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Happy new year!

Look back un 3... Uff.

xD good, i know you like more things in films that just "da Feels". You are still the best reviewer of all MAL

Merry Christmas

merry crismas :3

I see, I'll keep that in mind while I watch it.

Also what makes Vampire Hunter D one of your all time favorite animes? I've been meaning to check it out because of the visuals alone.

Exquisite profile you got there !

>Now you're speaking about your social circles; this can't be quantified as a metric; it's your accumulated exposure. I can just as easily bring up the fact that only on this platform and one other person I know online brought up Frieren to me, which hardly qualifies as widespread. But I didn't because that would be silly as a measurement of anything's success. It's as silly as mentioning the Top Anime chart on MAL (go figure) lol

This extends far past my own social circle, at cosplayer events and other gatherings that I personally have no interest in attending, characters from Frieren are very popular. The manga is also very popular not only in the west but also in Japan. Now, like you were saying, popularity obviously does not correlate to the quality of a work, but when multiple sources (social events, ranking aggregator sites, sales, etc) are alluding to the same thing (that a work is well received) then I would argue that there is significant merit in that. I don't know what your background is, but when it comes to scientific literature, the most empirical form of evidence comes in the form of systematic reviews and meta analyses. Which is a fancy way of saying "journal articles that take data from hundreds of smaller journal articles and trials to try and develop a consensus opinion on something". You don't necessarily have to agree with the consensus opinion, especially on something as subjective as art, but if a lot of different people enjoyed something, then it was probably a solid work. If you find yourself overwhelmingly disliking a lot of new anime that are coming out, while most people seem to be liking them, then that does mean you've (figuratively) aged yourself out of the medium.

>Again, this is another assumption, especially given what my previous reply stated: I know where to find the true gems in the medium divorced from its core demographic, and it's certainly not on this website's silly top ratings chart.
>I often disagree with both. I know my sensibilities, and I rely on specific networks and individuals if needed.

Which ones were these? I'd be interested to check them out myself. And which networks are you using?

>Using consensus from this community of mostly young adults to teens with limited exposure isn't how I find what I'm looking for, nor will it ever be.

Is this not just another way of saying that you've aged/fatigued yourself out of the medium? Am I misunderstanding something?

>The OP fan letter and Look Back. Both are critically praised to the moon, but I disagree with their assessment.


I would not say these are critically praised, and certainly not the best anime to come out of this year. Or at the very least, not the best full-length series to come out of this year, which is what most folks are talking about when discussing the best anime to come out during the year. Among fans of anime broadly, they are still very niche. Sure, people know about One Piece, but offline I don't think a single person I have conversed with knows what "Look Back" is. Meanwhile, most folks who have watched anime at least this year both on forums and in real life at least know what Frieren is (probably not Apothecary Diaries though, that one starts off a lot slower and is thus less appealing to the general viewer).

I am not a fan of One Piece in general so I will not comment on that, but I did watch Look Back some time after it aired and I very much disliked it. Way too sentimental for my taste and it tries to bite off more than it can chew in the timespan of an hour. I also didn't like that multiple times throughout the movie it felt like I was being "told to feel sad" and empathize with the characters, whom I barely knew or cared about. These sort of coming-of-age, kind of stories that rely on you empathizing with or understanding the character often do not work as shorts/movies. Can they be done? With a solid director certainly, and I have seen films where that is the case, but 90% of the time they can be done better in the form of a longer (but not too long) series where you have the time to develop a character and their relationships.

>"I would however disagree that the best has been mediocre to bad," where did I say that? I'm speaking about the year, not the medium as a whole.

I know you are. And I'm saying that the best hasn't been mediocre to bad. There are a lot more shitty anime these days because a lot more anime is being produced, but the best anime that is coming out on a year-to-year basis is about as good as the best yearly anime that have been coming out for at least the past decade.

To me, what it seems like is that you've probably aged yourself out of the medium, or at least that's what it seems like based on what you said you've watched this year. I would wager that a lot of the anime you've enjoyed in the past (whatever they may be) might not be particularly enjoyable to you now if you rewatched them. Which is not necessarily a bad thing, because most anime (especially now) DOES suck. But saying that the best anime coming out nowadays is just average or mediocre tells me that you're just so far divorced from the medium that your current impression on it is remarkably outdated. And mine probably is too, which is why I've started to watch the stuff that is critically acclaimed by casual and hardcore folks to get a better understanding of what people enjoy so that my opinions hold some salt.

My apologies if I sound like a bit of an asshole in my replies, it's hard to illustrate emotion/tone through text but I don't mean to offend.

All of them, if that's the kind of answer you want. There's no specific one. Not meaning that I actively dislike any of them, though.

Hi Zeph,

I'm curious what you see in Monster that's of worth to you from an thematic standpoint. I don't really agree with most of the discourse around Monster concerning its exploration of evil and morality. Johan as a character is a bit confusing to me and his past is too ambiguous for me to glean any insight on the nature of evil, or what it means to be a monster. From a moral standpoint, I don't understand the moral dilemma that Tenma faces. It's clear to me that if he were to do anything, he would at least apprehend Johan to keep him from being a danger to more people, if not kill him. Not that you necessarily hold the same views as the discourse I've been seeing, but I just want to know the meaning that you get from it when you decipher it, as per your tag.

Why does that matter? You can appreciate the technical aspects of a show and not be into its fundamental aspects. I can enjoy good character acting animation and scene-by-scene directing and not be inclined to rave about whatever kind of story quality is there cause that's still a personal preference in the end, is it not? Didn't you say previously that part didn't need to be brought up again?

I wasn’t trying to object his reputation and influence, though. I’m not sure why you had that interpretation. ☹️
When I said I’m not a fan of the script, I didn’t mean I necessarily disliked or hated them.

I said this because many people keep forgetting this. Why else would I bring this up?

>I disagree with going toe-to-toe with any adjacent medium; it reads like ignorance of the competition. So far, the "best" of anime (according to the community) that I've watched for this year wouldn't even make a top 50 for other mediums lol Not even honorable mention-worthy.

Well, which ones have you watched this year? And the reason I say ones is because there's probably only like 2-3 that were meaningfully good, so if you watched any more than that then you objectively weren't only watching "the best" of this year lmao. Which is kinda sad to think about but unfortunately that is the state of anime. I say this as someone who is not really a fan of anime anymore - I enjoy literature, films, and video games more.

I would however disagree that the best has been mediocre to bad, but that of course is dependent on which ones you've watched. Frieren for example is Top 1 on this site by a large margin, a position that was held by FMAB for as long as I've been on this site and I'd say it holds up pretty well. It has united both casual and hardcore watchers of anime, something that I didn't really think was possible until now. Maybe part of that is because of how shitty anime has become, but as someone who became very cynical and quit the medium for like half a decade and still really enjoyed it, I'd say there is some merit to it being a pretty damn good work in general.

I'd say if you've also become critical of the medium to give it a try and see what you think, maybe it'll offer you a different perspective, or maybe it won't.

Uhh, animation direction and scriptwriting are still distinctly two different things, even though they do go hand in hand quite often. In fact, Kon himself isn’t always the one writing them. It’s not uncommon to like one aspect but not the other, regardless if there’s a “symbiotic connection” between the two in question. You can like the technical aspects in how fluid and expressive some animated cuts are, but not like the actual story writing quality associated with it.

Fair, most anime coming out these days are a burning pile of rubbish.

I will say however that the best-of-the-best coming out now are still exceptionally great media, just that like you said there isn't really a lot of them. I stopped watching anime for like 3-4 years and watched Frieren and Apothecary Diaries at the request of a friend and was astonished by how refreshing they felt to watch.

I don't think I'll go back to watching anime routinely myself, but I will at least try to keep up with the highly rated shows because they are pretty damn good and can go toe-to-toe with the best yearly releases in any other adjacent artistic medium. Unfortunately you do have to ignore about 90% of anime releases because they are absolutely bottom-of-the-barrel shlock. But keeping up with like the 3-5 great series that come out every year (and I'm really being liberal with the quantity here, it's probably closer to like 2 or 3) has been pretty easy for me to do. I have no idea how people are keeping up with every release and keeping their sanity intact though.

It does give you a sort of unrealistic sense of the medium though, because there is such a disparity between a great anime and a garbage one, which only becomes wider if you filter out the shit lol.