Apr
1
Here’s an interesting phenomenon that has, for various reasons, been brought to my attention: people commenting on anime series and episodes they haven’t seen. It’s something that really makes no sense to me, for reasons that are (I would have thought) obvious. People claim they are able to get enough of an understanding of a given anime that they are able to form opinions of it purely from screenshots, blog reviews, episode summaries, Youtube clips and comments in episodes, but claiming this really dismisses the fact that almost all of the impact of anime is emotional, and I consider it disrespectful to anime as a story-telling medium that people think that the act of watching it can be substituted by reviews, interpretations and analyses.
A good anime really should be more than the sum of its parts, and the process of going over it with a checklist inevitably undersells it, as well as ignores pretty much the only reason I can see to watch anime in the first place. It’s one thing to read a synopsis to find a series with a good plot and characters and then check a clip on Youtube to see it has good animation, music and seiyuu work. It’s another thing altogether to actually watch the thing in its entirety, connect with the characters, be absorbed by the plot and atmosphere, laugh at the jokes and cry at the drama. I don’t think I’ll ever understand how the former could be a substitute for the latter, and if I ever got to the stage where that was no longer the case for me, whether it be due to anime losing its way as a storytelling medium, or just me no longer getting drawn into it and connecting with it (the good series anyway) the way I can now, I think I’d just stop watching it altogether. As far as I can see, there’d no longer be a point to watching it, since all I’d be seeing is moving pictures on a screen. At the moment anime is so much more than that (with the exception of the really bad series, but even they can be at times, still more than any external substitute).
Reviews, forum commentaries, blog posts and the rest work fine as recommendations, or as complements, information-wise, to the anime, as well as places for fans to congregate and discuss anime (which is also an interesting activity in its own right), but they’ll never be a substitute for actually watching the episodes and series. Another thing I don’t really understand is how people can form judgements on entire series from just the first few episodes. Admittedly, there are a few cases where it’s fairly obvious that the show will be a bomb from the first few eps, but I always shake my head when someone chimes in on a discussion about a completed or near-completed series with “I watched the first episode of this and it was total crap… how can anyone like this?” (Ignore momentarily that most of these types of comments generally come from trolls). It boggles the mind, since anime has a huge track record of series that have very noticeable shifts in mood and atmosphere between their first and last episodes (the anime in the OP pic being one of the most notorious examples). I think it’s fair enough to drop series after a few episodes, even though it’s something I don’t do myself (for this very reason, mind you), but recognize that when you go into a conversation about Narutaru and say “man this show sucked; how did anyone get past the first episode of this Pokemon crap,” all you’re doing is making yourself look like a fool. There’s a big difference between “this show sucked” and “the first episode sucked”, but people seem to conveniently ignore this fact whenever the argument suits them.
Which is why I’ll never understand why anime review sites publish reviews of incomplete anime. How can you form a complete, total judgement of something if you haven’t seen the whole thing? Partial judgements just don’t give the show a fair shake, if you ask me.
Comments
11 Comments so far
I’ve noticed the action of judging an anime without completely seeing it occurs a lot more with the “YouTube” generation of fans (the anime fans who watch almost everything on YouTube). They’re usually too lazy to set up a BitTorrent client and get the full episodes, so they watch them in parts in low quality. Then they go and judge a series by how much of it is available and how it looks (some don’t even exclude the issues with YouTube quality).
When I watch a show, I generally give it a certain fraction of the episode count (usually 1/5). I have a lot of Kyoshiro to Towa no Sora on my computer, only because I watched the first half of it and decided it wasn’t for me. Do you concider something like this partial judgement? And do you draw the line between openly speaking your opinion about a show you haven’t seen completely and abandoning a series because you’ve seen enough (but not all) of it to form your personal opinion?
There does not exist a judgement on something you haven’t seen, only speculations based on what you’ve seen or heard. People have the right to comment on episodes that they haven’t seen by watching youtube, blogs, etc. but it’s only speculations based on informations fed from other viewpoints. Anime will provoke different response from different people. If one does not watch it for himself, it’ll be more of his report on what he thinks it’s going to be, not what he thought it was after experiencing it for himself. But why bother trying to work out how the mind of anime viewers work, lot of their minds you just don’t want to even get close to try understanding : D
“Do you concider something like this partial judgement? And do you draw the line between openly speaking your opinion about a show you haven’t seen completely and abandoning a series because you’ve seen enough (but not all) of it to form your personal opinion?” - Kurier
Yes, I think there is a distinction between openly speaking your opinion on a partial viewing and dropping the series because it’s not to your taste. As far as I see it, if one has seen enough of a series that they’ve convinced yourself that they’re wasting their time by watching it, one should do what they wish with it (ie, drop it). Hell, even I drop series sometimes (eg, Chokotto Sister), just probably not as often as most other people. It’s when people try to tell the world that their opinion on a partial viewing is indistinguishable from opinions on a total viewing and that they can comment on episodes they haven’t seen, that I’m not a fan of. If anime was totally predictable and always followed the same patterns then partial viewing opinions would have more weight, but it doesn’t, and if it did, I wouldn’t watch it.
Okay, I’ll be honest with you: This is something I do quite often.
BUT: I only do it because stupid-ass weaboos come to me and claim Naruto’s good.
I, like you, believe that you can’t form total judgement on anything without seeing it. But at the same time, I think when you do a partial review, you can only speak for the SPECIFIC EPISODES that you’ve seen in the first place. Like you said, you can’t just go around forming opinions on shit you’ve never seen.
I think people do it sometimes to be cool, really. They want to be in on their friends’ conversations, bt they can’t. So they take some pre-packaged opinion from a review and reiterate it word for word.
I think dropping a series is justified; I see no reason to watch something that you think is complete shit. While I don’t do it unless it’s completely evident that it’s only going to become worse, I can understand the reasoning behind it.
Now… with something like Kyoshiro… that’s a different story. >_>
I think the worst offender of partially judging a series like this is John “Ask John” Opplieger. He admits that he watches only one episode of most series, yet whenever someone asks his opinion about a series, he acts like he’s seen the entire thing and completely deconstructs it based on one episode. (I’m sure this isn’t always the case, but it must be at least some of the time)
I think there are times where you can judge a series based on the first few episodes. Usually these are shows like Naruto, where you know they aren’t going to drastically improve.
Heck, even Narutards admit large chunks of Naruto suck.
lolol yeah, Naruto is such a total piece of shite, ain’t it? Nothing could possibly make that reproachable pile of horse manure worth watching. Hell, even THAT’s an unfair comparison; manure can at least be utilized as an effective fertilizer. Naruto’d just kill the crops before they can even reach the seedling stage of development! Therefor, complaining about the very existence of the show after having viewed not but an episode or two is perfectly valid and sound. So let the circle-jerking continue! Scorn Naruto vehemently with every last fiber of your being; only then will you be able to improve your tastes in Japanese cartoon shows to the level of true refinement. And it makes you look cool, too.
This is only partially on-topic, but in the general trend:
In my English class, the subject of Lost was somehow brought up. I, along with a few others in the minority, think it sucks. The rest say that I have no right to say it sucks because I stopped watching it. I disagree, because after a point it does become evident whether a series is good or not.
Finding a bright line is far harder, unfortunately. If I had watched, say, one episode, then I would be in the wrong. But I didn’t; I sat through an entire season of that crap. By then it was apparent nothing was ever going to get solved.
So in my opinion, I formulate that if one is going to review something, then they should render all initial judgment as moot until completion of the series, since the purpose of a review is a holistic analysis. However, just as a general opinion, the answer becomes a lot more gray. Obviously, there are certain anime where if you don’t like the first few episodes, you’re never going to like it. Hikaru no Go comes to mind; little knowledge of Go is needed to love the series (me), but if you find the topic boring then there’s no point in watching it. And yeah, right off the bat you can tell people that if they don’t find watching people play a board game then they probably should avoid Hikaru no Go. Conversely, other anime like My-Hime (had to bring it up since it’s your title picture) if dropped in the first like, 4 episodes will generate an opinion that’s totally unrepresentative of the anime.
It’s hard to give a brightline for anime opinions of incomplete series. So I think that when formulating opinions of partially watched anime, one should take it on a case-by-case basis and figure out whether or not it’s fair to voice that opinion.
Of course, I’m not disagreeing with you SK - the idea of watching only an episode or even a portion of an episode and then talking as if you truly did watch the entire series is stupid. However, I think the idea of streaming youtube episodes intrinsically takes away the enjoyment of the anime to begin with; and yeah, I think it cheapens it to an extent. Do I think this is elitist? Nah, but I’m sure someone will think I am. Then again, I’m not advocating everyone go out and buy all of the DVD’s - torrents are free.
You make it sound like (sorry if it wasn’t your intention) if you’ve watched a large portion of a series, you can form an opinion that is about as valid as an opinion formed from watching a completed series. If I was to describe Trigun after watching 24 episodes, I’d say it was quite flawed but an intriguing series with an interesting world and a strong main character. After watching 2 more episodes however, it literally threw how I saw Vash into the pits as his decisions and the finale reduced all that character development into comlete waste of time. Gungrave was awesome upto episode 19, unfortunately it degenerated into some brainless actions series you’d expect from a typical game to anime conversion, all the characters developed so far turned into ‘game bosses’. So after watching upto episode 24, you’d think this series has shit itself royally but the last episodes come back with epic finales, one of the best endings ever in anime to somewhat redeem itself a bit. Actually quite a lot. And let’s not even get to Neon Genesis Evangelion.
So the series do make big turns even at the very late stage, that can make one’s overall emotional response quite drastically. Even after watching a whole season, that’s still an opinion of a season. You can make speculations based on that, and from what people spoon feed you and sure, you can talk about them as in ‘general opinions’. But I don’t think you can argue, as in serious debate in literature with your classmates who have seen Lost on the same ground because unlike their assessment based on a completed experience, you only have speculations.
OK, I’m not trying to make this veer totally off topic, but I have to say, if I were to watch one season of an anime or show, and it suddenly get better in the second or third series, that honestly would not make up for the 26 episodes of crap that I had to watch prior to that. Hypothetically, if I were to review a show like Lost, I would bump down up to 4 points considering it took season after season just to reach some sort of definitive conclusion
Your examples, while valid, misrepresent what I said; both were less than one season. I didn’t use the word season arbitrarily - this means that the director had time to plot out what he wanted to accomplish, and I gave him sufficient time to come up with a plot in the TV series format. If he failed, the second chance I give him (if I give him one at all) will be seriously marred by the fact that I watched 26 episodes of crap.
Tying this all back to the Lost example, you’re correct that I’ve only seen one season of it. However, since what I’ve heard is correct, simply that they haven’t come close to solving everything they’ve brought up, then it’s just a stagnation of the one major gripe I had with the series that flows through all of the subsequent seasons.
“if I were to watch one season of an anime or show, and it suddenly get better in the second or third series, that honestly would not make up for the 26 episodes of crap that I had to watch prior to that.”
I think this is basically why we disagree, since I’d think another one or two more seasons can somewhat redeem (of course not completely make up) for the previous flaws. Perhaps that is why you also thought my examples were misused because I was trying to demonstrate how one or two more seasons have better chance of making up for the first crap 26 episodes of Lost (which you’ve said is impossible) than having last episodes of anime destroy the first 24 first episodes. I don’t think we’re off topic but it is getting bit long so I’ll end it there unless I end up saying something misleading again.
I know who inspired you to write this. Ahahaha~