Anime Storytelling

Ok, I feel like I must talk about this.

For once Japan I'll let you off a bit, put you aside for something I loath even more...

Anime Fans.


GRRRRRR.


I really must stop reading anime forums, they really frustrate me. Basically in these places certain shows are held quite high, but... I hate these shows. These shows can go burn in hell for all I care. I honestly can not understand the attraction of some of these things. But what gets me the most, what really grinds my gears is the massive amount of hypocrisy floating about.

I won't name name's but one Anime blogger complained that they didn't understand what was going on in the anime SRW. At first I was like "Ok yeah, fair. SRW is more of a nostalgia anime made for the fans and not for you, so you can complain that you don't know whats going on I guess..." but then the same blogger will love this other anime because it doesn't make any god damn sense.

...What?

Now before you think, oh grumpy old james probably just doesn't 'get it' but I assure you I do. I've watched this kind of stuff before... It's made on purpose to not make any sense at the start (And perhaps throughout the whole thing).

Then I saw people who didn't understand what was going on in Iron Man.... It's f***ing Iron man, this isn't detailed stuff!

The catch phrase of anime fans seem to be 'the Pace was off' as if they understood what the f*** pace was. I honestly can't tell what these people are thinking... or what their watching... To me everything was fine, expect in Star Driver (I.E the one that makes no sense) where the pace really is all over the f***ing place. Let me break it down for you, from memory this is what we learned from the first episode of these three animes:

Iron Man-

• There is a guy called Tony Stark
• He is Iron Man
• He has come to Japan to make free energy
• He wants to retire and makes a new Iron Man suit for some trainee pilots.
• Something goes wrong with the new suit, it goes crazy and starts killing people.
• Tony Takes it the f*** down.
• A weird robot attacks him and declares his evil group. Tony doesn't give a f*** and kills him.
• The new suit is stolen during the fight.

What did you miss there? These are some very basic plot points that are very easy to understand. None of it goes too fast not to hear or understand, all it does is create the setting and adds the bad guys... Boom bang you've got your plot. Anything else is just characterising Tony.

I'm not trying to call you stupid.... I'm just saying... You might be stupid if you somehow missed all that.

SRW

• There is a bad Robot killing people
• Bad Robot is beaten by good robot, foreshadowing future events perhaps? (yes)
• The setting is then explained very clearly.
• You meet the main characters fighting in a war that has been explained to you.
• New robots appear, friends or enemy's?

As much as I like SRW the basic plot is pretty straight forward, by the end of it only really has one good idea behind it all. But where the show excels is the cool looking robots, there using the old fashioned kind of 80's design (But I really like those), the characters, and the action... lots of action.

I honestly could not tell you what part of all this doesn't make sense... I mean... are you complaining that we don't know some of these characters? These characters we are meeting for the first f***ing time? Did you not catch the bit where the setting was clearly explained? I mean really? Help me out here? My brain isn't stupid so I'm having trouble comprehending your thought patterns.

Star Driver

• WTF?

Haha, ok that's actually not true... I'll go over why it makes no sense in a bit.

• There are... characters?
• The main character is insane and has some kind of father issue.
• There is a school on an... island?
• The school is secretly a base for giant... puppet... mechs?
• There are bad guys who don't like shrine maidens. By... hitting them they break their seals?
• The main character turns into David Bowie.
• The day is saved... for now!

Here, right here is when you could have said the pacing was waaaayyy off. This shit is on LSD. All the sudden scene changes are kind of jarring.... the worst one is when we go from the school, and with only a single line we are suddenly in an underground fetish cultist base. That was really sudden, and you could get lost there and then.

Star Driver is the kind of anime that only anime fans can watch... Anyone else would be "Wtf is this shit?" unless your already deranged. Now I did watch Utena and no, that did not make any coherent sense at all... I'm pretty sure when you watched it, you were having a fever dream... I'm positive that when you switch that show on all your seeing is flashing images that makes your brain wig the hell out.

So I am familiar with the antics of the guys behind Star Driver.

Now with Star Driver we'll no doubt be hitting on some serious metaphysical aspects, these are the writers bed and butter. At one point or another it'll click for viewers what this all probably means.... So this anime is symbolic of something....

Now... Hang on... I remember saying something about symbolism.... what was it... Oh yeah! I don't get it! I look at things like Utena and Star Driver and try to make sense of it, give it natural laws and so on... but it doesn't work for these things so they really don't make any god damn sense to me.

Also these guys are quite happy with exploring sexual themes... So... Yeah.... It could get real gay real fast. Just giving you the heads up, Haha.

Anyway, back to the point. I dislike Anime fans because for the 'hardcore' everything needs to be tripped out on fricken sex or LSD before they'll even look at it. When a story is set in a fantastic setting and makes actual sense they shrug their shoulders.

I mean really? Get off the drugs guys.