Cruel Angel Theses

Since Cruel Angel Theses’ one month anniversary is but two days away, I thought I’d take a quick recap on the posts I do and come up with some insight as to how or why I say the things I do, be it critique, reviews, or opinions — also, studying has been tiring (insert Konata face here) for someone who doesn’t like/isn’t really used to slogging away at books, so to take things off my mind I thought what I’d do was, I’d offer a bit of meta-critique, as it were.

First of all, though, allow me to point you to this well-written post from The Anime Blog. Basically what Rachel proposes, in the article, is the coining of two new terms that might help explain the differences anime fans the world over have with regards to taste.

Here’s an appetizer:

David has a background in film and special effects. He grew up watching movie classics and is able to comprehend the art of visual storytelling; something which I�ve slowly learned from him in the eleven years we�ve been together. While David does read, and reads as often as he can, he�s not the book devourer I am.

Watching an unfinished, un-reviewed, therefore, unnamed series together last month brought our two backgrounds together with very loud results. My take on the series was that it was too plagiarizing, too unoriginal, too inconsistent and all together too crappy to be considered good. David on the other hand found it highly entertaining, albeit, highly plagiarizing. He also found so many positives with the series I had to do a double take to see if we were watching the same thing.

Why would we differ so much in our opinions? Being me, I had to push this issue to the end result: David thought the character designs, action sequences, layout, color schemes, and overall visual appeal were top notch. I had to agree with him there. This series is gorgeous and over the top. Too damn bad the story sucks beyond redemption.

Now, the reason I linked to that is because it helps me explain where I’m coming from. You’ll need to read the post in its entirety, but what it boils down to is this: I post the way I do because I’m an anime literaist, and I don’t foresee that changing in the near future, or any future for that matter, if you’re talking about alternate ones.

That I choose to put “Elitist Discerning” at the sidebar with regards to my person isn’t really a joke. Yes, I really am elitist when it comes to anime for a singular reason — I value story more than anything. This goes hand in hand with how I’ve started to roll my eyes and denounce sola when everyone’s still going on about the sky and Matsuri being hot, and my raving about Romeo x Juliet when most people are being dismissive of it. Basically, for me it’s substance over form.

I guess I could attribute it to my love of reading and the English language, both of which were instilled in me from a very young age. I’ve always been around books. I used to get chided for reading at the table during meals, even more so at the reunion dinners with my relatives (this is due to a nuance of the Chinese language in that “book” is a homophone for “lose”, and books = bad luck, or so they think). Until broadband was installed in Malaysia half a decade or so ago, I read in considerable quantities.

With regards to the other thing people might be wondering about (but never bothered to ask): why bother reading so much into anime? Or, to paraphrase, why bother taking a critical view of things, for that matter? It’s pretty simple — people don’t think enough when they communicate. Blogs are a form of communication, and it so happens that my interest, and expertise, lies in anime, and the blogosphere at large.

As I’ve said once, I think one of the main reasons why otakus at large don’t get taken seriously is the manner in which we conduct ourselves — a matter I’ve brought up before with regards to anime and the mainstream is how too many of us, too often, are so caught up in our own opinions we don’t bother to explain ourselves. There’s a chilling effect when it comes to getting people to talk in detail about what they think.

This is a pity because the end result is, like I’ve mentioned before, a circlejerk — people get told about how their opinion is right almost all the time, which just seems like a whole lot of effervescent wanking, IMO. There isn’t much dissent, or even if there is, those on the receiving end choose to hand out silence or a mandate of “it’s my opinion, I’ll think what I like” instead of at least attempting to answer the issues raised. Those that don’t conform aren’t many.

I’ve noticed way before being involved in anime blogging that the anime community pales in comparison to, say, the tech community in terms of their respective blogospheres, and it would be nice to take a leaf out of their book. As I’ve observed from reading blogs like Scobleizer, the tech circle’s a whole different ball game. People link to each other plenty. The bloggers there actively engage their commenters if there’s something that needs discussion. Scoble, for instance, links regularly to other bloggers he thinks should be read more. It feels more like a group of people talking rather than people talking in a group. In other words, a more meaningful community.

What it boils down to in the end is how people are lazy. In this much advertised age of information we’ve turned into the proverbial armchair critics, a bunch of mindless leeches who proceed to pounce on the latest offerings from Japan and feed blindly without giving a thought or two to what we’re consuming, or why we’re consuming it, or if we could at least think of chowing down on something else for a change.

Of course, I could be wrong, and while it would be difficult, seem wrong to compare the anime and tech blogospheres in terms of sheer numbers alone as the latter definitely outnumbers the former by a huge margin, there’s no excuse for what seems, to me at any rate, the lack of sense of a community in general. Or maybe I’m comparing different things here and might be barking up the wrong tree for all I know — tell me what you think.

Last but not least, here’s a list of my reviewing criterion:

Story. It doesn’t really matter to me how something starts or ends (well, maybe ends more than starts), but how it goes during the journey. Is the story being told for story’s sake, or money’s sake? Do the writers place importance on characterisation or the character designs? Is there literary value in this, something I wouldn’t hesitate to show a non-anime fan?

Narrative. How is the plot paced? Is there filler, and if so, is it good filler? Does it feel like someone’s taking you through the motions RPG-style with names, places, and faces being thrown at you arbitrarily, or are there just bare essentials, with enough for you to figure out the rest on your own? Does the breaking of the fourth wall, if any, detract from the experience of the series or add on to it?

Characters. Can I relate to them? Does the story revolve around the characters, or the characters revolve around the story? (Hint: the former makes it better, the latter makes it suck). How realistic is their portrayal in a setting? Are they dispensable, or so valuable you’d cry buckets if they were killed off? Am I concerned about what happens to them? How’s the voice acting? (this is usually a non-issue though)

Genre. Does it excel at what it does within the genre(s)? Can it be pigeonholed into one or two genres? (if it can’t, it’s usually a winner) Do the trappings of the genre stifle it, or does it break free from convention? Does it do so to please the fans, to mislead the viewers into thinking it’s something it’s not, or to genuinely tell something better than the norm?

Originality. Does this bring anything new to the table with respects to the themes and issues that it’s tackling? Is this practically carbon copy with minor alterations? Are the original characteristics of the series gimmicky, e.g. there for the sake of idiosyncrasy or do they genuinely contribute towards making the anime or manga better? If it’s new, is it special? If it isn’t, what makes it? Is the manga-ka/director suffering from Sophomore Syndrome?

You could call that my personal taste, if that’s anything to go by. And there you have it — what makes Cruel Angel Theses tick. Pretty much sums up how I feel about the series I watch or read, and why I like what I do — yes, animation and art’s never really mattered that much to me, so much so that it was a turn-off. I had a friend who didn’t want to watch Saikano because “the characters had no noses”. Something inside me died that day.

“…and Alice never lent anime to Marisa again.”