[QUOTE=TH89;28828230]I've never seen a good one, ever
[editline]27th March 2011[/editline]
Don't get me wrong, I'd love to be proven wrong, but every time someone is like "you just saw the bad stuff, here check this out" it turns out to be bad[/QUOTE]
Oh gosh it's just like rap music
[QUOTE=Mr. Scorpio;28830345]funny, I'm the same way about rap music[/QUOTE]
[QUOTE=POLOPOZOZO;28830642]Oh gosh it's just like rap music[/QUOTE]
I'm talking about voice acting. A lot of anime has really amazing visuals and aesthetic value, some of the stories are brilliantly whimsical and shit. There are a lot of good things about anime. Good writing and voice acting (at least in English) is not one of them. The problem is anime fans can't stand to hear this and they will argue forever about it and refuse to critically engage with their favorite thing.
I love rap music, but I'm not going to stand up and pretend that, say, there's a bunch of good political rap music out there, because there isn't. It is a glaring flaw and I point it out to other people who like rap music in the hopes of contributing in some minor way to the raising of standards.
Same with video games. They're virtually all badly written. Even Mass Effect 2, a game given numerous industry awards for its writing, is pretty horrendous when compared to a moderately good book. A lot of people who play games don't like to hear that, and they make excuses for it or just flat out convince themselves that the writing is good and anyone who says it isn't is just being overly critical.
If you're going to get mad and defensive because someone critically engages something you like, how do you expect the thing you like to grow and get better? It's not going to.
Rap music is better than anime.
Well, when something is originally in another language you can blame lack of cultural context and difficulty in translations for bad writing. They're pretty shaky foundations but they're there.
I won't deny that a lot of anime is terribly written and paced.
[QUOTE=Jabberwocky;28831062]Well, when something is originally in another language you can blame lack of cultural context and difficulty in translations for bad writing. They're pretty shaky foundations but they're there.[/QUOTE]
I think that's a big part of it. Another thing is that (in my experience) the biggest anime fans tend to be dorky types with really lame senses of humor, and since they end up being the ones doing most of the anime dubs (except for big budget Miyazaki type stuff) their attempts at translating jokes and witty dialogue fall really flat.
Another thing is I've gotten the impression that ideas about psychology and sociology aren't as well-explored in Japan as they are in the West--it's kind of a mildly autistic society (although I've read some stuff about Japanese critics who are challenging those trends which was interesting). The result is material that's spectacular in some ways--especially visually, and might be good at tugging on heartstrings, but rarely has any thematic depth.
Or maybe I'm being super ethnocentric and Japanese narrative themes are so different from Western ones that I miss them entirely! :iiam:
[QUOTE=TH89;28831200]
Or maybe I'm being super ethnocentric and Japanese narrative themes are so different from Western ones that I miss them entirely! :iiam:[/QUOTE]
well that's part of it too
[url]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Japanese_literary_terms[/url]
Goddammit I can't read this crazy moon speak
basically they have words to describe things that the west has spent ages trying to find out in literature
[editline]26th March 2011[/editline]
pretty much japanese literature has had thousands of years to develop while english literature is fairly new
[QUOTE=thisispain;28831742]basically they have words to describe things that the west has spent ages trying to find out in literature
[editline]26th March 2011[/editline]
pretty much japanese literature has had thousands of years to develop while english literature is fairly new[/QUOTE]
I'm pretty sure english has had thousands of years to develop. It's just that it hasn't always been called english and that it's stolen heaps from other languages, just like how Japanese is stealing from Chinese.
[QUOTE=Jabberwocky;28831807]I'm pretty sure english has had thousands of years to develop. It's just that it hasn't always been called english and that it's stolen heaps from other languages, just like how Japanese is stealing from Chinese.[/QUOTE]
english literature dates around since like the 1300's
but yeah certainly chinese literature has had the longest time to develop
[QUOTE=TH89;28830784]I'm talking about voice acting. A lot of anime has really amazing visuals and aesthetic value, some of the stories are brilliantly whimsical and shit. There are a lot of good things about anime. Good writing and voice acting (at least in English) is not one of them. The problem is anime fans can't stand to hear this and they will argue forever about it and refuse to critically engage with their favorite thing.
I love rap music, but I'm not going to stand up and pretend that, say, there's a bunch of good political rap music out there, because there isn't. It is a glaring flaw and I point it out to other people who like rap music in the hopes of contributing in some minor way to the raising of standards.
Same with video games. They're virtually all badly written. Even Mass Effect 2, a game given numerous industry awards for its writing, is pretty horrendous when compared to a moderately good book. A lot of people who play games don't like to hear that, and they make excuses for it or just flat out convince themselves that the writing is good and anyone who says it isn't is just being overly critical.
If you're going to get mad and defensive because someone critically engages something you like, how do you expect the thing you like to grow and get better? It's not going to.[/QUOTE]
That is a sentiment I'm willing to agree with whole heartedly.
i think michael cera should be in this movie
[QUOTE=thisispain;28831703]well that's part of it too
[url]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Japanese_literary_terms[/url][/QUOTE]
Well from a quick glance at the page, it seems that most of those things point at literary forms, and not the content itself.
Japanese literature most likely went trough a number of diverse periods as european literature did though it's possible that the impact of these might have actually been somewhat smaller as Japan has always been a somewhat isolationist nation.
So while you had a profoundly massive exchange of ideas happening in Europe - just the ease the various -ISM movements spread (romanticism, naturalism etc etc etc) point at a slightly different evolution of literature. The somewhat lower societal pressure to standardisation is also most likely in effect.
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