Jake

Idle Thumbs 265: A Chill Hell

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I think saying people were using the word simply to mean "bad" (when I'm pretty sure people were using it as shorthand for some common, if negative, traits associated with anime) is reductive and unnecessarily defensive. People do that for a lot of things, positive and negative. But whatever you're right, sorry for continuing to talk about it.

 

I keep trying to leave it alone, but my issue is that critiquing a work from one medium just by saying it's like a work from another medium is what's reductive and saying, "People are always going to use a medium or genre as shorthand for the stereotypical faults of that genre," is what's defensive, but that's just me. I really don't understand why multiple people on this forum (who presumably devotees of video games, another medium with low cultural cachet) are pushing back against the efforts of others just to say, "Not all anime are like B-tier cinematic shorts from Blizzard, here are some examples of more impressive work." It's not being defensive, it's trying to expand the conversation beyond everyone's gut reactions to anime.

 

Also, people keep using thematically coded genres (again, not nationally coded mediums) of historically low repute for their analogies, like horror films and adventure games (although I generally hear people append "bad" when they use those genres as pejoratives, a qualifier that anime isn't typically seen to need). Personally, I think of it more like someone who doesn't like too much silence or abstraction in their video games and complains that some walking simulator is too much like "some French film." Suddenly, when we're using a medium with more legitimacy and with direct reference to its parent culture, it gets a bit more uncomfortable just to throw it around as shorthand for a nebula of features that didn't work for a given person. Even though the flaws of French cinema are broadly known, using the term itself as a means for criticism still comes off as uncultured and close-minded, not discerning. "Anime" gets used as a pejorative, first and foremost, because it's in a cultural ghetto for being foreign, poorly understood, and marketed to children. The actual quality of the works themselves, within their own context, is secondary (and sometimes irrelevant) to their foreignness, their childishness, their lack of compatibility with mainstream Western tastes. That's why I opened my part in this conversation with gifs from conventionally and unconventionally beautiful anime, works to which Blizzard only wishes its cinematics invited comparison, but somehow we're still fixated on the worst that the medium has to offer.

 

Sturgeon's Law is that ninety perfect of everything is crap. That applies to everything, as far as I've been able to tell, so the clearest sign of whether or not a given medium or genre has made it in mainstream culture is whether the ninety percent or the ten percent is taken to be the significant part.

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One of the Overwatch videos had me tearing up. So... I guess in this case my taste just missed the mark. Though, I was also in a weeeeird place when I watched it. So.. eh.. 

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I keep trying to leave it alone, but my issue is that critiquing a work from one medium just by saying it's like a work from another medium is what's reductive and saying, "People are always going to use a medium or genre as shorthand for the stereotypical faults of that genre," is what's defensive, but that's just me. I really don't understand why multiple people on this forum (who presumably devotees of video games, another medium with low cultural cachet) are pushing back against the efforts of others just to say, "Not all anime are like B-tier cinematic shorts from Blizzard, here are some examples of more impressive work." It's not being defensive, it's trying to expand the conversation beyond everyone's gut reactions to anime.

Also, people keep using thematically coded genres (again, not nationally coded mediums) of historically low repute for their analogies, like horror films and adventure games (although I generally hear people append "bad" when they use those genres as pejoratives, a qualifier that anime isn't typically seen to need). Personally, I think of it more like someone who doesn't like too much silence or abstraction in their video games and complains that some walking simulator is too much like "some French film." Suddenly, when we're using a medium with more legitimacy and with direct reference to its parent culture, it gets a bit more uncomfortable just to throw it around as shorthand for a nebula of features that didn't work for a given person. Even though the flaws of French cinema are broadly known, using the term itself as a means for criticism still comes off as uncultured and close-minded, not discerning. "Anime" gets used as a pejorative, first and foremost, because it's in a cultural ghetto for being foreign, poorly understood, and marketed to children. The actual quality of the works themselves, within their own context, is secondary (and sometimes irrelevant) to their foreignness, their childishness, their lack of compatibility with mainstream Western tastes. That's why I opened my part in this conversation with gifs from conventionally and unconventionally beautiful anime, works to which Blizzard only wishes its cinematics invited comparison, but somehow we're still fixated on the worst that the medium has to offer.

Sturgeon's Law is that ninety perfect of everything is crap. That applies to everything, as far as I've been able to tell, so the clearest sign of whether or not a given medium or genre has made it in mainstream culture is whether the ninety percent or the ten percent is taken to be the significant part.

Yes "not all anime" -- I know there is good anime but for the purpose of shorthand of explaining the presence of that bundle of tropes in a non-anime work, I don't care, and I don't think anyone else does either, because it communicates what it intends to communicate quickly. If anyone is so dumb to think "oh all anime is like cheesy anime" then they have preconceptions that aren't going to be saved by someone's defending post on an Internet forum.

Your point about the 90% thing feels like you're arguing against yourself when it comes to using a genre or medium's label to shorthand explain to someone that "this has characteristics which are more commonly found in this other medium." If you're wishing people would only use the mediums or genres you like in discussion to advocate for the things about them that you like, and never use them as negative examples, good luck to you.

It's true that I don't watch a lot of anime but I've watched a lot more than none. I like some of it. I definitely don't appreciate it the way many people do but I also recognize a bunch of tropes that are undeniably unique to, or born from, anime which are adopted by other genres. I don't know what to say about that other than we're going to disagree about how appropriate it is top point that out while simultaneously not enjoying the presence of those tropes in the non-anime work. It seems like that's just how it is. I'm sure you do the same things about things I like and you don't.

This conversation is such an Internet forum conversation holy shit.

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if someone figured out how to add the JoJo Roundabout freeze frame to this conversation somewhere, that would be *chef's kiss*

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man i am actually like kind of legitimately angry that what started as

 

"hey don't be so dismissive"

 

turned into

 

"lol internet"

 

i could say so much more but it wouldn't go over well for anyone involved if i did so i'm just... done, i'm done, fuck it

 

only other thing i'll say is that chris (and also voxn (and also whoever else)) i was not intending to call anyone out so i dunno if that's why it all blew up like this or what but... that wasn't the intention, and i certainly wasn't upset to start with, so, you know, take that as you will

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Yes "not all anime" -- I know there is good anime but for the purpose of shorthand of explaining the presence of that bundle of tropes in a non-anime work, I don't care, and I don't think anyone else does either, because it communicates what it intends to communicate quickly. If anyone is so dumb to think "oh all anime is like cheesy anime" then they have preconceptions that aren't going to be saved by someone's defending post on an Internet forum.

This conversation is such an Internet forum conversation holy shit.

 

It didn't communicate anything to me or to a lot of other people who listen to the show, that's the whole problem. Maybe, as a friend and colleague of Chris, you know him well enough to know what he thinks anime is and isn't, but for me, it communicated that Chris has a low opinion of anime and that's all. It feel like "anime" as a descriptor is a missing stair for language (ugh, I'm already regretting this comparison a little) where everyone thinks that everyone else knows exactly what they mean but each person uses it slightly differently and it's just a mess of poorly understood but vaguely undesirable connotations. These days, it seems to occupy the same semantic space for media as "hipster" does for people.

 

Anyway, I'm not defending anime, I'm defending functional use of language and a better appreciation of media in general. If you want to make apologies for lazy generalizations tossed out in the course of recording a podcast, that's fine, but I'm going to be on this forum calling them out and you can keep dismissing me as "defensive," as if it's uncool to care about something enough to try to engage people when it comes up. I know you don't care, you're making that abundantly clear. And that's also fine!

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It didn't communicate anything to me or to a lot of other people who listen to the show, that's the whole problem.

Fair enough.

This conversation is one that would be so so quick when said aloud. I feel like everyone is digging themselves deeper instead of resolving things and I'm contributing to that failure. Maybe I'm straight up causing it. Sorry if I wasn't arguing in good faith. (I do think the claims that people using shorthand are people who mean it as shorthand for "bad" or are people who think anime is a lower form of entertainment or something, is also not a good faith position to take, as for all you know they don't mean "bad" or they just have passing familiar with anime and maybe even more familiarity with parodies of anime than legit anime, or they just don't find it to their tastes, which are very different from seeing it as low work, but only one of those positions comes from a place assuming an attack/bad faith.)

Anyway, sorry for being dismissive or flippant to the point of frustration. That wasn't my intention.

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Anyway, sorry for being dismissive or flippant to the point of frustration. That wasn't my intention.

 

No, my bad for helping to create this situation, too. I know most anime's not to everyone's taste, but I do like to believe that there's at least one show out there for everyone. For instance, a business bro who's an acquaintance of mine fell in love with Spice & Wolf because it's an anime about medieval finance and trade. He doesn't like any other anime that I've shown him, though he keeps asking for more. It's really hard to walk a line of "there's so much to love" that's neither defensiveness nor proselytism, and I don't have as much skill as I'd like to have at doing so, but I'm working on it. These conversations, as acrimonious as they can be, help with that.

 

Anyway, I didn't like the Overwatch videos either, they were too much like recent Marvel movies for my taste!  :getmecoat

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You are probably right that assuming that someone using "anime" is intending it to be negative is not working on the best of faith. Sorry if I interpreted it incorrectly. It's just like I was saying earlier, it's such a common thing, it just sorta gets to me after a while.

 

Well hey all's well that ends well!

 

giphy.gif

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Well hey all's well that ends well!

 

vS8O2h3.gif

 

Not safe for work, unless your work is defending anime on the internet.

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I enjoyed that discussion about the use of the term "anime" in critique. Looks like it took a lot out of y'all, but I learned a lot. Thank-you to all who participated.

Also in case it is unclear this is not a sarcastic comment. I hope the clarification doesn't sound sarcastic. Oh well.

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I enjoyed that discussion about the use of the term "anime" in critique. Looks like it took a lot out of y'all, but I learned a lot. Thank-you to all who participated.

Also in case it is unclear this is not a sarcastic comment. I hope the clarification doesn't sound sarcastic. Oh well.

 

 I would like to mention that I also found it, for the most part, pretty interesting and just really wanted to make a dumb joke. 

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I enjoyed that discussion about the use of the term "anime" in critique. Looks like it took a lot out of y'all, but I learned a lot. Thank-you to all who participated.

Also in case it is unclear this is not a sarcastic comment. I hope the clarification doesn't sound sarcastic. Oh well.

 I would like to mention that I also found it, for the most part, pretty interesting and just really wanted to make a dumb joke. 

 

As a way of continuing the conversation in more concrete terms, I was reminded recently of this excellent article on the historical ambivalence toward taking anime seriously in the West and a brief follow-up from one of my favorite anime bloggers that anime fans need to be better ambassadors, too.

 

The blog on which the former article is hosted has also posted a conversation among its contributors about the difficulty of pulling together an anime "canon."

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Does everyone sound stoned when you slow their voice down? I didn't know that.

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Does everyone sound stoned when you slow their voice down? I didn't know that.

 

Ah, the source of a classic Conan bit:

 

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Does everyone sound stoned when you slow their voice down? I didn't know that.

Is this a good time to mention that youtube videos can let you watch videos at different speeds?

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As a way of continuing the conversation in more concrete terms, I was reminded recently of this excellent article on the historical ambivalence toward taking anime seriously in the West and a brief follow-up from one of my favorite anime bloggers that anime fans need to be better ambassadors, too.

 

The blog on which the former article is hosted has also posted a conversation among its contributors about the difficulty of pulling together an anime "canon."

Very interesting reading, thank you for sharing. I'd be curious on how much you agree, disagree, or rebut these different thoughts. There was one passage that spoke to me not as something I knew but something underlying for perhaps why this super broad genre gets condensed so quickly to tropes for me. 

 

It’s obvious that anime doesn’t share these priorities. Even though there were a few personality animators of the Disney mold early on at Toei Doga (notably Yasuji Mori), Japanese animation quickly diverged. Character acting in anime is often symbolic. That is, personality is conveyed through shorthands for a particular emotional response (one doesn’t need to watch more than a few yonkoma comedies to learn what those shorthands are). Most of the time the ‘roles’ in anime are little more than stock archetypes or emblems of a particular social class, give or take a few distinguishing quirks. Even in serious productions like Miyazaki’s the animation rarely has specificity of character – any given Miyazaki heroine is interchangeable with any other. And when we’re able to be emotionally affected by what happens to a character or empathize with their situation, the acting is almost never the reason why. This is probably why anime characters are appealing to fanartists and fanfictionists; they’re nearly blank slates.

 

I believe this is meant to be conveyed in an observational or objective tone, but my brain reads this as intensely negative. As a physical actor and someone interested in the mechanics of acting, those things are very important to me. However, I never would have put a pin straight into that as a reason I am more or less disinterested in anime. Does this read as correct (at least generally)?

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