Venting The Anime Disappointment – We Can’t Have Nice Things and It’s Your Fault

Author: nova

Every now and then I come across the old argument “Anime was much better back in the day and now it just sucks“. I used to think little of this sort of whining, mainly labeling it as oldfags’ stubborn refusal to keep up with the times. That is until the same feeling hit me and the idea for this post was born.

But worry not! I will not repeat that exact same argument. You see, my common history with anime is a short one spanning only about five years and until lately I have not bothered myself with the old stuff. I do not really know all that much in detail what anime like was before ‘00, therefore I’m left unable to reminiscence upon the Golden Old Days. That said, I have noticed recently that I have grown increasingly disappointed in modern anime and less motivated to keep up with each season. Before my blog was hacked six ways to India, I posted an article about dropping every show in this season except Bakemonogatari and Zan Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei and since then there has not been a moment of regret or hesitation about that decision. I do not miss any of the shows I dropped, not one tiny bit. I don’t feel any notable interest towards the next season either – it may be that I will skip that one as well.

So have I quit anime? No. Instead I’ve decided to stop forcing myself to watch shit just because it’s the latest stuff out there. I’ve searched out older shows regarded as a cut above the rest – Texhnolyze, Mushishi, Legend of Galactic Heroes and Serial Experiments Lain to name a few – and come to a nasty realization that I have wasted a whole lot of time watching absolute bullshit for no sensible reason at all. Additionally I became painfully aware about how much shit is produced and aired in a season. I’m disappointed by the anime that is aired today. Where is the oppressive atmosphere of Texhnolyze, the relaxed yet intriguing tales of Mushishi and the sheer majesty of LoGH?

Ran certainly does not approve all this bullshit.

Long before I even knew what anime was I’ve been an avid hard science fiction fan and as such it hurts me to see how badly science fiction is treated in anime format. There have been some very good shows like some of the aforementioned but let’s face it: not all that many. For every Last Exile, Evangelion and Noein there are half-assed and outright embarassing attempts like Shangri-la, Heroic Age, Lolbarrels and Tytania. Science fiction shows are few in number and even fewer in quality.

Some argue that science fiction doesn’t work as well as anime because it relies on the freedom imagination on the viewer’s part and visual display of things ruins that aspect. I disagree. Sure when you are reading a science fiction novel your imagination takes over to provide with audiovisual representation of the happenings but that’s definitely not anything that has to do with the actual entertainment value. It is up to the story to entertain you and what your imagination produces is just a projection of what you are reading, not really part of the entertainment itself but more of a side product. Besides it’s not like your mind pulls things out entirely of scratch however you like it; most people, objects and environments are a chaotic mix of things you have seen somewhere, assembled from your memory. The argument that the entertainment potential of a science fiction story is dependent on one’s imagination is thus completely invalid and the format the story is represented in – text, video, audio – is completely irrelevant as long as the story is adapted to match the specific properties of the medium in question.

Anime science fiction: What I expected.

Adaptation – that’s the operative word here. In the case of science fiction anime adaptation is a big thing. You see, anybody can write up a science fiction story and call it a day, but writing a good one is incredibly hard – especially in the subgenre of hard science fiction where your audience is looking forward to clever explanations to complex problems and mysteries, kind of similar to crime novels. Pulling off a convincing deus ex machina isn’t as easy as it may sound. Also, hiring competent scriptwriters is expensive, so most anime studios go over where the fence is lowest and adapt an existing story into anime format.

There’s nothing wrong in this practice when it’s carried out properly. I’d say that for example Vernor Vinge’s A Fire Upon The Deep would make an excellent series. Or Iain M. Banks’ Culture-novels with their satirical, humoristic tone. However in the case of anime studios it seems that most of the time adaptation process itself isn’t given much attention at all. This results in a show that may be loyal to the original works but cannot stand on its own as an individual piece of entertainment. A good example would be To Aru Majutsu no Index which treated its viewers with utter ignorance and made me wonder if there was anybody at all actually directing the show.

And what I got.

So is the lack of original animation works a good or bad thing? I’d say bad. It allows the studios to go for the easy way out and leave things half-assed, knowing that the sales will be decent in any case. I mean why even bother making abstract stuff like Lain or Texhnolyze nowadays? Who would even watch it aside from a bunch of hardcore fans of the genre? Not too many I suppose. The general anime watcher of the modern day isn’t interested in science fiction unless it involves cute girls and action. I have also found that cute girls and action does not generally make a good science fiction series without great production values and a setting that’s more original than just beating nasty aliens/evil organization.

Why is there only shitty anime nowadays? Take a look into a mirror. Look at the selection of every coming season and consider which shows are going to be the most popular and discussed. That’s right. The only ones we viewers can blame are ourselves and our poor, shallow taste in animated entertainment. Anime isn’t made out of pure artistic passion and where the demand is, there the market goes. We highly appraise easily made tasteless mash and congratulate every shitty attempt at something deeper just for trying. So what’s my key argument here? Where’s the punchline? What’s my solution to all this? WAKARIMASEN LOL. There’s nothing that actually can be done about it. It’s just adapt or quit. However, I like to hope that at least every now and then there are things worth seeing. Somewhere inside the huge steaming pile of shallow, poorly written, half-assed adaptation shit like Tayutama, Akikan!, Queen’s Blade, H2O, Shana, Index and so on, there are at least a couple of pearls waiting to be found.

P.S. Just to make it clear, it’s not like I’m saying that back in the day things were better. I don’t know what it even was back in the day and I’m pretty sure that it wasn’t much better. Which leaves me in despair because that only affirms that things never even were all that great to begin with.

Tags: rants, tl;dr