Ask John: What Anime Does John Love to Hate?

Question:
What are John’s top ten anime that he loves, but everyone else seems to hate? And the top ten anime John hates but everyone else seems to love?

Answer:
This query certainly sounds fun and dangerous. I hope you’ll excuse me for addressing the question in the form of a discussion rather than a blunt, dull list.

I’m certainly not trying to elevate myself, but I’ve long suspected that my taste in anime is more similar to the average Japanese otaku’s taste than the average American’s preferences. I’m not suggesting any sort of praise or respectability in that categorization, merely an objective distinction. Practically every season I find that in several instances my own interests in new anime conflict with the seeming predominate opinion of the American fan community. For example, this season the realistic dramas Uchuu Kyodai and Sakamichi no Apollon were very warmly received by the American fan community. In fact, even the Japanese fan community seems to enjoy both titles. However, I’ve been quite unenthused by both. While I respect the principle of realistic, mundane drama depicted in animation, I personally watch anime to see something different from reality. I want anime to transport me to another world, so I find myself far more enjoying this season’s Natsuiro Kiseki, which is another slice-of-life anime like Uchuu Kyodai and Sakamichi no Apollon, but one which also incorporates just a little bit of literal magic. I have enjoyed entirely grounded, realistic dramatic anime like Millennium Actress, Akagi, Ristorante Paradiso, and Bartender, but even these dramas have had a distinctly anime tone and style, unlike anime dramas including Human Scramble, Uchuu Kyodai, and Sakamichi no Apollon which aim to be live-action dramas in animated form.

I’ve been watching gunplay oriented action movies for thirty years. I began watching Chinese “heroic bloodshed” movies in the late 1990s. So I have distinct expectations for action cinema. I’ve watched all of the Trigun anime, all of the Black Lagoon anime, including even the Japanese Blu-ray exclusive parodies, and I made a wholehearted but failed effort to watch and enjoy Sunabozu (“Desert Punk”). I find myself enjoying this season’s Jormungand more than any of those three earlier series. Although Trigun and Black Lagoon are especially popular in America, I’ve long found that both Trigun and Sunabozu don’t satisfactorily merge and balance their comedy and action. Both the comedy and the action feel compromised and incomplete. Likewise, the first Full Metal Panic TV series also feels weaker than its sequels because it tries to evenly balance comedy and action. The predominantly comedy Full Metal Panic Fumoffu and predominantly action “Second Raid” are both superior to the original anime series because they’re more focused, thematically effective shows. Black Lagoon tries so abundantly hard to convince viewers that its characters are masculine, cold-hearted, ruthless thugs and killers that the show comes across as pretentious posturing. Jormungand, by comparison, doesn’t feel like a small dog with a loud bark. Jormungand is lighthearted but not outright comedy, thus it’s able to depict more action than Black Lagoon with far less ridiculous hyperbolic chest-pounding.

I genuinely understand the appeal of High School of the Dead, and I respect its admirable production values. However, I simply can’t overlook it’s abject absurdity, intense ridiculousness, and embarrassingly gratuitous, narratively hollow OVA episode. I just can’t set aside logical reality enough to accept physics that allow breasts to move faster than a bullet, even in “bullet-time.” While that may be the singular most egregious point of contention for me with the series, it’s definitely not the only illustration. Similar to my rational rejection of action anime, I’ve long loved cinematic gunplay, and I’m a huge fan of zombies and the horror genre, but the two have to be merged organically to win my approval, not haphazardly stitched together into a Frankenstein’s monster as was High School of the Dead.

Ironically, while I continue to watch it, I absolutely abhor the current Hellsing OVA series. Americans hate the 2001 TV series which, granted, diverged from the original narrative and ended with an incomplete resolution. And American otaku typically love the ultra-gratuitous “faithful” manga adaptation OVA series. Yet while the TV series had a lovely pervasive gothic atmosphere, the OVA series feels like splatterpunk missing the rebellious punk attitude. The OVA series foremost reveals the glaring weaknesses in inexperienced writer Kouta Hirano’s original manga, which is certainly ambitious yet suffers from way too much redundant and repetitive pretentious monologuing and egomaniacal characters reminiscent of Black Lagoon. Hellsing OVA is terribly paced absurd excess without any of the satire, substance, or literary concision present in equally eccentric apocalyptic splatter anime like Violence Jack and Kakugo no Susume.

I don’t subscribe to the American categorical dislike of certain anime tropes or themes. I don’t hate moé anime just because it’s moé. I don’t dislike tsundere characters just because they’re commonplace. But regardless of their supposed quality, I do dislike certain popular anime that seem to consciously pander to tsundere fans. Shakugan no Shana has been tremendously successful. Toradora is widely praised and well respected. Seto no Hanayome was quite successful and popular. OreImo was a nicely produced fan favorite. Despite buying all four titles on domestic DVD, I haven’t especially liked any of them because all four of them have seemed foremost designed to check off points on a predetermined checklist of characteristics, and only secondarily designed to be engaging stories.

I’m not going to try to be artificially intellectually refined and claim to love all varieties of animation. I prefer 2D Japanese animation. I respect the fact that Japan produces 3D CG and puppet animation. I respect the fact that countless other countries produce eclectic, artistic animation. But I’m an anime fan, not a devoted follower of French, Russian, or Brazillian animation, or even a big fan of Japanese puppet animation like Shin Sanjushi, Kawaii Jenny, or the work of Kihachiro Kawamoto. However, my affection for 2D Japanese anime does periodically extend to unpopular Flash animation series like Haiyoru! Nyaruani, Hanoka, Pugyuru, Gakkatsu, and Thermae Romae. Despite their more primitive look and animation quality, I enjoyed the Nyaruani OVA & TV series much more than the current Nyaruko-san TV series. I absolutely loved the surreal and bizarre Pugyuru. I think that Gakkatsu is adorably cute and weird, and while a bit redundant, I think that the Thermae Romae anime was quite fun and would have been drastically different in tone had it been animated with conventional animation.

The American fan community largely seems to revile the current Upotte web anime series, but it’s one of the current anime that I’m most eager to watch each week. I do understand that the concept of anthrpomorphized objects isn’t new after anime including Hetalia, Miracle Train, and Starry Sky, but Upotte is the first bishoujo anime to do use the concept. Furthermore, after the introductory first episode, Upotte has focused on narrative and character building, which I’ve found highly amusingly off-kilter.

The Saber Marionette J franchise has long gotten more approval among Americans than the earlier SM Gals Saber Marionette R OVA series, but I’ve always liked the earlier series more than the more successful later one. Saber R is often criticized for being a creepy hybrid of cute characters and grim, oppressive, violent, sexually provocative setting and story. I particularly like Saber R because it merges the cute and the morose seamlessly. The cuteness of the characters makes sense within the context of the narrative, yet it’s never emphasized enough to become a distraction from the narrative. Saber R is the successful predecessor of later anime like Cat Shit One and Higurashi no Naku Koro ni that put cute characters in disturbing stories.

Now inactive domestic licensor AN Entertainment acquired Miami Guns following my personal recommendation. The American reaction to the show was not nearly as favorable as I and the AN Entertainment staff had anticipated, yet I still firmly stand by my support of the show. Certainly, Miami Guns isn’t the very best absurdist anime comedy ever produced; it’s outshone by titles like Hare Nochi Guu, Ike! Inachu Takyubu, and, marginally, by Excel Saga. But I steadfastly believe that the show is witty, spontaneous, consistently surprising, and very fun.