I’m starting a series about how I’m becoming disenchanted (or dissatisfied) with anime. I start off by talking about why it’s important to keep a handle on the seriousness in an anime. It’s a long series with long posts, enjoy!
According to dictionary.com, to be disenchanted is: to be freed from enchantment. Gratz on stating the obvious Mr. Dictionary! To continue further, to be enchanted is: to delight in a high degree; to charm; to enrapture; as, music enchants the ear. Some other key phrases include: fascinate, influence, and attract.
That said, over the past year or so, I’ve become pretty disenchanted with anime. Well, probably more with the way a lot of anime is handled rather than the medium itself.
Now, before you go flaming me over why anime is “teh awesumz!”, please note just a few things: I still love anime, and I’m an avid watcher…in fact, I probably watch more than you do; I continue to wade through animes with all the issues I list below, in hopes that they might prove me wrong; this post is based on a personal opinion, I feel we’re all entitled to them…so if you’d like to throw numbers and facts at me, you can go fsck yourself.
Now, on with my disenchantment.
Please, learn to gauge your level of seriousness.
OH NOES HE’S DEAD! Oh wait…no he’s not.
You’ve all seen it before, and I cannot stand it anymore. Nothing pisses me off like an anime that sits on the fence in terms of seriousness. I don’t know how many times I’ve wanted to break something because an anime refuses to take a step forward or take a step back. The games aren’t fun anime, so stop fscking playing them. You don’t fill me with anticipation and excitment…just annoyance, boredom, and an strong urge to punt kittens.
What the hell am I talking about? Here come the examples. I’m going to use shonen, or in my terms “anime wif 1337 fight scenes!”, as the basis for my arguments.
The Good: Bleach, Samurai 7.
I know some of you saw Bleach and went “lol, yeah right”, but hear me out. Why do I list bleach as a good example? Because it almost never takes itself too seriously. When I watch Bleach, I don’t expect people to die, I don’t expect there to ever be any real romance, and I don’t expect the good guys to lose. Bleach has established these “rules”, if you’d like to call them that, simply by sticking to their guns and being consistent. And I still find Bleach entertaining and tons of fun.
Bleach is obviously SRS business.
I think everyone can remember the one time Bleach tried to take itself seriously. We got the horrible Bount arc. We’re given a filler arc and supposed to take the show seriously all of the sudden? Lay off trying to make the plot all emo and stuff and just give us back the action packed shonen we loved.
That’s why I love what Bleach does with the newest filler arc: it does filler Bleach style and says “Hey, we’re taking a break from the regular plot to tell a different tale you’ve never heard before”. THANK YOU! Call filler what it is and don’t try to make up for it by making it “serious Bleach”.
On the other side of a similar spectrum, there’s Samurai 7 (it been a while since I’ve watched it, so if my details are a bit off, forgive me). It doesn’t play games anymore than Bleach does. It takes itself seriously, people die (and stay dead), good guys lose, and any shots at serious romance are ruined because there’s a fscking war going on and people are moving their asses like they’ve got shit to do.
See that black guy in the middle? He was my hero…and he fscking dies.
So I can expect good guys and bad guys to die off. I can expect the shots at romance to get ruined by chaos and violence (instead of a male lead who’s retarded or spews blood at the sight of any woman not in a hazmat suit). A lot of stuff that happens in Samurai 7 happens for the shittiest reasons, but after the first hero dies and you’re like “NO! WHY?” you come to an understanding that it’s SRS Business and it makes the show that much more intense.
The Bad: Naruto, Nabari no Ou
I’m not going into humongous detail on Naruto, mostly because it’s a better example for points I’ll be making further along in this series. But let’s face it…you can’t take Naruto seriously. At the same time though, it’s like the writers are trying to force their not-so-epic tale on you. Naruto’s ramblings of “Sasuke was the first person who acknowledged me”, coupled with him turning around and being a complete and total dumbass make any sort of depth the show could have feel like it’s being shoved down your throat.
Hi, I’m Naruto and I’m incredibly stupid. We all know it, the show even plays it up as “comedy”. But then they turn around and try to hit you with depth and some notion of a serious plot. It just doesn’t work. Akatsuki might invade Konoha! Who gives a fsck? Your village is full of retards and if they all died, they’d somehow get magically resurrected anyway.
Hi, I’m Naruto…and I’m soooo deep.
Naruto is a show that tries to be both sides of the coin and fails, whereas Nabari no Ou manages to pull off both sides of the coin, but just can’t seem to blend them right. Now, I know the show is in the early stages and I may be jumping the gun. But so what?
Take the first episode for example. There’s an enjoyable blend of comedy and lightheartedness that progresses into a few nice ninjas fight scenes. It seems like a promising setup for the series to run with. Episode 02 then drops 95% of the seriousness and turns into a slice-of-life type show, complete with cat saving, train rides, and school lunches. Then in episode 03, all the comedic elements get thrown out and it’s suddenly all SRS business. Arms are broken, internal organs explode, eyes bleed, and it’s all kinds of intense.
On both accounts, Nabari no Ou does an amazing job at fitting the mold of the current episode. But overall? It just bores me. We can’t have people dying off or getting hurt because our distinctly separated slice-of-life episodes just wouldn’t be the same…yet we can’t go all out with those because we have to maintain a serious overarching plot line full of extreme violence.
You’d never expect an anime full of blood, breaking bones, and exploding organs from this would you?
Why does stuff like this bother me? Because of pacing. In Bleach, the pacing doesn’t need to be fast: no one’s going to die, and I’m just here for the awesome fight scenes and good sense of humor. Samurai 7: The pacing stays fast, because there’s a war going down and people don’t take breaks to go shopping when they’re being hunted or chasing after the guy who just murdered their best friend. Naruto: we won’t go there. Nabari No Ou: it’s like stop, go, stop, go, stop, go.
Please, gauge your level of seriousness and stick with it. If you want me to take you seriously, then give me that feeling of urgency, intensity…like time is running out. Make me unsure about whether my heroes can win the next fight. Let them fall and fail…their triumphs mean that much more afterwards. If you just want me to sit back for an enjoyable ride, then don’t toss me around from serious to casual over and over again.
Notes: I tried to stick to wider-known examples for the post, but there was one particularly good example of an anime that gauges it’s seriousness correctly, sticks with it, and rocks that I wanted to mention. Berserk.
The Forecast: I’ve got three posts in the works right now. There’s the second part of this series, a classic episodic review thing I’ll be doing, and a review for Sword of the Stranger.
Updates: Added IKnight’s “The Animanachronism” and blissmo’s “Yukan Blog!” information to the blogroll. Go check it out!
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