06-03-2003, 10:07 PM
I think what really feeds into people hatred and conviction is how inflated people's heads become when they watch anime. If we were to take a traditional American cartoon like Looney Tunes (merry melodies) and look at it, all we would find more often than not is slapstick, with many pop culture icons of the time (air raids, Nazis, Hitler etc). Then we look at some other animes like Gundam, and we find a very serious atmosphere with a continuing story, political overtones and the whole "war is hell" motif (quite a contrast to the shotgun to the head routine we see with Daffy Duck and Elmer Fudd).
When we see that Japanese and American Cartoons are very different, we get people thinking that anime is automatically "deep" since it's aimed at a different audience than Looney tunes (however, we can automatically show that it's not so when we show them shows like Dragon Half). We get shows like Eva which people adore and claim to be immensley "deep" and "psychological" (people love anything that resemebles "psychological"). The problem with being "psychological" is that more often than not, they aren't, and in fact just make up tons of BS, make unrealistic characters (most of which are obssessive-compulsive and fixated on a single element of their past) and babble endless on irrelevent junk, then we get people trying to make themselves look smart by writing pages and pages about it (I'm aiming this at Eva mostly because it's by far the most popular show to do this sort of thing with). Shows themselves aren't necessarily pretentious themselves (However, Gainax has a reputation of elevating itself to god-like status) but we get all too many people trying to prove how smart they are (and in some cases proving just otherwise) and with that we get a pretentious air surrounding many shows that people latch on to. Also, if a show isn't necessarily deep, but fun to watch they like to throw flak because the show is too "young" for them (I kindly refer to them as the AP English anime fans because of their fond use of the thesaurus to make sure that the average length of any sentence they write is 6 letters).
The main point I want to hit forth is that when watching anime, it's not about who can point out the most symbolic points in a show (I've already seen that a lot of people have too much time on their hands when they write a thesis on Eva characters and their sephiroth counter-parts), but more to watch, have fun, be entertained and have a good time.
While DBZ wasn't the first anime I watched, it's the show that latched into my head and propelled me into my frantic collective state that I am now in. I loved DBZ 3 or 4 years ago, I love it now, and I doubt Ill stop loving it.
When we see that Japanese and American Cartoons are very different, we get people thinking that anime is automatically "deep" since it's aimed at a different audience than Looney tunes (however, we can automatically show that it's not so when we show them shows like Dragon Half). We get shows like Eva which people adore and claim to be immensley "deep" and "psychological" (people love anything that resemebles "psychological"). The problem with being "psychological" is that more often than not, they aren't, and in fact just make up tons of BS, make unrealistic characters (most of which are obssessive-compulsive and fixated on a single element of their past) and babble endless on irrelevent junk, then we get people trying to make themselves look smart by writing pages and pages about it (I'm aiming this at Eva mostly because it's by far the most popular show to do this sort of thing with). Shows themselves aren't necessarily pretentious themselves (However, Gainax has a reputation of elevating itself to god-like status) but we get all too many people trying to prove how smart they are (and in some cases proving just otherwise) and with that we get a pretentious air surrounding many shows that people latch on to. Also, if a show isn't necessarily deep, but fun to watch they like to throw flak because the show is too "young" for them (I kindly refer to them as the AP English anime fans because of their fond use of the thesaurus to make sure that the average length of any sentence they write is 6 letters).
The main point I want to hit forth is that when watching anime, it's not about who can point out the most symbolic points in a show (I've already seen that a lot of people have too much time on their hands when they write a thesis on Eva characters and their sephiroth counter-parts), but more to watch, have fun, be entertained and have a good time.
While DBZ wasn't the first anime I watched, it's the show that latched into my head and propelled me into my frantic collective state that I am now in. I loved DBZ 3 or 4 years ago, I love it now, and I doubt Ill stop loving it.