[...] various guidelines to abide to. As Owen mentioned in one of his earlier posts (while linking to a post from a blog that looks like it might be worth reading), one of the many distinctions between two [...]

[...] my literary background would suggest that in the terms of this distinction, I am more of an ‘anime literaist’ [Audit Trail: that distinction was discovered via [...]

[...] Am I an anime literaist or visualist? [...]

[...] like the style of the series, but to me Tsubasa is more about substance than style (did ‘Mr. Visualist‘ just say that???). It’s tough for me to say, but the show has [...]

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.)

@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?

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.)

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 ^^.

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).

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.