Jeff Lawson frequently writes provocative – but not inflammatory- posts, which is why I love visiting his blog even when he grills my favorites. Just chipping in my two cents on this recent topic , where he criticizes the sketchy pseudoscience and loosely woven plot of Starship Operators, which then evolves into a musing partially inspired by DigiKerot’s diatribe.
I enjoyed SSO. Sure, it could have been a lot better, but given the budget and time constraints, I felt the producers did the genre justice. In general, plot holes and physics-defying moments are the norm in the “fantastic” sci-fi genre (e.g. Star Trek, Firefly, BSG, SG1, etc), and I felt SSO compared favorably in that aspect. In addition, the relative dearth of decent sci-fi anime in recent years probably ameliorated some of the glaring deficiencies, to be honest.
Moving on to the more general question of whether anime “sucks” or not, I find that anime tends not to have the tightest direction or the most well-baked plots, but this could in large part be due to the smaller budgets when compared to live action shows in similar genres. The talent goes where the money is, and anime television is still a niche market even in Japan. Which leads to the negative feedback cycle of not having enough cash – > lower quality -> less cash, with equilibrium being established at some point. I wonder – if anime was as popular as live-action, would equity in direction/writing eventually be achieved over time?
As implied by DigiKerot, there’s some sort of quality/creativity trade-off at work in the industry, with the more zany and creative ideas being dismissed due to lack of projected audience interest, and thus lack of profitability. These ideas then get shuffled to the (relatively) low budget world of anime, where directors and writers make do with the funding to create a rather flawed niche product. Yes Jeff, anime fans certainly put up with a lot of crap in order to get their fill of odd-ideas-given-life. Reality TV featuring a rogue starship crew on the run from imperial troops? What kind of crack-induced idea is that? Only in anime, sir.
Regardless of this rather theoretical question, and aside from the whole issue of anime quality, I’m glad that anime will always have a place in the world, no matter how bad the plot gets. Let’s face it; we’re all in here largely because we enjoy the anime style art. Aside from this obvious fact, I think a more subtle competitive advantage is that it’s easier to make a believable “unreal” world (e.g. fantasy, sci-fi, etc) in animation than it is to do in live-action. In the animation medium, your creativity is the only limit. Anything can be drawn in 2-D, and as long as it’s consistent with the main characters, nothing looks “out of place”, and the characters can be drawn to interact believably with any crazy object you throw in. Now show me a live-action SFF show where the actors could act well in a largely CG-rendered environment. Most of today’s quality LASFF shows use tons of props and elaborate sets for their character sequences, which translates into massive added cost, and if you skimp even a tiny bit on special effects, your robots end up looking like the Power Rangers Megazord, your aliens look like muppets (or Klingons), and everything looks cheese-tastic. Non-pedestrian costumes tend to look like bad cosplay, and you can forget about having neon green hair too. I am rather partial to Vash’s gravity-defying red trenchcoat, and this just won’t translate well into live action without some serious bling. For the moment, at least.
Bottom line is, unrealistic things don’t translate easily into the live-action (huh, imagine that), and this is where anime will continue to thrive.
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Alot of the anime I watch is, as Jeff put it, “teh suck”. I think it’s very hard to deny this fact. Many plots make no sense, or are just plain dumb and are pretty much only an excuse to fill the episodes with cool action or fanservice. Most shows have pretty bland and uninspired artwork that you’ve seen a thousand times before(although everything looks better with each passing year).
But to state all this and then stop isn’t very fair to anime, because the very same things can be said about most tv shows too. I rarely even watch tv shows any more because cheap cg effects and bad acting are even more apparent in a live-action show, and like you said, anime is a lot more forgiving on that front(even if bad animation can ruin or degrade an experience, like it did with Ergo Proxy for a while) simply because it’s easier to produce believable effects. Bad acting is also something anime is better to hide, simply because it’s a language that is very foreign for most of us.
In the end I think much of the media we consume “is teh suck” and it’s a matter of how much we are willing to put up with in between those good shows. Me, I’m willing to put up with quite a bit. I finished Soul Link, ffs.
Omfg, you finished Soul Link? You….you are not human!
It left scars for life… :
I actually have some more thoughts on this subject that deserve a blog post, but my brain is absolutely fried at the moment, so it’ll have to wait.
I thought the snow is suppose to cool things down…?
I think it’s fair to compare SSO with Firefly, BSG, and whatever.
I think it’s even fair to compare Black Lagoon with firefly, BSG, and whatever.
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[...] that people use to justify their hatred. A quick look at previous entries writing about this topic mostly focuses on why or why anime do not suck, but it misses something important. What are the [...]