Anime Continues to Blow, Despite Poorly Argued Comments!

FKM said

June 9, 2009 at 1:34 pm e

…You’ve never seen good anime. Watch some of the not kiddie shit that doesn’t air on TV. Specifically, watch Elfen Lied. We’ll see how bad anime blows after you see that.

That was a comment I received on my previous post, “Anime Still Blows.”  I hear these arguments all the time:
“Anime for kids sucks. Watch anime for adults.”

Uh, no. If I was talking about children’s programming I would have said so, and my post would have been about children. I am talking about adult-oriented anime, which is only adult because of the rating system we have. It’s immature, irrational, sophmoric, relentlessly and unapologetically inane, and even the stuff without tentacles has some masturbatory fantasy attached to it, in selfish idealism if not in overt sexuality.

“You only say that because you haven’t seen….”

I’ve heard this argument from people for years and years. It used to be Akira. Then it was Macross. Then it was Ghost in the Shell. Then Cowboy Bebop. Then Full Metal Alchemist. No. No more. I will not go tracking down another crap-fest just so I can argue the uninspired details of unimaginative sensationalism with someone who won’t listen to the argument, or understand it if they did.

And, just so I don’t hear about this again:
“Anime in America sucks. They keep the REAL GOOD STUFF over in Japan…”

This argument makes less sense than the others. The supporters believe there is some secret agenda designed to keep ignorant Americans out of the loop. Here’s the reality: Japan gears about 80% of its amime towards Americans. Because it makes money, and Japan desperately wishes it was America.  The rest is geared towards other Asian countries, like Southeast Asian islands, because their value system is less capitalist Christianity and more relaxed Muslim. They don’t send us that stuff because it would not go well with our culture, and especially would not go well with the value system that American anime-heads already have in place.

BONUS TRIVIA #1: Muslim dogma demands that the followers do not reproduce human forms, because only God can create human life. Anime, because it has so little regard for form and real anatomy, is allowed by even the strictest Muslim leaders.

BONUS TRIVIA #2: The term “manga” was coined by a Japanese calligraphy artist. Translated, it means “irresponsible art,” which is my whole argument against it.

Alien Artists

Just to remind people, the giant jellyfish crop circle is something that is completely within the ability of human beings to create.  As wonderful as it is to think that something out there beyond us creates crop circles or had some hand in the building of ancient tombs, I have to assume the simplest explanation is the most likely.  Human beings enjoy deviant behavior, especially when they get giggles out of watching other people go crazy over it.  People are perfectly capable of making crop circles, so why is it so hard for crop circle junkies to accept that they do?

There is an answer for that.  It’s the same reason that fundamental religions deny the basic tenets of natural laws.  They want desperately not to be alone in this postmodern isolated society so they reach out for something that they hope is there.  When groups of people get together with the same hopes, they convince each other that those hopes are reality, despite what a rational mind might tell them.

As a caveat, let me express that I do not believe that science and religion are mutually exclusive.  It takes compassion and humanity to apply the laws of nature that science has uncovered, for one thing.  For another, people absolutely need religion in their culture.  Individual results may vary, but the truth is that religion helps people abstract and transmit the ideas which that culture values.  These are the Big Ideas of Humanity that are directly approached through art and literature; religion allows them to be accessed intuitively and subconciously.  The beliefs themselves serve only as the dressing, the method of transmission.

The real TRUTHS that people glean from them are the big questions that religious followers have to go to their leaders for: how do I, as a member of this culture, deal with issues like revenge, betrayal, jealousy, economic distress, war, pride, love, etc?  What is the meaning of life?  Holy writ is investigated, studied, while the learner wades through confusing, sometimes contradictory, information in the hopes of finding something solid as an answer they can cope with.  That answer depends on who is investigating, what culture they are from, what the standards are for their particular religious sect.  The answer is almost always, “This is what our culture has come to understand about this issue.  This is what our religous group does to help eachother on this issue.  This is how we go on every day.”  This is helpful.  Religion is helpful and necessary.

BUT NOT AT THE EXPENSE OF LEARNING ABOUT OUR WORLD!  There is no usefulness in ignoring new discoveries or understandings about the world.  Scientific study and rational thought need not be tossed out the window.  Think carefully.  Aliens have no motivation to create crop circles if they are advanced enough to travel AT LEAST 4.5 light-years across the galaxy to deliver us a message.  What the hell kind of message is a picture of a jellyfish?

And there, ladies and gentlemen, is the joke.  The jellyfish is one of the strangest and goofiest things a person can think of, and symbolically is the epitome of oddball meaninglessness.  And there the believers are, out there in some farmer’s field, talking about what revelations can be found in it.  Just beautiful.