Anime you hate?

[Frankenpetey]

Okay, so a while back, there was a thread here asking about our favorite anime. I thought it might be interesting to go the opposite direction. Are there any anime that you just can't stand? A show that's so boring you just can't keep watching it, so stupid you just can't believe it, or so horrible it makes you feel physically ill?

My personal pick would have to be Okane ga Nai, which I've been exposed to recently. I say 'exposed to' because it feels more like I've just caught a disease than watched a show. For you lucky people who haven't seen it, the major idea is this:

Yakuza member A buys character B (yes, buys, as in purchases with money) at a slave auction. He then keeps character B locked up in his apartment, completely isolated from the rest of the world. A believes he's in love with B, but is physically and verbally abusive and is generally a sicko. There's some other threadbare plot, but honestly is just serves as a backdrop for the rape and such.

Now, that premise alone isn't enough to turn me off to the show. The idea could be fascinating if handled correctly and with a modicum of dignity, but here's why Okane ga Nai makes my blood boil. This relationship, if you can even call it that, is presented as being okay. As being romantic. As being cute. I beg your pardon?! How, exactly, is that kind of abuse and degradation supposed to be romantic?

Never mind the fact that B looks about twelve years old, just.....what? Every episode tries to justify what character A is doing, and I just don't understand. We're expected to sympathize with a psycho rapist? He's not a hero!




Anyway, anything push a big ol' angry button for you guys? We need some meaty discussion all up in here.

[UNIT 0918]

This one's easy: Naruto. 'Nuff said.

...Well, not really. I don't like it not only because it's overrated. For one thing, the anime takes waaaay too long to progress. I swear, those "dramatic" pauses are so long and frequent that if they didn't have those, they would've finished a battle or something within one episode. I think it took one whole episode just to show two guys getting killed by Gaara and Sasuke getting to the colosseum in time.

For another thing, the character development is waaaay too corny and done at the wrong times. We always have the characters talking about their "tragic" past to Naruto during a battle! Who does that?! And then there's the kid's anime style of having characters go through an instant personality change after those "Now I understand..." parts. This stalling is probably partly the reason why there are so much episodes by now.

Well, at least the Naruto: Ultimate Ninja games are good...


And if video games were allowed in this topic, I would say Final Fantasy VII.

[TronBonne]

I have a few I generally don't like...I don't really know how to explain each series without blabbing out spoilers, so I'll just be brief.

I think Shakugan no Shana is very overrated, I see a lot of praise for it, but I can't understand why. I found it to be incredibly boring for the most part. The first few episodes really had me going, until the one reason I was watching was pretty much resolved...however, the show did have its good moments, since I did watch all of season 1. Couldn't bring myself to watch the second season though.

Gundam Seed Destiny is another one, I'm just going to pretend that it doesn't exist. I didn't like the general direction the show took....

Peach Girl. I have such a love-hate relationship with this series. I watched a bit of the anime, a little from the beginning then I skipped straight to the end. >_> Didn't really like what I saw. Then I started reading the manga. It's so ridiculous I could die, yet I still feel tempted to finish it, because I love/hate the drama.

Death Note!! The last third of it, at least. I LOVED the first 26 episodes, but after that it went downhill, at least for me.

If I'm allowed to add manga, Hot Gimmick. It's shoujo, but a terrible one at that. The guy has the worst qualities I've ever seen, and even slaps Hatsumi over something really trivial (not picking up the phone or something when he called). I didn't like how she just accepted the things that he did to her o.o

[Buster Cannon]

Nov 17, 2008 15:54:18 GMT -5 UNIT 0918 said:

This one's easy: Naruto. 'Nuff said.

...Well, not really. I don't like it not only because it's overrated. For one thing, the anime takes waaaay too long to progress. I swear, those "dramatic" pauses are so long and frequent that if they didn't have those, they would've finished a battle or something within one episode. I think it took one whole episode just to show two guys getting killed by Gaara and Sasuke getting to the colosseum in time. This stalling is probably partly the reason why there are so much episodes by now.

Well, at least the Naruto: Ultimate Ninja games are good...

Yeah, the Ultimate Ninja games are pretty epic; they're even better in Japanese. The Accel series is pretty sweet! ;D

I don't mind Naruto in general; it's a lot better if you read the manga, actually. The American dub killed it though: the voices were annoying, and there were too many unnecessary edits. They changed Lee's Drunken Fist style to "Loopy Fist" in America, which is pretty stale.

As for the "dramatic pauses", you mentioned, RockBuster, DBZ had the same problem (it was actually worse). Characters scream for almost an entire episode, or there's a really lengthy transformation involved. Again, reading the manga makes it that much more enjoyable. The pauses are done for filler so that they give the manga writers time to forge ahead.

[Aim]

Anyone seen DemonBane TV? Besides having some pretty awfully cliche characters, it features horizontally wide robots that are vaguely anthromorphic and are larger than whole cities. Said robots do flying kicks. It's pretty awful and unbelievable.

I could suggest a lot more decent anime than I could name bad anime.

@gundam SEED: IF THEY'D JUST KILLED OFF KIRA OR ATHRUN. EITHER OF THEM. I'D HAVE BEEN HAPPY.

[Staulmaster]

Nov 17, 2008 18:08:55 GMT -5 Buster Cannon said:

As for the "dramatic pauses", you mentioned, RockBuster, DBZ had the same problem (it was actually worse). Characters scream for almost an entire episodes, or there's a really lengthy transformation involved. Again, reading the mange makes it that much more enjoyable. The pauses are done for filler so that they give the manga writers time to forge ahead.

Although I usually try to avoid using the term "QFT", I must say that I completely agree with your stance on how the mangas have much better pacing than the anime. A huge turnoff of the DBZ anime are the ridiculous screaming and power up-ing of the characters, but the manga has virtually none of this, as it would be absurd to have ten pages of panels of ppl powering up and screaming.

As for the topic in general, well recently I've been watching Macross at the anime night at my school, and for a while I really didn't like it. The characters were incredibly corny (Ranka looks like she's 7 years old, btw), and there are a lot of things that happen that make virtually no sense. However, a friend of mine has told me that a lot of it has to do with it being connected to the old Macross series, of which I have no knowledge (I only learned of its existence recently). However, it still doesn't explain a few things, such as why that purple chimera beast was able to screech like an eagle, despite not having the vocal capacities to produce such a sound, or how Sheryl managed to single out Ranka in a crowd full of people at her concert, and then talked to her alone in another dimension or something...

[ravenf6]

*looks at the previous posts*

I'm not surprised so many people hate Naruto. So...many...fillers... :-*BLECK!!! You could probably cremate a few people with all the drawings that went into animating them..

Samurai Champloo comes to mind. The novelty of adding a hiphop vibe to this kind thing felt nauseating after a while, though there were a few episodes I enjoyed (night of the living dead spoof, and the baseball one).

[Aim]

Nov 17, 2008 22:36:38 GMT -5 ravenf6 said:

*looks at the previous posts*

I'm not surprised so many people hate Naruto. So...many...fillers... :-*BLECK!!! You could probably cremate a few people with all the drawings that went into animating them..

Samurai Champloo comes to mind. The novelty of adding a hiphop vibe to this kind thing felt nauseating after a while, though there were a few episodes I enjoyed (night of the living dead spoof, and the baseball one).

Samurai Champloo was an awesome show. You've got a clan of tengus getting high on burnt poppies, all sorts of great scenes. Great start up, great action scenes, many unique scenarios. I loved it personally, but I guess it's fine if you didn't. I just thought it was much in the same vein of Cowboy Bebop with many separate episodes introducing brief but interesting characters for one conflict per episode.

[Frankenpetey]

Everyone who said Naruto: I've seen exactly one episode of Naruto, and decided I'd actually rather watch Dragonball Z. That about sums it up. How can an action series be so dull?

Tron Bonne: A lot of anime is like that for me. "Oh, it's so great! Seriously, you've gotta watch it!" Yeah, whatever. Boredom is the reason I avoid most shoujo. A friend of mine tried to turn me on to Nana a while back. I gave it four episodes, waiting for something, anything to happen. It never did. I gave up.

Though some of them are worth sticking with just for sheer ridiculousness. Fun to laugh at with friends.

AimMan: Never heard of DemonBane TV. Never want to hear of it, from that description. What?

I love Samurai Champloo, too, but I can see how it could grate on some people's nerves. Heck, there's lots of people who will defend Okane ga Nai to the death, so there's no accounting for taste, right, ravenf6?

Another one that comes to mind for me is Evangelion. I know, I know. I was still watching Slayers and Darkwing Duck in 1994; I was too young for it when it was new and fresh. By the time I saw it in 2005....bleurg. The fights are boring, the characters are annoying (the boy is whiny and the girl is a shrew), and the regurgitated Christian symbolizm that anime seems so fond of is beyond cliche by now. The only vaguely interesting thing about it was how the mechs worked. Seeing as the mechs featured for about five minutes every two episodes, that's not enough to carry the show. An interesting bit of history, but it hasn't aged well, in my opinion.

[UNIT 0918]

If Afro Samurai counts as an anime, since it's animated by people in Japan, then I'll say that I hate that. From what I've seen, it's nothing but violence, gore, drugs, and all of the crap stuff. Typical for an adult show meant for an American audience. I'd rather watch Samurai Champloo. I'm not too fond of that show either, but it's way better than I believe Afro Samurai will ever be.

Random fact: "Champloo" is not a Japanese word, but an Okinawan word meaning "mix". Quite appropriate for the show really since it mixes cultures and time periods, which includes the title.

[betaman]

I hate it, all of it.

[Dashe]

I'm with betaman. I haven't got any sort of personal grudge against it...it's just that a good 99.999999 percent of the stuff is either horribly executed, has a trite plotline, or just doesn't know when to quit making new episodes. If you can't jump into the middle of a show without watching over a hundred other episodes, it's just not worth it in my opinion.

And don't beat me up over this, but a lot of the people who incessantly watch anime are really, really weird on a superficial level. They probably also post a whole lot on fan forums and argue over which heroine the hero winds up with in the end. *Shudder*

[Pitch]

I pretty much, nay very much, agree with Miss Dashe. Although I'm incredibly shocked to find that you feel that way. I thought you liked anime. (Isn't animation sort of your thing, and such?) In any case, you practically took the words out of my mind.. so, well put.

If you can't jump into the middle of a show without watching over a hundred other episodes, it's just not worth it in my opinion.

Except this one, because I like things to be serial. Over a hundred is a bit much(pretty much intolerable if you ask me), but shorter anime's are okay when they do this. Serial cartoons are fun, too. (..maybe)

And don't beat me up over this, but a lot of the people who incessantly watch anime are really, really weird on a superficial level. They probably also post a whole lot on fan forums and argue over which heroine the hero winds up with in the end. *Shudder*

But... but.. We do that here. .. *glances at Roll and Tron* I mean, I agree with you otherwise, but.. yeah.

[Frankenpetey]

betaman, Dashe, Green: I can probably count the anime I really enjoy on one hand. I'm pretty ambivalent about the rest (seems very formulaic for the most part). I just thought it'd be interesting to see what people just couldn't make themselves watch, and why.

Anime does tend to use a lot of stock characters, and plots, and settings, and...well, a lot of anime is pretty "stock" in general. It's sort of like genre fiction in this regard; those who aren't very familiar with the genre will see all the similarities and decide it's all the same. Those who are familiar with the genre, along with all its conventions, will see the differences between each individual story and be able to enjoy them. I, for one, don't have much free time to spend watching TV, so I can't really indulge in getting familiar with most anime genres. The few I really like tend to fall into genres that I already know, like space opera or high fantasy.

And then of course, some anime handle their genre better than others. If the characters aren't engaging and the world and story don't bring anything new to the table, it's not worth my time. And then of course, there's a few that actually make me angry.

a lot of the people who incessantly watch anime are really, really weird on a superficial level. They probably also post a whole lot on fan forums and argue over which heroine the hero winds up with in the end. *Shudder*

That's a low blow, and very true. XD You're mean, Dashe. And by mean I mean awesome.

[ravenf6]

That sounds like half of the fangirl community, beware thier lot.

I enjoy my anime in moderation, or after a paricularly bad day. More specifically, my opinion goes along the line of Frakenpetey's. I don't spend much time watching t.v., either. Too much work and school.