Quote:
Originally Posted by Kaioshin Sama
Maybe it's also that greater complexity gives people more things to nitpick at going along since it's kind of hard to nitpick say your average "slice of life" shows because they are generally just so laid back and non-threatening in their portrayal more often than not that they tend not to have much in the way of plot driven content to criticize to begin with and this tends to be seen as a strength rather than a tradeoff nowadays. In general I continue to get the impression that despite what many anime fans say they don't really like characters and situations that are complex, conflicted or showcase hesitancy and that those types of characters and plot points tend to illicit a great deal of hatred whenever they pop up. It's sort of ironic in a way that people appear conflicted in approach about how they feel about anime that are conflicted in approach.
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I agree with 99% of what you said. I feel that anime fans in particular tend to have a problem with all of the types of things you've mentioned.
And yet when I talk to people about American Live Action TV, it is exactly these traits which define some of the most popular well respected TV Shows ever. I'm thinking about shows like
The Wire and
Twin Peaks.
The Wire in particular is probably one of the most depressing, tragic (some might call it a deconstruction of cop shows) pieces of fiction on American TV. It doesn't give you a moral, it doesn't tell you who the good guys and the bad guys are, and nobody makes it through the experiences of the show physically or emotionally unscathed.
But I never hear American TV fans criticizing The Wire because the plot is too ambiguous or because they think that the creators are trolling us by killing off X character in such a sudden and brutal way.
These are the types of criticisms I often see levied at morally ambiguous/depressing anime and manga.
Quote:
Originally Posted by ujiuji
Narutaru, the manga, haven't seen the anime, is not something I'd have picked up if I'd known how it was going to turn out but found it was too good to drop. From the simple-looking but subtly expressive art to the well-rounded, if disturbed characters Kitoh shows mastery. When the violence occurs it feels equivalent to the violence committed every day by people who aren't archetypes of metaphysical evil, just tragically fucked up.
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Kitoh is such a great writer.
Narutaru and
Bokurano are both masterpieces of tragedy. Few anime or manga have made me cry so much.