better things to do then take pictures of people's mistakes?

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Learn never to take him serious xD He's just CR's troller

Ya know what anime I think you'd like, DoMaya?

Naruto. You should give it a try some time.

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I actually like Naruto, but I stopped watching it around the time lee first started using the drunken fist.

I just haven't gotten around to watching more of it.



He posted an anime gif in a thread made by a person who supposedly hates anime and I'm the troll?

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Im just evil like that

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I'll still watch anime once in a while (or maybe just to catch up on what I've missed) but these days, I'm bound to watch something under 25 episodes. Filler was cute when it was like 1-2 episodes for the entire season or series, but I'm tired of shows that will air 20 episodes in a row and like 13 of those bastards are pure filler, don't move the plot forward any, don't help with character development, and don't even provide a decent amount of fluff or humor. Just... keep it. It's out of balance and is definitely a shit.

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So pretty much animes like Bleach?

I actually haven't watched more than one episode of that, so I couldn't say.

Let's just say I tried to jump on the Naruto bandwagon but couldn't make it to the end of the adaptation. And I won't even touch Shippuden. The most recent animes I finished were Death Note (under 40 episodes) and Chrono Crusade (under 30 episodes). Very little filler from what I remember. Also I watched Paranoia Agent (13 episodes). No room for filler there.

I will admit one exception lately. I've also been watching the Princess Knight DVDs (52 episodes) and though a chunk of the episodes would be seen as filler today, the episode plots go by so fast that it just doesn't bother me. (Of course, it is a rather old and kiddy anime, but damn it, it's still Osamu Tezuka.)

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I have to admit that even though I like Naruto I can't stand all the fillers that the anime has which is why I refuse to watch the anime but I do read the manga since there is no fillers. I enjoyed Paranoia Agent back when they used to show it on Toonami when it used to be cool.

I didn't really get to see it until a couple of years ago on Youtube. Toonami, huh? I would have thought Adult Swim, though with less boobs still.

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I gotta watch it again since its been a while since I seen it but I wanna catch up to Attack on Titan first. By the way my apologies your right, It was actually on adult swim. I got the two mixed up.

I dunno, blame the mangaka for not drawing and publishing fast enough, so that the anime doesn't get ahead of it? Or blame the anime developers for making the anime before the manga is far enough or almost at an end, so no Overtaking The Manga can take place.

C-A

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Wow, and here I was, getting back into anime after a couple of years of not watching any, and I come across this thread.
Also, Is my Anime a shit if the fights in every episode drive the plot? (I'm hazy on these specifications)

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Why does blame need to take place? It is what it is.

It's not that the artist isn't making the story fast enough. It isn't that anime developers are trying to keep up with it. It's the need to make pointless episodes while the series is hot, possibly due to some fear that the fanbase will lose interest.

In this case, it isn't about hating the players, it's about hating the game.

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You gotta understand the process that a mangaka has to go through in making new chapters every time to meet deadline. Its very hard and takes a lot of hard work. It also ruins their own health like for example Oda, he has been sick so many times because he doesn't take care of himself because he is working hard making his chapters. So you can't blame a mangaka for a issue like that.

You'd just love Detective Conan. 700 episodes out of 730 are filler, and even the few dedicated to the main plot really don't further anything at all.

Well, if the anime itself is supposed to be that way, that's one thing. It bugs me when the show has an amazing plot going on, but it keeps getting interrupted by chunks of filler.

I don't know about Detective Conan, though. What little of the plot there is, or the characters themselves, would have to be so profoundly interesting to keep me watching two years' worth of episodes (yes, if the anime is that good, I will watch in blocks).

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I know that. Hence I said, we can mostly blame the developers for choosing to make an anime out of something that is not finished. Or is very close to being finished, so that the start of the anime would not do much difference and halfway through the anime, the manga has been finished.

As for Conan, well, I dunno. Some of the Anime-Only cases are quite interesting or entertaining, like... I currently can't think of one. But some are quite fun. My problem is, though, that I stopped watching anime pretty much. I still read the manga, but part of me wishes that Aoyama would just end it already. We are, what, 820 chapters in now? And about 250 of those are plot relevant or enhancing. It seems like he's shoving in more characters than we need (Rena, her clumsy brother, that whole Akagi thing and even Sera now) seems like he's making it too complicated...

...it's similar to Nenilein's AA fanfiction. The idea is great, it's interesting and all. But prolonging things, adding in things to be in-canon with something that recently came out, it's... it feels tiring after a while. You know how they call it "Arc Fatigue"? Like the Namek section for DBZ. That's what it feels like. 'Cept with Conan, it seems to be Manga Fatigue overall. I almost feel like asking, "Are there ANY humans still alive in his world?"

C-A

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Aoyama stated he wanted to wrap things up under 100 volumes, which sounded like ages when he first said that, but with volume 82 released last month, the end is actually getting (slowly! slowly!) in sight.

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Considering it took him, what... oh, when was that stupid London plot? Chapter 700ish? ...it took him that long to just get us one step closer to the, "Yes, Shinichi and Ran are gonna be a couple" line, which I'm surprised we were ever supposed to worry about... I am scared as anything on how he'll actually finish things up without looking like he's rushing.

The horror of him having to do the Osaka!Shinichi and Osaka!Ran... I-I mean Heiji and Kazuha going through that same shit... I have the feeling those two will have a one-panel-hook-up in an Epilogue styled Chapter that is Shinichi and Ran's wedding... where, of course, a murder will take place.

C-A

PS: God I hate childhoodfriend-lovers...

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Frankly Conan's main plot isn't remotely amazing. It's definitely worth watching for the stand alone cases though, just like one would read Agatha Christie books for their individual mysteries.






The three part séance plot, around episode 600 mark, was excellent, one of the few closed room mysteries that made sense and wasn't artificially intricate. Most of the original episodes until ep. 200 were also good.

It's funny to think that 700 episodes later, Aoyama didn't resolve ANY original plotline, he's just spent 20 years adding new ones on top of them. Which is fine as long as the stand alone mysteries were worth it, but that's hardly the case anymore. The fruit trunk was decent at best, yet it was his finest in like 4 years.

I've never understood why anime is as popular as it is. I mean, I've got nothing against it, but from my admittedly limited experience, it's not a revolutionary phenomenon. I was really impressed by the first 25 episodes of Death Note, bar the shinigami and its rather dated views on women, and the first two arcs of Naruto are actually really good aside from several problems and create a solid foundation for an exciting world, only to later completely mess up absolutely everything, ignore everything the first arcs set up and create plot holes, lame plot twists, unnecessary elements, far-fetched deus ex machina, creator's pets, superfluous characters etc etc . Huh, I'm starting to see a pattern here. The only anime I've been "into" other than those two is Attack on Titan, and it has so far not turned its own story into a joke, but Mr. Isayama has some pacing issues to deal with.

Anyway, aside from those three, I've not been impressed by any manga or anime at all. My friend convinced me to watch Fullmetal Alchemist, both the filler series and Brotherhood, and it was so mediocre that I can't even recall half the cast's names, and I watched this only a few weeks ago. Dragon Ball is just a story about men competing to make the biggest explosions, Code Geass tried to be deep but I was too busy being distracted by the fact that the characters were all two meters and weighed around 40 kilos to care. And these are all some of the bigger titles, right? I understand they don't represent all anime or manga as a whole, but surely I should grasp the fundamentals after watching all this.

You know, writing this has made me realize that a lot of these stories should have ended a lot sooner than they did. Is it common for manga artists to be pressured into writing more than they want, or do they just enjoy milking their own franchise for the sake of money? I'm not trying to sound like a conspiracy theorist, but several of these series either spiral out of control or just lose their spark, yet continue for a long time.

That aside, I do understand where DoMaya is coming from. From what I've seen, there are far too many similarities between a lot manga or anime to simply brush it aside and say that it's a problem in all form of media. Yes, I will agree that originality is hard to come by and that a lot of people borrow from others' ideas, but not to the extent that manga and anime do. The protagonist is often either a hard-working idiot/everyday man or a cool genius, the setting usually involves a school of some sort, normally a high school, there are often copious amounts of fan service and few characters evolve beyond common stereotypes, such as the cute submissive girl with the amazing rack, the character acting like a child who also often refers to herself in third person, and so on. There's also bound to be some kind of romantic subplot; if the protagonist is a boy/man, he simply won't care or notice, and the girl is usually a childhood friend of some sort. I've sadly not seen any manga where the protagonist is a girl/woman, so I can't comment on that. However, one can only imagine her settling down and becoming a housewife, but now I'm just being cynical and presumptuous.

Like I said, I won't claim to have any extensive knowledge of anime or manga, but to me it seems like a lot of manga artists want to play it safe by catering to a market which is, for all intents and purposes, already saturated. That's why I'm hoping Attack on Titan won't pull a Naruto and go on forever and turn into one of the worst stories I've ever read in my entire life. I'm sure anime and manga won't stay the same forever, but right now there are far too many similar elements between most shows I know of that it's just hard to take a story seriously when you feel like you've already watched it several times before.

One final question to someone who knows more about this than I, but what the hell is up with the random numbers Japanese media seem to enjoy just making up for no apparent reason? Flames 10.000 hotter than the sun, IQ over 200 and such ridiculous numbers are often just thrown out and never expanded upon...like, seriously, what the hell?

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