Hype and Anime Culture (A Force For Good or Bad or Neither)
 

Alright after a couple days of pondering this matter, I think I might as well face it and go full bore into creating a topic about it. It'll probably hasten my return simply by getting this more off my chest in the form of a discussion thread as opposed to just ranting about it to the occasional people willing to listen. How do people feel about the idea of hype and it's relation to anime culture and discussion? Personally I could not think of a thing that I find more loathsome and more a force for bad when it comes to discussion, anticipation and reaction to anime (and games too now that I think of it) than hype, and in fact I can only think of one positive and only if you're in a certain position. Here's why:

1. Hype often creates ever escalating expectations from fans that at some point or another become impossible to meet by any realistic means. This eventually leads to disappointment that otherwise wouldn't have occured if something had been approached at more level angle without any of the baggage that hyped expectations would have brought in otherwise.

2. Hype typically does strange things to people. It makes them more emotional, irrational, more critical, more prone to missing the obvious, and to be honest more aimless in the content they provide in threads a lot of the time. How often does somebody need to hear something like, "OMG this show is amazing, totally number one of the season and of the year, teh hype was real!!!!!11" for every single show that gets popular when you could actually be having a real discussion about said show.

3. Hype tends to attract the attention of trolls to threads more than the show itself would otherwise. I liken it to having a swimming pool full of fans, throwing a shark in and the hype being like tossing blood into the water. They can smell it and they will come and they'll almost certainly make a mess of the thread and make everyone miserable for it at the end of the day.

4. Hype causes people to exaggerate the merits and demerits of shows to almost absurd extents. In my experience as an anime fan nothing is ever as good or bad as people say it is and deep down I think many people know this to be true more or less so why get caught up in it as opposed to just making up your own mind from scratch after a certain level of healthy anticipiation. Personally if I were to acknowledge the hype a show has garnered it would only be in passing and with the utmost disdain and disregard. I'd rather talk about a show as I actually see it, not as it's perceived to be.

5. This is more of a personal observation, but hype is a natural mood killer for me. The struggle I frequently find myself in is to do my best not to let it influence my appreciation or criticism of a show not because I believe in it, but because I absolutely hate the concept of it and frequently feel a nagging desire to be harsher on shows that are overhyped and more lenient towards ones that are underhyped when I find fault with them. I find this especially troublesome as a fan on the rare occasions where hype overlaps with my interests like in the case of shows like Sword Art Online, Gundam 00 or Code Geass. Neither was a good forum experience for me (I'm forecasting a bit for SAO, but given what I've seen so far I would want to keep the other fans at arms length and just enjoy the show on m own so that I actually can) for me, despite actually highly enjoying what I've seen of said shows.

In trying to think of one positive aspect I can attribute to hype I could only come up with one situational one and that is if you are an advertiser for a show looking to stir up interest you would want to look at ways of generating hype and act like you strongly believe in it. Other than that though I just cannot see anyway in which it is a force for good and in the absolute best of situations which I think occurs once in a blue moon I might be able to argue that it was simply neither good nor bad and that I wish I could do more often.

I have mixed feelings about hype.

I think that most of the drawbacks you mentioned are real (especially the fourth one in your list), but on the other hand I find that hype makes discussions more active, and hence exciting.

I also think that most of the drawbacks you mentioned are most heavily in force at the beginning (first two or three episodes) and at the end (last few episodes), but in the middle it's not as hard to get the sort of 'less hype-driven' discussion that I think you and I both like. Eventually, people tend to loosen up a bit and become a bit more accepting of viewers talking about a show with fewer superlatives, less exclamation marks, and the occasional touch of criticism. Of course, people naturally get hyped up for the finales of the shows they love.


One thing I think we need to be understanding of here is that for a lot of heavily hyped anime shows, there's anime-original viewers, and then there's people familiar with the source material. Almost always, I'm in the anime-original category (and my impression is that this is usually true for you to, Kaioshin), so I'm going in just hoping for a good watch. But people familiar with the property are going into it much the same way that, say, a big comic book fan goes into a movie about one of his/her favorite superheroes. It's exciting to see something you love in book format get put into an animated or live-action medium! So that's something that I think it helps to try to be understanding of.

With this in mind, I have to tip my hat to the Sword Art Online fans. They've hyped up their show, but even at Episode 1 I found some of them took my slightly critical comments well (I thought it was an excellent first episode, but there's certain things that I would have loved to have seen that weren't there). I didn't face as much push-back from them as I did from fans of some other heavily hyped shows, so SAO fans have my thanks there.


tl;dr Hype is like the old Goldlilocks fable. You can have too much of it, and you can have too little of it (some shows I've found it hard to get into because relatively few people are talking about them), and there's somewhere in the middle where it's just right. I'd say Hyouka-level is probably the sweet spot for hype.

I guess I don't feel that hype has any real negative when it comes to anime and the subculture here in the west surrounding it.

It's not like...say...MMOs, where it's pretty much par for the course that the general populace hypes up a release and then rips it apart viciously for not living up to its perceived hype upon release. There are certainly people who rip apart one anime show or another, but they are rarely the same individuals who were hyping the show(s) to begin with. I find, in the anime sub-culture, most people who hype shows end up enjoying the shows.

This is a fairly key distinction, in my mind, between unhealthy hype that ends up destroying communities, and-for lack of a better term-healthy hype.

Now, that said, I'm also fairly sure the only reason for this distinction is that anime watching in the west is still a fairly niche subculture. ie: We, as a fan community, are far more homogenized than say, the community that plays and talks about MMOs.

I'm sure that if anime ever became completely mainstream, hype will have become a fountain of negativity.

Of course, I suspect your issue is that there are people who dislike one show or another and feel like they have to do nothing but spew forth their disregard, day after day after day. Which is definitely true, but from my perspective, a completely separate issue from hype itself.

As to your last point, I think it's very easy to ignore hype in the anime community if you are so inclined (largely because, again, I don't feel that it's all pervasive and filled with negativity and completely unavoidable when attempting to discourse with others on message boards), but I think delving any deeper into that discussion risks pretentious back and forths over age and maturity, so I'll just leave it at that. :heh:

Thanks for responding, I like this response in particular because it highlights two other semi-related issues I've noticed, but failed to mention. One is that I tend to completely agree about the first 3/last 3 rule as it were, but I tend to see it more as being like first quarter last quarter. Typically I find that shows that garner a lot of hype tend to have above average reception in terms of the first episode, but below average reception when it comes to the finale arcs compared to shows that aren't that hyped which tend to have a more even curve from beginning to end. I definitely find that shows with little to no hype tend to have the more well received endings for sure and generally the more pleased fans.

The other issue is anime original fans versus source material fans. Aside from the obvious issues like spoilers which is another subject entirely I find that here is where I've finally been able to pinpoint why I differ so much from many when it comes to my approach in watching anime. As an anime original watcher my gauge of a shows quality is how well does it execute on the technical aspects of production (animation, music, direction, cinematography, thematic portrayal etc) and how much I'm enjoying it whereas with source material fans I find the overriding concern more often than not tends to be how close the show stays to it's source and it doesn't matter how good the show is in it's own right if it doesn't include and accurately portray every possible event from it's source material. Thus I often find myself at odds with fans of source material when either I go to criticize a show and am met with the argument that it was in the source therefore my argument is invalid or I go to mention something about the show that I liked but because it was something that wasn't in the source or wasn't portrayed 100% accurate to how it was in the source people disregard it entirely or even argue against it in a reply.

For these reasons I tend to support the growing initiative to try to seperate the source material fans discussions from the pure anime viewers a little more as they kind of are different groups in a lot of ways and the former just can't seem to help themselves from spoiling the experience for others in more than a few ways a lot of the time.

This, oh god. Certain anime like K-On and Bakemonogatari were hyped up to the point that trolls, reverse trolls, spammers, and haters sabotaged most of the threads. It was impossible to have a decent discussion about Bakemonogatari for over a year after that. And although K-On fared better, it became a scapegoat symbol for "moeshit that's killing the industry" for many anime fans.

To add something more constructive, while I agree with your points (especially #3), I like hype to some extent.

Quite simply, if I'm enjoying an anime, it makes me happy to see other people enjoying it. When I complete an unpopular anime that I really liked, I get slightly bummed when I can't find anyone to talk about it or any big discussion threads archived about it. Yeah, as asocial as I am, I still seek a superficial form of "acceptance" from other people, even if I don't know them at all. Some people get most of their enjoyment from an anime from live watching threads and "SPECULAH" (which is often driven by hype). Of course, there's a threshold where the hype becomes unbearable for me, and it most recently happened for the VN Katawa Shoujo.

That is a good point, however I often find myself asking myself how much people are really enjoying a hyped anime so much as enjoying "being there" when the much hyped show hits the air waves and joining in the moment of celebration. I find this phenomenon often has a way of sorting itself out over time like Triple_R suggested with the first 3 episode rule and that the people that are truly invested in the show versus people that are just along for the hype have a habit of revealing themselves over time as well, but only to a certain extent. I see what you're getting at though, but I'd prefer that form of acceptance to be real and demonstrated as opposed to artificially inflated as a result of hype.

From an individual standpoint, it's nice to be hyped. It just feels nice to be really excited for an upcoming release, whatever the release may be.

Then backlash comes in when the product doesn't manage to meet your expectations, so the disappointment is huge compared to another product for which you didn't have high expectations.

In the rare cases where this doesn't happen, it's great. But when it happens (that is, most of the time) is when the shitstorms of trolls and spam shine.

The best approach I have found for this is thoroughly informing myself about the show I'm going to watch. Who are the staff producing it? What can we expect from them? Does the show have a source material? If so, is the staff known for their loyalty or for their liberties? What kind of tone does the writer prefer? What kind of directing is the director known for?

If you do all that, your expectations of a show are more 'ratio' and less 'furor', thus easier to control. If then the series manages to subvert (in a good way) or exceed your expectations, you get the good part. If it ends up being underwhelming, the backlash is better handled.

To me, the worst thing an anime production can do is to create a sense of it being dependent on hype to sustain the interest of the crowd. KyoAni is the main sinister in this. They basically force memes or some other hype device every other episode of whatever they're making to sustain the built up pre-air hype.

I wonder who's responsible for the hype. Is it just marketing departments? Or are fans guilty of ravelling in hype culture, where the guy who posts the cover scans of the newest light novel anime adaptation coming out is the coolest? This is typical early adopter culture.

Hype can be nice. With so many shows running around, certain points to where the talk is about can give someone something to chew on while they continue to find stuff. If nobody knows about a show, then nobody will watch it.

However, it leads to some bad things. One is the formation of camps, especially if it's from a particularly famous studio or crew, or even worse a metaseries. You immediately get comments like how "X has gone downhill", or "this shits on everything!" Naturally, every season gets the "best anime anime ever". That's fine though, but people can go overboard and some particular entities have gotten shielding from criticism. I call this the "hype shielding" buff. ;)

Another problem are the impossible expectations that can arise, especially if its an adaptation. Some people can never be satisfied, or maybe the adaptation was shit but original viewers liked it, etc... I did get sick of defenses of an adaptation like "well, the original was like that..." Surely not everyone treats a source material like a holy text, and adaptations do go bad, but that's not the only factor I feel.

In the end, it's a fairly natural thing to be hyped over what's new and shiny. However, it's not a good idea to get into an "us vs them" thing.


I guess there was one case that was annoying, and that was Code Geass. I just never liked that series, yet tons of people were jamming it down me and having some strong reactions when I said I didn't care. ;) Pretty much every opinion on the matter was rather extreme. I'd imagine such a thing happens with many a popular show, and such annoyance could be built, if people are too aggressive in shilling a show.

I feel I was fortunate to watch every Key/Kyoani adaptation, Bakemonogatari and Haruhi, as well as Lucky Star after it aired, without hearing too much noise on it. And nowadays, I simply just tune out the noise, and contact people I trust on anime. Also, I learned to be less insecure and not let it affect my own enjoyment. What people think of a show doesn't change what it is.

I understand the feeling. I'm still crying silently over Guilty Crown's first episode.

But while I'm aware of the sentiments behind it, there's nothing we can do about it. Expectations are a part of human nature. If people catch wind of some suggestive signs, they're bound to expect the best, or else the absolute worst. Long story short, judgments are made prematurely. The best part is that it only takes a handful of outspoken individuals to form an opinion at first. Then, it won't take long for more individuals without any strong opinions to jump onto the hype bandwagon.

It's not limited to anime either. It can also apply to technology, books, artists, laws, and politicians just to name a few. It's an inseparable aspect of human society.

Isn't hype something like marketing? Or is it promotion?

Yeah, that's a very good and accurate summation of it, I think.

Anime does have (or at least recently had) a reputation for having bad endings. I wonder if that perception is due, at least in part, to hype? Basically, hype can make it so that nothing short of a masterpiece ending gets a "Thumbs Up" from the audience.


That's a bit of a pet peeve of mine. I get the "It's in the source material, so it has to be in the anime" argument, but that just means that the anime-only viewer likely would have disliked this element in the source material itself too. In other words, it's not a proper defense against a basic "I don't like the story, character, etc... going in this direction" statement, as that statement still applies when judging an anime on its own merits.

Now, if this is a question of "You can't blame KyoAni/JC Staff/SHAFT/etc... for it though!" then Ok, fine, I get that too. But again, if the viewer doesn't like it s/he just doesn't like it. So many arguments on this site would be avoided if more people could just roll with this. I know and accept that big, long, negative rants can sometimes get out of hand and get people legitimately upset, but people shouldn't get bent out of shape over a couple lines of criticism, imo.

More than anything, that's what I dislike about hype. How it can turn something into "All-Praise All-The-Time". But like I said, it thankfully tends to only be like that for the first few episodes.


Yeah, I've been there too.


The one thing I'll say in the source material fans' defense here is that sometimes you'll get questions that can seem to point to nasty plot holes from the questioner's perspective, but the source material has a good answer for it... but that answer would involve spoilage. I can see how it would be very frustrating to see a show you love take heat for something you know it'll have a good answer for down the line.

But yeah, aside from this, I do think that source material fans should aim to be more careful with spoilers. It's important to remember that for many stories much of the fun is being kept in suspense over what's going to happen next.

So I do think there's some value in giving source material fans a good venue to discuss everything openly, while anime-only viewers are left in suspense (as many of them/us want).

Enjoying entertainment is an emotional pursuit for most people (some people act like it's more an intellectual pursuit for them, but ultimately their words almost always betray the emotional base anyway). As all marketers bring into evidence, hype is a tool that accelerates our emotions and provides momentum for an experience. The enjoyment enhanced through hype is no less real, but it could be fleeting in some cases. When your emotions are enhanced, disappointment could also be more exaggerated. But, when the emotions are sustained, it can definitely make an enjoyable show even more enjoyable.

Sometimes, you have people who try to be "anti-hype"; they'll watch shows that are hyped (whether it'd normally be a sort of show they'd watch or not) and try to be a sort of "voice of reason" and point out to other people that the thing they're enjoying so much is flawed. The thing these sorts of people should remember is that enjoyment isn't based in logic, though it has a logical component. You may have a million reasons why the over-hyped piece of entertainment is flawed, but those reasons may have absolutely no bearing on the reason why someone enjoys it. This isn't because people aren't intelligent, but because emotions aren't purely logical, and emotions are triggered by different things for different people. Even on an intellectual level, people's minds weigh different "flaws" at different degrees of importance or significance (or they see things in a different way that obliviates the flaw someone else sees). Some people act like "if you're enjoying it so much, you should be able to list the reasons and prove my criticisms wrong", but this generally misses the mark in terms of way enjoyment usually works.

I should also say that a show being "over-hyped" doesn't count as a flaw in the show itself. Perhaps you might feel it has an unfortunate side-effect on the fanbase and the balance of opinion/discussoin on the work, but if you're going to judge a show, it's better to talk about the show itself, and not how much hype it has. (Or at least to recognize that talking about the reaction to the show is different from talking about the show itself.) This applies particularly to people who are writing reviews and the like.


Other than that, it isn't really clear to me if the topic has a clear purpose, other than to be a random discussion about hype. But if that's all it is... well, there are my random thoughts about hype.

Yea, I seriously don't understand what's up with "overhyped" or its cousin "overrated" counting as something wrong with a show. Which is why I said what people think of a show doesn't change the show itself. But it happens all the time!

"Why do you not like this show?"
"It's overrated"
"In relation to what?"
"It sucks! It's not that great!"
"Why does it suck"
"It's overhyped!"
"Why is that?"
"It's overrated!"
/loop

Well, there isn't really much I can say about hype that hasn't already been said. I generally try to avoid the massive amount of attention a work has so I can judge the show on its own. Even then, it's nice to enjoy something popular and revel in the celebration. At the same time, I try not to feel deflated about liking something underhyped and having little in the way of discussion since I can safely brag to all of you mainstreamers about finding an indie darling watch anime for myself.

Speaking of which, underhype is the kind of hype that I actually pay attention to. The most notable example for me would be Aria the Scarlet Ammo after hearing almost nothing but scathing words for it. I went on to watch it and found myself pleasantly surprised. Yes, avoiding words that may fuel unreasonable expectations while listening to criticism that sets your expectations to almost nothing sounds hypocritical but, hey, I just try to enjoy things as much as I can.

Yeah, I think this too is a sort of "anti-hype". I talked about this elsewhere recently, but sometimes a show gets the "stink of death" right at the start for various reasons that sometimes seem to not matter to me. A number of my favourite shows have a some very vocal critics (or just very low awareness in general), but a decent-sized audience that loves it. While I wouldn't necessarily expressly seek shows that are "underhyped", I do try to watch shows based on whether I think it will appeal to me, and not based on popularity or hype. Then again, for me, anime viewing is primarily a personal experience, and if I do discuss it, it's only an outpouring of that.

Oh yes, absolutely! Even if a show is nice and enjoyable, when all the fandom does is hype and gush and behave like the show in question is best thing in the universe, and even the tiniest, the most irrelevant and the most insignificant details and scenes start get gushed over to no end, I tend to start feeling a bit iffy about the whole show, and my enjoyment gets hampered.

I do this too. I still need to get around to watching Guilty Crown and Symphogear.

Oh, but if the show actually turns out to be as good as the fandom makes out it to be, won't you end up pleasantly surprised thanks to your lowered expectations?

Hype brings about two polarities: For and Against. And this idea falls on the "hit-or-miss" principle.

Due to hype, I have avoided things like Naruto like a plague - not even giving it a chance. Not even a second.

Yet, I allowed myself to watch something like Bleach. It didn't get as much hype in the beginning, but it grew to Naruto levels as well. Ultimately, I ended up dropping Bleach by eps 130.

Without hype, anime would not be as popular as it is today. Credit that to the likes of Sailor Moon and DBZ. Maybe Pokemon too, but it counts more as a video game. ;) If it weren't for hype, I probably would not have given Magical Madoka a chance. But, I went along with it and enjoyed it.

Despite the hype - Guilty Crown sucks balls. Episode 10 is the absolute proof of that. :p:p

All-in-all. It may take hype (and a bit of added extra) to get my attention. At this point, I have a general feel as to what I like anyways.

As someone who is already used to the environment of 4chan's /a/ board, all I can say is that hype makes everything exciting.