Its from a post on r/CharacterRant, where OP was giving his thoughts on modern anime as a non anime watcher. The post was mocked and meme-d by shitposters since OP complained about how tropey and cliche-ish anime is when he choose shows that are obviously meant for younger audiences.
Growing up, I wasn’t really an avid watcher of anime. Sure, there were shows, specials, and what have you that aired on my country’s TV channels, but I grew up on more reality comedy shows (not the American or British ones, my country’s). The most I ever consumed was like a few episodes of DBZ, a localized version of Grendizer, and one or two episodes from some football series.
Now fast-forward nearly two decades later. Anime is incredibly popular, successful, and so wide-spanning that even non-watchers like myself could name a couple of anime characters. I figured ‘why not?’, I decided to go watch an episode or two of a popular modern anime on a whim and see what the hype is all about.
The first show I picked? My Hero Academia.
I know, I know, my fault for picking a mid show when I should have known better. My reasoning was that the premise was interesting enough, and that the show was quite clever when it came to executing its ideas, or so I’ve heard online. So I figured I’d at least give it the benefit of the doubt and watch at least like 5 episodes. They’re all around 18 minutes each; it’s not too bad, right?
So I watched the first episode. Subbed, of course. Thought to myself “Seems fine enough, even if a bit tropey and cliche-ish. Maybe it’s setting up to something bigger and better, who knows?”
I watched the episodes after it, and my only reaction after each episode was bewilderment. And not the good kind. “Flashback of a scene that happened only an episode ago?”, “Why is everyone so one-dimensional and flat?”, “Why is the narrator and Deku constantly explaining everything to an absurd degree?”, and so on. Sure, there was setting, character, development, and else, but it felt like they were all… basic. To put it mildly, everything and everyone felt like a caricature of a caricature of a caricature. It’s like the writers (no offense to them) asked themselves during writing something like “What if this really cool or surprising thing happened?” Instead of “How would this event affect each character’s development?”. Everything felt so superficial and like it lacked any real depth. No, it being ‘satirical’ doesn’t deflect these criticisms if everything else in the show shares the same tone.
But surely, that was an outlier, right? I went ahead to watch a few more shows I heard were good and that even my friend recommended. Re:zero, Frieren and The Apothecary diaries. I don’t think it is controversial to say that these are at least decently well written.
Even though they were better about their issues, I still sensed the same problems. It still felt like everything was hinged around the premise and the ‘pizzazz’ of it all rather than everything else. Safe to say, I wasn’t hooked.
So I decided to give anime one final go. I set on watching Cowboy Bebop and Neon Genesis Evangelion. These were the two shows nearly everyone said were great, but given my experiences so far, it set a very low bar.
And you know what? I actually liked them! Sure, they used just slightly more cliches than I was fine with, but overall it didn’t really hamper my enjoyment too much. Still, it felt I was watching a real show! The characters actually felt grounded, like I could see these people like Spike and Shinji existing in real life, they had flaws and development that didn’t come straight out of a cartoon show, the setting was interesting and well rounded, nearly everyone episode felt important to the plot even if some leaned towards being filler episodes, and so on. Even some of the weirder things (especially for Evangelion) were at the very least crucial to a few of the character arcs.
I’m not the type of guy who wants to come as saying all modern anime is bad and that “back in my day” things were better, but I constantly found myself asking “Hell, is this what everyone considers to be good nowadays?”. And just like that, everything clicked for me.
Have you ever read, heard, or seen something and immediately went “Oh, now everything all-of-a-sudden makes sense about this topic!” The same happened for me, but instead I thought “Oh, I understand why everyone who likes this acts like a child!” If shows like these were what everyone grew up on and liked, then everything about their behavior makes sense, and I’m not just talking about the weebs: Preferring style over substance, overlooking flat characters, criticizing small things when there are much larger issues with the writing (because they can’t detect them), ‘cool’ or ‘complex’ or ‘interesting’ powersystems rather than ones that make for a good story, overuse of ‘sexy’ and/or ‘cute’ designs (because it sells; who cares if the character is as deep as a puddle), over-explaining, too much exposition, and too much dialogue (because who’s going to get implicit details, right?), nearly every show having the same protagonist who does good for the sake of it and not any deeper motivation, and so much more. Even the older shows implied (and by that, I don’t mean a throwaway line or small visual detail) some of the later plot points or arcs.
Mind you, this is all despite the limited number of shows I watched. But I don’t need to see a million frogs just to know if something is a frog.
Now, is my analysis biased? Possibly, given my very small sample size. And moreover, the two shows I liked were known for being groundbreaking and influential, compared to the other stuff I saw. But I have a very strong feeling that if I watched another anime, I could immediately clock it as being worth my time within the first 10 minutes.
Feel free to prove me wrong. As a matter of fact, I do want to be proven wrong because I don’t want to carry this negative expectation of every modern anime.