animation Anime with emotional content, why is it bad?

[Meire 100]

I call them anime with dramatic elements. But for some reason even as a 19 year old when i loved the realism in some of the animations i watched. Well its not realistic but it felt realistic back then. Like Rurouni Kenshin to mention a few anime that had and focused on personal relationship with the characters they fought. Now there exists people in real life too i think, but i have mostly talked with them on the internet. Through youtube and stuff, they argued for example that Final Fantasy 7, which have some of those psychological elements that it was about some emo person who whines.

 

So it makes me wonder if they say this because they feel insecure or something. I am not sure why they hate it, is it because it tries to sturr up emotions inside you as a response when you have to relate or watch the characters in a show?. Is it because if they watch too much of it that they will feel like they have to be emotional too?.

 

Its a legit argument because there literally exists people out there who believe the idea that emotions or dramas is sorta the black sheep of the entertainment industry, which it isnt if it can be done right. So my argument is why some people seem to dislike it so much?

[Hocus Pocus 636]

There are a multitude of reasons people might not be able to get into emotional situations in media.

 

As an amateur writer (I've done some stuff for D&D with my friends) I make sure to check off three specific factors to ensure my audience feels what I am trying to convey,it's just my personal style.

 

1.) The audience must feel an attachment to the character experiencing the trauma. In my D&D writing, this is the easiest part if the character having a hard time is a PC since the audience themselves are quite literally a part of that character, if it is in a game, however, this may be more difficult, as the audience is forced to play as a character they did not have total control over. In a way, they are simply "borrowing" your character, so you have to make sure that your audience can relate to them, many techniques to perform this task include dialogue trees, customizable characters, and branching story paths to make it feel like you have an impact on what your character is going through (with the exception of the Stanley Parable... which uses branching story paths to make you start forming that emotional attachment to the story, only to tear it away when it reminds you that it's all a game, and none of the choices are really yours, but only the things the programmer allows you to do.); but if it is an NPC or a character in a book, movie, or show, it can be a little harder to form an attachment to something you have no control over. In this case, you must at least at first, introduce the characters with a problem that everyone can relate to, or a personality that everyone defaults to feelings of joy with. This is why the characters that people often love the most are characters like those form the persona series, who all have very real issues that almost everyone have faced at one time or another, from choosing a path in life that you might not enjoy only because you feel like everyone expects you to, to struggling with sexual identity, or from the latter option, Toriel from Undertale was designed to have the personality of a mother, a figure which most people could never bring themselves to foster any negative feelings towards due to childhood nostalgia of simper times.

 

2.) The audience must have an interest in the story at hand: If nobody cares about the story, or if the story becomes too convoluted, the audience will not feel anything but confusion or boredom whenever anything that is supposed to be emotional happens. Think about the really dry books you were forced to read in school... Did you really care when Cardboard personality #12 whom was apparently the protagonist's great uncle or something kicked the bucket? Of course not! The story sopped making sense a long time ago, and it stopped being interesting a looooong time ago. If anything you're happy that he's dead because if they kill off all the characters, then the story will finally end already.

 

3.) The audience must understand the gravity of the situation. It's the reason that villains monologue so much. If the bad guy is just some schmoe who's gonna nuke the world, then he just seems like another boss to kill for exp... Let's take a look at Undertale once again.... Also, spoilers, so be careful. I'll still try to make it vague as possible. If you die to a random monster, the same event will happen as if you die to king Asgore... But of course the final fight with Asgore is gonna feel more epic!The mood was set properly. Monsters tell you why they have been trying to hunt you down as you walk through the halls of the castle, until at last, you meet the king himself, who seems sad... Perhaps lonely even, as he leads you to the barrier. He gains a defeated expression as he reluctantly fights you, unable to even look you in the eyes... Then let's compare this to the genocide run even, where the fight with Undyne overshadows the fight with Asgore. If the proper party wins, you're still looking at the same occurrence, the destruction of humanity, yet the amazing speech Undine gives before going absolutely bonkers in difficulty and the concentrated amounts of determination she gives off far surpasses even the grande feel of the fight with king Asgore.

 

 

A lack of any of these points can ruin an emotional scene for the audience. Using your FF7 reference, we have a character who's personality is predetermined, even in the dialogue choices we're given. And although we can name them whatever we want, we all know he has a cannonical name of "Cloud", so it is not easy to relate to the character in personality. second, the plot of FF7 is notoriously confusing... To the point where Starbomb even wrote a song about it... So we cannot really relate to the emotion there either.

The third point, however, FF7 nails pretty well in my opinion. The flower girl is your only hope of defeating Seph- oh.... Oh ..... OH! Welp, time for plan B!

 

But without the first two points being met, many people find a disconnect from the story that prevents them from being moved by such plot twists. Even if the urgency of a situation is spelled out for them, they find it hard to get into because they cannot immerse themselves in the characters or story. It'd be like someone randomly coming up to you and saying "I heard there was a fire here once" compared to actually being in a burning building. You don't really get the same effect.

Edited November 8, 2016 by Hocus Pocus

[Lambdadelta 1,462]

1. Crying, crying and crying.

2. Screaming in Japanese voice is annoying.

3. Angst is an art.

4. Flashbacks everywhere.

5. Woobie woobie woobie.

 

In short, I call Emotional Manipulation. They exaggerate everything and try to squeeze our eye balls as hard as possible, sometimes they work, sometimes they dont.

 

I remember some scenes of my favorite visual novel make me so sad, and then I read them in ps3 version (voice version), and I got turn off by their japanese screaming voice... I rather read non-voice version... Some Japanese screaming voice, especially teenager characters, pissed me off and a lot of drama anime revolving schools so...

[cider float 2,538]

There are anime that does it good with proper setup and building it up. But there are ones that use every cliche in the book without establishing a character, building up anything and not putting as much of something people can relate to.

 

If people can see a weak hero experience his weakness until he can slowly ramp up his strength and his confidence also grows they can relate to it since they saw his weaker side and can reason why he's more confident now giving that "he's come a long way" feeling to people. 

 

I see a lot of cliches play out that just make me go meh sometimes, not sure why one would get actually livid about it though, I guess when they play out cliches and continue them while trying to shove them into people's faces that THIS IS SAD THIS IS BAD THIS IS NOT RIGHT then people get tired of it and turn it off.

 

I think it's similar to how those commercials on interest groups like animal activism and help the orphans ones play out and you can see all the propaganda rat feces they're blowing around that you just cringe when they try doing things and go "care about this, care about this, care about this!" that you wouldn't entailed to even care

[They call me Loyalty 1,948]

Because they abuse of emotional elements, to disguise a selfish purpose.

Which is when something that can come up as genuine emotion, turns into drama.

My suspension of disbelief is destroyed, and everybody is sad about it, but in a bad way.

My personal issue is with bad drama, not with emotion.

[Zyrael 1,471]

I call them anime with dramatic elements. But for some reason even as a 19 year old when i loved the realism in some of the animations i watched. Well its not realistic but it felt realistic back then. Like Rurouni Kenshin to mention a few anime that had and focused on personal relationship with the characters they fought. Now there exists people in real life too i think, but i have mostly talked with them on the internet. Through youtube and stuff, they argued for example that Final Fantasy 7, which have some of those psychological elements that it was about some emo person who whines.

 

So it makes me wonder if they say this because they feel insecure or something. I am not sure why they hate it, is it because it tries to sturr up emotions inside you as a response when you have to relate or watch the characters in a show?. Is it because if they watch too much of it that they will feel like they have to be emotional too?.

 

Its a legit argument because there literally exists people out there who believe the idea that emotions or dramas is sorta the black sheep of the entertainment industry, which it isnt if it can be done right. So my argument is why some people seem to dislike it so much?

 

It's good to feel, and be moved. Art should move you, emotionally. Have you ever seen Neon genesis evangelion? it's widely regarded as one of the greatest anime series of all time, and rightfully so. People complain about the protagonist shinji, but he's a very relatable and flawed character, which makes him relatable for flawed and troubled people. Regardless, my point is when anime does it right, it does it right.

 

I haven't personally seen Rurouni Kenshin, I don't know what my judgement on it would be. My guess is that if people seem to hate something, it's because dramas that are poorly done are more abundant than those that are well done. In any case, shows like NGE and Death Note are masterpieces. And i'd challenge anyone with an open mind to dislike them. 

[碇 シンジン 27,432]

I'm pretty sure they aren't bad one my recent favourites March comes in like a lion is pretty emotional yet still amazing