Anybody ever seen the anime Tengen Toppa Gurren Laggan?(hint: the picture above is from it.) Don't worry if you haven't, unlike my previous 'Footnotes', there will be no spoilers in this addition. But to give you the quick version, Gurren Laggan is pretty much one of the stupidest anime that has ever existed. It has giant mechs that can get huge power-ups pretty much on a whim for no reason, it operates on logic that makes absolutely no sense if you stop to think about it, and by the end of it, has broken so much rules of logic and sense that the final fight is literally two giant robots throwing galaxies at each other. Quite simply, it's a show that will fall apart the second you use any kind of brain power to actually think about what is going on, because you will realize that what the characters are saying and the events that are transpiring just plain don't make sense. But you know what?
I DON'T CARE.
Yes, Gurren Laggan may as well have been written by a bunch of giraffes stomping on a typewriter considering how much sense everything makes, but the show is also one of the most enjoyable anime I have ever watched. It's a truly epic tale of friendship, manliness and the power of the fighting spirit that escalates over time and ramps up the stakes with every episode somehow, until as before mentioned, we have robots picking up galaxies with their hands(because that's how it works) and throwing them like goddamn frisbees. Basically, Gurren Laggan is amazing, and an anime experience I can recommend to anybody who is able to turn their brain off completely. But the fact that a show as nonsensical as Gurren Laggan even exists and I like, brings up a couple of important questions, I think. Is a show that pretty much completely relies on you not thinking too hard and enjoying the ride able to compare critically with shows that actually try to make sense? And if you do find a show to be "fun", is that really an excuse if it has other shortcoming in the plot and characters? Well, I'm going to give my opinion on that today.
Hello peeps and people of "The Wired", my name is Quan, I hope you're doing fantastic and today on this entry of the section I like to call 'Footnotes", we're going to be looking at the simple yet slippery question of whether an anime being fun is really that much worse than an anime being good. Hopefully I'll be able to give an answer on that today, and not drag on too long. Well, time to get started.
So to open with this discussion, I guess I should clarify what kind of anime I'm talking about here. Now admittedly Gurren Laggan may not have been the best example to lead with; it's almost an unique show in the way that it over-exaggerates everything and pretty sacrifices all logic to make everything epic, unless you count the recently aired anime Kill la Kill, which was made by the same team of people. I'm probably going to refer to shows more like Nisekoi or The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya from now on when I'm talking about shows that are fun to watch, rather than the straight out explosive insanity of Gurren Laggan. These are shows that have fun characters, entertaining story-lines, and are pretty much really easy to digest, easy to comprehend, and very, very easy to marathon. I'm serious with that part too, if you just took one of those examples above with Nisekoi, I'm pretty sure I watched the last ten episodes of that anime in one afternoon, which is as good a testament as any to prove how straightforward these kinds of shows are. And I think it's good to ask yourself how valuable that is. I mean, yes, these fun shows don't exactly feature any complex, well, anything, but hey, as long as you're having fun, what else could you ask for in a show? Well, in my opinion, a lot actually.
Don't get me wrong, I have nothing against fun, bouncy and entertaining shows. In fact, I like to calm down with one of these kinds of shows after watching something particularly heavy, and as to be expected, I tend to really enjoy them. But I feel a viewer shouldn't rate something too high or praise heavily a show that just entertained you or made you laugh and chuckle throughout. Why? Because its easy to entertain somebody if you know what to do. A dog chasing a cat in circles around a cat before the cat turns around and scares the dog away? Entertaining, and funny as well. A cat wearing a shark outfit riding across the floor on a Roomba? Entertaining, and also one of the best things ever. A bunch of Japanese high-schoolers leading out their daily lives in an anime while getting up to a bunch of random shenanigans and featuring common character archetypes like the tsundere, the bland protagonist, and the common relief best friend? Entertaining as hell, and a formula that about a thousand anime have copied since it was first introduced in... umm...I don't know Sailor Moon or something. That's not important right now. That's not to say some of these "fun" shows don't hit the mark better then others. Even in the examples I've mentioned like Haruhi and Nisekoi, those are shows I pretty much consider to be best you can make a show while just be entertaining and doing nothing more than that. Those two shows have something very important: charm, and that was enough to keep me invested in the characters. If I had to think of something that was completely mediocre and did the bare minimum of just keeping me entertained, I'd say something like Gosick or to some extent Shakugan no Shana, though I do expect more of the latter when I get around to watching its follow-up seasons.
When you look at something very charming and entertaining like Haruhi, while I like them better than those mediocre anime, I feel shows like it never can really become anything more than that. It's fun to watch; but after that sentence, nothing more can be really said for it. If a show is truly good in my opinion, there needs to be a comma there, something else to discuss, to analyse, and to come back years later. Luckily, in Haruhi's case, it got a kick-ass movie after the series was over, but if I turn to Nisekoi, while I'd be happy to learn a second season is on its way, I can safety say I would rate that season either the same as season one or lower. I can say this, because yes, this hypothetical second season would be fun, but would the exact same thing as season one: entertaining, quirky, easy brain-food. There's nothing wrong with that, but that show is never going to get anything above a 7/10 in my book. And there's your limitation.
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| The entertaining cast of Nisekoi: fun, but never much more else to be said. |
What I think is interesting is that when I look at some of my favorite anime of all time, I don't think I can say I had a lot of fun watching some of them. Hell, I think I spent more time depressed than entertained while watching Welcome to the NHK. Or do you think watching all seven movies of Kara no Kyoukai was fun? No it wasn't. Contrary, it was dark, imaginative, and creepy as hell occasionally. I mean my all time favorite anime Baccano! was the perks of being both fantastically entertaining and subtly intriguing at the same time, but as I look down this list of shows I've rated highly, there's not a lot like that. Bakemonogatari bored me half the time, if I was to be honest. Grave of the Fireflies made me more want to cry for weeks than laugh. Evangelion 3.0 was both frustrating and disturbing most of the movie, and the first half of Gankutsuou was extremely tedious(until you know, absolutely everything happens in the second half). But I think that's where the value is.
Here's where my true thoughts on the matter lie. All those shows I listed above all share something in common, something that made them all legitimately good anime shows and movies. They all brought something more to the table than what was required. They just didn't make me laugh, or have fun but bland archetypes to fill the character roles, or even allow me to relax my brain for a second. These shows made me think, analyse, re-watch, and discuss them, and that was because they were eccentric, or dark, or gripping, or mind-boggling. Let's put it this way. They all gave me an experience that can't be replaced by something that's just plain entertaining, like a cat in a shark outfit riding on a Roomba, though I do still think that mental image is awesome. These shows gave not just another fun anime. And for that, I'm grateful.
Now don't worry, this doesn't mean I hate you now Haruhi and Nisekoi-like anime. I've got nothing against fun shows; they're...well fun. But for all those reasons above, is why I can never hold shows like you in extremely high regard. Still, if I'm ever in the mood to sit back and relax, I'll watch the hypothetical second season of Nisekoi anytime. Because sometimes I don't want to think, or analyse, or whatever. Sometimes I just want to watch anime to have fun. And when you get down to it, there's no better reason.
Goodbye for now guys.
Check out my other 'Footnotes' on what makes a deep story here.
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