Gourmet. What does that word conjure? Caviar served on crystal platters at palatial estates? Tiny but elegant meals served at pricey restaurants which share their name with a famous chef? Exotic locales that serve foods in season for two days out of the year?
Those are some of the things that pop into my mind when I think of gourmet. If you take a sampling of foods, which are by and large considered “gourmet”, a formula will emerge for why these foods are considered gourmet:
- Rarity
- Novelty
- Quality of Ingredients
- Quality of Preparation
Take for example white tea: used to be that only the upper class in China had access to this delicacy. Now, with technology being what is, white tea is being sold in grocery stores next to the Earl Grey. Is white tea still a gourmet tea? It’s more abundant as a crop than it was before (availability) and it’s no longer as labor intense to create (quality of preparation), but it’s still more of a novelty than a mainstay (novelty). I would say, although white tea has lost some of its gourmet attributes, it hasn’t lost all of them.
This formula for gourmet food can be applied to anime. Two things to note, however, gourmet doesn’t always equal good, nor does gourmet denote an anime destined to become a classic. Personal opinions are still in play as to whether or not an anime is any good. Gourmet is in reference to criteria which have come to represent the ideal for food of people of distinguished taste, which can be applied to anime.
Ergo Proxy would be a good fit for gourmet anime. It fits the criteria of:
- Novelty (unique story)
- Quality of Ingredients (character designs, Japanese voice acting, dialog)
- Quality of Preparation (animation, famous studio)
I think Ergo Proxy was a fantastic anime which happened to be gourmet. An example of gourmet anime that sucked would be Gantz. Gantz fit every one of the gourmet criteria:
- Rarity (Available on DVD and Anime Network only- downloads don’t count, IMO, since everybody can download anything- and is still relatively unknown to the general anime public)
- Novelty (Original concept)
- Quality of Ingredients (Great character design, great action, great voice work)
- Quality of Preparation (Animation, famous studio)
However, I just didn’t like the “taste” of the anime, yet Gantz was a gourmet anime. Go figure.
In contrast, there’s the fast food of the anime world. These would be series like Bleach, Naruto and Yu Yu Hakusho. Not all anime we consider good can be considered gourmet; we can still enjoy a Big Mac even though we know it’s cheap and unhealthy.
What do you think should make for a gourmet anime? Which criteria should be added or subtracted from the gourmet formula? Which anime, in your opinion, fits those criteria and which do you like or dislike? What does it take to make gourmet anime?
Well-developed interrelationships. Full Metal Alchemist was so emotionally charged because of all the relationships between the characters: Ed and Al’s intense brotherly bond, Mustang’s and Hughes’ historic comradeship, Hughes’ and Gracia’s picture-perfect marriage– these relationships were all so visibly intense that you could feel the burn every time these connections were jeopardized. And every time these characters met fortune, we can’t but feel good for them. Good anime– good stories in general, evoke emotions in the viewers, whether it be fear, melancholy, anger, or joy.
@Havana, good relationships make good anime; what do you think makes gourmet anime?
I think really, any good anime can contain any of the aforementioned aspects but gourmet takes it and runs with it. The infusion and execution of all of it: unique characters, good relationships, etc. creates a ‘gourmet anime.’ Plus, I think another thing that creates gourmet anime are the fans. All anime is subjective, in the long run. I don’t really like Naruto but it doesn’t have hordes of fans for no reason …