[ SECRET POST #3445 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #3445 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

01.


__________________________________________________



02.


__________________________________________________



03.


__________________________________________________



04.


__________________________________________________



05.


__________________________________________________



06.


__________________________________________________



07.


__________________________________________________



08.


__________________________________________________



09.


__________________________________________________



10.


__________________________________________________



11.


__________________________________________________



12.


__________________________________________________



13.


__________________________________________________



14.


__________________________________________________



15.










Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 01 pages, 16 secrets from Secret Submission Post #492.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

I watch all new TV anime with low expectations and an awareness that I'm probably not about to experience an intelligent narrative. Half the pleasure of the """medium""" is wankery of cute or cool-looking characters doing cute or cool-looking things, the pandering aspect is baked into the marketing and marketing is baked into the shows (and I can barely even criticise "look at all these sexy girls!" shit when I follow so much "look at all these sexy guys!" shit). Sure, you sometimes get impressive animation/direction on top of that. Some shows or adaptations are genuinely clever, funny or thoughtful, but not much beyond what you can find in other formats (and when they do pop up coughrakugocough they may go under the popularity radar). For the most part, even as I consume a bunch of shows every season, it's a self-aware pleasure and I'm not in illusions about the current standards of writing in this particular industry.

So I'm always baffled when I come across people who clearly are. Seriously, it fucks with my head a bit when I'm lurking message boards and somebody writes a big-ass paragraph of 'analysis' on the genius of some current-season anime, which always ultimately boils down to 'this is crude symbolism' or 'wow, this represents something! so deep' shit like the user has never watched/read anything that isn't TV anime, and thus has only just discovered the basics of what storytelling/characterisation can do. Which is not to shit on all analysis of anime, but on the over-credulousness of certain anime fans who think anime is the be-all of literary technique...every season's critically-praised "amazing dark mature intelligent epic!" show is almost guaranteed to turn out as either flimsy fluff or a total clusterfuck.

I also think anime fandom is horrible at maintaining critical distance. This is true of a lot of fandom, but I think anime's focus on appealing characters exacerbates the problem. Maybe I'm just hanging around the wrong circles, but it fucks me up so much when I see people having epic personal debates about which characters are the best people and had the most justified emotional outburst, as if they're real humans in an internally consistent universe and it matters, with little regard for the fact they're constructions and might be faultily made...But that's how the publishers make their merchandise bux, I guess?
I'm more done with anime viewers than with anime. In general I've started learning never to take narratives for granted or unquestioned, and now I wish everyone else watching all these crap series with me would at least catch up.

As other replies have said, there is a lot of great older stuff (and completely mad older stuff that I love anyway - I'm partial to Patalliro) and some new gems underneath all the banality. But I don't blame you for stepping off the anime wagon, OP.

[(Anonymous)]

This is true of a lot of fandom,

Bruh, absolutely everything you said is true of a lot of fandom. Most popular entertainment is fluff with intentionally appealing characters. And have you seen the omg!sodeep! essays regularly churned out by the Superwholock fandoms? You sound more pretentious than the fans you're bagging on tbh.

[(Anonymous)]

Analyzing a series doesn't mean that they don't watch anything but or haven't studied "better" things. It just means they wanted to analyze something.