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[i2amroy]

i2amroy:
I never actually got around to watching the last arc of SAO season two, but with that recommendation I'll probably watch it.

Also, the Excalibur filler arc was a good watch for exactly one reason, right near the end.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

The scene where Shinon asks Kirito to think of her every time he uses Excalibur in front of the ENTIRE REST OF THE CAST

Spoiler: That reason (click to show/hide)

Yeah, that was definitely a nice dig from Sinon at Asuna that I actually laughed aloud at. Personally I saw it as Sinon coming into the group late enough that she missed the whole "we'll let them be unless Asuna drops Kirito, then it's a free-for-all" pact that the other female characters pretty blatantly outlined earlier, and as such still being willing to try to get some shots in.

[Flying Dice]

Yes. That's part of what happens when you watch (the vast majority of) shonen series, you have to deal with female characters being systematically marginalized. Welcome to a genre marketed to teen boys and apparently quite often written by them. 


--
Honestly, my favorite part of SAO apart from the very early bits where it looked like it might not be a cliche trainwreck? The domestic scenes where Asuna and Kirito were just chilling out in the woods being a family with their adopted nascent AI.

Incidentally, Yui's one of the reasons why the series is shit. You could have had a story about a teenaged couple trying to deal with having an emergent informorph which has imprinted on them and gone all cyberpunk with the MMOs progressing towards a state where game-death causing body-death was a feature, but nooooo, you had to cop out on her "death", remove 90% of her non-human traits, and turn her into a fetish-fuel Navi to Kirito's Link.

Wai-waitaminute. That was just a casual comparison, but I'm laughing now at the mental image of wossname being Ganondorf.

[Frumple]

... at least she spends a lot of the supplementary material just trolling everyone.* It's a small recompense, but it's there.

*Seriously, to FD, m'fairly sure Yui still is very much an infomorph, she's just screwing with everyone. Many of her lines in the games, ferex, show every instance of being entirely calculated. Her character makes a notably larger amount of sense when you remember the whole superb mastery of human psychology, complete lack of human morals angle. Entire series past her introduction to it is just the little datafreak xanatosing everything for her amusement.

[Neonivek]

Sakura's useless for all of Naruto and while she was downright AWESOME when fighting that puppet guy in Shippuden she has since become useless again. Well...she's useless but she has a likeable personality now. The only two things I can remember her doing in Naruto (not Shippuden) was crying, complaining about how Naruto sucks all the time, and beating anyone who annoyed her (mostly Naruto).

Yes but they pretend that she is on a journey to not be useless.

Think they ever do a plotline where they pretend Sam might become awesome?

[Hawkfrost]

I wonder if the actual good writers in Japan have been scared away from the medium, or are just not very noticeable.

Anime is an industry almost entirely supported on the faltering legs of pantsu, generic writing, and a race for who can achieve the most moe female character that month. (Because how else are you going to sell all those ecchi figurines and uncensored DVD releases?)

[Neonivek]

I wonder if the actual good writers in Japan have been scared away from the medium, or are just not very noticeable.

They definitely exist... But think of it this way. If the most popular Mangas are sports mangas... then why aren't the majority of animes sports animes?

[Frumple]

Signal to noise ratio hasn't really seemed to vary much, to me, since... hell, late nineties? We've got pantsu now, but back then we just straight up had tits free to go with the generally mediocre writing and most derivative character contests. Time's let us filter out a lot of the junk, but the junk's still there, et al.

Most TV/movie media is roughly as stagnant/quality deprived as anime is, possibly even moreso, insofar as I've noticed, though. Sturgeon's not really any more applicable to anime than it is to anything else.

[Hawkfrost]

I wonder if the actual good writers in Japan have been scared away from the medium, or are just not very noticeable.

They definitely exist... But think of it this way. If the most popular Mangas are sports mangas... then why aren't the majority of animes sports animes?

I would guess they are less otaku-marketable.

Anime fans don't seem to be the most discerning audience sometimes; they have a tendency to dislike shows that actually try new ideas, and praise shows that give them more of what they already have.
It's like trying to convince your 58-year-old father that there are more bands than just Led Zeppelin.

Signal to noise ratio hasn't really seemed to vary much, to me, since... hell, late nineties? We've got pantsu now, but back then we just straight up had tits free to go with the generally mediocre writing and most derivative character contests. Time's let us filter out a lot of the junk, but the junk's still there, et al.

Most TV/movie media is roughly as stagnant/quality deprived as anime is, possibly even moreso, insofar as I've noticed, though. Sturgeon's not really any more applicable to anime than it is to anything else.

You aren't wrong, old anime was often completely atrocious. TV in America is dying due to the steadily dwindling numbers of watchers, which for some reason has convinced the industry that what they need is more amounts of shittier reality shows, instead of taking the risk and going for a breakout hit due to quality.
Quality may be risky, but mediocrity dooms you to a slow death.


The thing that makes it more difficult to bear is probably just the sheer amount of it hitting me so often.
Does anyone know the numbers of how many anime are produced now yearly compared to previously?

[Furtuka]

Tons more. I saw a chart a while back that showed it spiked up massively in the past decade. Like from around 70 to over a hundred at some point, and it's still increasing.

[Reelya]

You can get a good idea from looking at wikipedia. They have listings of animated TV shows made each year, sortable by country.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_animated_television_series

For example, 31 animes started airing in 1995
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_animated_television_series_of_1995
The main difference is that each of those is 26 episodes or greater. 1-cour shows didn't exist back then. 3-cours was about average back then, meaning 1995 had the equivalent of 90 1-cour shows.

Compare to this:
https://www.livechart.me/spring-2015/tv

60 shows pegged for the current season. There are some 2-cour shows, but they're balanced out by short-episode shows. So lets call that about 60 1-cour shows this season. Times that by four, and you have about 240 shows per year. So, the volume of anime is 2.5 times what came out in 1995, but the number of total shows is 8 times as much.

[Andres]

Sakura's useless for all of Naruto and while she was downright AWESOME when fighting that puppet guy in Shippuden she has since become useless again. Well...she's useless but she has a likeable personality now. The only two things I can remember her doing in Naruto (not Shippuden) was crying, complaining about how Naruto sucks all the time, and beating anyone who annoyed her (mostly Naruto).

Yes but they pretend that she is on a journey to not be useless.

Think they ever do a plotline where they pretend Sam might become awesome?

I haven't watch Danny Phantom in several years so I can't really judge Sam, but considering the only memories I have of her 1. Getting the band back together when she travels through time, 2. Complaining about an endangered species, and 3. Being a vegetarian, you may have a point.

You aren't wrong, old anime was often completely atrocious. TV in America is dying due to the steadily dwindling numbers of watchers, which for some reason has convinced the industry that what they need is more amounts of shittier reality shows, instead of taking the risk and going for a breakout hit due to quality.
Quality may be risky, but mediocrity dooms you to a slow death.


The thing that makes it more difficult to bear is probably just the sheer amount of it hitting me so often.
Does anyone know the numbers of how many anime are produced now yearly compared to previously?

That was like 3 years ago, dude. Reality TV has thankfully declined in popularity since then and the new popular thing is legitimately good programming (Breaking Bad, Walking Dead, etc.), even if reality still exists.

I wonder if the actual good writers in Japan have been scared away from the medium, or are just not very noticeable.

Anime is an industry almost entirely supported on the faltering legs of pantsu, generic writing, and a race for who can achieve the most moe female character that month. (Because how else are you going to sell all those ecchi figurines and uncensored DVD releases?)

There are some good ones. TTGL is a strange example, in my opinion. On the one hand, Yoko is made to be a minor character (though this is debatable) but she certainly has her place in the series and we're not really presented with any scenarios where she's powerless for some reason and needs someone to save her. Nia, on the other hand, is a Mary Sue Damsel in Distress who I....actually find endearing for some reason. Seriously, I've seen her character archetype before and I've always loathed it but not in this case. Anyone know why?

[Furtuka]

Related note, the masterpiece and artsy OVA's of the 80s and early 90s aren't a thing anymore because the bubble popping and the Japanese recession means that studios no longer have the budget to make it worth risking on them. Not too much that can be done about that.

[Reelya]

Now OVAs are almost all either bonus episodes for existing franchises or bundled with their respective mangas.

There are much less original OVAs than before, but you still get feature films. Maybe because it's easier to get a lot of people going to the cinema than to get them going to a store to buy your DVD. Obviously the cinema is something you can't quite replicate at home by pirating the material.

[Flying Dice]

... at least she spends a lot of the supplementary material just trolling everyone.* It's a small recompense, but it's there.

*Seriously, to FD, m'fairly sure Yui still is very much an infomorph, she's just screwing with everyone. Many of her lines in the games, ferex, show every instance of being entirely calculated. Her character makes a notably larger amount of sense when you remember the whole superb mastery of human psychology, complete lack of human morals angle. Entire series past her introduction to it is just the little datafreak xanatosing everything for her amusement.

Yeah, in the SAO arc. What I recall past that was that she turned into a plot coupon dispenser.

[Hawkfrost]

You aren't wrong, old anime was often completely atrocious. TV in America is dying due to the steadily dwindling numbers of watchers, which for some reason has convinced the industry that what they need is more amounts of shittier reality shows, instead of taking the risk and going for a breakout hit due to quality.
Quality may be risky, but mediocrity dooms you to a slow death.


The thing that makes it more difficult to bear is probably just the sheer amount of it hitting me so often.
Does anyone know the numbers of how many anime are produced now yearly compared to previously?

That was like 3 years ago, dude. Reality TV has thankfully declined in popularity since then and the new popular thing is legitimately good programming (Breaking Bad, Walking Dead, etc.), even if reality still exists.

If you don't have HBO or any premium channels like that, the majority of television channels are still reality TV and criminal investigation/hospital dramas.
I know because flipping through the guide is depressing.

Maybe those shows you mentioned are not as big of a thing here, because I know exactly zero people who watch Game of Thrones and only one who watched Breaking Bad and The Walking Dead (and he's an American).