The net is such a great place for invention. Everyday I see new words and phrases pop up, get accepted into the culture and become a part of daily use. This is true even for the anime subcultures. Gar is a good one to use as an example of this. In a recent Anime Argument (patent pending), David and I “discussed†our many differences in terms of anime compatibility which led to the birth of two made up new terms as applied to anime personalities.
This latest AA led us to finally come to an understanding of sorts as to why our views are so wildly different at times on anime.
My background is one grounded firmly in literature. I grew up with books, I have my weekly servings of literature and I write as often as I can. A good story is all important to me in anime. No story= no good for me. I didn’t watch a helluva lot of TV growing up when an anthology was handy.
David has a background in film and special effects. He grew up watching movie classics and is able to comprehend the art of visual storytelling; something which I’ve slowly learned from him in the eleven years we’ve been together. While David does read, and reads as often as he can, he’s not the book devourer I am.
Watching an unfinished, un-reviewed, therefore, unnamed series together last month brought our two backgrounds together with very loud results. My take on the series was that it was too plagiarizing, too unoriginal, too inconsistent and all together too crappy to be considered good. David on the other hand found it highly entertaining, albeit, highly plagiarizing. He also found so many positives with the series I had to do a double take to see if we were watching the same thing.
Why would we differ so much in our opinions? Being me, I had to push this issue to the end result: David thought the character designs, action sequences, layout, color schemes, and overall visual appeal were top notch. I had to agree with him there. This series is gorgeous and over the top. Too damn bad the story sucks beyond redemption.
In the end it came down to this: “Hi, my name’s Rachel and I’m an anime literaist.” I don’t think that awesome choreographed fight scenes, beautiful animation and superb voice acting counts worth shit if there’s no story. Literaists aren’t wowed by detailed CG, delicious character designs, or gratuitous eye candy unless used in tangent with a good story. They rely on sound plot lines, good pacing, and in depth character development to be able to get the most from a series.
I’m now outing David; he’s an anime visualist. Visualists go for the visual aspects of anime and highly regard a series based mostly on what they’re seeing. These folks can get the story through the characters use of emotions and how they interact with their environments as opposed to getting the story primarily from the plot. Color schemes, character designs and subtle visual cues enable visualists to read between the lines to get more from a series visually, than can anime literaists.
There is, naturally, a middle ground for literaists and visualists. Most people have a bit of both in ‘em and don’t get into to too many arguments since they’re so internally balanced in this regard. Of course, both visuals and plots are important in order to have a great series.
David and I, however, find ourselves firmly entrenched in our respective camps of Visualist and Literaist. These hardcore stances are responsible for our lack of harmonious anime viewing. We’re the Yin and Yang of anime types; pity we didn’t discover this earlier.
What kind of anime fan are you? Do you really “get†an anime when they break out the visuals? Or do you understand the story better through your interpretation of the plot? Is there harmony in your anime community or is there a reason you watch anime alone? What are your thoughts on the matter folks? Let your voices be heard!
Rachel – You hit this one perfectly. When we had that Anime Argument™, it was like the heavens opened up and rained down sacks of realization upon us.
Imma 4channer. I pick whatever 4chan obssesses over, so there.
Also I am a /b/tard. That means i have the privilege to laugh at this argument.
Okay, being serious now.
Well, I love books, and I’m currently being schooled in a multimedia diploma. I do see where a good plot comes in, and when visuals take an already good plot to the next level.
What I do know, though, is that when I cease enjoying a series (whether it be due to a lack of plot or a drop in visuals or something else), I know that it’s not for me. I haven’t seen a series that I disliked yet, but Eva might just change that.
I say that a series is 30% source material and 70% execution. both are necessary for great animation, but you can get away with a fairly mediocre story (Suzu0000 Ha0000) and still get good results. I mean, it’s worked for Pokémon and Super mario, why not animé?
Those were some nice insights on the Great Art.
I find myself to be both an anime literaist and visualist for different series. Meaning when a series is high in either plot or visual interaction, I’d learnt to enjoy the series based on its main strength. This of course is subjected to the other component maintaining a minimum standard. Citing some examples. I managed to enjoy Tsukihime despite the fact it squandered a great deal of awesomeness the source material has to offer since the plot was still sufficiently sound for me to enjoy its superbly crafted atmosphere/visuals. Now Gilgamash on the other hand had a gripping premise but I just couldn’t get past the fugly character designs/jarring animation.
Definitely a literalist here. Like you, Rachel, I think it may have a lot to do with my background in books and literature that I tend to concentrate on the anime’s plot instead of the flash. Goodness knows that most of the shoujo anime series that I’ve watched have had ZERO production values (Marmalade Boy, Fushigi Yuugi, or Hana Yori Dango anyone?), but I stuck with them because the plot was gripping enough that it dragged me in.
@David, hehehe…sacks
@DrmChsr0, you haven’t seen a series you haven’t liked yet? Really? Sometimes, I wish I could be like that, but I’ve seen equal amounts of crap as much as gold.
While I agree that visuals and story are important, I’m gonna say that for a good anime it should be 50% source material and 50% execution. or 40-60, at the most. That’s me. If the visuals get too outta wack in that ratio, whew, I can smell it.
@Stripey, I thought alchemy was the Great Art? Or is it the Great Working…
“when a series is high in either plot or visual interaction, I’d learnt to enjoy the series based on its main strength.Niiiiceee point. I think that’s why David wasn’t as pissed about Karas and the unmentioned series as I was. Damn good point. I’ve never thought to do that. I think maybe I should give your way of anime watching a whirl and try and balance out the huffy Literaist in me.
@Reika, good to see another Literaist on the board. I stuck with Tetsujin 28 for the same reasons you had; stellar plot. I really disliked the style of animation they used for the series, but damned if it wasn’t a great story.
I consider myself as literaist, one who believes plots and dialogue comes before the visual. What makes me unusual is that I consider sound to be more important compared to the visual, even for the anime. Many times, I have seen mediocre anime lauded as masterpiece for a year or two before being forgotten by almost everybody. The reason usually is that voice acting and music has huge effect on the subconsciousness of the listener, thus good voice acting, sound effect, and music tends to make viewers over-rate the anime work, while poor sound quality will make people under-rate the series. Examples of this is many, but most noticeable case are
1. Koi Kaze: nothing outstanding visually, plot isn’t that complicated, but best voice acting and use of back ground music I have experienced so far among anime work. The Stripey’s favorite word ‘Oni-chan’ at the end of the ep. 1, conveys so much complex emotions. If you saw the original manga, which isn’t that good a series, in my opinion, you will notice that most of visual elements and dialogues are similar to what is in the manga. The only reason, why I find the first chapter of manga to be bland, while the 1st episode of anime to be so mesmerizing, can only be because of presence of good voice acting, BGM, and excellent control of time between dialogues and monologues.
2. AIR: Possibly the best OP ever. I seriously believe that OP made people believe AIR series to be much better than it actually is, as I find too many holes in the plot.
3. Saiunkoku Monogatari: Decent OP and ED, but horrible use of BGM. The poor use of music in many scenes just ruined what could have been a powerful scene. Had they got better music, more people would have been watching this great story.
4. Chobits: True story. The ED song ‘Ningyo Hime’ had such power that it made my wife read the entire Chobits comic, which she hates, fervently.
5. Tsukuyomi: Moon Phase & Karin ( Chibi Vampire ) : Both has decent visual elements as well as interesting plot, but I believe they would have been much more popular had they got some more quality music.
In end, if you think about it, plots and dialogues are least demanding of money and technology, followed closely by sound ( voice acting, music, control of silent period between events or dialogue ), and the visual elements are most demanding of money and technology. It is this reason why I believe I can forgive the anime producers for inadequate visual quality ( Cabbage Love, anyone? ) but find it much harder to forgive for poor sounds, and just can’t overlook bad plots or dialogues.
Wow, that was a good read. Definitely a die-hard literaist — you nailed that one on the head. It also explains my scorn for sola’s lacklustre plot, now that I think of it.
I suppose that within the literaists themselves there would be sub-groups of literaists, too? The thing is that while we’re definitely more “literate” (is that where you got the word from? or from “literature”?) in terms of being well-read, even being well-read is pretty subjective — not everyone who reads just reads literature, unfortunately. Lumping all those who appreciate characters and story under one convenient tag just doesn’t seem to cut it, when you realise that yes, Dan Brown’s fame is a rather sordid reality.
While we’re at it, I suppose the visualist camp’s gotten larger through the years thanks to improvements in animation technology, and since the number of literaists were never that much to begin with, the visualists are the ones a majority of anime are made for these days? Which would explain why there’s still a lot left to be desired, at least in my opinion, with anime as it is lately.
@Rachel & Stripey
trivia time or yay!, my college education is finally paying some dividends:
There are at least three major references in history with respect to the term “Great Art” (Ars Magna in Latin):
- as you said, Alchemy…the earliest reference I can remember is of the Emperor Diocletian’s (3rd cen. AD?) proclamation to expel alchemists from Egypt
- name of a book written by Ramon Llull where he tried to condense all human knowledge into lists and then onto two discs where you could mix and match ideas to come up with new truths…although this was meant to be used as a tool for Christian missionary work, mathematicians consider him an early pioneer of logic
- name of a book written by Gerolamo Cardano which was an early treatise on algebra and included solutions to the cubic and quartic equations
@Rachel & David
Now, on topic…although I am a video editor by profession, I guess you could put me in the literaist (my tongue twists a bit trying to pronounce literaist) camp.
However, this is because, for me there is very little in the way of good anime which uses visual storytelling. Of course, there is a lot of anime I haven’t seen yet, so I could have easily missed some. What I mean by visual storytelling is
telling the story with images and minimal dialogue.
Actually, if there were more of such anime, I would probably call myself an audio-visualist since (agreeing with maglor) I think sound is vital to visually oriented anime. Even silent films used live musical accompaniment to help tell the story. With this type of storytelling, however, restraint must be used with the sound. The goal is to enhance the visuals without becoming distracting. Unless it is part of the foreground (e.g. – the music in “Allegro non Troppo”, an animated but not anime feature), music and other sounds should blend into the background.
Most of the anime I have seen with visual storytelling are either (essentially) music videos or experimental works. Off the top of my head, the best commercial anime with visual storytelling was a short OVA called “Hagaren Kids” (or simply “Kids”).
It was a coda to the Full Metal Alchemist series and movie. It had a good balance of music and ambient sound with minimal dialogue. The story was simple and it could be easily understood.
However, since (at least to me) the vast majority of anime does not use this type of storytelling, then I count myself as a literaist (tongue twists again).
@Owen, glad you found this post to be a good read! As to the fun new word “literaist” I derived that from “literature”. As in, “I can’t watch that crappy anime when I have all this awesome literature to catch up on.”
I guess it’s natural to have categories within categories since this really isn’t a “one size fits all” world. To have sub groups for literaist and visualist is inevitable, though, I feel pretty secure with the blanket term.
Interestingly, the poll shows most fans (at least the ones who’ve visited this post) to be in the middle with a large number of literaists coming in second. I’m surprised and a lil’ pleased by that ^^.
Interesting discussion. I’m a hardcore literaist, myself, for better or worse, which
). Note that the fact that so many people who identified themselves
is partly because I am kind of stupid visually (I became a geometer to compensate for
this weakness
as literasists responded here may have more to do with their tendency to express them-
selves verbally than because this truly represents their numbers in the anime-watching
population.
Of course, I am most excited when an anime appeals to me both in terms of its literary
qualities and its visual qualities– e.g. Only Yesterday (Omohide poro poro)– but if
the story writing is mediocre or bad, which is unfortunately how I feel about considerably
more than half the anime I have seen, it is hard to keep up my interest.
Interesting observations about voice acting and music– one of my other compensations
for visual stupidity is that music and language are very important to me, and I spend
lots of time and effort trying to learn and to create in both media. I will have to
pay more attention to my responses to these aspects of anime, and see how much they
affect how much I enjoy an anime.
I would be very interested to see some lists of favorite for others who identify
themselves as literaists. Mine include all of Takahata’s (Only Yesterday, Grave of the
Fireflies, Yamadas), Miyazaki’s Spirited Away and Totoro (and Whisper of the Heart, but
with less enthusiasm), Paranoia Agent, Planetes, Mushishi, Yokohama Shopping Expedition,
Infinite Ryvius and Poverty Sisters (despite the over-the top heartwarmingness of the
last). I like all of these for varying reasons and to varying degrees, but all of them
have strenghs in character, plot, and/or folklore references which make them work for me.
(I did like Koi Kaze, despite the fact that neither plot nor character really go very
far in the series, so maybe the sounds hooked me more than I realized, as maglor
suggests.)
@maglor, you make such a great point “…plots and dialogues are least demanding of money and technology, followed closely by sound ( voice acting, music, control of silent period between events or dialogue ), and the visual elements are most demanding of money and technology.” So who are the studios making anime for? Makes you wonder…
@Tony, “Note that the fact that so many people who identified themselves as literasists responded here may have more to do with their tendency to express themselves verbally than because this truly represents their numbers in the anime-watching population.” Interesting… Do we literaists usually speak up? I don’t know about other folk, but I sure do. Does it have something to with personality as well as preference or are the two intertwined? That’d be fun to find out: How many fans are extroverts or introverts and who among whom is a visualist or literaist?
Rachel,
I think being an introvert or an extrovert may not be the relevant question. I, for one, am an extreme introvert. My guess about literaists was that since they respond strongly to realities created with words, and less strongly perhaps to realities created with visual images, they are more likely to be interested in discussing their experiences and ideas in this particular medium, which is completely text-based. My guess is that a person for whom visual input is more important than verbal input may not have as much patience with expressing ideas in a medium which allows only for words– not even tone of voice or physical gestures, although we try (not very successfully) to incorporate those elements somewhat through the use of emoticons.
Anyway, I’m still curious as to what anime other self-identified literaists have found appealing.
–Tony
(P.S.: Sorry about the funny line breaks in my postings, by the way — for some reason, no matter what resolution I use to look at the web site, this form I’m typing in now is much wider than the portion of it I can see, and there is no way of scrolling it that I can find. So I have to insert line breaks, which the web site is then treating as hard breaks instead of white space.)