Reflection – Page 12 – The Renegade Coder

Lately, I've been watching a lot of anime while taking breaks from grad school work. In fact, in the last couple months, I've watched Full Metal Alchemist: Brotherhood, Rent-a-Girlfriend, and Noragami. If those titles just gave you whiplash, then it's probably a good time for me to try to explain my taste in anime. Note: I made this post premium for two reasons. One, this allows me to keep some of my bad takes about anime somewhat private. Two, there are a few spoilers that I didn't want to blast off to the wider audience. How My Friends Perceive My Taste One of my favorite gags in my close group of friends is bagging on each other for our tastes in anime. For instance, my one friend tends to fall for Shonen while my other friend prefers slice of life. When it comes to how my friends perceive my taste in anime, it usually goes like this: "Of course you don't like this show! No moms died in it." Now, I find this absolutely hilarious because I do prefer shows that are on the darker side of the spectrum, but that's obviously not the only type of anime I'll watch. Unfortunately, this has some pretty frustrating consequences. For instance, because we each know each other's taste in anime, we tend to avoid watching each other's favorite shows. One show I always recommend is Promised Neverland. Of course, if I'm giving it a good review, it must be a rough watch. While that's totally true in this case, it's not like I only like sad anime. For example, I recently binged Rent-a-Girlfriend, and I'm pretty close to giving it a perfect 10. Another anime I recently watched was Noragami. Sadly, I'm not sure I'll be able to get anyone to watch because I mentioned that it was "sadder than I expected." After all, if it was sad for me, it must absolutely obliterate the average person. Never was this phenomenon more obvious than when I recommended one of my favorite shows of all time, Your Lie in April, to a friend. It took him nearly 5 years to watch it, and now he touts it as one of his favorites. That said, how did I go about earning this perception? Let's talk about it. A Quick Peek at My Anime Ratings If you've ever taken a peek at my World Domination Checklist, you might have seen that I track a lot of cool information there. For example, I track all the anime I've watched and even include my own ratings. If you glance over that list, you'll notice that I'm generally pretty nice in my ratings. In other words, the vast majority of my ratings are 7 and up (30/37 or 81%) which would indicate that I like a lot of shows. RatingCount1021334051627489912105 I think there are two basic reasons for this. One, I only watch shows that I think I'm going to like. In other words, there's a bit of a selection bias at play. Second, I tend to believe that anime as a medium does a lot better at story telling than other forms of media. I have no evidence to back that up; it's just my preference. Of course, if we take a peek at the upper end of the ratings, we'll get a feel for the types of shows I really, really like. For example, here's the list of shows I gave a perfect 10: My Hero AcademiaSteins;Gate (Zero)The Promised NeverlandYour Lie in April From this list, you can't really pin down a genre that I like. I mean My Hero Academia couldn't be any more different than Steins;Gate. In fact, they don't even have a single overlapping genre—at least according to MyAnimeList. So, what's going on? What type of anime do I actually like? We'll explore that in the next section. What Makes an Anime Good? Lately, I've been doing a lot of reflecting on what makes an anime good. After all, if I could figure it out, picking a new show to watch wouldn't be so hard: I'd know exactly what to look for. While I haven't exactly figured it out, I have slowly discovered my tastes over time. I'll break them down in the subsections below. The Story Is Bigger Than It Seems One of my favorite genres of all time is the psychological thriller. After all, who doesn't love a story being told by an unreliable narrator. Basically, it forces you to try to find the truth amid all sorts of chaos, and I find it a lot of fun. I bring up the unreliable narrator because some of my favorite anime were told from the perspective of someone who didn't have all the facts. For example, I recently watched Full Metal Alchemist: Brotherhood, and that story is told from the perspective of the Elric brothers. What initially starts as a quest to get their bodies back turns into a complete unraveling of the military. That is certainly not what I expected when I started watching it. If you've kept up with Attack on Titan, you'd know that it has a very similar story structure. What starts as a quest of a young man who wants to join the military to kill titans turns into an equally massive unraveling of the military. Stories like these are really awesome because it's clear that the author had some end goal in mind before writing in all the details. In other words, we have somewhere we're going, and the entire story is told through the perspective of one person who watches something much bigger unfold in front of them. The Characters Feel Real While I love a story that has some direction, I can't possibly get through it without characters that feel at least somewhat relatable. That doesn't mean that the characters have to be human, but they have to exhibit realistic human traits. For example, their range of emotions have to feel human, and they need to show some form of growth or development. One of the reasons I really like My Hero Academia is because the characters have very realistic struggles in a world that doesn't mirror ours in the least. For example, I identify with Bakugo in terms of his apparent Imposter Syndrome. Sure, he's an asshole, but I feel like a lot of that stems from his belief that he doesn't deserve the praise he gets. On several occasions, he's even admitted that other characters are stronger than him, and he's clearly very frustrated by it. In my day-to-day life, I feel a lot of similar emotions. For instance, I've received a ton of great support over the years, but that never really aligned with my own views of myself. The frustrating bit is that now I'm very much self-aware to the point of perfectionism. After all, if I make a mistake, I'll be outing myself as an imposter (Among Us pun intended). These are very real emotions that people like myself have on a daily basis, so being able to write something so close to home in a character is really satisfying to me. It makes me feel like I'm not alone—even if they're just an anime character. The Premise Stays Interesting One way I get hooked into shows is through a premise. For example, Tokyo Ghoul hooked me when I realized that one character would be a part of two opposing worlds: humans vs. ghouls. Of course, the premise alone isn't enough to keep a show interesting. In other words, the premise itself has to stay interesting. For example, the idea of quirks in My Hero Academia is pretty interesting, but the idea maintains its momentum because each one has its own set of rules that governs its potential. One premise that has kept me hooked is the one in Rent-a-Girlfriend. In other words, what would happen if you rented a girlfriend for a day and she suddenly became part of an elaborate lie? There is just something about the way the main character in this show keeps getting himself in trouble that reminds me of the messiness of life. One way a show can get boring is if the premise starts to lose steam. One show that really did that for me was Death Note. How can someone possibly make indiscriminate murder interesting for 37 episodes? After awhile, the cat and mouse game felt really drawn out for me, and I was just hoping one of them would get caught. Before long, I started asking "how's Light/L gonna get out of this one?" Ironically, I really enjoyed Breaking Bad which was just a series of escape sequences. I Still Really Love Sad Anime Despite everything I said above, I have a soft spot for emotionally gripping anime. Ultimately, if you're wondering what ties my current perfect rating anime together, it's that every single one of them made me feel personally invested in the lives of the characters. Everything else was a bonus. In My Hero Academia, I want to see Deku reach his potential, Bakugo resolve his Imposter Syndrome, Todoroki come to terms with his relationship with his dad, Uraraka build up that fortune for her family, and Iida fulfill the role of Ingenium. In Steins;Gate, I want(ed) to see Okabe save both Kurisu and Mayuri, Suzuha meet her father, Mayuri fix her damn watch, and all the side characters resolve their issues without the use of time travel. In Promised Neverland, I want(ed) to see all the kids escape to the outside world, Isabella have a redemption ark, and Emma and Ray to avenge their friend Norman. In Your Lie in April, I want(ed) to see Kousei play the piano again, Tsubaki and Kousei fall in love, Emi and Takeshi grow into their own as pianists, and Kaori live. Whether or not any of these things actually happened in the anime is not important. Ultimately, I just want to be able to root for something, and I find it a lot easier to be invested when there's something of value at stake. With all that said, I think it's time for me to call it a night! In general, I really enjoyed writing this. Maybe I'll write more anime related content in the future. Seeing as you're already a patron, I don't need to pitch anything. That said, if you'd like, I'd love it if you'd revisit the list of ways to grow the site. There are always ways to help out! For instance, here are some related articles: You Could Not Pay Me to Redo 201824 People Successful by the Age of 24 Thanks for taking the time to check this post out! I appreciate it.