I’ve had two topics floating around my head for the past few weeks (in between being swamped with work); they could probably be further expanded, but thought I should throw them out there anyway. Here’s the first of the two:

Observation #1: Seeing Every Show Through a Shounen Action Filter

It seems to me that there’s a certain contingent of anime viewers and bloggers who process every show they watch, regardless of genre, through the “filter” of shounen action genre expectations. This is especially apparent if you watch their complaints/criticisms about things like pacing, plot development, and “fillers”, but seems to run much deeper into the fundamental way they analyse and process shows on all levels. I find this sort of curious, but perhaps it makes sense; after all, many anime fans began their “anime journey” with shounen action shows like Dragonball Z, Inuyasha, Naruto, or Bleach.

This isn’t necessarily a new observation, but it came to the forefront as I read the various reactions to the recent Toaru Kagaku no Railgun anime, and the comparisons to its predecessor Toaru Majutsu no Index. What’s interesting about the “Toaru” anime franchises is that both shows have shounen action elements, but neither are actually “shounen action” shows. That didn’t stop many people from processing both shows through that filter and judging it accordingly. For Index, many complained that there was too much exposition, not enough action, and too much emphasis on technobabble — this is why I personally nicknamed the show’s genre “preachy sci-fi”, perhaps in the style of something like a Star Trek: TNG. For Railgun on the other hand, many of these same people complained again that the show had too little action, but here the complaints centered around too much focus on “moe” and “girls being girls”, too much “filler” (defined in this case as anything that doesn’t primarily advance the “central plot”), and — ironically enough — not enough presence by Index’s “preachy” male protagonist. At the end of the day, I don’t think either show was ever really focused on developing the “action plot” — in the case of Index they were focusing on “world-building”, and in Railgun they were focused on “relationship-building”. But if you filter everything through a “this show would be better if it were shounen action” filter, both shows fail to “live up to their potential” to some degree. But is that even a fault?

(By the way, you could probably take the same point and apply it to romance shows always being seen as “shounen harem” regardless of their actual origins/intentions. This produces those somewhat-puzzling reactions I discussed previously where people disregard a show’s obvious romantic overtures and intentions and instead favour/advocate all sorts of “alternate reality” possibilities that they’d prefer.)

I always try to approach literary criticism with great caution because I believe that our reaction to literature is based at least as much on our personal perspective/biases as it is on what’s actually in the show proper. This is why I’m always a bit… troubled? annoyed? disgusted? …when people launch into these missives attacking shows and those who produce them for the show’s failure to live up into their own ideal vision, presuming that they know “just what was missing” and “just where things went wrong”. Now, wait a minute here — process that show through a different filter, and all these so-called “faults” could actually be strengths. Are you — the proverbial you — so arrogant to presume that you alone are the best judge of what’s objectively good and objectively bad, and the factors that make it so? That isn’t to say that there isn’t room for negative opinions and criticism, but I think people should be careful about presuming too much about the “obviousness” of their claims. Whenever someone engages in a “this show would be so much better if…” hypothetical, it probably tells you more about that person and their tastes than it does about the show itself.

I’ll touch on one of the possible contributing factors to this trend in the next post, but I’m curious if other people have noticed this same “filtering” going on, and whether you might even recognize some “filters” in the way you watch and appreciate shows. In the end I suppose filtering is necessary and good because it helps us gravitate towards things we find enjoyable, but that’s only useful if we recognize our tendencies and adjust our habits accordingly. If you don’t recognize your own preferences (or aren’t able to pick up quickly on the way various anime aligns with those preferences), you might put yourself into situation after situation of being disappointed that something doesn’t live up to some measure it was never attaining to. Hence, in my mind, why the anime world seems to be filled with people who believe that most anime — even the shows they watch — suck. What a sad state of affairs.