Behind The Nihon Review

Pictures are related in the sense that they're all from anime that I thought started out as crap but turned out to be good.

And how it’s shaped my anime diet.

Dropping anime is a constant dilemma for every anime fan and there’s a variety of different philosophical approaches that people take when choosing to drop anime. Some people have a three episode test, some people have more, some less, some people will just stick around for as long as they can stand, while others will walk away from a series the second they no longer enjoy it. Personally, I take a pretty extreme approach towards dropping anime, in that, I try my darnedest not to. There are a number of underlying philosophies to why I choose to take this approach, and it’s lead to a few surprising consequences. In this post, I’ll attempt to come to a conclusion about whether this hard-lined attitude is healthy and leads to a balanced anime diet.

omisyth from Grand Punk Railroad opened the discussion by highlighting the fact that choosing to drop an anime can be a real dilemma. When deciding to drop an anime, one will probably ask themselves “what am I potentially missing out on?” “What if this series gets good?” “What if it doesn’t get good, would I just be wasting my time by sticking around?”. The basic dilemma is one of “missing out” if it does get good, versus “wasting time” if it doesn’t. What makes it a difficult choice is the fact that one’s decision in this situation must be, in part, informed by speculation. Does that mean, by the very nature of the decision, one can’t be truly informed, because one must attempt to predict what’s going to happen in the future to guide that decision? In my opinion, yes. And, for someone in my position, where giving an anime a “fair shake” is more important than being entertained, this is a significant reason why I try to avoid dropping anime where possible.

So what anime will I drop. I dropped Kanokon after two episodes. No controversy there, right. I dropped To-Love-Ru after eleven. Why did I take so long for this series, when it’s probably no better than Kanokon, you might ask. Well, the answer is because there were regular fansubs for To-Love-Ru, which, for me, makes it even more difficult to drop. I often get into the frame of mind with poor series that, if I only have to put up with them once a week, I can tolerate them. When fansubs come sporadically, it requires even more motivation to get through the episodes when they do pile up, and if I’m not enjoying the series, the consequence is inevitable. I dropped Kyouran Kazoku Nikki after just one episode. The reason: because it was the last show I added to my list in the anime season it was airing it, and, by that point, I’d already built up a very full anime schedule. Kyouran Kazoku Nikki was one series too many at that point, and the first episode did little to impress or excite me, so I didn’t bother following it.

So, what about the anime that I regret watching and wasted my time on? Well, just go to the anime review page on the main site, click “Rating” twice, click “Reviewer” twice and scroll down to see the ten or so anime I’ve rated with “3″ or less. The thing is, in all honesty, I don’t “regret” watching any of these anime, since they all play an important role within my anime diet. I like this idea of taking a step back and looking at anime, the medium, as a whole, which I think is an important thing to do as a commentator on anime. There are inevitably going to be crap anime (as there are going to be inevitably people who like crap anime, no offense to them). But I honestly think it’s important to be aware of and understand these series, as well as what drives and justifies their existence. A lot of these series are easy to watch (provided you check your brain at the door). On the other side of the coin, a lot of the series that receive high ratings on our site are difficult to watch. I’d point to Bokurano as an example of this, which was a series I haven’t been able to bring myself to continue watching since I stalled it after thirteen episodes. Do I disagree with Shadowmage and Bokurano’s other fans that it’s a brilliant series? No, I might not enjoy it as much as he did but I will pay that it’s a raw, heavy and powerful drama and that it’s gutsy just on the material that it covers. So why didn’t I feel compelled to continue watching it when the fansubbers stalled… I’m not sure, I guess I found myself simultaneously underwhelmed and overwhelmed by it, and therefore grew detached. Kinda hard to explain. Do I feel bad that I stalled it, and have thirteen unwatched episodes sitting on my hard-drive? Yes. Do I have the impetus to go back to it? No. As it stands, I have to make time to even watch the third greatest anime I’ve ever seen.

This is another anime that ranks pretty high among the greatest I've seen.

I think this comes a bit back to the idea of hard and soft anime that gaguri from Ha Neul Seom proposed about a month ago, and that, to expand on the idea, in general, hard anime tend to find critical approval, while soft anime can sometimes be dismissed as aiming for mass appeal. The point I want to make is that, in regards to an anime diet, I think it’s really unhealthy to watch either just one or the other and not both. Similarly, I think it’s really unhealthy to not follow a variety of genres or styles or popularities… (I’m making up words now) where “popularities” refers to a range of variously sized followings for a given series, from “popular” to “obscure”. What I basically mean by it is that one shouldn’t only follow series that are really popular or series that are really obscure, and that one should choose series based on a mix. I like to watch popular series for two reasons. First, because it’s an effective way to keep up with trends in anime. Second, because of the social aspect I discussed in an earlier post. I guess a third, more tenuous reason is that sometimes they turn out to be popular for a reason. I don’t subscribe to the “it’s popular therefore it’s crap” point of view (it doesn’t need to be pointed out who shortsighted this view is), but I do think that there’s a greater tendency for obscure series to be more rewarding.

But, again, you can’t use tendencies to drive speculation to make truly fair judgement calls on anime, because you’ll inevitably be wrong. I think many people that drop shows habitually probably don’t care too much if they turn out to be wrong later on. There is no irreversibility about dropping shows after all, but a lot of people seem resigned to the fact that you can’t be perfect in what you pick and some will even go so far as to put the onus on a series to prove that it’s worthwhile in the first few episodes. What I tend to find is that series that start off crap and turn out to be good are almost invariably among the most rewarding to watch. Do they, within the anime diet, justify sticking around with so many of the other shows that start off crap and end up that way? Dunno, that’s a hard call to make. But, as mentioned earlier, the fact that these shows also have a valuable place within my anime diet also makes them worthwhile.

I guess the point is that pretty much everyone will drop shows because it’s just a practical thing to do in certain situations. If one takes a step back from the extreme logical conclusion that an anime’s worth can only be fairly judged by watching the show all the way through, every single minute, then one can have more faith in the judgement calls they make after two or three episodes, and can therefore drop series that fail to pass the so called “three episode test” without much dent to one’s conscience. The three episode test is probably good for 80% of anime one would choose (to pull a number out of my ass), but the fact that it produces so many false negatives is the reason why I don’t trust it and wouldn’t use it.

No kidding. I was actually unimpressed by the first ep of this show.

So, the fact that I commit to the series I choose to sample at the outset of a new season kinda demands that the choosing process must happen very carefully. In the past, it didn’t, and I was happy to shoot a shotgun at a new season and latch onto whatever got hit, as well as any sequels or specific titles I had a vested interest in. If I missed a good series at the beginning, I could always go back after the season was over. These days my time is much more limited (and that’s not just because of RL, this site is partly to blame for that), which is why it’s very important to get the choice right (and I guess also why I’m dropping shows more frequently than I used to, as in, once or twice a year rather than previously never). So what drives the decision process when choosing new anime? Things like genre (I’ll never pass up a good old-fashioned iyashikei anime), studio, staff, hype, etc. The ironic thing is that, previously when I was choosing anime with a high degree of randomness, I wasn’t making so many decisions, but now, by making careful choices while constructing my anime list for the season, I’m essentially making judgement calls about series before even seeing a single episode which, one could very readily argue, is even less fair than making judgement calls based on the first few episodes.

So, is the entirely ideological approach inherently flawed. I’d say, not when coupled with a highly random decision making process. By making less decisions, I’d argue one can be more fair with their judgements of a collection of series. But what about when the decisions aren’t random, does that make it less flawed than the “three episode test”. I’d say, it depends on the intention. Are you building a knowledge base about anime for the sake of commentary, or do you just want to be entertained? Because, if it’s the former, as long as you’re not commenting on series that you haven’t even seen, then the crap series eventually justify themselves by contributing to your anime knowledge and increasing your ammunition for use as an anime commentator. And the good series that start out as crap, the surprises, just make the entire process worthwhile.

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To end with some meta, Owen S, contributing to anitations, takes an even more hard-lined view than myself, not so much on the matter of dropping anime, but on the matter of commenting on the anime that you’ve no intention of watching all the way through.

At the beginning of each season, we get a lot of #1 judgements based off one, two, maybe three episodes–reactionary tripe that we can safely ignore, for that asinine herd polemic is merely meant for the purpose of perpetuating a blogger’s insecure, fragile ego, and the need to proclaim that the latest season is terrible in order to establish their purported superiority, nevermind how they have shit taste in shows themselves.

#1 judgements are only valid when a significant portion of an anime said to be representative of its entirety has been seen, if you ask me, and if nothing short of watching the whole thing allows for a proper representation, then so be it. Plot-heavy anime usually fall into this category, and to denounce something when it hasn’t played all its cards… I don’t know.

I agree, haterz should STFU LOL! I think one can make judgement calls on what they’ve seen, provided that the rider “so far” is at least implicit. But, I kinda agree with the view that, if you’re going to openly criticize an anime very early on, the least service you could do to the anime is stick around and eat humble pie in just as open a manner if you’re initial impressions turn out to be wrong.