Is anime getting worse or has it just stayed the same?

C

Cesia R

New member
Over the past few years i have watched tons of anime. But there is a feeling that i am getting that anime is either declining in quality or maybe I am outgrowing it.

Lets say that anime started really making waves in the early-to-middle 2000's. If thats the case for most people then by now, in 2010, the people who started watching it were alot younger and are hence 6/7 years(roughly) older. Which means that everyone is now in their 20's at least i would think. I am one of those and has a long time fan I find it disappointing that anime doesnt really cater for this generation who surely by now,must be tired of watching high school romances which really are not funny anymore and over the top fan service animes that have seriously weak story lines. I started watching B Gata H Kei thinking that maybe it could be a little more than the average by introducing sex but it almost made me puke.

Is that just my perception or do other people share it too? I would have thought they would bring out better anime but the best ones i have found lie in the past.
 
I've been watching anime since the 90's and I've seen series come and go. My preference in anime is good story lines that have action and a little comedy. Animes are like movies (films), some movies are good and worth watching over and over and some anime are ok and watching them once is good enough. U also have your bad movies that u end up asking yourself, how did i ever think this would b a good flick? When i feel that i'm getting a little tired of anime i just look into categories i normally would not care to watch. Let me give u an example i really like Mecha, normally i would not watch teen series that had to do with i guess real life situations. But i saw an anime that might peak my interest in Initial D due to the racing part. Once i started to watch it i started to realize that it had a good story and it kept me interested. What i'm trying to say maybe u should look into watching anime that u normally would not watch and see how that works.
 
Anime is stagnating right now, afraid to innovate like it was famous for doing in it's early years by pandering to moe/ecchi crowds who don't care about quality writing. It's also more than possible that your tastes have "grown up" somewhat. Looking back on things I used to watch I realize that the vast majority of it was pretty bad in the grand scheme of things, I was just easier to entertain then.
 
There are a lot of ways to approach this question. First, let's start with the past. A lot of horrible anime was producted in the 80's and 90's, and I mean A LOT. I have some of it on VHS, from when you swapped fansub tapes virtually blind, and from bargain bin sales. The plots were bad, the animation was bad, and the characterizations were downright horrible. However, no one remembers this stuff. No one watches it now because it's no longer produced or distributed. This means that when comparisons are made, people compare the GOOD stuff from the past with the TOTAL catalog of anime produced currently. This is still relatively true for anime produced in the early 2000's, as well.

Personally, I think most anime is mediocre at best, with a good portion of it being just plain worthless. I don't see how this fact is any different now than it was several years ago. Perhaps it's because there is more anime being produced that the bad anime seems like a total flood, but I think the ratio is still somewhat the same. In any given year, there is only a select few titles that deserve respect, with several more that can pass as reasonable entertainment.

I've seen some good stuff recently, that I think stands up well against earlier works. Skip Beat, Baccano and Durarara, Arakawa Under the Bridge, Denpa teki na Kanojo, Spice & Wolf, Moyashimon, Summer Wars and The Girl Who Leapt Through Time, Welcome to the NHK, Gurren Lagann, Kimi ni Todoke, and Kara no Kyoukai are all anime that I've enjoyed watching. A few of those I would hold up with just about anything. No, you're not going to get something as revolutionary as Serial Experiments Lain, or as powerful as Grave of the Fireflies every year, but that's to be expected.

Anime has always suffered from the practice of running formulas into the ground. In each sub-genre of anime, there will be a few definitive titles that precede a tidal wave of imitations. Harems, Cat-girls, harems, Magical girls, robot/doll girls, giant robots, harems, moe, loli, they've all come, gone, and come back again. Unique is hard to come by, but that's always been the case.

By the way, I thought B Gata H Kei was quite clever. I liked the role reversal, and saw it as a satirical take on the normal romantic comedy. Even more interesting was its use of reverse psychology to impart a rather positive message about sex being more special when not undertaken casually.
 
I agree that it may just be your taste maturing. A LOT of anime is either somewhat childish, or at least, not that mature, and as your tastes mature, you lose interest in a lot of stuff that you may have even loved when younger. Hell, if Bleach came out 10 years ago, I would have been all over that, but it didn't. DBZ was around, and I fell in love with that instead. As your taste matures, you may not have as many great anime choices, but you'll be able to appreciate the really well-made ones even more. At least, that's what I think.
 
I wouldn't say that's the main reason as to why most anime are average and another ton are crap.

Let me ask you this. Does originality = good?
 
Maybe I really am outgrowing it (which makes me kinda sad). But I dont wanna accept that right now. Could it be a factor that the anime world might be suffering from the global recession and thus leading to them sticking to the "what they think is popular" formulas? Just an idea.

What still puzzles me is how grown men/women who write the manga/anime are comfortable drawing little high school girls with massive boobs/in their underwear etc. That still seems just a touch too paedophilic for my liking.
 
Personally I think anime is just as good if not better than it was when I first got into it in the beginning of 2000 (I was 10, for those curious. Unless you could Sailor Moon, then I was 5).

Regardless, I think there are certain aspects of getting older that may alter your taste in anime which may make the perception of quality go down.

Think about it this way, when you were younger I'm sure there were games you played, stories you read, and shows that you watch that you absolutely adored. As you got older your taste in those things was altered by different events and influences along the way and now you like thinks that are similar but a bit more grown up and not as "Childish" as when you were little.

Sorry, I feel like all that is supper choppy writing.
 
Quality has increased dramatically, number of completely unwatchable shows has stayed pretty consistent. There's just lots of people who are "new" to it and thus don't have any memory of some of said unwatchable drivel from the 80s and 90s that's comparable to the moe **** being produced lately.
 
I personalty think the quality is getting better in the visual department at least, but recently anime has

been getting worse and disappointing me. It seems to me that more likely than not many companies aren't

taking risk to incorporate anime that truly awws, they stick to the script and add crappy fan service to just

barely reach the bar well that is what I think anyway.
 
As was mantioned, anime in general has a lot of mediocre movies and series. That hasn't really changed since I first started watching it in the early 90s.


What I did note, is that my tastes became much more selective and my standards gotten much higher in the past several years. Hell, back in the day I thought that Love Hina was the best thing since slice bread. Today, it has to be a complete package for me to even consider watching a series, and some recent animations are completely horrendous as far as visual design goes. Take Beck for example, the quality of animation and character design is so low that I dropped it after 2 episodes.

There are still great recent animes out there, but you got to dig through a lot of garbage to find them.
 
You should check out the Beck manga if you haven't, the story is worthwhile and definitely makes up for any failings in the artwork.
 
As the state of consiousness of the society changes, anime and every other entertainment form is also bound to change with it. But throughout the years there have been excellent anime with fascinating plots and very satisfying completitions. Take Gurren Laganh as an example: It is heavily based in the belief that God's power is spiral(Zoroaster) and builds up on this concept. Spice and Wolf, with a fresh approach to the materialistic futility in a sense and many other animes.
 
As i looked through the forums since i've been a member i realize that perhaps there's anime for everyone. What i mean is that as i look through the member's response to their top 10 animes in threads, i realize that people have different taste in anime, while i watched some of the mentioned animes i tend to think might not be that good, the member posting on the thread might think is one of the best animes ever done. Just as i've posted my top 10 some members might not agree with me while some might. At the same time there's some anime that i have not seen and its metioned in a thread, i then do a little research on google and determine if i'm going to like it or not, base on that i watch it. This is why i love anime cause while some anime might not be what u like, it's fine cause someone else will appreciate it. In fact thanks to this website i've seen some pretty good anime that i might not have checked out i.e. Black Lagoon, Ghosthunt, Claymore, etc... Perhaps u are not out growing anime u might be out growing some of the situations that might be happening in some of the stories, but maybe if u do a little research before u start watching an anime series, movie or manga u might get something u like instead of something u might not have a lot in common with now.
 
There was a nice boom from 99-01/02 where there was just so much high quality anime coming out (Terms of storyline/creativity, even an big step up overall in animation quality). However once the bubble burst it's been one long down hill run with bumps of true quality few and far between.(Storylines getting more repetitive and over use of uncreative plot twists for no other reason then the sake of having a plot twist. However over animation quality has advanced greatly, now if only the writers could get their **** together)
 
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