Report boldulysses's Profile

Worry not; I produce words as quickly as I breathe, and enjoy it enough it's one of my favored forms of relaxation. I hope I didn't make you feel too burdened by my deluge.

I need to make a meme now of Yotsuba lecturing Uesu-whatever about his complete ignorance of the absolute pure-scientific greatness of geocentrism. Try calculating 20 epicycles deep.

Got back to looking at MAL; answering your reply here so as not to clutter the other thread: I tried the first episode of Amagami Sisters (? I think that's what it was called), and you're right—it's boring. (Unless it changed in more recent episodes.) It's like that Richard Rorty quote I pull out sometimes:



I like the harem shows that, in their squalor, betray that they're ridiculous, or are somehow in on the joke. This Amagami Sisters thing is just depressing, like the dude hooked up to the masturbation pod in DARLING in the FRANXX.

As to that Orb: The Movement of the Earth or whatever that HOOfan_1 suggested, a show that plays straight the completely false history attacking the Church as backwards I'd probably consider the scum of the anime earth. That's got to be so evil I'm willing to refer to Quintessential Quintuplets by its actual name in order to say that that thing is far worse. I've got to do enough to counter the anti-Catholic historical ignorance taught in our schools; no way would I go for such a thing as entertainment. Nuke that from orbit.

Getting back to C.S. Lewis, I am rather pleased to be anticipated; I don't think that comparison to Dawkins had occurred to me until I wrote my comment, but it's certainly in the vein of things I would say. I've read the Narnia books multiple times (when I was a kid), the first two Space Trilogy books, The Screwtape Letters, Till We Have Faces, The Abolition of Man, and An Experiment in Criticism. I am offended at the notion of giving "Christianity" the prefix "Mere," so I haven't read that. In all I find Lewis too stridently sure of himself about precisely the kinds of epistemological points the standard Western conservative/liberal paradigm has been getting wrong the past hundred years. His book on criticism says it's the worst thing in the world to judge a book for its morals, that we should be "objective" in our criticism. But "objectivity" itself is its own (rather strange) moral position, one that acts like we can view a thing from a position so abstract and commanding we're basically God ourselves. I tend to see Lewis's theological washiness as a secondary problem; fiction doesn't have to be perfectly orthodox, because it's already only suggestive. The problem is combining that washiness with smugness. And combine that with consumerism and we get tangled in minute arguments about whether this or that line in the Narnia books is doctrinally correct, which is kind of like asking whether a particle in quantum mechanics can have exact position and exact momentum simultaneously; it's a bad question because the situation just doesn't allow it.

And oh, Saekano: I like it for its competence, seriousness, and potential; I think it made evil choices. Tomoya's choices I don't mind; some characters ought to be obnoxious. But the way the show presented itself it basically tricked people into thinking it wasn't trash because it was a "parody" (this is a large simplification of my thoughts). Lending talent to a deceptive enterprise does more damage than the standard trash.

Since nothing at all of importance is happening right now:

For physics and math I do indeed possess the requisite pieces of paper that say I know them; for literature and criticism I am just an amateur, though if I had to go up against, say, an English major, I'd wager I'd lose only against the good ones, e.g. those planning to go to grad school. As to why a physics person likes criticism too, it's because it vindicated my approach to reading, something multiple people used to make fun of me for in the past: I often would read or interpret things in ways I wasn't "supposed" to, and told I was slow because I didn't notice "obvious" interpretations. In reality what I was doing was realizing the historical and social contexts of interpretation, and therefore reading much more cautiously and questioningly than the people making fun of me. Having literary criticism reveal that variety of gaslighting for what it was was both formative and highly entertaining. Things came together when I realized this was the same kind of cautious perspective that made me able to understand physics in greater depth—and got even more fun when I started reading nuclear strategy, whose most important principle is hermeneutic responsibility, understanding what signals you send out by your actions.

I'm not sure where I fit into your perspective on learning to interpret life. The abstract/concrete and theoretical/practical distinctions are important, but I often find myself going off the deep end reading ridiculous philosophy precisely because observations in everyday life (like people making fun of me for my slow literary interpretations when I was in high school) point to non-obvious solutions you can't learn from the jedi of pop knowledge.

As for writing, that's why I started doing this on CR back in 2016: I wanted to put my thoughts together, and I found the CR forum dynamic fascinating for how it—uh, so, my analogy requires some explanation: See, in physics, one of the most important kinds of experiments is scattering—which basically means shooting one thing at another thing and seeing what comes out. (This is what giant particle accelerators do.) Being able to "scatter" off all the ideas in the CR forums both helped me figure out what I thought and revealed the contours of the community's notions of art and criticism (because that's what arguing about anime is). And there's something about sticking ideas on paper that brings them out of one's brain and makes them clear and coherent. I often go back myself to what I've written to remind myself of my own thoughts (and I'm disappointed I wasn't able to save everything I wrote on the CR forums before they died). I'm not sure I say anything new as far as criticism goes, because from my perspective I'm just applying what I learned from various books, but I do get the feeling this stuff is just entirely outside the popular consciousness of appreciating anime, and really all art. So there is also a sense that I write what I do to save people from the standard "taste is subjective" attitude that leads inevitably to thinking it's okay to like eating poop on a stick. (That CR forum thread I do have saved.)

Oh, don't worry about that; I too am busy/distracted, and it's not like this is a particularly formal—uh—forum.

I did go to grad school and attempt to get a PhD in physics, but that didn't work out. Most recently I've been teaching high school physics, which is absolutely awful. I am attempting to transition to something less stupid.

As to MAL, I'm here too, so I don't blame you for your choices. Indeed, I think too much of a great thing devalues it; there's a relevant quote by Debussy I enjoy:



Clearly this has happened to much art, as Taylor Swift and Harry Potter attest. My graduate real analysis professor once said that you can only do four hours of good math a day; trying to do more spoils it. This is partially why I watch anime (to answer the previous Sunday Evening Question): It's fun, its socioethical tendencies aren't those popular in the Western culture industry so I don't tire of the stories, and I can do my silly analyses on them without much investment (which you can't say for the usual arena of criticism, politics). I actually started learning/reading serious literary criticism around the time I subscribed to CR, so it seemed natural to analyze anime since I like both.

To answer your question about how I choose what anime to watch, it used to be that I'd read what Nick Creamer (he has an anime criticism blog) thought. But then I realized (i) he is too tendentiously political, and (ii) I'm better at criticism than he is, so I started to find him grating. Instead I just asked people I trusted on CR (StriderShinryu and Shenseiken, if I recall correctly), and when the forums died I just looked at our forum refugee threads here. I also flip through the currently streaming shows on CR and HIDIVE. Most of those I skip because it's clear they're bad just from the name; I'm not really sure how I do end up choosing what to watch; I think it's that if I find a show whose title isn't stupid and potentially interests me, I read the description and decide based off that. I usually don't drop shows, so it seems to work. Of course, this doesn't really help anybody since I don't know exactly how I decide I like a title and description other than by my own strange perspective.

I don't know that I require myself to watch something trashy every season, but it does seem like I do that, and I usually enjoy it. This is probably because such things lend themselves easily to criticism, which I enjoy, and they tend to inadvertently make fairly interesting points (like Love Flops and its AI-generated harem shenanigans). I also find fascinating the objections/defenses people make regarding trashy anime, as these say a great deal about the social perception and appreciation of art. And sometimes the trash is actually good: The Cafe Terrace and Its Goddesses had a great first season given what it is; unfortunately I am not enjoying the second season, which started stupid and has trended stupider.

I haven't seen the Saekano film, but I think I'd like it given that I liked the first two seasons. As to C.S. Lewis, I don't remember the last time I mentioned him around here (though maybe it was somewhat recent). This requires a bit more explanation than I feel like at the moment, but his best-known work of actual literary criticism An Experiment in Criticism is bad and wrong and stupid. It reveals him to be a snob who does not know what he is talking about. There is a reason that, when one learns the history of English literature and criticism, I.A. Richards is an important figure while C.S. Lewis is not, and yet Lewis cannot help but sneer at Richards as inferior whenever he gets the chance. And theologically his opinions are what you'd expect from someone whose expertise is elsewhere. He's kind of like Richard Dawkins writing The God Delusion; he sold, and sells now, because of capitalism, not actual value.

Let's see:

• So, I definitely get emotionally invested in anime. The thing is it's probably rare for this to short circuit my analysis mode, probably because I've spent my whole life annoyingly questioning why things are the way they are, and doubled down on it in grad school. I probably do put less into this mode when I'm enjoying the ride, but I don't think I generally stop noticing things. Especially since even if you're highly aware of all sorts of nuances in meaning and story choices, Muad'Dib could see the entire motion of reality; there's a huge gap between those two, such that I can tell I'm constantly missing stuff even when I'm analyzing a thing closely. (That's one of the reasons I stuck with the CR forums for so long, and am here now; people are always teaching me things I wouldn't have thought of.)
  
• I'm not sure I've ever thought of anime in terms of how ambitious they are, or if I have, I'm definitely sure I haven't considered when an anime should be more ambitious. Though I guess every once and a while I make the point that certain harem anime could break through the standard tropes and actually make the characters deal with real life. Renai Flops definitely could have done this, and I think you're right to phrase it that the show could have been more ambitious; it was too focused on being trashy, and thus it didn't notice it could've been more. Saekano: Flat was the same, though as it was far more serious, it could have been amazing had it tipped slightly towards the School Days direction—though I guess if I'm saying just slightly maybe it's better to reference White Album 2. I don't remember the Saekano protagonist's name, but he was just leading all those girls on: They clearly liked him, and all he cared about was his stupid game. There are a few other anime I can think of that I know could've done better, but I'm not sure the problem was that they weren't ambitious enough. What comes immediately to mind is Shoujo☆Kageki Revue Starlight, which was highly ambitious but (i) needed more episodes, and (ii) had a faux-intellectual denouement that it probably tricked itself into thinking was smart. It should have believed in itself more, which is a kind of lack of ambition, I suppose.
  
• When I compare Dostoyevsky and co. to anime, I do admit it's overkill. The thing is, if the forums here (and at CR) are any indication, many people forget something as good as Dostoyevsky can even exist. So I bring it up because I feel like it's necessary.
  

Well... if it's okay, I'm going to rephrase your question: I really do earnestly enjoy most anime I watch; it's just that often my earnest enjoyment arises from the occasion an anime gives me for criticism. (Also, just to be clear, I should say that "criticism" in the literature sense actually just means analysis; thus literary criticism isn't inherently negative.) And further, I do think I earnestly enjoy most of what I watch even when I have lots to criticize; I think I've said before that often what drives me is disappointment that an anime I like isn't living up to its potential. And I think I tend always to see mistakes, whether or not I think a show is the best thing ever. So whether or not I rake a show over the coals isn't the best criterion; I want shows I like to be as good as they can be, and am more annoyed when a good show makes a mistake than when a bad show does. (The Horrid Five Genetically Identical Sisters That Can Go Die in a Fire can do whatever it likes, though. There's a weird verse in the book of Revelation that's relevant.)

I'll make another caveat and say that I do often minimize/dismiss flaws in shows that I like, and not just because I know nothing can be perfect; I regularly have the opinion that what a show does well more than makes up for its mistakes. So instead I'm going to rephrase your question like this: What's an anime I've enjoyed at face value—that is, something I don't need to have fun trashing to enjoy, because I enjoy it at its simplest, as it's actually presenting itself? Well, the evidence is gone (since the CR forums are gone, and it seems that even my hasty copy-paste of all my CR forum involvement doesn't include it), but I sincerely enjoyed Hajimete no Gal. There were ways in which it was awful, but I think I usually defended it even in its awfulness (I'm pretty sure I went so far as to defend the pedophile-adjacent character). More recently I guess there's Dark Gathering; I liked it so much I made a MAL thread about it that was popular enough it hit the main page, but it got closed as a random X vs. Y thread even though it wasn't random at all (the common thread was genre deconstruction, but don't expect a MAL mod to understand that). I gave Planet With a 10, which is crazy for me. I know I saved my CR posts on it, and I'm pretty sure my only criticism ended up being dealt with by the show itself. I can't recommend Planet With enough.

Hmm, what else is there: Within the past few years there's Call of the Night and Akiba Maid War; Train to the End of the World definitely could have been better but was way too funny not to love; and I'm not sure I can come up with anything to say against Oshi no Ko, either season. More than a few years ago I was a great defender of Talentless Nana and Granbelm; both of these were shows that didn't obey the standard anime audience expectations, and that simultaneously was the reason I liked them and the reason most other people didn't. Anything older than that is probably too old to bring up. This season I guess only Oshi no Ko I have no obvious criticism of. I find Makeine scattered but I do think it's pretty good; that I don't like what it did with Lemon doesn't take away from Komari and Anna. I do think I am enjoying it for what it actually is. Meanwhile I initially enjoyed that VTuber anime thing but now it's exhausted itself. I might drop it in another episode. (Partially I think this is because I didn't entirely understand until now what a VTuber was; now that I know they shouldn't look like their avatars in everyday life, it's much more difficult to take seriously.)

I do think part of my approach to anime is due to how bad a lot of it is, such that I'd argue it's not my fault I often have negative things to say. This is why I tend to say that my judge for a good story is Dostoyevsky, such that all anime is trash compared to him. I earnestly enjoyed The Idiot, Anna Karenina, Moby Dick, Foucault's Pendulum, and even Dune and Atlas Shrugged. As TV goes I guess I earnestly enjoy Star Trek: The Next Generation and Gilmore Girls, though I wouldn't put these in league with the great authors.

Happy Birthday Ulysses!! 🎉

Sorry about that! I re-enabled my DMs.

Cool new FSOA banner :-). You should have a general discussion thread in the forums so people can comment on stuff like that and collaborate on club events and such.

Hey boldulysses!

You're right I should be spending some time there, and yes I'm still collecting the stats so I should recreate it.

Happy Birthday!!

Bonjour enchante

For over ten minutes I was staring at your profile photo to burst into laughting when I realized that's Kaguya.