do you think what you get from the shows/books/movies is any more valuable to you than what stay at home moms and whoever gets out of soaps? how about kids books? sports? music?
I was actually sort of semi-defending anime stuff because I think it's no different than a soap opera or whatever like their taste in it is just as legitimate and I think anything like this has a certain FEEL on at least a basic level, I at least sort of still like anime better in principle than random CGI superhero movie of the week because at least anime has a familiar feel to go back to, random superhero movie almost always feels like they're just throwing shit all over the place and maybe if they're feeling ambitious attempt to make some half-assed commentary on Iraq etc. I really can't see it as a film style people will REVISIT, make homages/parodies of like the campy old Batman TV show. Anime/soap operas are at least complete enough you can whip up a witty enough parody of one of them. oh yeah Si
mn City did have a pretty good feel to it it was like the worst thing ever made as far as story/themes but it did have an aesthetic like a lot of NOIR-y feel to it it was like film noir the fuck. I am honestly interested in this shit like putting random shit in there for the sake of completeness if soap operas didn't have the cheesy music would people feel distressed/confused? If anime didn't do the sweatdrop thing or draw the eyes with exact ISO-9001 proportions would people march to the streets in protest? Why was it so godawful when Sub-Zero was just a dude in that one Mortal Kombat game and not generic faceless ninja? If the box of mashed potatoes didn't have mysterious floating spoon scooping the potatoes and holding it to your face and use the word 'home' combined with some other word like 'style' and/or mention that it comes from Idaho would people figure well maybe there's breadfruit in there and not potatoes after all. Do people have some internal measure/sixth sense of how good Idaho potatoes are compared to shitty potatoes from other states? But yeah I do think it's like minor brainwashing, and like false or easily exploitable feelings in these sorts of things. Sort of Pavlovian imo
I also love in electronic music circles how some guy had supposedly scientifically deducted that the waveform of the amen break
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amen_break equals the golden ratio in some way and not just that it's been overused so much it just kind of 'sounds' like a hip-hop/drum and bass record even if you know nothing about making those varieties of music it's a very easy/exploitable way to get the same feel. I'm waiting for someone to find the golden ratio in anime face
oh yeah I do think stuff like Dragon Ball Z/Naruto that's about 16490 episodes long and somehow ends each episode on a cliffhanger is like soap operas for straight teenage males
and by completeness I didn't mean like fulfilling MY LIFE IS COMPLETE I meant like consistent internal logic or whatever that term is
also a lot of videogames are probably like this the creator of Dragon Warrior admitted in an interview he's a gambler and when he designed the game he wanted it to feel like a slot machine. So yeah I think a lot of stuff exploits whatever can be exploited emotionally in people/is just a little like crack
Edit: 'cracky'
Edit: j.j. abrams
Edit: but yeah I think anime draws a lot of flack because it's ridiculously unsubtle compared to j.j.abrams etc. people took a while to figure out his tropes anime is like a CODEX of it's own symbols/ready-made characters/plotlines. You can almost see the seams of the 2 or 3 character types as you're watching it. But plenty of stuff is just as cheap it's just more compleximicated/more difficult to figure out the structure. I would say anime and soap operas are neck in neck for which one more blatantly flaunts its plot devices
Edit: throws random insane expectation of people out there - all directors should make one movie and then quit the business fucking coen brothers have been making the same movie for 30 years too bad if you like them