You know what hurts people more than telling them their favorite show sucks? Telling them their favorite show is simply ok. They react as if I threw their kittens in a wood chipper.
Perhaps I’m being insensitive since it’s morally impossible for someone of my refined taste and unbridled honesty to praise mediocrity. But isn’t mediocre taste better than bad taste? Mediocrity means there’s something good about it. Seriously. I’m not saying that just to be nice. Likewise, when I say a show is bad, I’m not joking around. It really does suck, completely and thoroughly. If you like it, you should be ashamed of yourself, and my reviews should agonize you.
when I say a show is bad, I’m not joking… If you like it, you should be ashamed of yourself, and my reviews should agonize you.
Unfortunately, Baka-san, I bet the terribad fanboys would still insist it’s worth watching. -_-
-_- is right.
Man, you should definitely review Milky Holmes Tantei Opera. Go and do it NAU! 😀
I guess I could give it a shot…
Oh Christ, this is not going to go well.
Wise words.
https://twitter.com/#!/AJtheFourth/status/137235214152896512
I regularly stalk AJtheFourth’s twitter with the intention of passing his ideas off as my own months later. And I would have gotten away with it too, if it weren’t for you meddling kids.
I found that the best way to defuse raving fanboys is to do this. They’ll never live with it.
Perhaps, but I’d only write such a review if I actually meant it. Otherwise I’d be a troll! You wouldn’t want me to be a troll, would you?
Well, when somebody goes and says, “HEY GUYS CHRISTIANITY SUCKS EVERY SINGLE CHRISTIAN IN THE EARTH SHOULD DIE!”, nobody takes him seriously. Even if you’re a Christian, you wouldn’t care, by subconsciously treating his comment as inferior to your own thoughts due to its blatant bigotry.
On the other hand, if somebody said, “HEY GUYS CHRISTIANITY IS GOOD AT KEEPING PEOPLE GOOD PEOPLE BUT I THINK THE BUDDHIST TREATMENT OF GOD MAKES MORE SENSE!”, people will take him seriously. If you’re a Christian, you can’t subconsciously treat his comment as inferior to your own thoughts because, capitalism (hoho) aside, there’s really nothing wrong with his comment. People who can’t refute his comment would then run home crying to their mommies; while people who can refute his comment will refute his comment, but it’s not like you’re also taking note of all the people who do reply reasonably.
tl;dr: comment of ‘horrible’ -> author thinks he’s trolling -> normal response
comment of ‘decent’ -> author thinks he’s serious -> reply seriously
comment of ‘decent’ -> author thinks he’s serious and can’t reply -> ragequit
But “normal response” is “reply seriously”!
Wait,you actually do see ‘favorite’ shows recommended to you? O_O
How about I recommend some too?
And yeah,I do agree with many of your reviews BUT there have been many shows which you’ve said bad but I have found it good….so your goods are really good whereas not all your bads are necessarily bads 😛
I do have higher standards than most.
You should definitely give Ashita no Joe a go…there’s no reason why you shouldn’t
1)It’s a 70s and 80s anime,which guarantees it to be awesome (you said so yourself)
2)It features boxing (Another thing which is of your tastes)
The only thing which is damn inconvenient is that the fansubbers are really slow (you have to tolerate an episode a month)
Awaiting your reply
I just finished reading the 500 or so Hajime no Ippo chapters that take place after The New Challenger ends. A little more boxing couldn’t hurt.
Well, I guess terrible is easier to make entertaining through hyperbole than mediocre. Which I suppose softens the blow somehow? I don’t know, I don’t claim to know about people who think that saying something is okay should warrant the electric chair.
Oh, but perhaps you do. You never know who’ll react that way until it happens.
Why haven’t I seen a review of the best anime of 2011 yet?
Because I haven’t watched any 2011 anime yet. For now I’ll say the best anime of 2011 is Kaiji Season 2. I’ll return to alter this comment if I ever change my mind.
Just do what I do: rip shows a new asshole for ten paragraphs and end with “Grade: +”. That way everyone’s happy.
Writing 10 paragraphs about anything can’t possibly make the author happy. Your slacker’s license has been revoked.
I’ve never written that much about any one show. I was merely trying to get you to so that I could claim the ultimate slacker title for myself. Unfortunately, you’ve seen through my ruse.
It’s like how people would rather have other people react to them negatively than to be indifferent towards their existence. When you give their favorite shows a bad review it means that it at the very least created some emotion within you (even if its just hate or displeasure). When you say the show is merely mediocre its the same kind of indifference which makes an individual feel like they don’t exist. Saying something is just okay is like saying that it barely exists.
There are many kinds of mediocre. Sometimes it’s bland all around. Sometimes it’s great in some ways and lousy in others. The latter still bothers people.
There’s another factor you have to consider here, bud. That factor being YOU. People come to your site because of the way you respond to things, you’re a pretty extreme reactionary when it comes to things you don’t like, and you derive that from your idol, Maddox. When someone submits their “favorite” show, they could in fact be submitting a show that they intend on seeing be placed on the chopping block, whether or not they even like it at all. Instead, what they were hoping for was another Maddox style rant about everything that could be considered “bad” about the show, sometimes even affirming what they themselves believed to be bad in the show. Frankly, it’s this style of writing that keeps me coming back to this site as well, as you probably won’t see me around very many other anime blogs, because I favor a succinct and blunt approach to the “blog” concept, with as little “today I did X” or “today my cat did something so funny” sort of posts as can be avoided. You seem to avoid bringing your own life story into the fold unless it’s relevant, and that plus the black background and plain white font hearkens back to the era of Maddox in a time before “blogs” and people posting about their cats that is very refreshing. People who submit their favorite shows to you are probably responding to this as well, whether they know it or not. In fact, their only real hope is for a sense of interaction with you, the author, so that they can say that they ‘participated’ in the creation of your latest post in some manner, be it derivative or not.
Just my 2 cents.
-FRP
Sure, 2 cents back in 1793. The horrors of inflation…
My top commenter from 2008 convinced me to watch Ghost in the Shell. I watched it, thought it was good but not great, and never felt the inspiration to write a review post. Said commenter passively-aggressively expressed his frustration about it in a few comments, and I haven’t heard from him since. Maybe things would’ve turned out the same way if I’d reviewed it. Maybe not. So your participation theory may have legs (though perhaps not as many as a Tachikoma).
I’m in favour of throwing kittens in a wood chipper when circumstances require it.
An opinion befitting your username 🙁
Nobody wants mediocrity. If it’s bad it’s bad, if it’s good it’s good but.. if it’s mediocre? It’s nothing.
Lots of people want mediocrity. Post forthcoming.
Does people really made a big deal about a mediocre anime? Tell them to get a fucking life.
No no no. People make a big deal about amazing anime which other people think are mediocre.
Coooooompletely different.
A little from Column A, a little from Column B.
The opposite of love is not hate, but indifference.
Only if you’re sane.
So then what do you think of Kimi to Boku…?
I’ll hang up and listen to your response.
I guess I could give it a shot…
I’m actually relieved I’m not the only one in the entire Internet who thought that the Tatami Galaxy was mediocre.
The lots of good/lots of bad kind of mediocre, but mediocre nonetheless.
If you hate it, then at least it had a strong impact, whereas calling something someone’s passionate about mediocre and having a “meh” attitude towards it I can see being more offensive…
I guess I can see it. I wouldn’t know personally, since everyone loves what I recommend, but I can see it.
It’s because in my experience, people who say that an anime is average but not great, tend to sound smugly confident about how they found the golden mean between fanboyism and the hatedom, as if that would make them more right than everyone else.
When you claim that you laughed through every minute of a comedy, people will just assume that you have a strange sense of humor to like it that much. When you say that you were bored out of your skull during a slice of life, they will understand that you don’t apreciate the slice-of-life atmosphere. But in either case, the “in my opinion” is already implicitly there, based on the fact that your opinion is so different from theirs, that they simply KNOW that you can’t be right. But if your opinion is only slightly different from theirs, they might feel like you trying to make an objective statement.
It’s especially noticeable when people feel that a supposedly “popular” (well-known) show is overrated, and they all go out of their way to sound unbiased about it, and confirm that it’s “good, but not as much as all those fans claim it to be”, until that phrase practically becames a meme, and the few people who actually like it are drowned in a hive-mind insisting on how average it is, and that only deluded fanboys would claim anything else.
Ah, the smug golden mean. Like the first line of this K-ON review. He does this sort of thing all the time, but in his defense, at least he has no pretensions that he’s not pretentious.
I do occasionally call out anime for being overrated, but the gist of the argument is that the show is flawed, not really that it’s average. The reception tends to be more like “lol u 2 funneh” than “I’ll never read your blog again!”
Not sure what this has to do with this post, but it does relate to a poll you had up a while ago:
http://www.tmz.com/2011/10/02/arrested-development-television-show-one-more-season-mitch-hurwitz-ron-howard/#.TxTZXqVSSTk
I’m on it like Sonic.
My favorite anime was reviewed by Baka-Raptor and his only plus was that it may have been the cleverest anime ever.
Who cares if B-R thought it was only okay? 🙂
j/k luvumwahmwah
I care
I’d give you recommendations, but you really like a lot of the shows that I really like too so it would be pointless.
I do wonder though if the Liar Game J-Drama is any good compared to the manga… it stars an actress I really like and uh it’s easier than reading.
There’s no doubt I like the manga better, but the drama does a few things I kind of like. It’s not a must-watch, just if you’re bored.
Just don’t say anything bad about Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood – The best show in this universe.
But Naruto, One Piece, Bleach you can bash anytime!
Me Gusta!
Too late
prease revqiew my favoritee ainme Mliky Hlomes
It is Verry Good yes
If he does choose to watch and review this show, I want screen shots of his face as he views it, just so I can see his last moments of loathing before his head explodes.
https://www.baka-raptor.com/2012/01/07/im-sorry-your-favorite-show-doesnt-suck/comment-page-1/#comment-15503
I was joking ;_:
Please don’t do it
[…] So we quit when we can’t handle having to juggle our lives and our hobbies, right? How more simple can the question get? Yet it’s hardly that simple. At which point do we drop our hobbies to focus on our lives? When we run out of time for blogging? It’s not like we don’t know anyone who blogs only once in a blue moon, yet remains alive and kicking on the ‘sphere. (I’m looking at you, Baka-Raptor.) […]
Hmm.. For one, I love your blog, I totally relate to most of the posts. I love Liar Game(watched the series and the movie – btw there’s a new one coming out this march), I hate Endless Eight etc..
So I’m not sure if I should recommend my top most favoritest fanboyest anime ever. Gintama. There, I hope you give it a try. I heard the anime is much much better than the manga because the humor translates better and i’ve never read the manga. I hope you give it a try and write a review for it and I think there’s a high chance you might enjoy it 🙂