Quote:
Originally Posted by relentlessflame
I often wish people would get over the very notion of "Objective Quality" in entertainment as something generally worth debating. What really matters most is "will I enjoy it?" Sometimes that's tied to objective qualities or certain common/known writing patterns and principles... but often times it isn't. And I don't know that anything productive has ever resulted over people trying to argue whether or not they have "objectively good taste". So, to me, if people try to use sales to speak to a show's "Objective Quality", I think the main problem isn't their use of the sales figures, but the fact that they believe it's even worth having a conversation about Quality in that way. Really, who cares...
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I know this is a tangental discussion, so I'll try to be brief about it, but I have to say that I think there's
some value in having a conversation about Quality in this way.
When anime shows disappoint and/or fail to entertain much of the audience, a lot of the time it comes down to generally poor writing (at least in my experience). For example, with
Guilty Crown, I think
a lot of the reason why it disappointed a lot of people comes down to fairly basic writing issues (certain characters not being well-developed enough, certain subplots not being fully fleshed out with satisfying conclusions, some character evolutions being very hard to swallow, etc...).
Now, not everybody will value this the same, but trends in viewer response are often seen overtime. Being generally well-written certainly doesn't guarantee that a show will be entertaining, but it definitely helps, so I think it's something worth discussing.
But in fairness to you, I don't think it's terribly productive to, say, have a big long argument pitting
Clannad against
Legend of the Galactic Heroes. Because the two shows are aiming for
wildly different core appeals, so it's like comparing apples and oranges. So that sort of discussion is of very limited worth, and can even be counter-productive.
But discussing the literary strengths/weakness of an anime show that has at least
some serious plot to speak of? I personally see some value in that.