Anime you hate but everyone seems to like?

[jonsmth]

My ol' friends recommended Naruto to me, but I never felt like trying to catch up as it has like over 9000 episodes. And then I see all these stupid-looking merchandise everywhere and I have a friend who makes himself look silly doing this ninjutsu-crap hand movements so now I hate Naruto.

Bleach was okay as I started watching it from ep1 until mid-way through filler season and reduction in quality. And then it had over 9000 episodes later on.

One Piece is awesome all the way but after my local TV station stopped airing it (they had awesome non-Japanese dubs too that makes it worth watching), I missed too much eps that catching up to over 9000 episodes seems like a chore. I don't hate One Piece.

I'm not sure if everybody likes Soul Eater but I just don't like the anime adaptation at all. All that unfaithfulness drove me away.

Oh, Gundam Seed maybe.
I TRIED watching it but it's darned boring. And then I know someone who whenever you try to talk about anime, he always brings up Gundam and only Gundam that it makes me wanna hate anything Gundam in general.

[Vegard Aune]

Originally Posted by jonsmth

My ol' friends recommended Naruto to me, but I never felt like trying to catch up as it has like over 9000 episodes. And then I see all these stupid-looking merchandise everywhere and I have a friend who makes himself look silly doing this ninjutsu-crap hand movements so now I hate Naruto.

...Uh, this might just be me, but claiming that a series sucks because of its merchandise and length strikes me as rather silly.

Originally Posted by jonsmth

I'm not sure if everybody likes Soul Eater but I just don't like the anime adaptation at all. All that unfaithfulness drove me away.

Unfaithfulness? From what I heard, the anime was almost 100% true to the manga until the last 15 episodes or so. Though admittedly, the rest of it was noticably inferior to the actual manga-content, and the ending was kinda dumb.

[Thyrz]

1. Death Note

'Smart' anime for stupid people.

2. Code Geass.

'Smart' anime for stupid people.

3. TTGL

Shitty characters.



I'll stick to 3. Although I also hate Naruto, not everyone seems to like them, so I won't mention it. As you can see, there is a pattern, mainly shounen anime.

[toru_toru]

I don't know why but everyone seems to like Shinn Asuka and Stella Louisse from Gundam Seed Destiny. I can't seem to understand this, especially for Shinn, as he is blanatly the most un-likable character. And Stella is just a mindless psycho serial killer, so I dont see whats to like her. For me, Shinn is pretty much the douchebag noob who bascially ruins the series for me.

[synaesthetic]

Originally Posted by Haak

So many people love Azumanga Daioh. Except the first three episodes felt like torture to me and i just dropped it promptly after.

Azumanga Daioh is best watched in small pieces rather than watching whole episodes back to back.

[Irenicus]

Originally Posted by Thyrz

'Smart' anime for stupid people.

You know, while it's courteous in this thread to keep justifying counter-arguments to a minimum, it's also courteous to keep the hate limited to the anime, not the fans.

[synaesthetic]

Originally Posted by toru_toru

I don't know why but everyone seems to like Shinn Asuka and Stella Louisse from Gundam Seed Destiny. I can't seem to understand this, especially for Shinn, as he is blanatly the most un-likable character. And Stella is just a mindless psycho serial killer, so I dont see whats to like her. For me, Shinn is pretty much the douchebag noob who bascially ruins the series for me.

I don't know anyone who likes Gundam SEED Destiny... most Gundam and mecha fans I've met consider GSD to be the worst Gundam iteration ever.

[Vampire]

Originally Posted by Last Sinner

SE - Everything that is cliche and fail about shounen. Meandering machismo, endless ecchi or flapping fail. The guys love to rant and posture - they really do. The amount of ecchi comments about Blair's lack of breast development, her sleazy fail of a father, Soul's perverted nature and his ability to make a random situation ever so more perverted - it grows old fast. Very fast. There is just too much dialog, it isn't funny and it is so reminiscent of styles from every other shounen series from the last decade - it's just so very frustrating and insulting. As for the action - when there actually is any *cough* - it is short, spoofish andpoorly executed. At least other shounen series had decent action in between the rants - but Soul Eater fails at providing a decent battle. Every character is cliche and boring. The story is boring, the animation is crapulent. Drove me insane.

I fully agree with this one, the rest of your despised shows were just generally not your taste or shows that I haven't watched, thus no opinion.
Cliche isn't a bad thing at all, there's always bound to be something that has been done before in the past since this is the 21st century with almost everything in our lives thought up of or recreated. But for shows that use cliche should put it in their own interesting/unique way to make it look great; which is one thing I liked about Gurren Lagaan because it's so cliche but takes the battle in a enormous level that takes your breath away, just a show that pumps your ardenaline.

[WanderingKnight]

Neon Genesis Evangelion
It used to be super-popular to slob Eva's knob, but now a lot more haters are coming out of the woodwork, especially since the Rebuild of Evangelion movies are starkly revealing their predecessor's flaws. NGE was important--definitely for Gainax, as it saved the company from bankruptcy, but as a story it's not that good. The remake movies are doing a great job at taking the bits and pieces of what was good about NGE and expanding them into something different yet better, but the original TV series was just... not good.

NGE was a revolution. It single-handedly crushed every single archetypal Japanese hero while also striking at the core of the Japanese society's ideals.

That alone is reason enough to make it one of the best, if not the best series ever conceived. The problem is that people don't usually see things in context or just blatantly don't try. Just because you can watch NGE in 2010 in the US it doesn't mean it was meant to be watched in such a context.

Also I'm not justifying the post-NGE cash milking from Gainax, including these new movies, and my intention is not to say that your tastes suck or whatever. I'm just awfully dazed every single time people whine about NGE being cryptic just for the sake of it or about Shinji being a crybaby when they're missing the entire point of it.

[Kazu]

Bakemonogatari,I like the artwork,but i'm just to much of a dumbass to get what they're talking about most of the time.

[Archon_Wing]

I seriously need to give that Bakemonogatari another try. I got turned off in 20 seconds. And tried again and failed. But yea, I wasn't blown away by it.

[The Master]

Gundam Wing

[synaesthetic]

Originally Posted by WanderingKnight

... when they're missing the entire point of it.

What's the point of it, then?

I sure as hell don't get it. It breaks so many cardinal rules of good writing it's not even funny. The movies (which you don't seem to like much, but yeah, different people have different tastes) seem to have a much more obvious point--a dystopic sci-fi end-of-the-world scenario with humungous cyborg-mecha. Pretty clear-cut, not terribly original, but definitely entertaining to watch.

True Art is Incomprehensible, I guess. NGE TV annoys the piss out of me, but I don't see how changing the "context" in which I watch it (which isn't mutable anyway) will somehow make it less confusing and frustrating.

The only "point" I see to NGE the TV series is Anno going off his meds and working through his mommy issues through Christian eschatology.

[WanderingKnight]

I sure as hell don't get it. It breaks so many cardinal rules of good writing it's not even funny. The movies (which you don't seem to like much, but yeah, different people have different tastes) seem to have a much more obvious point--a dystopic sci-fi end-of-the-world scenario with humungous cyborg-mecha. Pretty clear-cut, not terribly original, but definitely entertaining to watch.

The point was that the characters defied every preconception of how the overused theme of the epic hero is treated in Japanese works, and, in turn, how the individual is constantly at struggle within the Japanese society. Shinji, Rei, Asuka and Misato all represent this anti-hero of sorts, with Shinji being the most easy to see. It's not about scifi giant robots kicking other giant robots' asses.

The thing is, NGE was the first series to ever do that in such a grand scale, and the first series in which the devastated individual won against the pressure of his peers. That's why Shinji is such a great character, and that's why it had such a huge impact in the first place, in 1994 and 1997 when End of Evangelion was aired. Everything that came afterwards is just marketing fluff, including these new movies. But the original series, and the original movies, were the whole point of it. They were the biggest revolution in anime history, so big a lot of people started copying it afterwards (some did it good, some sucked pretty bad).

But the point of it all stands. I don't care if Anno is an idiot and is trying to "appeal to new audiences", as he tries to excuse his lack of commitment to his original ideas, or if those original ideas were due to his own personal problems--he created a masterpiece that closely touched a lot of people, far and beyond the usual anime scene, since those people shared the same struggle Anno tried to depict in the first place.

What are the "cardinal rules of good writing" you are talking about, by the way?

[synaesthetic]

So basically you're saying True Art is Incomprehensible.

Because I'd like NGE a hell of a lot more if it was just mere "dystopic sci-fi end of the world scenario with humungous cyborg mecha fights," instead of trying to drop a bunch of anvils about Japanese character archetypes.

Which, of course, goes completely over my head because I'm American, not Japanese. Maybe I'm just a simpleton, I dunno.

DISCLAIMER: I'm not angry, please don't think I am. I just don't "get" NGE the way most of its staunchest fans do, perhaps due to a lack of experience and knowledge with traditional Japanese archetypes and story values. The new movies are much more enjoyable experiences to me because they seem to emphasize the whole "dystopic sci-fi end of the world scenario with humungous cyborg mecha" things and tone down the other stuff.

[WanderingKnight]

So basically you're saying True Art is Incomprehensible.

No I'm not. It's completely comprehensible as long as you use your head and put an effort into investigating the background of the series.

Because I'd like NGE a hell of a lot more if it was just mere "dystopic sci-fi end of the world scenario with humungous cyborg mecha fights," instead of trying to drop a bunch of anvils about Japanese character archetypes.

The thing is, you're not trying to understand why it had such a huge impact. I'm not saying you have to like it, I'm just saying you're missing the point--two entirely different things.

Which, of course, goes completely over my head because I'm American, not Japanese. Maybe I'm just a simpleton, I dunno.

I'm not Japanese either.

[synaesthetic]

I know logically why it had a huge impact--financially it was extremely low budget and made lots of money. Saved Gainax from bankruptcy. The popularity of the show itself influenced countless other series.

But beyond that, I don't really get it. I've watched all of NGE, plus End of Evangelion, and I still don't get any of it. It's all very frustrating, very confusing. A lot of the plot I understood, what was going on with SEELE and Instrumentality, but the show is clearly trying to drop anvils, and I'm dodging said anvils, not understanding what they mean.

[thefeared]

Seto no Hanayome. That was just a bunch of crap.

[wingdarkness]

Let me preface this by saying while IMO NGE isn't close to being the greatest anime of alltime, it is one of the most IMPORTANT animes of alltime...It created it's on genre within an established sub-genre and for that it is to be respected, but I get snot-bubbles when I read this review blurb by Music Television, the most respected critical organization in niche anime history...Music Television, the icon of integrity, said this:

MTV - "Neon Genesis Evangelion is the greatest anime of alltime..."


/closethread

[WanderingKnight]

I know logically why it had a huge impact--financially it was extremely low budget and made lots of money. Saved Gainax from bankruptcy. The popularity of the show itself influenced countless other series.

Its popularity has little to do with what you stated there.

But beyond that, I don't really get it. I've watched all of NGE, plus End of Evangelion, and I still don't get any of it. It's all very frustrating, very confusing. A lot of the plot I understood, what was going on with SEELE and Instrumentality, but the show is clearly trying to drop anvils, and I'm dodging said anvils, not understanding what they mean.

Those things are merely tangential to the actual issue at hand the show wants to discuss. They're nothing but mediums, as is anime itself.

Watch it again. Try to understand the characters. Try to empathize with the characters. And if everything else fails, read about it. There's a lot of crap written about NGE, but there are some serious worthwhile analysis of the whole series that might give you a whole new perspective about it. Or even better, read about it and then watch it again. It's not like I've figured the show out the first time I watched it, or that I've done it entirely on my own.

For all the crap ANN editors write every single day there was a very nice piece written a few years ago which might help you. It's not the best and it might be a little one-sided, but it's very good nonetheless.