I'm too tired to think of a good title right now

[cerusee]

I've finally had a chance to witness firsthand the anime fan equivalent to the following scenario:

"Hi, my name is John, and I love comics. My girlfriend doesn't read them, but she loves manga, like Fruits Basket and stuff, and she's willing to try a few comics. Can you recommend some?"

"Watchmen."

"Ditto. Also, V for Vendetta. And Dark Knight Returns. Make sure she reads that one first."

"I'm a huge fan of Preacher! And uhhhh, jeez, did anybody say Watchmen?"

"Kingdom Come, I'm gonna go out on a limb here, but Marvels, Dark Knight Returns, definitely Watchman. So-and-so's run on X-Men is fucking awesome, but if she won't read regular comics, there's the latest Wolverine mini..."


Of course, I'm guilty of putting Usagi Yojimbo, Runaways, and Bone in the same headspace as Kitchen Princess ("these are all popular with kids, so thirteen-year-old girls will definitely like this!"), so I know how easy it is to do. Nevertheless, some people should probably not make recommendations to new readers, because their horribly inappropriate, blind rattling-off of fan-favorites that have nothing to do with the stated interests of the outside reader are actively counterproductive and may work to destroy the reader's willingness to sample, because after all, the cherry-picked titles they were given when they asked for a starting point at X turned out to be somewhere around the Ms.

Seriously, I see maybe one person actually answering her request for "epic fantasy anime titles" with epic fantasy anime titles. Other commentators manage a smattering (the same titles over and over again--old fan favorites like Vision of Escaflowne and Slayers, which are pretty on-target at least), but mostly just fall prey to the urge to list their favorites, regardless of how removed they are from the OP's stated interest.

On that note, I hereby declare Cowboy Bebop to be the Watchmen of anime fans (i.e. a fantastic genre deconstruction work with a moderate degree of independent appeal that really isn't as accessible to new audiences as fans think it is--the knee-jerk recommendation to the question "What do I read next?", assumed to be universal simply because it's good).

Comments

[retsuko.livejournal.com]

*laughs* I see entirely what you mean. I usually answer a question like this with a gentle poking around of the person's exact reading tastes and then try to tailor one or two titles.

I recommend Cowboy Bebop a lot, but only because it was one of the few anime that my husband would watch with me. He doesn't like the majority of anime series because of the "cutesy" stuff and the way that serious characters don't actually act serious--too much talking, in his opinion. Cowboy Bebop is that much different from other anime series, and it even seems a little Western in the way its characters act. (I suspect he also has a little crush on Faye, but he won't admit it.) He enjoyed Samurai Champloo for many of the same reasons--Gin doesn't stand around and talk about how deadly his martial art is, he shows how deadly it is by doing it. [End of anecdote]

[cerusee.livejournal.com]

Man, I love Samurai Champloo! I can appreciate Cowboy Bebop on just about every level except the characters--but with the exception of Jet and the adorable techno-corgi, god love him, Bebop's characters leave me cold,* and I can't love the show. I adore the Champloo characters, so I love the show without reserve.

*They're good characters, and they work fine. I just dislike them personally, if that makes any sense.

The show I pimp out to all comers is Mai-HiME, because I think it's one of the best damn things I've ever seen--it just works on every single level, and every technical aspect of it is beautifully executed. As I work my way back in to an academic mindset, I may have to stop calling it subversive, but I still want to, because I remain impressed by easily it reverses gender roles and rewrites cliches without every dropping its poker-face--no meta-commentary on what it's doing, never once pulling outside the story to talk about the story--and yet, you can't deny that there's some kind of conscious commentary going on, the show just makes you work it out yourself. (It's also pretty fan-servicey, although in ways that completely serve the characters and the plot--like Empowered, Mai-HiME is proof that you can have your cheesecake and eat it, too.

Ahem. Anyway, although it's a very entertaining, appealing show, and not a bad rec, I'm sure that I've recommended it to people who ended up thinking ugh, no, because I don't stop to make sure they like enough of the right things to appreciate it on even a superficial level. I generally only recommend anime to people who already watch anime (manga is another story), which makes them better equipped to evaluate for themselves the answers to "What do I watch next?", but I am also guilty of indiscriminately recommending favorites instead of thinking about what the asker really wants.

[retsuko.livejournal.com]

Ein the techno-corgi is, hands down, my favorite mascot character, EVER. :D

I love Samurai Champloo very much, all except for the racist gaijin episodes. I mean, I know they're parody, and I'm happy to laugh at silly stereotypes, but... well, crap. After living in Japan for three years and finding that quite a few people don't regard those depictions as parody, but as real, it just soured me on recommending the series as a whole. I mean, c'mon, writers, aren't you smarter than that? >:p Aside from that, I think the Jin-Fuu-Mugen triangle is fabulous and the martial arts stuff is to die for awesome.

I need to watch Mai-Hime, you're the second person who's recommended it to me.

Have you tried Kino's Journey?

[mikkeneko.livejournal.com]

You know, I still haven't seen Cowboy Bebop! Except for that movie with the butterflies.

[cerusee.livejournal.com]

I haven't seen the butterfly movie yet.

(Speaking of movies, I was a little amused at the person who said she recommended VoE, but only if it was the series, not the movie. The phrasing was funny, but I also thought the movie was a lot better than the series--the series is good, but the movie does a fantastic job of condensing the best aspects of the series in to a couple of hours, and the noses aren't as pointy.)

I've never seen Bebop all the way through, and unless someone asks me to watch it with them, I probably never will. Life is too short.

[herongale]

You'd think that someone would recommend a feel-good girly romance such as Fushigi Yugi. It's a bit dated but the story is EXTREMELY accessible as both epic fantasy and epic romance. I'd go recc it myself but am not a part of the comm. :D

[cerusee.livejournal.com]

I went and recommended it. I vastly prefer the manga version of FY (it was the second manga series I ever read, after Ranma 1/2), but the dreadful pacing of the anime probably doesn't feel so dreadful if you watch it without reading the manga.

Also recommended VoE, Seirei no Moribito, and Record of Lodoss War. And shit, I meant to recommend Scrapped Princess. It's got some random sci-fi elements, because anime just loves to do that, but it's essentially fantasy.