I don’t get involved in fandoms or fanfic. I only look up wikis on anime if I need help figuring out what is going on or keeping up with characters, or recently with Attack on Titan just to see who else dies, because I just couldn’t take it anymore. (BTW I finished the first season and still don’t see what the appeal is, that story is bloodier than a George R.R. Martin novel).
Thank you!!
THANK YOU!!!
Imma kiss your feet! Mwahmwahmwah! Thank you!
Finally, somebody who shares the same view on
Attack on Titan. I could never grasp the popularity of this series. Just a couple days ago I had this animated discussion with a friend who’s completely, head-over-heels fanboying over it. I mean, I normally go by the maxim of never even engaging in anime argument because everyone’s entitled to their tastes (more on that later). Alas, he just had to be one of those people who chose to diss
Sword Art Online. For a long time, I’ve been keeping my mouth shut on Facebook on how I just can’t dig
Attack on Titan. But when you just openly create a status on just how much you’ve grown to particularly
hate an anime that
I enjoy, I’m taking off my gloves and flipping the table.
Attack on Titan disgusts me. I mean, I’m all for
GoT-style gore. However, there’s only so much blood and organs you can send flying around before I need something to counterbalance it. Failure means I am growing to like your work less.
But worst still are character deaths. That’s like the rotten corpse that tops off the steaming pile of refuse of which the anime just impressed upon me. My tolerance for killing off characters is low enough as it is without an author being so openly blatant about it and plays cards like character development, realism, and style as an excuse.
Then again, it’s not really an excuse to fans who like that sort of thing. That’s really both the issue at hand and partly the reason why arguments like this take place at all!
Why can’t people just realize that this is ultimately a matter of preference, of
taste. Yes, you can cite your morals, personal experience, religion, or whatever. That doesn’t change the fact that it’s really all you. I don’t see why some people prefer to rail and declare everything else garbage because, as much I think
AoT is garbage, it’s really a matter of
taste!
This is the biggest problem I have with people styling themselves as critics. Funnier still is that my reasoning is best expressed by a western animated film,
Ratatouille:
In many ways, the work of a critic is easy. We risk very little, yet enjoy a position over those who offer up their work and their selves to our judgment. We thrive on negative criticism, which is fun to write and to read. But the bitter truth we critics must face, is that in the grand scheme of things, the average piece of junk is probably more meaningful than our criticism designating it so. - Anton Ego
I too previously thrived on negative criticism, even (if not
especially) towards myself. My life, much less my views on anime, never felt emptier than the hedonistic hooligans that are often scorned on these forums.
Setting that aside, I remember watching this morning the latest episode of
SAO II. I could see plenty of the scenes utterly dismissed by rancid critics. (“Ugh, empathy.” “Man this is stupid.” “What is this sentimental tripe!?”) The fact that I could still recall my shadow as a nasty criticizer only made me realize how truly horrifying the mindset was.
True I’ve been quite critical myself of a lot things. But you know, it’s a whole lot different from when you do it for the raw sake of upholding some elusive ‘standard’ (be it moral or otherwise). You forget a lot of things that define your humanity. And in this case, you forget that the sole reason for watching all this is to simply
enjoy it.
I see my friends who claim to have a lot of discerning tastes. One moment, they’re raving about something as the best thing since sliced bread but then a few months later, it’s worse than Justin Bieber. This kind of petty, hipster-ish inconsistency just really puts me off. Critics are just full of it really. (Ironically,
I’m designated as the hipster of the group!
)
Why can’t people just say, “I like it cuz I like this sort of stuff.”?
As to your second question, it’s neither. It’s Agito Wanijima from Air Gear. 
