Anime: The Cute, The Angry And The Kusoge ("garbage")

[UberScout]

Rewind to 1998.

A little boy (read: me) tunes into Cartoon Network, expecting the Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy to come on, but instead is surprised to see a muscular man with a spiky 'do sporting an orange jumpsuit hulk his way into the opening credits. A song in an unrecognizable language (which I would find out to be Japanese) excites across the opening.

Soon following after is an intense fight between the same man and a pink humanoid alien with a large tail on his head. The fight begins in a furious flurry of punches, kicks and palms and moves both fighters across the ocean, moving so fast that they cause waves. This is Dragon Ball Z, my first anime.

Then we had singing cat-like puff balls, electrified mice, kids attacking adults with huge paper fans, women summoning mallets out of thin air, strange trading cards that summon colossal beasts of arcane origin, and overall awesomeness.

What's your opinion on anime in general? My recent favorites as of yet are Jojo's Bizarre Adventure and Sword Art Online.

Have some of you who watched anime pictured yourselves as an anime character in some situations? Frankly I do this all the time...

 

[GrownupGirl]

My feelings about it are a bit mixed. But only a couple of weeks ago I found out about a so-bad-it's-good anime called Chargeman Ken. It's about a boy named Ken who lives in a futuristic utopian world, and goes around shooting and killing evil space aliens that are trying to destroy the world. The episodes are only around 5 or 6 minutes long but the plots are like something that should be in a show that's at least 30 minutes long, and the animation moves at barely beyond 5 frames a second, and the stuff in it is just crazy. For example there's one episode where Ken's sister gets hypnotized by her piano teacher who is really an alien in disguise, and then later at night she gets up and tries to stab him to death! But their mother brings the sister out of her trance by smacking her in the face! And then there's one where Ken meets a friendly older gentleman who is a scientist, but Ken later somehow finds out the guy has a time bomb inside his body and then he... well it's completely bonkers.

 

[Misery]

I've been cosplaying and going to conventions for quite a long while. I could tell a million stories about that.

For me it all started with an old anime by the name of "Iria: Zeiram the Animation". That's a very short one, but I've seen it about 20 billion times. Heck, I used to use the name "Zeiram" online all the time. It first appeared for me on the Sci-fi network, way back when. I would soon after be exposed to such things as Outlaw Star, Tenchi Muyo, Armitage the 3rd, and Galaxy Express 999 (the two movies, not the series). DBZ I wouldnt see until muuuuuuuuuch later.

Video games that featured anime artstyles also suddenly started popping into view left and right around that time. Those were what ended up really starting the convention thing for me, but... that's a whole other bizarre story.

These days, I tend to prefer just reading the manga rather than watching anime. Doesnt help that I find alot of the really popular modern series to be boring. I dont know what I call the style really, but it's the "uh oh, the next bad guy is even worse, better pull a weird new attack out of nowhere and explain it with a bunch of gibberish, and then use the power of OMG FRIENDS to win!" sort of style that you see in series like Naruto or Fairy Tail. Bores me to death. As does overuse of fanservice or most harem series.

So I either prefer older series, or modern ones that tend to be alot more niche (as in, not trying to be the next Naruto). And that often leads to just reading the mangas, as that's usually where the stuff I want is. Often doesnt get made into anime.

But also I'm not very patient about watching stuff these days. Reading, sure. But watching, no.


As for picturing myself as a character, well... again, I do conventions. Need I say more?

 

[Aspychata]

My daughter had a excellent collection of films like Spirited Away. She attended cosplay conventions, so she had props drying outside that she made. So l will see titles and remember l watched it.

 

[8398]

I saw pokemon indigo league on T.V, immediately drawn to it but my . authority. figure thought pokemon is a bad influence. (Then all the kids in japan must have terrible behavior, by that logic.)
When I had my own computer I totally watched that darn thing, well by then I'd watched a lot of other anime xD
By middle school I was in somewhat deep to the point of checking out what's seasonal but that quickly fell apart as being pointless. Huge quantity put out that is just not worth it.

I watched Hunter x Hunter (2011) and things further fell apart, it was way too good.
I know the first volume came out 1998, like Naruto. Many people speculate that Naruto got a lot of influence from it. Probably a lot of others too. Despite that Naruto, One Piece (1997) became the mainstream instead. I really wonder why. But anyway, I feel the same as Misery, anything that really gets my attention tends to be more niche, Made in Abyss is the one I've been kind of interested in seeing next.

 

[Eclipse14]

I've been into anime for a long time. I don't watch it as much now days but it's still something I enjoy greatly. My absolute favourites are Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood, Neon Genesis Evangelion, Cowboy Bebop, etc. Most recently I watched Welcome to the NHK. Hilarious, but often a bit too... real.

 

[GrownupGirl]

WARNING: CONTAINS MAJOR SPOILERS!!

I've been watching clips from an anime lately about a teenage juvenile delinquent named Oga who has to be the guardian for a baby who is actually a demon named Beelzebub, nicknamed "Baby Beel", and there's a lot of wacky humor and high-jinks. Today I saw a clip where they've switched bodies like Freaky Friday, and Oga (in Beel's body) is wearing baby clothes, which was unusual to see because Beel is normally always naked, but then Beel (in Oga's body) tries to take his clothes off and everyone freaks out, they have to stop him from picking poop up off the sidewalk - twice, and then there was a part where a character was self-aware/broke the forth wall by saying in the subtitles "They're not even the same character design" and then "Who writes this crap?" after Beel (in Oga's body) pulls the chain attached to a punker guy's nose, and someone said that pulling the guy's chain increases his power.