Quote:
Originally Posted by Obelisk ze Tormentor
I mean, even for late-night animes which obviously not targeted for kids, many of their stories are still dumbed-down in order to be understood more easily. That proves that many anime creators and many writers consider “subtlety” is too much for the viewers & readers coz they will only consider it boring. Of course, they don’t want their products to flop, so they go with the least risky choice (especially for anime: even if the source materials do have subtlety, the anime creators will think twice or thrice before adding it).
|
I'd like to add that we the audiences are parts of the problem. We demands exciting anime and "cool" characters. We turned a blind eye to the fact that sometimes what the character did totally betray his/her own behaviors in favor of making him/her more cool or make things more exciting. I personally think some of the popular characters have no character at all. The author just make him do whatever would be cool at the moment.
This is how I imagine Hyouka would be if it take the regular approach: start off with three episodes of "Hyouka" arc (3-5) then proceed directly to the Kanya festival arc. I think it would eliminate a lot of complains about it being boring. To make things even more "exciting", they can make Houtarou rushed down to deliver the bag of flour to Mayaka in that cooking competition. That would have made him more cool and score some points from both Mayaka and Eru in the process (and Satoshi, if you want it that way
). Let us also make a slight modification of the arc ending with Houtarou announce his deduction to the whole school. Finishing it off would be he actually said what he thought out loud in this episode. How cool would that Hyouka be!
Except not. Hyouka would lose all its charms. We who appreciate Hyouka the way it actually is will pull our hair while saying "but this guy just claim repeatedly that he is an energy conservation person!" Triple_R already explained in details why even the last-episode Houtarou is still not the type of person to say that pseudo proposal out loud. However, I think Hyouka may be more "popular" that way. It won't get as many 10/10 scores, but it would get many more 8's out of those 1-6's it got right now to make up for it.
It's also a little bit of catch-22 situation. An anime taking the regular approach became popular. The industry respond by making more like that, which in turn make more popular anime that take this approach. It just went on. So, while I think relentlessflame is right, I hope that Hyouka would inspire more anime to tackle its character development style. I don't mind a regular fix of suddenly-I-decided-I'll-save-the-world/girl(s), but I do need something that can blow me away with my suspension of disbelieve turn almost completely off too.