Rules: explain why

Ready player one.

That has to be one of the cringiest movies I’ve seen, is tries so hard, too hard with it’s “WE LOVE YOU NERD, YOU’RE SO COOL FOR PLAYING GAMES AND GETTING THIS 80S REFERENCE” message and the whole “corporation bad, the people good” narrative seems written for toddlers… The fan service feels cheap and adds nothing to the story.

Finally, they trying to make the people believe that very attractive girl with a barely visible red tint spot on her face is “ugly”… Like wtf?

Yet it received decent reviews plus being one of the most successful movies of that year.

  • Lemminary
    3•4 days ago

    And sometimes dragged on forever for no real reason other than to fill air time. Looking at you One Piece. Yuck.

    • @[email protected]
      2•3 days ago

      So as an anime fan I’ll give a hint on terminology if you want to take an approach at it. What you’re talking about is the genre Shonen which is targeted for boys in school, roughly translates even to “young boy.” Because of that it’s the ones that you have a group that’s relatively easy to cater to… hence drag on for ever and ever like US comic books. There are a LOT of genres in anime like there are in western tv and it’ll still be a YMMV because completely different culture, but because of the medium there are still some small studios that are willing to do some stories that are difficult to get in western media because it’s too risky for corporations (granted that’s been less the case with streaming coming out)

      The number one that I’m sure anyone would recommend if you want to make an attempt is Cowboy Bebop because it’s a good blend of western sensibility, it’s a noir in being a group of down on their luck bounty hunters in space, set to a jazz, blues and rock soundtrack and has a good English dub from an era back when that was rare. And importantly, the story ends.

    • @[email protected]
      5•3 days ago

      My friend who never watches anime always goes on about the same point and I just have to laugh because there are maybe 2 shows matching that description out of 100 in a year.

      • Lemminary
        3•3 days ago

        Haha, yeah you caught me. I haven’t watched a lot of anime, but I do remember how I dreaded the bunch of fillers in the ones I watched before I detached completely from it, so I’m just being salty about it.

    • @Duamerthrax
      5•3 days ago

      I like anime, but wont touch shounen with a ten foot pole. And that includes “American Anime”, which seems to almost exclusively be the shounen genre.

      Western shows tend to fall into a similar pattern. A show will just keep getting dragged on longer then it should and end up tanking its popularity. How fucking long did Super Natural or Walking Dead last?

      • Lemminary
        1•3 days ago

        Oh, you’re right, I’m being unfairly biased. I stopped watching Walking Dead precisely because it went on and on aimlessly, just like Westworld. lol

        • @[email protected]
          2•3 days ago

          Have you watched non episodic anime? There’s a lot of Movie length anime out there often with more mature theming.

          Akira was probably the first anime that put the medium on the map for me at all. The animated Ghost in the shell movie is also pretty good. And almost all of the Studio Ghibli films.

          You could also try stuff like Cowboy Bebop or Serial Experiments Lain for episodic but still short works.