Poll: Do you watch anime? | Hacker News Reader

Poll: Do you watch anime?

In response to this item:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1800971

Can't stand it. Even Miyazaki/Ghibli, which my kids adore. Love animation --- particularly the 2-D Sita/Kells/Ware type stuff. Just can't deal with Japanese-style animation (in Miyazaki's case, I think part of it may be the minor cognitive dissonance of the voice over translations).

This actually dovetails with an irrational aversion I have to geek signifiers of all sorts. Can't listen to trancey techno music, or goth/dark/industrial (which used to be all I listened to). Can't stand role playing games. Can't read science fiction. Coming close to not being able to read long-form comic books anymore, too. It's getting worse as I get older; I noticed it starting back in 1998.

I wonder if I'm the only one this happens to.

I've never liked anime though. Other than Miyazaki, there's too much stylized violence and too much emphasis on sci-fi action plots. I was the Sandman-readin' kind of comic book kid.

I've noticed myself being the same way, it's weird. When I was a teenager I used to be all into anime, LARPing, industrial music, Japanese RPGs, Dragonlance, etc. Now that I'm 30, some of my friends are still into these things but I almost find myself actively avoiding them. I'm still into video games here and there, but I find myself feeling guilty playing them since there's SO MUCH WORK TO DO.

IRC and video games are two things I avoid not out of irrational aversion to geekiness but because of the intense feeling of guilt I get for doing them; they are the Cinnabons of time management.

Hacker News and West Wing reruns are big two time vices (Hacker News being an almost perfect replacement for the time I used to sink into Usenet).

I'm much the same way. Right now I'm taking an Elementary Japanese class in preparation for studying abroad, and it easily has the the highest amount of either insanely awkward or development-arrested students of any of my classes.

I was a part of that "subculture" in middle school. My classmates wear the same clothes (I spotted a cheap plastic trenchcoat the other day, ugh), listen to the same music (Malice Mizer fandom, X-Japan wristbands/purses), and have the exact same mannerisms that I grew out of come high school (I'm now in college).

Still a fun bunch, though I still cringe from time to time. It's just weird being back in that "loop" after so long, to see that nothing has changed.

    I would not eat green eggs and ham.
    I do not like them, Sam-I-am.

I personally find the 'cyberpunk' sub-genre of anime fascinating.(According to wikipedia entry: "Plots often centered on a conflict among hackers, artificial intelligences, and megacorporations")

The prime example would be the "Ghost in the Shell" anime series and movies. The Wachowski brothers, makers of "The Matrix", have mentioned this series as an influence.

Sometimes. It is an interesting tightrope to walk in IT here: you want to be able to talk with coworkers about a common hobby, but white guys in Japan who desire to be taken seriously also don't want to be That Guy.

Just some yaoi, occasionally (I hope this thread was already meant to be weird enough).

I look at it like this 90% of american tv is garbage, and 90% of japanese animation is garbage. But the 10% is gold (see berserk).

I used to watch anime when I was a teenager (was a huge fan of Akira, Robotech, Ghost in the Shell, Princess Mononoke), but the only show I've watched recently is Avatar: The Last Airbender.

I like anime vs north american television because often it's a succinct 26 episode series. It's going to have a conclusion. It feels like reading a book at times.

There are many anime that go on forever. Dragon Ball Z, etc. The ones truly worth watching are the science fiction ones. Planetes, Nadesico, Ghost in the Shell, some of the early Gundams, and Evangelion. Each of those paint a very coherent picture of the world. Very unlike american television where a series is milked out over years and often fails to deliver.

You mean except for The Sopranos, The Wire, The Shield, Mad Men, Breaking Bad, The West Wing, Six Feet Under, Dexter, BSG (gak), Friday Night Lights, Lost, Sons of Anarchy, Deadwood, Extras, Damages, Weeds (gak), House...

What's tricky about this comparison is that there's so much North American TV. A lot of it is ABC sitcoms, yes.

I used to watch a ton. Then once I felt like I saw everything I could I stopped. I have no new source or way of getting new things recommended but feel like if I shared my likes and movies I enjoyed, someone with great knowledge could make suggestions on what to get. I do not have NetFlix (I know, im the last one) so I do not have a central point of movie taste graph setup.

I personally tend to read manga rather than anime save for a few I feel need to be watched, and the stuff shown at my schools' anime club.

Clickety click: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1800971

Responding to the PDF linked in that article, I'm not so sure about the good/evil thing. People actually are pretty easily sorted into good guy/bad guy classifications in most anime (hint: anyone ugly or scarred is 99% sure to be bad).

The trick is that bad guys aren't 100% bad (and good guys aren't 100% good). Also, there's some cultural stuff, so their idea of "bad" may or may not map to yours.

And if you go past people to ideas, some ideas are pretty much universally bad in anime. For example, resurrection is only for evil people in anime; the good guys get reincarnated. Examples: Death Note, Mar Heaven, Shaman King, etc. If there's a counter-example, I've yet to see it.

There is at least one counter example in Naruto. (A series where genuine literary merit hides under genre convention and filler.)

You're right, I neglected Chiyo's revival of Gaara. I guess I personally make an exception for instances when people are only dead for a few minutes (call it the difference between "mostly dead" and "all dead" if you like). There are a few revivals like that, both in Naruto and elsewhere. All had positive portrayals, that I can remember. It's kind of hard, sometimes, to know when people are really dead, after all.

Orochimaru & Kabuto's Kuchiyose: Edo Tensei ("Impure World Resurrection") technique, on the other hand is more the kind of "resurrection" I had in mind.

That article makes some interesting points, but I'm not comfortable with how recklessly it tends to generalize, and at times it seems to be picking evidence to fit its conclusions rather than trying to draw its conclusions from the evidence.

For example, at one point it argues that the typical plot complexity and subtlety in most anime is "extraordinary". I suppose this is true for something like Ghost in the Shell, Princess Mononoke, or some of the longer-running plot-driven manga, but that's a very biased sample. Perhaps that's a sign of the time in which the article was written -- in 2003, Americans' reference pool of anime was smaller, and so there was some pretty serious selection bias going on.

Just Yu-Gi-Oh Abridged for me. I prefer manga where at all possible- I don't really enjoy any subs or dubs.

Read manga, anime not so much

It shouldn't be hard to guess with me...

Only a few titles, but I watch these titles all the time

Code Geass

Dragon Ball Z

I've watched (and liked) several others too, but never obsessed with anything like the above two!

I used to obsess with 'Detective Conan' but it got boring and repetitive.

Miyazaki mostly — My Neighbor Totoro, Spirited Away, Princess Mononoke.

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