Anime has always “had a bad reputation”, just like anything else that was originally “nerdy”. Today, it has the unusual position of being treated as a genre when it is a medium (which you are doing here). It’s like putting Garfield and Watchmen in the same bucket and is intellectually dishonest.
Yeah Watchmen isn’t terrible.
I watch quite a bit of anime, but it has a bad reputation for good reason. There are lots of issues in many popular shows. Glorified casual sexism (in both directions) and sexualization of minors for example. If you pick a random anime from any season there is a >50% chance it contains stuff that would make you deserve being socially shunned if you endorse it.
Yes there are very good shows and i love them, but anime as a whole is very infested with horrible garbage. So i would say its not just that people recommended “those few bad shows” but that there are just a lot of bad shows. You could argue the same for books and say that books dont have a bad rep despite all the bad books, but i genuinely think the ratio of good to bad books is nowhere near as bad as anime.
In the end it might be less about individual recommendations and more about a lack of systematic review and curation systems. Following MAL ratings is for example completely worthless. When you go to a bookstore you know you wont accidentally stumble upon a story glorifying incest or domestic violence.
Now? Its always had a bad reputation (especially in the western world), but mostly due to the fact that the people who like it the most were awkward nerds.
Yeah, I was gonna say, anime mostly has a bad reputation because of the people who watch anime. Like, if the average person were told “picture an anime fan”, they would imagine an overweight neckbeard wearing a tail and a Naruto headband, with a mall ninja samurai sword shoved in their sweatpants.
There are two categories of anime which have a good reputation.
First is anime directed at children with mass appeal, like Pokemon or Dragonball. You can talk about this with other adults with a level of respectability, assuming you are discussing kids watching it, or your own experience watching it as a kid. It is weird if you, personally, are interested in the new season of pokemon - this will put you in the same category as adult My Little Pony fans. You do not want this.
Second is anime which is good and classic enough that it has superceded the negative cultural associations of anime. I would put Akira, Bebop, and and Miyazaki in this category.
Outside of this, and you will need to have a reasonably respectable presence and good social skills to overcome the negative associations of watching anime. Which is unlikely, considering that the stereotype exists for a reason. So if you like anime, and are trying to make friends… keep that to yourself the first few times.
Unless your trying to make anime friends, in which case, let your freak flag fly :)
I’d put attack on titan in the second category as well, seems like it had broader appeal.
I think it’s a valid observation.
However in my highly subjective opinion - one of the reasons this happens is because in the west - anime is seen as a genre with conventions rather than more generically being in the medium of animation.
Since 90% of anime, as with everything - is not particularly good, you end up with mass-produced slop representing most of the “genre” to the masses because they fundamentally view it as such rather than a medium.
It’s kind of hard to explain, but to resort to an analogy - most video games today are mobile asset swap online casinos and/or outright scams, but the average person does understand that their presence isn’t indicative of the medium and there are video games that have a lot more artistic merit, just like the presence of reality TV show trash doesn’t invalidate TV series as a medium or the presence of shoddy airport novels doesn’t invalidate the entire medium of prose.
For videogames, this didn’t actually use to be the case, and most people thought that video games are all side scrolling pixelated Nintendo platformers aimed at children, but as the medium matured there’s now an understanding that it’s not a genre where that is the convention but a medium of many genres of its own.
If anime becomes more popular I’m sure people will develop a similar understanding that something like SAO shouldn’t put them off watching Death Note or Serial Experiments Lain or why Evangelion 3.0+1.0 doesn’t mean all anime is equally dogshit and not worth any consideration.
I would argue that it is not a valid observation, but rather an observation with heavy survivorship bias.
There has always been a ton of low-quality cheap garbage trying to capitalize on it. It just gets forgotten about because it’s boring. Maybe one could argue that more of it getting released in the West is a trend, but even then it’s hard to say whether that’s real or it’s just that more anime overall is getting released.
I mean I will watch any anime. I feel anime is like sex (the ole even bad anime is alright). It just enterains me more when its not great than a not great live show and I lump us animation in this too. That being said there is anime that is like wow. This was great, there is like popcorn anime thats a nice romp, and there is stuff which even I can only take a few episodes at a time. Like anything to there are some things where the first season is great then it sorta falls apart or was not that great and then has a pretty good season.
That is the “problem”, because porn isn’t seen as art - precisely because it’s seen as a utility to fullfill a purpose. It’s no different than a workplace training video in that sense, though it’s probably good to not mix them up.
to be clear im not saying I like anime because its porn like. Im saying I just generally like animation so even if the story is not great I just like it as a medium enough to enjoy it. Especially the more actually drawn it is. The more computer animated the less it gets the points. Music can do that a bit to.
I mean yeah - that’s what I mean. Bad porn is still porn. It’s utilitarian. You view anime the same way.
Ah. Yeah. I just here the turn of phrase with sex. I think partially because sex is going to be your type of thing if your doing it but there is porn I don’t want to get anywhere near.
I don’t think it’s the quality I think it’s just that it’s animated. At least for that surface level reputation you’re talking about. There’s just an intense dislike or distaste or distrust for animated media. It’s why they make so many live action remakes these days. For the majority of the public anything animated isn’t worth their time. Regardless of quality.
That’s such a weird thing to me. I’ve known people like that, but it’s just not something I get. Especially when they are fine with “live action” remakes or superhero movies that are just animation with extra steps.
Yeah, 20 years ago you were seen as a golden god for watching anime.
Personally I just don’t like the style, and by that I mean the writing or animation. I understand a lot of my issues with the writing are probably cultural, but the animation style is really off-putting to me, as well as the cadence with which they speak.
There is definitely some fantastic new anime out there. I see two issues: First, some of the genres are VERY specific and it can be hard to find something you like in them if that’s not your thing. Second, many of these seem to be derivatives of each other–not old animes, but other animes that just came out recently. It’s like ChatGPT began to write these all of a sudden.