This happens a lot with gag anime and slice of life anime.
I don't think it's fair. Do you guys agree with me on this?
I don't think it's fair. Do you guys agree with me on this?
Why should certain anime be judged by plot if they have none?
- Thread starter Claraviolet
- Start date
Every anime has plot, just judged for the weaker plot.
I'd say its fair actually. A lot of anime blend romance with action, mystery or fantasy. Dusk Maiden of Amnesia even mixed it with Horror. Now that I think about it, Sankarea was also similar in a sense. So there are a lot of anime where romance is a big/main focus, with some extraordinary elements, and a ton of people that enjoy them.
That'd be just like people judging an action anime on its lack of fantasy/supernatural elements.
And this. I've not seen a lot of gag anime, or anime with standalone episodes, but those I've seen all had a linear storyline. They may not have a goal, but they do have character development and some sort of progression in the narrative. There are often episodes that build up on events that happened maybe several episodes back, or inside jokes that you wont get if you haven't seen the previous ones. One that comes to mind is Daily Lives of Highschool Boys and the literature girl.
You’re missing the point, I’m just talking about straight up romance anime and complaining about a lack of fighting. The genre mixing shows are irrelevant to the conversation.
There is no straight up romance anime, though. I'm assuming you're talking about slice of life, or drama, or even comedy, which is still mixing genres. Point is, different people have different preferences. For someone, the perfect romance anime may be Vampire Knight, which has a lot of action. My favorite one is actually Akagami no Shirayukihime, where action is very present and makes it way more interesting. I'm not going to say romance anime without action are bad, but I will rate them lower for missing my preferred sub-genres.
I know about preferences. My entire point is that you have to be pretty dumb to watch a non-action series and complain about there not being action. It's like being a mecha fan and you watched K-on and then complain about there not being giant robots. It's like... what did you expect?
I'm not saying you have to like something, but I wouldn't call it fair to criticize a show for lacking elements that’s usually not associated with or present in a genre. Back to the K-on example, I don’t find it fair to review or complain about it not having mecha battles, but it would be fair to complain that there’s not as much music being played in a music anime about girls starting a band.
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That's the thing. People make judgements based on their preferences. And they will ALWAYS make comparisons. Not just in anime, but with everything. Lets go with your example. Someone watched Sound of the Sky, which is a music and slice of life intensive anime despite its military theme (and giant robots). They loved it. Then they discover K-On, which a lot of people say is similar. Even the characters sorta look the same (to the point where I always thought it was the same studio xD).
So they give it a try, and naturally start comparing it to Sound of the Sky. Some will still love it just the same (and I'm one of them). Great for them. Others will enjoy it less, or drop it entirely, for missing the elements they found exciting in SotS. And if they decide to rate and review it, they will say they didn't enjoy it as much as they thought they would because it didn't have x or x, like in x anime.
Now you are right when you say that it's dumb to read K-On's summary and watch it while expecting it to have giant robots. But I stand by my point that there is nothing wrong with knowing it wouldn't have it, watching it, and saying you didn't enjoy it a ton because it didn't have it.
And the other way around is also entirely fine. You can judge an anime for having an element you already knew it would have. Like loving K-On, but judging/not enjoying Sound of the Sky for its military elements. Or watching a harem anime and judging it for its harem.
Edit: Starting to think we maybe have different ideas of what judging means here xD I'm thinking more about having an opinion, albeit a strong one, about an anime, rather than negatively criticizing/hating on it.
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I think you’re also using outliers as examples, whereas I’m trying to stick to more stereotypical examples.
Sure we can namedrop a genre and not like something typical to it, then find an outlier, but the majority of the genre is going to have elements of that thing you didn’t like.
We're just coming back to preferences now. You cited K-On, so I'm assuming that's a stereotypical music anime to you. And I love it. One of the few anime I've rated 10 on MAL. Then you have other stereotypical music anime like Aikatsu, Love Live or the whole Idol franchise that I have zero interest into.
If I can say that dislike them for not having the lighthearted yet down to earth storyline and comedy that makes K-On so amazing to me, I can also dislike them for missing the deep/serious theme and action scene that made Sound of the Sky so exciting.
And believe it or not, but the first thing that came to mind when I though music anime was the whole Macross franchise where the music and singers have a role and impact that are just as important, if not more, than the mechas and their pilots.
What makes anime so amazing is that they aren't and will never be limited to one genre. I've cried watching action ones, laughed watching tearjerking dramas, and felt my heart race watching an anime about trains lol. Stereotypes just don't mean much and not everyone will have the same level of immersion in every anime despite liking the same genres. There is not, and there can be no global and standard guideline or set of rules when it comes to reviewing anime.
If Sound of the Sky is an outlier in a genre, I don’t consider it fair to complain about Love Live not having action and military scenes.
You can compare the music scenes to Love Live or Idolmaster, but you can’t bring up and complain about the action scenes, because they never were or attempted to be action anime.
I mentioned earlier you don’t have to like them, but to criticize them for lacking tropes from a genre that isn’t present in the show is just being silly at best. Watching K-on and expecting Macross is just plain dumb IMO.
I still think you’re focusing too much on outliers in a genre. You can namedrop 20 shows from a particular genre and about 17 of those will be very similar, but you keep name dropping the 3 that, while having similar elements or maybe primarily that genre, have other genre bending tropes that make them very different. A Certain Magical Index is technically a harem, but I wouldn’t throw it together with something like Nisekoi or Bokuben, as Index is primarily an action/sci-fi series with secondary harem elements, while the other two are just harem romcoms.
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