This an observation from what I read in animeblogs and anime forums, especially when the more popular shows of the season are talked about.
Case in point: K-On
My stance on K-On! is:
On its own, it is an alright show with its own appeal, KyoAni knows what appeals to its fans and does it right. However, it is far from the corporate cynicism that people have thrown on the show as accusation. As said earlier, it’s a okay show on its own rights, it is even doing better, imo, than Lucky Star. However, in the musical aspect, as in characters finding out their call in music and growing as musicians, “Beck” is way better than K-On. As a slice-of-life show, Aria is far superior to K-On, delivering fascinating sceneries, to the point that Neo Venezia itself is a character of the show, character developement for the three juniors and the mentioned slice-of-life moments.
Now, on K-On.
Does it deserve the hype? No.
Does it deserve love from the fans? Just like any show. I mean, FUCK! There are still people DEFENDING GONZO’S HELLSING!!!! WHEN THE MANGA AND THE OAV JUST DWARF IT!!!
So, does K-On deserve that contempt fed by a small clique of people thinking they are the Authority of Good Taste And Good Anime? No.
So when I read shit like “should have been more ambitious”, “blah blah SERIOUS BUSINESS Social Commentary”, “blah blah blah a travesty thrown at the industry”, in other words a show whose the most heinous crime was its mere existence, excuse me while I roll my eyes and give yall the middle finger.
I have fcking told you to read some pages to get an idea of what to EXPECT! Laziness is NOT an excuse! You act like snotty little snobs who can’t give some of your precious time and energy to read and know the material, yet you waste it to moan, whine and bitch ad infinitum ad nauseum.
When you call K-on the herald of the cynicism of the actors of the anime industry, I laugh my ass off and I call it Comedy Gold. No guys! That’s just your brain full of crap that had to invent some convoluted theory of The Evil Conspiracy of Moé to Bring Anime to Its Downfall.
K-on is not more cynical than your B-sci-fi story that HAD to throw mecha in the story TO SELL IT AND SELL THE TOYS OF THE SPONSORS, the harem anime that HAD to make the male lead yet another nerd who had dozens of girls clinging over him BECAUSE HE IS A NICE GUY, or YET that another action shounen that had to have ANOTHER IDIOT HERO to sell it to teenagers.
You guys needs to cut the show some slack, take that stick out of your ass, waste your bile elsewhere and use your brainpower for something more productive.
PS: tl;dr, it is not the fault of the show, the one to blame is YOUR MISAIMED EXPECTATIONS. Get out of your Ivory Tower, take some fresh air and get that damn +1 stick of Snobbitude out of your rectum.
PPS: Profanities are the results of myself facepalming and cringing whenever some people open that mouth of theirs as if their opinion hold more weight than everyone else’s. Their opinion may be valid but they have a way to fag it up so much that you can’t help but point and laugh at them whenever they comes in, stomping and trumpeting that they are so knowledgeable.
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LOL, it happens with every series you know. Personally, I can’t stand hype. It makes my skin crawl. The more hype I see, the more I annoyed I become. Also, fans have a huge tendency to take things out of proportion and totally out of the context they’re supposed to be.
Take a number of series.
Haruhi: I was enjoying. I was actually one of those people that wasn’t put off by the infamous 00 Episode. Then the whole overhype reached legendary proportions and I’m not sure that thing is the same series I started watching. Seriously, it’s not THAT good, but Haruhitards just won’t quit and if you say otherwise, they’ll eat you alive till you become a Haruhizombie like the rest. But I was really enjoying the thing. Now I still think it’s kinda fun but not THAT fun, and the Haruhitards just make things worse. What Haruhitards believe is that this anime is the end-all-be-all of entertainment, the master, that which is perfect in every sense…. which of course is one huge pile of bs. The overanalysis of the time travelling and the Data Entity thing is so bad I don’t know whether I should love or cry at people actually overanalyzing a friggin moe series… And no, I don’t want to hear about “the Great Novels” again… That it’s one stupid cliche upon another and the only thing that makes it worthwhile is really Kyon needs no further explanation.
Code Geass: Ok, many things were different in this one. Not sure how can people call it a real mecha anime when mecha use was rather secondary and not the point (like normal mecha series and Gundam). Anyway, besides that, it wasn’t without flaws, especially R2. But despite the more vocal critics, it still didn’t fail to continue with its overhype, and I can point to a new breed of Geasstards roaming around. It’s ok to like a series, but when people actually defend it against valid criticism, it becomes retardation. The fact that people may enjoy it despite the obvious flaws is 1) a given and 2) up to the individual.
And I’m not even going to start on KyoAni’s other “nice” stuff like Kanon and Clannad… >_> (Although for all intents and purposes, at least Clannad was good and failed epicly at the ending but the KyoAnitards don’t seem to get it). Seriously, sometimes I think only brainless teens go around the net… the horrible thing is that it just might be true…
K-ON: I had no expectations about this other than I’m pretty critical to anything that’s KyoAni because of the overhype most of their stuff get. But it turned out pretty good. Mio is my least favorite girl possibly because of all the Mio hype. I’m sure she’d have a better place if I didn’t see “MIO MY WAIFU!!” all over the retarded net. It wasn’t perfect but I consider it more fun than Haruhi. I seem to be with the minority because I actually enjoyed ep 10 O_o .
The point of all this is
1. You can’t stop overhype. And K-ON was overhyped. Not as much as Haruhi but the hype was there.
2. Overhype can have a number of not-that-nice effects.
2a. Overhype leads people to expect the world to shatter before the awesomeness of something.
2b. Overhype tends to yield -tards.
2c. Overhype tends to yield anti -tards.
When people are being so annoyingly vocal about a thing and preaching its magnificence to everyone, they effectively raise people’s expectations. That, along with the general overhype, WILL lead to some people being dissatisfied, and out of those the more vocal ones will start crying murder. The fact that the idiots WILL keep shouting only makes retaliation that much more appealing.
K-ON was a victim of overhype, that should be obvious by now. Not sure whether I prefer people bitching forever because they didn’t like something to becoming zombie-like when they hear the name of God-Haruhi. Both seem equally crap to me.
Another point : No, people don’t have to read the original source of ANYTHING. People are watching K-ON the anime, not reading K-ON 4koma, as people were watching LotR the movies and not reading LotR. The fact that I could compare the movies and find them lacking compared to the books is an added “bonus”. The thing is, you don’t need to have the original source to judge a medium. If I’m offered something on TV, it should be self-reliant and self-contained. If I need to draw medium-specific information from the medium’s other forms, then the medium has failed, and many anime have this terrible tendency to heavily depend on their original source. The fact that K-ON is a really 4koma should inform people what to expect. If I haven’t heard about it though, it’s still fine. In both cases, some things did feel like they didn’t belong there anyway. So in the end, the original source is not that relevant. Most of the damage comes from the overhype. If people could accept the series from what it was from the start, if people weren’t going crazy over Mio and K-ON in general, and if KyoAni didn’t go into the emo-drama department, there would have been more happier people with K-ON.
Also, the profanities will hardly help your cause, you’re just giving more ammo to flame you back :p
Well, I gave up “posing” as the more sensible, “knowledgeable” and “educated” poster in Asuki. When you are dealing with you-know-who for almost three years already to the point you want to scream at the top of your lungs “OK OK I GET IT ALREADY!”, you reach a point where you just go “fuck it”.
It is just not worth the effort when all one does is to weasel out when another gives a valid point.
It feels like being confronted to Materazzi by the dozens, then you go, “SCREW IT!” and go Zidane on them.
Or I can just smirk at their rampant hypocrisy when they put themselves on a higher ground, and yet are no better than Anonymous.
My only consolation is that KyoAni did not overload K-On with Haruhi or seiyuu references. I can only imagine a much worse backlash if they did.
On Code Geass: It is an amusing series on its own when I watch it as something as corny as a soap opera. But when fanboys present it as War & Peace meet Dune meet Death Note meet the awesome political thrillers of the 1960s, I can only point and laugh at them.
Heh, a lot of raeg here but TBH the reasons for your being annoyed are pretty valid.
The trouble with fandom, especially when views can be tossed back and forth so easily, is this ‘backlash tennis’ going on. Something is hyped or panned, there’s a backlash against the hype or panning, then there’s a backlash against the backlash…you can see where this is going. It happens all the time but that said, that doesn’t mean you have to like it.
I’ve had to take a bit of a step back recently and watch things from a distance, which is a nice relief. I’m not too old for anime or anything, but I don’t feel cut out to be part of the debate any more. Too many blog posts are either fanboying/fangirling, or they’re something written as a piece of college coursework, and very little in between. I often worry about when to slip in and out of over-analyis mode because some shows are meant to be talked about at length, while others are meant to be more disposable and just enjoyed as the popular media they are. I’ve seen the same problems when reading about people’s thoughts on anime shows for as long as I’ve watched anime…I reckon the fandumb has always been this way actually.
If you want to really piss people off, ignore the new shows entirely and talk about older ones. They don’t have to be really old – given the attention span of your average internet-dweller, shows more than a year old are considered uncool and irrelevant so that should do the trick. And yeah, I’m only being semi-sarcastic: some stuff deserves to be remembered long after the next season of fansubs pushes it out of the limelight.
That’s one of the things I decided to do about my posting in asuki: posting less in threads or sub-forums prone to this kind of backlash vs anti-backlash like *cough*KyoAnisubforums*cough*, it could be my loss because #1. I enjoy their shows but can acknowledge their flaws. #2. I do like talking about them. But I feel that my liver will be healthier that way, especially after three years reading about the same old rehashed arguments and thinly veiled attacks. I’ll likely stick to creative threads or browse Dungeons & Dragons boards. Or chill out with friends in IRC.
I’ll try blogging about #1. Series I like. #2. Series I like and are being ignored in mainstream fandom (Guin Saga), sticking to how I like talking about it. However, right now, real life takes priority over blogging. Because there are things that I need to settle first, especially in that time of economical crisis.
Regarding the old series, a few pop in my mind but I’ll need to get them back, I mean series like Cyber City Oedo 808 or AD Police.
K-on, overhyped? Holy crap, that’s new to me. Most of the KyoAni fans I know didn’t care about it because of Haruhi 2 or the remaining Clannad AS chapters.