Energetic-Nova said: There's a common misconception that if everyone agrees with something, it must be objective, when in fact objective means without mind or perception, and you cannot say that the narrative judgment of an anime is without mind. Actually, and ironically, if popularity does prove right, then it would be subjective, unlike the idea that the Earth is flat is objectively wrong, regardless of how many people believed it."It is objective to look at ALL the reviews and see regardless of score, they all say the same thing. " <---- ALL REVIEWS regardless of how they feel about it, will say the same thing about Samurai Flamenco. And for some folks it is a good thing. For some folks it is a bad thing. You cannot tell me it is subjective at that point. Of course, the more basic problem is that not all reviews say the same thing. Energetic-Nova said: None of these are facts. lol Controversy is inherently steeped in opinions. Without contrary opinions, there's nothing to be controversial about. A good test to see whether something is objective is to imagine a world without certain people to observe them. If everyone who disliked Evangelion never existed, then can it still be considered controversial? No? Then controversy is not an inherent property of it, but a property of the social environment.If everyone says the same thing about an anime even if it is a positive review or a negative review, than it is probably one of the things which make the anime what it is. Evangelion for instance has a controversial ending which you could either love or hate. <---- This is a fact of the anime. You will either find the ending to be the best part of the anime or the thing that ruins it. And what you feel about it will probably say more about you than the anime itself. When someone does not like Samurai Flamanco, I feel that person doesn't like the unknown. They prefer a more predictable affair. Neon Genesis Evangelion lets me know if they can handle imperfect characters and crying and things maybe not ending in a neat bow for them. Energetic-Nova said: The slow pace nearly ruined Wolf's Rain, but the Eastern philosophy aspect of the ending painted a bleak picture that summarized the condition of humanity, always hopeful but always doomed to repeat itself. But if you gave me any atmospheric anime or any anime with a sad ending and expected that I would rate it highly, it would be a hasty generalization, and inaccurate. Because you are using your subjective experience to conclude mine.To me, these anime become markers of taste preference in how they prefer their story to flow. Usually if someone has rated Wolf's Rain highly, I can expect that this person is really into slow paced atmospheric anime with sad endings. Energetic-Nova said: Just like how Evangelion isn't literally love it or hate it, there is no black and white dichotomy between scifi and moe. Otherwise either no one would like shows that combine the two like Macross Frontier, or everyone. And that's obviously not the case: it's rated 7.99, not 10, or 1.And they probably love the scifi genre or would love it and the space genre if they watched more. And if a person rates it low, they usually like more action and moe character designs and the plot to go faster like Madoka. |
| My subjective reviews: katsureview.wordpress.com THE CHAT CLUB. |
katsucats said: Energetic-Nova said: There's a common misconception that if everyone agrees with something, it must be objective, when in fact objective means without mind or perception, and you cannot say that the narrative judgment of an anime is without mind. Actually, and ironically, if popularity does prove right, then it would be subjective, unlike the idea that the Earth is flat is objectively wrong, regardless of how many people believed it."It is objective to look at ALL the reviews and see regardless of score, they all say the same thing. " <---- ALL REVIEWS regardless of how they feel about it, will say the same thing about Samurai Flamenco. And for some folks it is a good thing. For some folks it is a bad thing. You cannot tell me it is subjective at that point. Of course, the more basic problem is that not all reviews say the same thing. Energetic-Nova said: None of these are facts. lol Controversy is inherently steeped in opinions. Without contrary opinions, there's nothing to be controversial about. A good test to see whether something is objective is to imagine a world without certain people to observe them. If everyone who disliked Evangelion never existed, then can it still be considered controversial? No? Then controversy is not an inherent property of it, but a property of the social environment.If everyone says the same thing about an anime even if it is a positive review or a negative review, than it is probably one of the things which make the anime what it is. Evangelion for instance has a controversial ending which you could either love or hate. <---- This is a fact of the anime. You will either find the ending to be the best part of the anime or the thing that ruins it. And what you feel about it will probably say more about you than the anime itself. When someone does not like Samurai Flamanco, I feel that person doesn't like the unknown. They prefer a more predictable affair. Neon Genesis Evangelion lets me know if they can handle imperfect characters and crying and things maybe not ending in a neat bow for them. Energetic-Nova said: The slow pace nearly ruined Wolf's Rain, but the Eastern philosophy aspect of the ending painted a bleak picture that summarized the condition of humanity, always hopeful but always doomed to repeat itself. But if you gave me any atmospheric anime or any anime with a sad ending and expected that I would rate it highly, it would be a hasty generalization, and inaccurate. Because you are using your subjective experience to conclude mine.To me, these anime become markers of taste preference in how they prefer their story to flow. Usually if someone has rated Wolf's Rain highly, I can expect that this person is really into slow paced atmospheric anime with sad endings. Energetic-Nova said: Just like how Evangelion isn't literally love it or hate it, there is no black and white dichotomy between scifi and moe. Otherwise either no one would like shows that combine the two like Macross Frontier, or everyone. And that's obviously not the case: it's rated 7.99, not 10, or 1.And they probably love the scifi genre or would love it and the space genre if they watched more. And if a person rates it low, they usually like more action and moe character designs and the plot to go faster like Madoka. This is art not science. Nice asspull. When you start categorizing anime like myself between anime which have Mood Dissonance and Narm moments and ones which do not and can look at someone's list and determine if that is their thing or not, I would say you would have a good handle on the medium. And no, there is no line between scifi and moe however, there is a line between people who like slow paced stories with more western character designs and people who want a fast paced story and moe character designs. I would say these people are opposites. There are people like myself who dislike No.6 for the same things she dislikes Madoka for.They are very similar anime in some ways. Just No.6 is actually funnier. But they very much get the same criticism from me that they 1. Needed to be longer. And 2. Needed a less annoying ending. Madoka gets more hate because they showed me kinda more the ending I would like and of course we gotta just do what other magical girl anime do and nobody wants to acknowledge that unless they have seen at least 3 works from the genre.... *sigh* But for some people that ending is fine. They don't mind But for me, it is Dragon Ball Z... and Eva did it first. And not like anyone would praise Devilman for actually doing it first. The real split is Devilman or Cutey Honey. |
Energetic-NovaJan 2, 2018 6:03 AM
The anime community in a nutshell.  |
Energetic-Nova said: Relevance?katsucats said: This is art not science. Nice asspull. There's a common misconception that if everyone agrees with something, it must be objective, when in fact objective means without mind or perception, and you cannot say that the narrative judgment of an anime is without mind. Actually, and ironically, if popularity does prove right, then it would be subjective, unlike the idea that the Earth is flat is objectively wrong, regardless of how many people believed it. Of course, the more basic problem is that not all reviews say the same thing. None of these are facts. lol Controversy is inherently steeped in opinions. Without contrary opinions, there's nothing to be controversial about. A good test to see whether something is objective is to imagine a world without certain people to observe them. If everyone who disliked Evangelion never existed, then can it still be considered controversial? No? Then controversy is not an inherent property of it, but a property of the social environment. The slow pace nearly ruined Wolf's Rain, but the Eastern philosophy aspect of the ending painted a bleak picture that summarized the condition of humanity, always hopeful but always doomed to repeat itself. But if you gave me any atmospheric anime or any anime with a sad ending and expected that I would rate it highly, it would be a hasty generalization, and inaccurate. Because you are using your subjective experience to conclude mine. Just like how Evangelion isn't literally love it or hate it, there is no black and white dichotomy between scifi and moe. Otherwise either no one would like shows that combine the two like Macross Frontier, or everyone. And that's obviously not the case: it's rated 7.99, not 10, or 1. Energetic-Nova said: Those are either feelings that you've self-defined or arbitrary references defined by someone else. It's quite odd that you insist that objectivity means that people are aligned with your frame of reference. If I understood those moments, I'd say that I have a good handle on you, not anime. I already have a good handle on anime, much more refined than yourself, thank you very much.When you start categorizing anime like myself between anime which have Mood Dissonance and Narm moments and ones which do not and can look at someone's list and determine if that is their thing or not, I would say you would have a good handle on the medium. Energetic-Nova said: Wolf's Rain doesn't have western character designs. Kekkai Sensen has western character designs, but it's fast paced. Non Non Biyori is decidedly slow paced and is moe. I don't know where you pull this shit from.And no, there is no line between scifi and moe however, there is a line between people who like slow paced stories with more western character designs and people who want a fast paced story and moe character designs. I would say these people are opposites. |
| My subjective reviews: katsureview.wordpress.com THE CHAT CLUB. |
katsucats said: Energetic-Nova said: Relevance?This is art not science. Nice asspull. Energetic-Nova said: Those are either feelings that you've self-defined or arbitrary references defined by someone else. It's quite odd that you insist that objectivity means that people are aligned with your frame of reference. If I understood those moments, I'd say that I have a good handle on you, not anime. I already have a good handle on anime, much more refined than yourself, thank you very much.When you start categorizing anime like myself between anime which have Mood Dissonance and Narm moments and ones which do not and can look at someone's list and determine if that is their thing or not, I would say you would have a good handle on the medium. Energetic-Nova said: Wolf's Rain doesn't have western character designs. Kekkai Sensen has western character designs, but it's fast paced. Non Non Biyori is decidedly slow paced and is moe. I don't know where you pull this shit from.And no, there is no line between scifi and moe however, there is a line between people who like slow paced stories with more western character designs and people who want a fast paced story and moe character designs. I would say these people are opposites. Here is the TV trope for Mood Dissonance: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MoodDissonance And here is the tv Trope for Narm: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/Narm And the trope for Mood Whiplash: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MoodWhiplash Yeah plenty of moe anime are actually slice of life. But I am talking about a totally different thing. Anime with tonal shifts or everyone dies endings. I definitely feel there are a few different camps of people who like different things in these tropes. But if an anime is referenced in all 3, it is probably true that the anime is tone deaf. |
Energetic-NovaJan 2, 2018 6:11 AM
| The anime community in a nutshell. |
Energetic-Nova said: I don't see any similar at all between No. 6 and Madoka. If I recall, No. 6 was borderling shounen ai with an interesting premise that devolved into the most unsatisfying non-ending. It's like they had too many fillers and realized there wasn't enough time, so they decided to end it in the worst way possible. Madoka, on the other hand, had no overt deviant undertones and ended properly. Thematically speaking, No. 6 danced with several existential questions, but never went anywhere. It's hard to even compare it to anything because it's incomplete.There are people like myself who dislike No.6 for the same things she dislikes Madoka for.They are very similar anime in some ways. Just No.6 is actually funnier. But they very much get the same criticism from me that they 1. Needed to be longer. And 2. Needed a less annoying ending. Madoka gets more hate because they showed me kinda more the ending I would like and of course we gotta just do what other magical girl anime do and nobody wants to acknowledge that unless they have seen at least 3 works from the genre.... *sigh* |
| My subjective reviews: katsureview.wordpress.com THE CHAT CLUB. |
katsucats said: This is a red herring. I'm not talking about popularity so I don't know why you feel like I am. Regular normal people are not Joyce scholars, so why should I ever care(in the sort of academic sense of "care" to not seem facetious) about what they have to say about James Joyce? 1. Popularity is not objectivity. katsucats said: You're putting words into the mouths of animators and just presume that the only reason they care about Miyazaki is because they found him relatable or appreciate the effort used. That is not what the consensus among experienced and learned animators are. Miyazaki's technique is considered top of the line for the industry, not just anime but elsewhere, and it's not because animators are circlejerking the effort he put in.2. Animators may appreciate how hard it is to animate a work. The techniques are relevant to their experience. They may take the time to convey to us how the work inspires so that we understand their perspective. Animators would say Miyazaki's animation is great because the process of creation is relatable. Animators then praise the work and we say that the work is great. But when we say it is great, there's a couple things to keep in mind. We are not saying that it is objectively great, we are saying that experts recognize the effort that went into its creation. But yes, the sentiment that we just kowtow to expert sentiment is understandable, but I don't actually like Miyazaki. In fact, I think he's an average storyteller with only a handful of decent films, but to deny his technique would be absurd. There's an important difference, in my opinion of course. ;) katsucats said: The Greeks figured out with #maths that the Earth wasn't flat a long time ago, but pardoning that, just because Justin Bieber is incredibly popular does not mean that experts have deemed him valuable. Context is important in this, but I will agree that all human knowledge endeavors are by definition at the mercy of human error and radical revolutions in thought and idea. So, yes, maybe in 5000 years, if we are still alive, Bieber will be seen as the hero of humanity while Beethoven will be relegated to lost archives, but I dislike this extrapolation that people use to say that in a couple thousand years figures that we have now are going to be forgotten and lost, because these are all pretty much either answered by relevant arguments ("period pieces" for instance) or just essentially what they are, pure extrapolation and hypothesis. If anything, the opposite has happened, where artistic opinion is more synthesized to be more all inclusive and consistent rather than changing from one radical tradition to the next, not too unlike Hegel's dialectical synthesis. Even if a lot of people, even if a lot of experts value a particular work or idea, it does not mean it is more objectively valuable or right. Otherwise, we'd admit that at one time, the Earth was flat, the universe revolved around it, God existed, Justin Bieber is a better singer than Mariah Carey, Vincent Van Gogh was a shit artist, and Avogadro's Gas Law was absurd (as it was considered by the experts of his day). I also dislike arguments that are backward looking and note either scientific mistakes or, more topical to this matter, a sort of presumed misjudgment of taste, because the latter immediately implies that there is a "correct" judgment that should have been made. When people say things like "Oh, people used to hate Edgar Allen Poe, the novel Moby Dick, or "can you imagine Schubert was almost relegated to obscurity," there is an implication that a misjudgment of taste has been made, and almost immediately we are asked to resolve the question of whether any of those three hold value. I do, which is why I say these precise things. katsucats said: No I'm not. Someone said in this thread that being "purely" objective removes any humanistic elements, which I don't think is necessarily true. People wouldn't be in university studying texts if they didn't enjoy it.If you mean enjoying something as in turning your mind off, that's not what's being said at all. Or maybe they're slaves to academia. Iono. katsucats said: I mean you seem to think any analysis is somehow some person's individualized perspective and bias, when I don't think that's true. Classical music is a great example because music theory is at once both a sort of grappling with aesthetic sensibility (clearly subjective) and...math (which we might as well call objective).It is, and this isn't mutually exclusive with subjectivity. I won't ask you to do it, and I guess you'll just have to trust me on this, but anybody who studies Beethoven's late fugal compositions, for instance, will immediately be able to analyze and discern that he is indebted and extending techniques and methods employed by Bach and and Mozart. This is not a disputable claim, all you have to do is know math and you will see the patterns of where Beethoven is indebted. Further, if you look at another composer like Brahms, even by just listening to Brahms, one can tell that Brahms is essentially just adding to the foundational edifices of his musical predecessors. The actual analysis of his work bears the much clearer picture obviously, but none of this is just "my" opinion that I've instilled into the music. I haven't interpreted aesthetic feeling from the sheet music. I just did math. e: By the way, I mentioned how Schubert was relegated to obscurity. One's study of music theory will also find that due to his obscurity, Schubert's composition and unique approach to music is chronicled well in musical lineage, where we see how his compositions were not born into the next romantic era, and instead the classical tradition followed in the footsteps of Chopin. To thus say Schubert is "unique" is not some sort of personalized claim. It's rooted in our understanding of music history. Another area where I think judgment and evaluation isn't placed in the eye of the beholder. katsucats said: There was a post earlier in this thread. I'm too lazy to find it, but if you're really insistent on this I will.Once again, nobody said you can't. katsucats said: Again, I feel like this sort of fear of these sorts of standards is rooted in McCarthy era anti-Soviet sentiment, where anything that remotely resembles checklists, rubrics, and order are automatically assumed to have like robotic/mechanical aspects rooted in Communist sympathies. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯No, what reduces a work is when you think predetermined metrics and standards are objective laws of nature or God, in which case your analysis is a checklist or equation that involves no self-reflection, soul searching or humanism. You just plug and chug, and anyone who disagrees with your conclusions are objectively wrong -- they used the wrong equation. Anyway, I don't think these are objective laws or the rules of the natural world, but I'd much prefer in literature, for instance, that if we were to discuss literature, we discussed novels and poetry on an understood formal structure. And, as I'm sure you're aware, these structures change depending on historical period, writing style, country of origin, author in question, etc. etc. etc, but at least sensible pre-determined standards are more fruitful than what we have here. I don't mean this to say that this is the reason the anime community fucking sucks at discourse, but it really is because few people in this community seem to have broad and all-encompassing sensibility on the rhetoric of fiction that we keep getting into arguments about "if characters are whiny are they bad," "can a story be good without a plot," and "what's the meaning of character development?" katsucats said: The quality of being literary is something that is much more "real" insofar as any knowledge can be real. We can go ahead and take a set of traits like adept use of literary techniques and concepts, insight into the human condition, coherence of form and vision, aesthetic value, etc. as signs of literariness. These traits have been extensively studied, theorized on, and debated about, and I think it would be silly, not to mention extremely conceited, for one to dismiss literary studies in academia. Okay, but try defining cinematic or literary with non-subjective terms? We can have quite multi-dimensional discussions on how a particular sequence makes us feel, what kind of feelings or metaphoric scenery it evokes, or how its beats contributes in the message that it attempts to convey without ever leaving the realm of subjective discourse. Of course we can also talk about which software they used to make it, but that's not interesting, is it? It's why I'm confident in saying that, Borges for instance has a much greater use of literary techniques (metafiction), and demonstrates a superior coherence of form (short story) and vision (postmodern conceptions of reality) to say, his fellow compatriot Adolfo Bioy Casares, whose novel The Invention of Morel, essentially an imitation of Borgesian form, pales in comparison on both a technical and thematic level. But again, it all comes down to rules and definitions. I'll be the first to agree with you that all "universal" rules built from any moral or aesthetic imperatives crumble at the mention of the one person who disagrees with you, but as I mentioned earlier, I think it's extremely arrogant for people to just dismiss the study of narratology on the basis that how we "feel" is more important than even just the last hundred years of aesthetic theory. |
YudinaJan 2, 2018 6:30 AM
katsucats said: Energetic-Nova said: I don't see any similar at all between No. 6 and Madoka. If I recall, No. 6 was borderling shounen ai with an interesting premise that devolved into the most unsatisfying non-ending. It's like they had too many fillers and realized there wasn't enough time, so they decided to end it in the worst way possible. Madoka, on the other hand, had no overt deviant undertones and ended properly. Thematically speaking, No. 6 danced with several existential questions, but never went anywhere. It's hard to even compare it to anything because it's incomplete.There are people like myself who dislike No.6 for the same things she dislikes Madoka for.They are very similar anime in some ways. Just No.6 is actually funnier. But they very much get the same criticism from me that they 1. Needed to be longer. And 2. Needed a less annoying ending. Madoka gets more hate because they showed me kinda more the ending I would like and of course we gotta just do what other magical girl anime do and nobody wants to acknowledge that unless they have seen at least 3 works from the genre.... *sigh* I feel for me, they ended the same. And with the same trope I don't like and find more acceptable in a property like Sailor Moon where I have love for the characters, they allow that build up vs. Madoka or No.6 which does not but Madoka less so. Was I supposed to feel something? Apparently so. Most people find all character death sad. A moment like this also occurs in Yu Yu Hakusho. Which I also don't like. But at least it is longer so there are other things for me to like. Attack on Titan also gets hate from me for the same thing. I would actually say Genkai from Yu Yu Hakusho is the entire reason I can't like these anime who do this ever again to me. Cause as much as DBZ taught me to not feel in it's anime... Yu yu Hakusho caused me to clam up any sort of feels from that day forth. You just can't trust it. But No.6 does make you question more things than Madoka does. It isn't there to only have one interpretation of events and is closer to being like Evangelion that way than Madoka is. Utena makes you question lots of things. I think there is a difference between anime which are philosophical in nature and anime which are simply save the world by fishing and card games. Not that I don't like those anime. But the lonliness you feel watching something like Video Girl Ai will be the same as Evangelion for me. <--- Anime with loneliness themes at their center. Video Girl Ai made me cry every single episode. I think character death doesn't make me cry in the way that feeling all alone does... see: Wolf's Rain or Evangelion which have both. Princess Tutu also has a very lonely feeling. Madoka struggles with choices I guess. But does it struggle with feeling truly alone in the way Loveless does (another very incomplete anime)? But this is up to opinion. Does Madoka have profound themes of loneliness. I would say, in the side characters which weren't given that much development, yes. But in Madoka herself who is simply indecisive, no. I think some people, like myself, prefer some things to remain unsaid in their supposedly profound anime. And other people need concrete answers for everything. See the No. 6 ending vs Madoka ending and you could see why someone who likes things a little more open ended would like it more. Can an anime make being lonely the greatest adventure like Captain Harlock? I would say, Cowboy Bebop says yes. The profound lonely feelings for the forever alone come in many flavors. Evangelion and Madoka are ultimately Hamlet in the end though. But how do you like your Hamlet? And is it really better than Lion King? |
Energetic-NovaJan 2, 2018 6:57 AM
| The anime community in a nutshell. |
| True objectivity is liking something yet being aware of its failings, rather than being offended if someone disagrees. If you can balance subjective enjoyment with critical thinking, you have the mindset of a critic. And that is the only way for self-improvement in general. True idiocy is saying "everything is subjective, so don't hurt my feelings by questioning my taste". That kind of insular logic leaves people stupid forever more. There is a difference between Ousama Game and Death Note. There is a difference between an amateur and a professional. Humour is subjective but bad writing as a rule never will be. |
AironicallyHumanJan 2, 2018 6:36 AM
AironicallyHuman said: You took the words from my mouth. I wanted to say exactly this but didn't know how.True objectivity is liking something yet being aware of its failings, rather than being offended if someone disagrees. If you can balance subjective enjoyment with critical thinking, you have the mindset of a critic. And that is the only way for self-improvement in general. True idiocy is saying "everything is subjective, so don't hurt my feelings by questioning my taste". That kind of insular logic leaves people stupid forever more. There is a difference between Ousama Game and Death Note. There is a difference between an amateur and a professional. Humour is subjective but bad writing as a rule never will be. |
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Yudina said: Wayne Booth's appropriately titled The Rhetoric of Fiction would go a long way in helping a lot of people develop a better critical lexicon, in my opinion. It's just another one of those books that I think are pretty seminal reference tools in getting into seeing some of the inner cogs of fiction.I don't mean this to say that this is the reason the anime community fucking sucks at discourse, but it really is because few people in this community seem to have broad and all-encompassing sensibility on the rhetoric of fiction that we keep getting into arguments about "if characters are whiny are they bad," "can a story be good without a plot," and "what's the meaning of character development?" |
AironicallyHuman said: True objectivity is liking something yet being aware of its failings, rather than being offended if someone disagrees. If you can balance subjective enjoyment with critical thinking, you have the mindset of a critic. And that is the only way for self-improvement in general. True idiocy is saying "everything is subjective, so don't hurt my feelings by questioning my taste". That kind of insular logic leaves people stupid forever more. There is a difference between Ousama Game and Death Note. There is a difference between an amateur and a professional. Humour is subjective but bad writing as a rule never will be. But what makes a bad writing or good writing? What makes an amateur and a professional? Those kind of things are totally subjective. Everyone want a good quality anime but makes a good quality anime? Sure, it easy to says objectively good anime has good story,writing, narrative, characters,etc which is common sense doesn't add anything new to the discussion, instead that lead us to the next important question and that is what makes a good story, writing, narrative, characters etc? It ultimately goes down to subjectivity as different people has different way to define what makes a good story, writing, narrative and characters.  |
VyzassJan 2, 2018 7:12 AM
| 'America is a stolen country' https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SM8WZ0ztMuc Zapredon said: It doesn't matter if you like LoGH,Monster etc.If you are a jobless or college/school dropout living in your mom basement, you are still an unintelligent loser. Taste in anime does not make you a better person. Totally agree! |
Vyzass said: But what makes a bad writing or good writing? What makes an amateur and a professional? Those kind of things are totally subjective. Motivations and pacing; the logical and the illogical. If characters come across as human, rather than a creation, then that is the difference between amateur writing and professional. If the story flows from point to point, without abrupt jumps, then it is well-paced. None of that is subjective. Retaining the human aspect in fiction is the easiest way to differentiate between something pandering and something not. Subjectivity is nothing to do with writing and everything to do with fetishes. You can like something someone else will hate but that does not make bad writing good or invalidate the arguments against it. It's perfectly possible to like something and be able to say it's flawed. |
AironicallyHuman said: Vyzass said: But what makes a bad writing or good writing? What makes an amateur and a professional? Those kind of things are totally subjective. Motivations and pacing; the logical and the illogical. If characters come across as human, rather than a creation, then that is the difference between amateur writing and professional. If the story flows from point to point, without abrupt jumps, then it is well-paced. None of this is subjective. Subjectivity is nothing to do with writing and everything to do with fetishes. You can like something someone else will hate but that does not make bad writing good or invalidate the arguments against it. It's perfectly possible to like something and be able to say it's flawed. So motivations and pacing, the logical and illogical are what makes a good writing to you. Is this your definition/criteria on what makes a good writing that accepted by you only or it also applicable to other anime fans as well? If other anime fan doesn't share the same kind of criteria on what makes a good writing, doesn't that means good writing is subjective? |
VyzassJan 2, 2018 7:27 AM
| 'America is a stolen country' https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SM8WZ0ztMuc Zapredon said: It doesn't matter if you like LoGH,Monster etc.If you are a jobless or college/school dropout living in your mom basement, you are still an unintelligent loser. Taste in anime does not make you a better person. Totally agree! |
Yudina said: The point still stands even if we mean popularity among scholars.katsucats said: This is a red herring. I'm not talking about popularity so I don't know why you feel like I am. Regular normal people are not Joyce scholars, so why should I ever care(in the sort of academic sense of "care" to not seem facetious) about what they have to say about James Joyce? 1. Popularity is not objectivity. Yudina said: It was an example to illustrate the point of contrasting expert consensus and objectivity with regards to a work's purported greatness.katsucats said: You're putting words into the mouths of animators and just presume that the only reason they care about Miyazaki is because they found him relatable or appreciate the effort used. That is not what the consensus among experienced and learned animators are. Miyazaki's technique is considered top of the line for the industry, not just anime but elsewhere, and it's not because animators are circlejerking the effort he put in. 2. Animators may appreciate how hard it is to animate a work. The techniques are relevant to their experience. They may take the time to convey to us how the work inspires so that we understand their perspective. Animators would say Miyazaki's animation is great because the process of creation is relatable. Animators then praise the work and we say that the work is great. But when we say it is great, there's a couple things to keep in mind. We are not saying that it is objectively great, we are saying that experts recognize the effort that went into its creation. Yudina said: Absurd only in the sense that if Miyazaki is universally lauded, and we don't know any better. But expert sentiment isn't truth. By that I mean we should accept expert testimony pending further evidence, but the subject is inherently not an objective matter that could be empirically measured.But yes, the sentiment that we just kowtow to expert sentiment is understandable, but I don't actually like Miyazaki. In fact, I think he's an average storyteller with only a handful of decent films, but to deny his technique would be absurd. There's an important difference, in my opinion of course. ;) Yudina said: It is a hypothetical. If you accept that anonymous expert testimonial is binding, then in the hypothetical world that all experts testify on the brilliance of Lil' Pump, you should accept that Lil' Pump is potentially brilliant. But since it is possible to imagine this reality (such that it is not possible to imagine that gravity does not exist without breaking major propositions that we hold as evident truths), it disproves expert consensus as an objective authority.katsucats said: The Greeks figured out with #maths that the Earth wasn't flat a long time ago, but pardoning that, just because Justin Bieber is incredibly popular does not mean that experts have deemed him valuable. Context is important in this, but I will agree that all human knowledge endeavors are by definition at the mercy of human error and radical revolutions in thought and idea. So, yes, maybe in 5000 years, if we are still alive, Bieber will be seen as the hero of humanity while Beethoven will be relegated to lost archives, but I dislike this extrapolation that people use to say that in a couple thousand years figures that we have now are going to be forgotten and lost, because these are all pretty much either answered by relevant arguments ("period pieces" for instance) or just essentially what they are, pure extrapolation and hypothesis. If anything, the opposite has happened, where artistic opinion is more synthesized to be more all inclusive and consistent rather than changing from one radical tradition to the next, not too unlike Hegel's dialectical synthesis. Even if a lot of people, even if a lot of experts value a particular work or idea, it does not mean it is more objectively valuable or right. Otherwise, we'd admit that at one time, the Earth was flat, the universe revolved around it, God existed, Justin Bieber is a better singer than Mariah Carey, Vincent Van Gogh was a shit artist, and Avogadro's Gas Law was absurd (as it was considered by the experts of his day). Yudina said: You do, but which is the misjudgment? If expert testimonial changes over time, is artistic value a function of time, even if the artwork itself does not change? Why not just shave this with Occam's razor and attribute artistic value to the individual experts themselves, which is much more reasonable and doesn't require any metaphysical structure?I also dislike arguments that are backward looking and note either scientific mistakes or, more topical to this matter, a sort of presumed misjudgment of taste, because the latter immediately implies that there is a "correct" judgment that should have been made. When people say things like "Oh, people used to hate Edgar Allen Poe, the novel Moby Dick, or "can you imagine Schubert was almost relegated to obscurity," there is an implication that a misjudgment of taste has been made, and almost immediately we are asked to resolve the question of whether any of those three hold value. I do, which is why I say these precise things. Yudina said: I said that. And studying it at university does not preclude it from subjectivity. They call it liberal arts, or "humanities" for a reason. And the reason is that it relates to the human subject.katsucats said: No I'm not. Someone said in this thread that being "purely" objective removes any humanistic elements, which I don't think is necessarily true. People wouldn't be in university studying texts if they didn't enjoy it.If you mean enjoying something as in turning your mind off, that's not what's being said at all. Or maybe they're slaves to academia. Iono. Yudina said: I am speaking on the subject of aesthetic sensibility, which comprises any judgment of value. You can analyze the math in music theory, but that would only clarify a description. It does not impart value inherently. Music isn't so great because it adheres to the math of some theory. It is great if an individual finds adherence to theory aesthetically pleasing.katsucats said: I mean you seem to think any analysis is somehow some person's individualized perspective and bias, when I don't think that's true. Classical music is a great example because music theory is at once both a sort of grappling with aesthetic sensibility (clearly subjective) and...math (which we might as well call objective). It is, and this isn't mutually exclusive with subjectivity. Yudina said: I don't doubt you, but none of this exercise tells us how great Beethoven is.I won't ask you to do it, and I guess you'll just have to trust me on this, but anybody who studies Beethoven's late fugal compositions, for instance, will immediately be able to analyze and discern that he is indebted and extending techniques and methods employed by Bach and and Mozart. This is not a disputable claim, all you have to do is know math and you will see the patterns of where Beethoven is indebted. Further, if you look at another composer like Brahms, even by just listening to Brahms, one can tell that Brahms is essentially just adding to the foundational edifices of his musical predecessors. The actual analysis of his work bears the much clearer picture obviously, but none of this is just "my" opinion that I've instilled into the music. I haven't interpreted aesthetic feeling from the sheet music. I just did math. Yudina said: Again, understanding the formal structure of literature (and music) helps us interpret it as the authors of the respective genres would have, or perhaps understand the terminology of experts so we could further communicate our ideas. These grammatical rules have structure, and they are objective. But I feel you are committing a semantic fallacy, in which this objectivity is then substituted for the purported objectivity of aesthetic sensibility. No expert would suggest that mere satisfaction of some set of rules prescribe greatness. Anybody could write a haiku poetry if he knew the rules, but that's not what made Matsuo Basho great. Anyone who has studied a semester or two of music theory knows how to analyze counterpoint, or switch between modes, but that's not what made Mozart great. What made them great was aesthetic sensibility. We can study how some classical music adheres to counterpoint, or how jazz adheres to chord progression, but that doesn't lend any help to forming an opinion about a work.katsucats said: There was a post earlier in this thread. I'm too lazy to find it, but if you're really insistent on this I will.Once again, nobody said you can't. katsucats said: Again, I feel like this sort of fear of these sorts of standards is rooted in McCarthy era anti-Soviet sentiment, where anything that remotely resembles checklists, rubrics, and order are automatically assumed to have like robotic/mechanical aspects rooted in Communist sympathies. ¯_(ツ)_/¯No, what reduces a work is when you think predetermined metrics and standards are objective laws of nature or God, in which case your analysis is a checklist or equation that involves no self-reflection, soul searching or humanism. You just plug and chug, and anyone who disagrees with your conclusions are objectively wrong -- they used the wrong equation. Anyway, I don't think these are objective laws or the rules of the natural world, but I'd much prefer in literature, for instance, that if we were to discuss literature, we discussed novels and poetry on an understood formal structure. And, as I'm sure you're aware, these structures change depending on historical period, writing style, country of origin, author in question, etc. etc. etc, but at least sensible pre-determined standards are more fruitful than what we have here. Then, there are structural analyses that require subjective interpretation. For example, Robert McKee describes screenplays by dividing the story into a number of "beats" that, for example, establishes the pathos of the protagonist, or builds conflict to the climax, but there is no objective formula that tells us exactly which point constitutes the climax peak, and relatability with the protagonist is subject to the values of the audience. We could infer that the author meant to do something or another, or that certain events denote the start of a saga or establishes so and so -- and no doubt experts could hold consensus on some of these things -- but they are not free from aesthetic and moral judgment. Yudina said: I agree, but vagueness, lack of nuance or understanding of context, etc., are not symptoms of subjectivity. They are symptoms of lack of aesthetic sensibility refinement or lack of communication skills, or lack of vocabulary. In fact, a large segment of the anime community believe they could achieve an air of respectability and impartiality by avoiding subtleties or elaboration, and this is what infuriates me (well, not really, but insofar that anime discussion is hampered by it).I don't mean this to say that this is the reason the anime community fucking sucks at discourse, but it really is because few people in this community seem to have broad and all-encompassing sensibility on the rhetoric of fiction that we keep getting into arguments about "if characters are whiny are they bad," "can a story be good without a plot," and "what's the meaning of character development?" Yudina said: Ah-ha! I was waiting for this delicious is-ought fallacy, where you made the jump from aesthetic sensibilities being obviously subjective to the idea that literary techniques, only some of which are objectively measurable, directly informs aesthetic value.katsucats said: The quality of being literary is something that is much more "real" insofar as any knowledge can be real. We can go ahead and take a set of traits like adept use of literary techniques and concepts, insight into the human condition, coherence of form and vision, aesthetic value, etc. as signs of literariness. Okay, but try defining cinematic or literary with non-subjective terms? We can have quite multi-dimensional discussions on how a particular sequence makes us feel, what kind of feelings or metaphoric scenery it evokes, or how its beats contributes in the message that it attempts to convey without ever leaving the realm of subjective discourse. Of course we can also talk about which software they used to make it, but that's not interesting, is it? Yudina said: Literary studies are not scientific studies.These traits have been extensively studied, theorized on, and debated about, and I think it would be silly, not to mention extremely conceited, for one to dismiss literary studies in academia. Yudina said: I'm confident that when you review your metric of "greatness of use of literary techniques" and "coherence of form" and "vision", and find that they involve no math like the structure of haiku and counterpoint, that you would not be so confident.It's why I'm confident in saying that, Borges for instance has a much greater use of literary techniques (metafiction), and demonstrates a superior coherence of form (short story) and vision (postmodern conceptions of reality) to say, his fellow compatriot Adolfo Bioy Casares, whose novel The Invention of Morel, essentially an imitation of Borgesian form, pales in comparison on both a technical and thematic level. Yudina said: We do not dismiss it. We merely realize what it is and what it is not.But again, it all comes down to rules and definitions. I'll be the first to agree with you that all "universal" rules built from any moral or aesthetic imperatives crumble at the mention of the one person who disagrees with you, but as I mentioned earlier, I think it's extremely arrogant for people to just dismiss the study of narratology on the basis that how we "feel" is more important than even just the last hundred years of aesthetic theory. |
katsucatsJan 2, 2018 7:28 AM
| My subjective reviews: katsureview.wordpress.com THE CHAT CLUB. |
Vyzass said: So motivations and pacing, the logical and illogical are what makes a good writing to you. Is this only your definition on what makes a good writing or it also applicable to other anime fans as well? If the argument you're trying to make is that other anime fans can better relate to caricatures than people and enjoy watching something that skips between scenes with no rhyme or reason, then it's more than possible to define writing as subjective to the extent that they can write better than the most talented authors in history, yes. I say again enjoyment is not defined as pretending to be ignorant of flaws. I can enjoy something written intentionally stupid just as much as I can hate something objectively excellent. Being self-aware enough to differentiate is objectivity. |
Crusader_8 said: What a weird extrapolation at the end. Possibly a strawman but I don't think it was your intention so I'm gonna believe it wasn't. Just because I believe art and artists can be objectively evaluated has nothing to do with whether I will give new art or new artists a chance. Why did you think that taking the objective side leads to such a mentality? All of that nonsense also implies that someone who takes the objective side in this debate will only want to watch things that have been objectively measured to be the best... I take the objective side in this and I'll always be the first to tell people I have shit taste! Some of my favorite anime (not to be confused with my favorites list) are high school rom-coms. Most of the anime I own and re-watch are things I gave a 6 to. My loving an anime doesn't cloud my ability to understand whether the directing, animation, etc, is good or not. Please don't misrepresent what it means to believe in objective evaluation of art. This extrapolation will make sense if you consider that an older and more qualified writer can never produce a work that is inferior to a younger and less qualified writer, given your worldview. If that ever happens, then your entire system of skill is called into question which will put your art critique under scrutiny too. |
AironicallyHuman said: Vyzass said: So motivations and pacing, the logical and illogical are what makes a good writing to you. Is this only your definition on what makes a good writing or it also applicable to other anime fans as well? If the argument you're trying to make is that other anime fans can better relate to caricatures than people and enjoy watching something that skips between scenes with no rhyme or reason, then it's more than possible to define writing as subjective to the extent that they can write better than the most talented authors in history, yes. I say again enjoyment is not defined as pretending to be ignorant of flaws. I can enjoy something written intentionally stupid just as much as I can hate something objectively excellent. Being self-aware enough to differentiate is objectivity. Can you elaborate the statement 'anime fans can better relate to caricatures than people ' because anime fans are people themselves too. You make it sounds like anime fans and people are two separate thing but could be misunderstanding on my part. Again, just like the writing thing, how you define someone able to relate closely to caricatures are subjective too. Are you saying that if you take out enjoyment while judging anime, it means that you are judging objectively? But would you agree with me that even if we take out enjoyment different people will still come up with different criteria on what makes a good quality writing/anime? |
| 'America is a stolen country' https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SM8WZ0ztMuc Zapredon said: It doesn't matter if you like LoGH,Monster etc.If you are a jobless or college/school dropout living in your mom basement, you are still an unintelligent loser. Taste in anime does not make you a better person. Totally agree! |
AironicallyHuman said: This is a false dichotomy and a semantic shift fallacy. It is a false dichotomy because thinking your opinions represent objectivity and having balanced judgment, in contrast with thinking everything is subjective and having a thin skin are not the only two positions. It is a semantic shift fallacy because you defined objectivity using the definition of impartiality, but contrasted it to subjectivity, which is opposed only to another definition of objectivity. In fact, having a balanced perspective and not being emotionally reactive and thin skinned is not objectivity or impartiality, but it is desirable. The art of critique is improved by understanding narrative structure and all the things that Yudina said, but it is ultimately subjective. It is an art. You can't write a computer program to do this except by using machine learning to figure out what appeals to people.True objectivity is liking something yet being aware of its failings, rather than being offended if someone disagrees. If you can balance subjective enjoyment with critical thinking, you have the mindset of a critic. And that is the only way for self-improvement in general. True idiocy is saying "everything is subjective, so don't hurt my feelings by questioning my taste". That kind of insular logic leaves people stupid forever more. AironicallyHuman said: A professional is someone who is paid to do what he does. An amateur is someone who has not had a lot of experience. Ousama Game and Death Note were commercialized or serialized before the animes were made. Yet, they were both first major works of the respective authors. In that sense, they were both amateur and professional.There is a difference between Ousama Game and Death Note. There is a difference between an amateur and a professional. Humour is subjective but bad writing as a rule never will be. |
| My subjective reviews: katsureview.wordpress.com THE CHAT CLUB. |
| I'm lazy so apologies for terse replies. katsucats said: It's not popularity among scholars. It's just you won't find substantive academic criticism (in the "I dislike" negative definition of criticism) of Joyce, even by professors who disregard Joyce out of personal taste and preference. Again, there's a difference.The point still stands even if we mean popularity among scholars. katsucats said: The point is not all work of literary criticism and judgment are done to imprint the status of "great" on something, which was a good chunk of my original statement.I don't doubt you, but none of this exercise tells us how great Beethoven is. katsucats said: I never committed this fallacy. My only point was to say that not all pursuits of judgment and analysis are done to make something look great. The back of all my Norton Critical Editions of Romantic poetry aren't filled with lamentations about how people don't like Wordsworth or Keats as much as they should. It's all hard analysis. Again, understanding the formal structure of literature (and music) helps us interpret it as the authors of the respective genres would have, or perhaps understand the terminology of experts so we could further communicate our ideas. These grammatical rules have structure, and they are objective. But I feel you are committing a semantic fallacy, in which this objectivity is then substituted for the purported objectivity of aesthetic sensibility. No expert would suggest that mere satisfaction of some set of rules prescribe greatness. katsucats said: I disagree strongly with the last part. Understanding counterpoint, chord progression, and Sonata form are instrumental in appreciating good music to its fullest. Someone who loves Beethoven but listens to him as a hobby and someone who loves and studies Beethoven are completely different, in that the latter almost certainly has a more enriched and informed opinion. To know that Goethe uses Greek classical poetry and transitions in meter from Greek to Romantic German poetic traditions is instrumental in understanding loving what is otherwise a seemingly impenetrable part two in Faust. Structural knowledge breeds synthesis and understanding. Anybody could write a haiku poetry if he knew the rules, but that's not what made Matsuo Basho great. Anyone who has studied a semester or two of music theory knows how to analyze counterpoint, or switch between modes, but that's not what made Mozart great. What made them great was aesthetic sensibility. We can study how some classical music adheres to counterpoint, or how jazz adheres to chord progression, but that doesn't lend any help to forming an opinion about a work. katsucats said: I didn't mean to blame subjectivity.I agree, but vagueness, lack of nuance or understanding of context, etc., are not symptoms of subjectivity. They are symptoms of lack of aesthetic sensibility refinement or lack of communication skills, or lack of vocabulary. In fact, a large segment of the anime community believe they could achieve an air of respectability and impartiality by avoiding subtleties or elaboration, and this is what infuriates me (well, not really, but insofar that anime discussion is hampered by it). katsucats said: They do inform aesthetic value, and much of it is subjective; I never denied any of this. And again, I'm well aware that, in music, concepts like "making music" and "playing with virtuosity" are all in the ears of the listener and that "elegance of prose" and "beauty of sentiment" are all vague qualifiers, but behind these are literary forms and techniques that aren't just terminologies spun from thin air, but constantly debated and theorized for centuries. As I mentioned at the top, there is a reason that even people who disregard or dismiss Joyce out of personal preference, have nothing bad to say about him. It isn't because Joyce is immune from criticism, and I'm not just talking about circlejerking Joyce wankers, and there are clearly plenty people don't like him. It's just you won't find substantive academic dismissal.Ah-ha! I was waiting for this delicious is-ought fallacy, where you made the jump from aesthetic sensibilities being obviously subjective to the idea that literary techniques, only some of which are objectively measurable, directly informs aesthetic value. Why is that? It's not because there's some conspiracy to shove Ulysses down your throat. It's because Joyce fulfills and exceeds all parameters of what "literary" could possibly mean. And again, what "literary" means is clearly enclosed in a sort of structured space in a means to understanding aesthetics. If you step out of it, it obviously loses meaning and becomes essentially the buzzword it is today, but it's when you dance in the hermeneutic circle that its applications becomes discernible. katsucats said: That's irrelevant to whether or not we should listen, to be perfectly honest.Literary studies are not scientific studies. katsucats said: Unlike other people, I don't prescribe to the idea that something has to be scientifically verifiable to confident in adhering to. When someone who knows as much as literature as I do can prove to me that Invention of Morel demonstrates greater literary capacity than Borges's short story is the day I concede. And again, this isn't knowledge that I've just pulled out of my ass. When I say Borges has an immensely superior of vision and coherence of form, it isn't some flimsy concept, but rather one that is immediately apparent by people who read and understand what literary techniques, forms, and devices both authors are deploying.I'm confident that when you review your metric of "greatness of use of literary techniques" and "coherence of form" and "vision", and find that they involve no math like the structure of haiku and counterpoint, that you would not be so confident. I mean....I guess some guy can be like "yo fam I disagree," but then they'd have bad taste I guess. :P |
YudinaJan 2, 2018 8:13 AM
| Why can't you? Just devide the anime into discretely scoreahle categories like: story, characters, musoc, animation (or anything that yoi can separate it into eg.: storybuildin constructs (story itself, narration, typical osts for a certain event etc)) Then look at what you watched and decide a balance for these categories (mostly genre list helps). Then yoi can score it. And set a good meaning to your stats like 5/10 is averafe for me. EXAMPLE TIME: I just watched Cardcaptor Sakura It is a shounenish anime meaning that the characters aren't that important except for the MC and the story should be in the focus. But because the first half/thrid is episodic, but the overall storyline is centered arond two big "goals"/"opponents" (keep in mind I keep it spoilerfree). Also it is a long 70 ep anime so the music shouldnot be that diverse, but iconic/memorable. It is kind of old anime so the animation can be dated. So what did we get in terms of story: good . Slow start but it is really cool that most long runmer shounen arcs are beaten by the lat arc. So it is a big plus. It puts rhe anime above average for aure, because the genre specific main stat is good. But for the repetitiveness of some early episodes I give the story as a whole a 6/10 only. (remember 5 is an average acorw for me ao ir is still good) Characters:sometimes bit repetitive, but those whobeeded to be detailed got details so it is also a positive point. It delegates the anime to a 7/10 ( actually it is lile a, but I generally give the higher whole number 6.5/10). Music is meh, because the episode count I wont take away any point. Animation is dated but the proportions for the adults and some really wired "wtf is happening in the screen" moments I cannot go without taking away a point here (in actuallity it is like a 0.5 point, but the anime stiod at 6.5ish point) tadaaa 6/10 |
Yudina said: What is the difference? You are saying that the work enjoys such popularity that it has no substantive academic criticism. And if it were academically criticized, it would not be as great. That is exactly greatness by popularity. For what it's worth, I found Dubliners to be hit and miss myself. More misses than hits. A few of the stories were enjoyable.I'm lazy so apologies for terse replies. katsucats said: It's not popularity among scholars. It's just you won't find substantive academic criticism (in the "I dislike" negative definition of criticism) of Joyce, even by professors who disregard Joyce out of personal taste and preference. Again, there's a difference. The point still stands even if we mean popularity among scholars. Yudina said: "Great" is a substitution for all such value judgments. It includes: terse, short, long, cohesive, visionary, sublime, chiaroscuro, allegro, andante, pizzicato, *insert another musical term here*, sad, happy, etc.katsucats said: The point is not all work of literary criticism and judgment are done to imprint the status of "great" on something, which was a good chunk of my original statement. I don't doubt you, but none of this exercise tells us how great Beethoven is. Yudina said: This claim is highly doubtful. Literary analysis does not only contain objectively discernible structure, devoid of all personal feeling. Even the choice of which passages to deconstruct to weave some kind of cohesive narrative for an essay is subjective.katsucats said: I never committed this fallacy. My only point was to say that not all pursuits of judgment and analysis are done to make something look great. The back of all my Norton Critical Editions of Romantic poetry aren't filled with lamentations about how people don't like Wordsworth or Keats as much as they should. It's all hard analysis. Again, understanding the formal structure of literature (and music) helps us interpret it as the authors of the respective genres would have, or perhaps understand the terminology of experts so we could further communicate our ideas. These grammatical rules have structure, and they are objective. But I feel you are committing a semantic fallacy, in which this objectivity is then substituted for the purported objectivity of aesthetic sensibility. No expert would suggest that mere satisfaction of some set of rules prescribe greatness. Yudina said: I strongly disagree. There is a difference in the kind of appreciation when judging a work purely on forms and structure that's incomparable, and orthogonal, to the appreciation by appealing to the passions. You can be one, or both. Someone who understands structure can almost certainly articulate better on the subject, and elucidate certain matters that are not considered, until you realize that he is speaking nonsense because he is not answering the same question. It could also be that he is substituting jargon to masquerade as passion, a more sophisticated way of suggesting story/character/art/sound/enjoyment makes one objective. katsucats said: I disagree strongly with the last part. Understanding counterpoint, chord progression, and Sonata form are instrumental in appreciating good music to its fullest. Someone who loves Beethoven but listens to him as a hobby and someone who loves and studies Beethoven are completely different, in that the latter almost certainly has a more enriched and informed opinion. To know that Goethe uses Greek classical poetry and transitions in meter from Greek to Romantic German poetic traditions is instrumental in understanding loving what is otherwise a seemingly impenetrable part two in Faust. Structural knowledge breeds synthesis and understanding. Anybody could write a haiku poetry if he knew the rules, but that's not what made Matsuo Basho great. Anyone who has studied a semester or two of music theory knows how to analyze counterpoint, or switch between modes, but that's not what made Mozart great. What made them great was aesthetic sensibility. We can study how some classical music adheres to counterpoint, or how jazz adheres to chord progression, but that doesn't lend any help to forming an opinion about a work. I am not saying that structural understanding is not valuable. It is not appreciation in the same sense, neither better or worse. It does not explain why you like a piece. You could understand all the accepted ways to deconstruct some medium and feel absolutely dispassionate about it. To you, it is a mere piece of literature, but not art. And if you feel passionate about it, it might be predicated upon some structural fact, but it is not the structural fact itself. Otherwise, every person, upon knowing that fact, would feel the same passion. The conflation of the two is, in my opinion, a semantic error. I omitted the rest of your post since I feel responding to it would be repetitive. The same points are made. |
katsucatsJan 2, 2018 8:48 AM
| My subjective reviews: katsureview.wordpress.com THE CHAT CLUB. |
Lanor-sama said: So if I divide it into how much of the color "blue" there are, how many times the OP/ED songs have middle C#, how many butterflies and dogs there are, how tall MC is, and how many times a dog barked in my neighborhood when I watched it, I can be objective?Why can't you? Just devide the anime into discretely scoreahle categories like: story, characters, musoc, animation (or anything that yoi can separate it into eg.: storybuildin constructs (story itself, narration, typical osts for a certain event etc)) Then look at what you watched and decide a balance for these categories (mostly genre list helps). Then yoi can score it. |
| My subjective reviews: katsureview.wordpress.com THE CHAT CLUB. |
katsucats said: Lanor-sama said: So if I divide it into how much of the color "blue" there are, how many times the OP/ED songs have middle C#, how many butterflies and dogs there are, how tall MC is, and how many times a dog barked in my neighborhood when I watched it, I can be objective?Why can't you? Just devide the anime into discretely scoreahle categories like: story, characters, musoc, animation (or anything that yoi can separate it into eg.: storybuildin constructs (story itself, narration, typical osts for a certain event etc)) Then look at what you watched and decide a balance for these categories (mostly genre list helps). Then yoi can score it. Obviously not. Regardless of the quantifiable data, an objective judgement of its aesthetic value does not logically follow. Individual differences in art perception are more representative of a person's characteristics. Since aesthetic value can be taken contrastingly from any source of art, it's more helpful to understand the motivations behind any art appreciation to better understand an individual's character and frame of mind. A wise person's aesthetic interest will say more about their mental context and societal attitudes than it will about this idea of "objective aesthetic value". |
katsucats said: I mean this isn't true all. How people write or compose are directly related to what they want their viewer to feel or understand, whether it's conscious or not to the viewer the precise mechanisms that the writer or animator is introducing. Counterpoint or fugal compositions or the inclusion of ornamentation are done to mean something, even if that "something" is meaningless, and I think it's extremely dismissive to argue that understanding/love of form/theory is distinct from the love of the music in general. You just make it sound like any learned person of cinema or literature is just using his learned experience to purport his correctness, when it's more likely that he's learned precisely because he's passionate about it. I strongly disagree. There is a difference in the kind of appreciation when judging a work purely on forms and structure that's incomparable, and orthogonal, to the appreciation by appealing to the passions. You can be one, or both. Someone who understands structure can almost certainly articulate better on the subject, and elucidate certain matters that are not considered, until you realize that he is speaking nonsense because he is not answering the same question. It could also be that he is substituting jargon to masquerade as passion, a more sophisticated way of suggesting story/character/art/sound/enjoyment makes one objective. Just because it's possible to dispassionately analyze an anime, which I've done before, doesn't mean that's always the case. katsucats said: It does, simply because form and any other method of storytelling serves a purpose, and understanding that to a higher degree than others gives access to better experience and understanding, provided you actually "like" what method or form is being used. I think you're just making distinctions of appreciation with little to no reason. I dismiss him almost entirely, but the only reason why I have any appreciation for Pollack is in the methodology he uses to paint, and a good majority of novels on my bookshelf I like precisely because I understand literature and literary form, not because I read it for some passionate literary experience and just found catharsis in the "experience" of the language. As a whole, the latter part about just "experiencing" art is such an overstated and overrated aesthetic idea, that we should embrace ourselves in artistry and just see it for what it "is."I am not saying that structural understanding is not valuable. It is not appreciation in the same sense, neither better or worse. It does not explain why you like a piece. katsucats said: You're mistaking knowledge with appreciation. Just because you know what something is doing, doesn't mean you have to like it. I'm perfectly aware what shows like Ghost in the Shell or Cowboy Bebop are "doing," but I just don't like any of what they actually do.You could understand all the accepted ways to deconstruct some medium and feel absolutely dispassionate about it. To you, it is a mere piece of literature, but not art. And if you feel passionate about it, it might be predicated upon some structural fact, but it is not the structural fact itself. Otherwise, every person, upon knowing that fact, would feel the same passion. I agree in the sense that yes, you can like something based on cinematic or literary methods you're unaware of, but the more you understand, the more you can explain and sense what someone is doing that makes said method so attractive. katsucats said: I mean, this point doesn't have anything to do with the fact that there's plenty of literary criticism that's just done to make a statement on what a text means or is engaged with, which was my original argument, that literary analysis isn't simply the act of making something look good or bad or whatever.This claim is highly doubtful. Literary analysis does not only contain objectively discernible structure, devoid of all personal feeling. Even the choice of which passages to deconstruct to weave some kind of cohesive narrative for an essay is subjective. katsucats said: It's a bit of a hyperbole, but this is what digital humanities has been trying to do with literature for the last like twenty years now. Just feed every novel into big data and produce conclusions. It's a decent idea, given that no single human, or even a giant faculty made of professors, could reasonably get through all the books that need to be read out there, but I think the unfortunate part is that the conclusions that can be drawn from the data is notably uninteresting and bland.Lanor-sama said: So if I divide it into how much of the color "blue" there are, how many times the OP/ED songs have middle C#, how many butterflies and dogs there are, how tall MC is, and how many times a dog barked in my neighborhood when I watched it, I can be objective?Why can't you? Just devide the anime into discretely scoreahle categories like: story, characters, musoc, animation (or anything that yoi can separate it into eg.: storybuildin constructs (story itself, narration, typical osts for a certain event etc)) Then look at what you watched and decide a balance for these categories (mostly genre list helps). Then yoi can score it. |
YudinaJan 2, 2018 10:48 AM
| It's often overused, but there is a big difference between people who say "it's good because I liked it" and those who can actually point out pros and cons based on their knowledge about animation or cinematography. By "objective" people often mean the latter - analysis based on facts and not opinions. |
| Saying we shouldn't try to be objective just because perfect objectivity is impossible is as retarded as saying we shouldn't try to be perfect cause perfection doesn't exist. We can't pull it off anyway right? So let's BE TERRIBLE PEOPLE! LET'S BURN THE WORLD! MURDER! BLOOD! LET'S FILL MAL WITH BIASED REVIEWS! A perfect celphone is impossible to achieve right? SO APPLE SHOULD DEFINITELY STOP TRYING TO PERFECT THEIR PRODUCTS AND JUST RELEASE TERRIBLE ONES! YESSS, THAT'S THE WAY TO GO! RIOT! I was gonna go more in dept, but this comment sums it up perfectly. le_halfhand_easy said: This is just getting ridiculous. I feel like the community has become largely allergic to the term “objectivity”, thanks in no small part to the pretentious pieces of shit lording their tastes over others because they are unloved and have to constantly seek validation from unknown people over the internet. But the thing is, while there is no such thing as perfectly objective, it shouldn’t be for the lack of trying. We can’t be objective but we can try to be as less subjective as possible. We can and should be as critical as possible. Especially with the things we love. Anything less is a disservice because criticisms offer an avenue of growth and appreciation. Not only to the industry but to yourself. It helps to know why you like or hate that particular scene or character or show. Knowing helps you appreciate the creative minds and process behind them even more. Know what you like and what you hate and what you want more of. It's an endless journey of self-discovery and growth. Sincerely, a filthy casual. |
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Hraktuus said: The same goes for people who consistently rate comedies lower and serious shows really high. They don't understand the concept of objectively rating a show within it's genre (this is a masterpiece comedy, this is a masterpiece thriller, etc), and rather have some ridiculous comparison between all anime. Why is your way of thought right and this one wrong tho? I 100% believe that's the right way to rate anime. |
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| Eh, most things are subjective, but is naive to say everything is. Come on, you can't just go and tell me plot holes are a good thing. If something happens that completely contradicts what was already established, with no explanation as to why, and the characters don't even question it, you can't say that's good. |
| You are not your body, you are your brain, the "self" that emerges from within it. |
Azeew said: Saying we shouldn't try to be objective just because perfect objectivity is impossible is as retarded as saying we shouldn't try to be perfect cause perfection doesn't exist. We can't pull it off anyway right? So let's BE TERRIBLE PEOPLE! LET'S BURN THE WORLD! MURDER! BLOOD! LET'S FILL MAL WITH BIASED REVIEWS! A perfect celphone is impossible to achieve right? SO APPLE SHOULD DEFINITELY STOP TRYING TO PERFECT THEIR PRODUCTS AND JUST RELEASE TERRIBLE ONES! YESSS, THAT'S THE WAY TO GO! RIOT! I was gonna go more in dept, but this comment sums it up perfectly. le_halfhand_easy said: This is just getting ridiculous. I feel like the community has become largely allergic to the term “objectivity”, thanks in no small part to the pretentious pieces of shit lording their tastes over others because they are unloved and have to constantly seek validation from unknown people over the internet. But the thing is, while there is no such thing as perfectly objective, it shouldn’t be for the lack of trying. We can’t be objective but we can try to be as less subjective as possible. We can and should be as critical as possible. Especially with the things we love. Anything less is a disservice because criticisms offer an avenue of growth and appreciation. Not only to the industry but to yourself. It helps to know why you like or hate that particular scene or character or show. Knowing helps you appreciate the creative minds and process behind them even more. Know what you like and what you hate and what you want more of. It's an endless journey of self-discovery and growth. Sincerely, a filthy casual. Define what makes a perfect anime first. Without a universal accepted standard on what makes a perfect anime, everyone ended up using their own definition on what makes a perfect anime, thus subjective. Without explaining what makes a perfect anime the claim objectivity is assertion but no evidence to back them. |
VyzassJan 2, 2018 4:23 PM
| 'America is a stolen country' https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SM8WZ0ztMuc Zapredon said: It doesn't matter if you like LoGH,Monster etc.If you are a jobless or college/school dropout living in your mom basement, you are still an unintelligent loser. Taste in anime does not make you a better person. Totally agree! |
Thanakos said: These facts are measurable in subjective impressions. Say a failed lion chase in a National Geographic documentary has a personal meaning for me (somehow resonating with an old experience of trying really hard but failing anyway) but not for you. The only way I can explain why I felt teary-eyed at that scene is by eliciting a past story or the lesson I got from it. A fact may just be a fact to someone. The lion chase is just another chase scene for most people. But for some minds looking for a consolation or just in a very emotional mood today, it's going to have meaning. And no amount of explanation of that mood or lesson is going to make others realize the emotional weight that I perceived in the scene. I think you're grossly underestimating both people's ability to articulate their thoughts and feelings, as well as other's ability to empathize. If you explained previous experiences that colored a scene for you, then only someone who is particularly unequipped emotionally couldn't follow your reasoning that brought about your emotions. |
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Vyzass said: Azeew said: Saying we shouldn't try to be objective just because perfect objectivity is impossible is as retarded as saying we shouldn't try to be perfect cause perfection doesn't exist. We can't pull it off anyway right? So let's BE TERRIBLE PEOPLE! LET'S BURN THE WORLD! MURDER! BLOOD! LET'S FILL MAL WITH BIASED REVIEWS! A perfect celphone is impossible to achieve right? SO APPLE SHOULD DEFINITELY STOP TRYING TO PERFECT THEIR PRODUCTS AND JUST RELEASE TERRIBLE ONES! YESSS, THAT'S THE WAY TO GO! RIOT! I was gonna go more in dept, but this comment sums it up perfectly. Define what makes a perfect anime first. Without a universal accepted standard on what makes a perfect anime, everyone ended up using their own definition on what makes a perfect anime, thus subjective. Without explaining what makes a perfect anime the claim objectivity is assertion but no evidence to back them. Define what makes a perfect CELLPHONE first. Without a universal accepted standard on what makes a perfect CELLPHONE, everyone ended up using their own definition on what makes a perfect CELLPHONE, thus subjective. Without explaining what makes a perfect CELLPHONE the claim objectivity is assertion but no evidence to back them. That can be used for anything ever. Defining a perfect cellphone is impossible. But we can agree on what is good for a cellphone. The better the camera, the better the cellphone. Same for better screen resolution. Same for better battery length. Anyways, you get the idea. And the same is plausible for storytelling. Three-dimensional characters with depth, original and complex plot, philosophical value and teachings, a perfectly balanced dramatization. These and lots of other things have already been deemed good as a standard in storytelling, and have been studied in literature for years. |
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Azeew said: Vyzass said: Define what makes a perfect anime first. Without a universal accepted standard on what makes a perfect anime, everyone ended up using their own definition on what makes a perfect anime, thus subjective. Without explaining what makes a perfect anime the claim objectivity is assertion but no evidence to back them. Define what makes a perfect CELLPHONE first. Without a universal accepted standard on what makes a perfect CELLPHONE, everyone ended up using their own definition on what makes a perfect CELLPHONE, thus subjective. Without explaining what makes a perfect CELLPHONE the claim objectivity is assertion but no evidence to back them. That can be used for anything ever. Defining a perfect cellphone is impossible. But we can agree on what is good for a cellphone. The better the camera, the better the cellphone. Same for better screen resolution. Same for better battery length. Anyways, you get the idea. And the same is plausible for storytelling. Three-dimensional characters with depth, original and complex plot, philosophical value and teachings, a perfectly balanced dramatization. These and lots of other things have already been deemed good as a standard in storytelling, and have been studied in literature for years. So are theee dimensional characters with depth, original and complex plot, philosophical value and teachings, a perfectly balanced dramatisation your definition in what makes perfect story telling or other share the same as you? Can you show me evidence and citation that prove that those things you mentioned are deemed as good story telling and by who? For your record, there are difference between literature studies/ analysis and review/judging quality. They are not the same thing. |
VyzassJan 2, 2018 5:46 PM
| 'America is a stolen country' https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SM8WZ0ztMuc Zapredon said: It doesn't matter if you like LoGH,Monster etc.If you are a jobless or college/school dropout living in your mom basement, you are still an unintelligent loser. Taste in anime does not make you a better person. Totally agree! |
Vyzass said: Azeew said: Define what makes a perfect CELLPHONE first. Without a universal accepted standard on what makes a perfect CELLPHONE, everyone ended up using their own definition on what makes a perfect CELLPHONE, thus subjective. Without explaining what makes a perfect CELLPHONE the claim objectivity is assertion but no evidence to back them. That can be used for anything ever. Defining a perfect cellphone is impossible. But we can agree on what is good for a cellphone. The better the camera, the better the cellphone. Same for better screen resolution. Same for better battery length. Anyways, you get the idea. And the same is plausible for storytelling. Three-dimensional characters with depth, original and complex plot, philosophical value and teachings, a perfectly balanced dramatization. These and lots of other things have already been deemed good as a standard in storytelling, and have been studied in literature for years. So are theee dimensional characters with depth, original and complex plot, philosophical value and teachings, a perfectly balanced dramatisation your definition in what makes perfect story telling or other share the same as you? Everyone with knowledge on the subject can agree on that, I believe. |
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Azeew said: Vyzass said: So are theee dimensional characters with depth, original and complex plot, philosophical value and teachings, a perfectly balanced dramatisation your definition in what makes perfect story telling or other share the same as you? Everyone with knowledge on the subject can agree on that, I believe. No they don't. Literature studies and review/ judging quality of work are two different thing. |
| 'America is a stolen country' https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SM8WZ0ztMuc Zapredon said: It doesn't matter if you like LoGH,Monster etc.If you are a jobless or college/school dropout living in your mom basement, you are still an unintelligent loser. Taste in anime does not make you a better person. Totally agree! |
Vyzass said: No they don't. Literature studies and review/ judging quality of work are two different thing. Uh, and how does that relate to what we were saying? |
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Azeew said: Vyzass said: No they don't. Literature studies and review/ judging quality of work are two different thing. Uh, and how does that relate to what we were saying? It means that your definition of perfect anime is yours alone and other people have their own way to define a perfect anime thus subjective as it differ with individuals. |
| 'America is a stolen country' https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SM8WZ0ztMuc Zapredon said: It doesn't matter if you like LoGH,Monster etc.If you are a jobless or college/school dropout living in your mom basement, you are still an unintelligent loser. Taste in anime does not make you a better person. Totally agree! |
Vyzass said: It means that your definition of perfect anime is yours alone and other people have their own way to define a perfect anime thus subjective as it differ with individuals. But my point is that everyone with knowledge on the subject will agree with what I say are positive factors. Like, literally. Grab a bunch of high IQ babies, make them read thousands of books and they WILL reach a consensus on what is good or bad in storytelling. |
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Azeew said: Vyzass said: It means that your definition of perfect anime is yours alone and other people have their own way to define a perfect anime thus subjective as it differ with individuals. But my point is that everyone with knowledge on the subject will agree with what I say are positive factors. Like, literally. Grab a bunch of high IQ babies, make them read thousands of books and they WILL reach a consensus on what is good or bad in storytelling. Who are those people with knowledge you talking about? If you mean those who study literature analysis, as I said literature analysis and review/ judging quality are not the same thing. No they won't. That just your assertion but baseless claim. |
| 'America is a stolen country' https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SM8WZ0ztMuc Zapredon said: It doesn't matter if you like LoGH,Monster etc.If you are a jobless or college/school dropout living in your mom basement, you are still an unintelligent loser. Taste in anime does not make you a better person. Totally agree! |
Vyzass said: Azeew said: But my point is that everyone with knowledge on the subject will agree with what I say are positive factors. Like, literally. Grab a bunch of high IQ babies, make them read thousands of books and they WILL reach a consensus on what is good or bad in storytelling. Who are those people with knowledge you talking about? If you mean those who study literature analysis, as I said literature analysis and review/ judging quality are not the same thing. No they won't. That just your assertion but baseless claim. 1. I mean people who read books, not necessarily people that graduate in literature. 2. Yes, it is baseless. But saying it's not true is also baseless. I thought it would be truth by default, do you really think that wouldn't happen? I mean, knowledgeable people already reached that as a consensus, that's my point. I don't really get your point, what are you claiming? That if you ask people around the world if having "three-dimensional characters with depth" in a piece of work is good or bad you're gonna have mixed answers? You sure as hell won't. It's a good thing, period. |
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Azeew said: Vyzass said: Who are those people with knowledge you talking about? If you mean those who study literature analysis, as I said literature analysis and review/ judging quality are not the same thing. No they won't. That just your assertion but baseless claim. 1. I mean people who read books, not necessarily people that graduate in literature. 2. Yes, it is baseless. But saying it's not true is also baseless. I thought it would be truth by default, do you really think that wouldn't happen? I mean, knowledgeable people already reached that as a consensus, that's my point. I don't really get your point, what are you claiming? That if you ask people around the world if having "three-dimensional characters with depth" in a piece of work is good or bad you're gonna have mixed answers? You sure as hell won't. It's a good thing, period. 1. Then please prove it that they will come up with same definition of perfect as you. You are making too many assumption. 2. No I won't say it bad but rather whether they matter or not as part of definition of perfect. Not everyone think 3 dimensional character are needed to be perfect anime just like how not everyone think character development or having theme/ message necessary criteria to make perfect anime. It's never by default. |
VyzassJan 2, 2018 7:17 PM
| 'America is a stolen country' https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SM8WZ0ztMuc Zapredon said: It doesn't matter if you like LoGH,Monster etc.If you are a jobless or college/school dropout living in your mom basement, you are still an unintelligent loser. Taste in anime does not make you a better person. Totally agree! |
| Judging the quality of an anime from an individual standpoint is subjective. Completely subjective. Even when judging the quality of the art, animation, voice acting, and music. The only way to be objective about the quality of a series is to use the majority's opinion. Look at the stats. 657,012 people have watched and scored FMA:B on MAL. And the mean score is a 9.25. From a majority standpoint, FMA:B is a great series. If you as an individual happen to hate Brotherhood, and thought it was trash, it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter how well you think you can criticize the art, story, animation, voice acting etc, because over half a million people disagree. Same with a series like Mars of Destruction. 23,117 people on MAL have watched and scored it, and its mean score isn't even a 2.33. Objectively speaking, the series is bad. One person might think MOD is the greatest series of all time, and might be able to present a solid list of reasons why. Doesn't matter. Statistical speaking, over 20,000 people thought it was trash. So to recap... Individual opinion = subjective Majority opinion = objective |
Vyzass said: Azeew said: 1. I mean people who read books, not necessarily people that graduate in literature. 2. Yes, it is baseless. But saying it's not true is also baseless. I thought it would be truth by default, do you really think that wouldn't happen? I mean, knowledgeable people already reached that as a consensus, that's my point. I don't really get your point, what are you claiming? That if you ask people around the world if having "three-dimensional characters with depth" in a piece of work is good or bad you're gonna have mixed answers? You sure as hell won't. It's a good thing, period. 1. Then please prove it that they will come up with same definition of perfect as you. You are making too many assumption. 2. No I won't say it bad but rather whether they matter or not as part of definition of perfect. Not everyone think 3 dimensional character are needed to be perfect anime just like how not everyone think character development or having theme/ message necessary criteria to make perfect anime. It's never by default. I don't get why you keep saying "perfect anime" when I never said that and explicitly said that it's impossible to define it. Being objective doesn't mean trying to judge something as perfect. I don't even know how to respond to the "show me proof that people think like that" argument. As I put it, "three-dimensional characters with depth" is good as an axiom, I can't prove it. If you don't think that's true, just test it by yourself: make a poll asking people if they think it's a good trait. Okay, are you done? Sure, now we can move on. We defined good and bad traits. Now you analyze if a certain anime has some of those. Done, that's it. You're being objective. You are using traits that are known to society as good or bad ones to back up your criticism about an anime. There's no subjectivism here - please spare me of the "there's subjectivism in everything" argument. Sure, there might be something there, but it's mostly objective. Let me give you an example. Society reaches a consensus on the fact that phrases that make no sense aren't funny. Author X publishes the following comedy book, that only contains one phrase: I pizza like potato friends. It's a comedy. It makes no sense. No sense is deemed as society as not funny. Therefore, it's a bad comedy. That's it, you objectively criticized it. Hope you get what I'm trying to say :) |
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Azeew said: Vyzass said: 1. Then please prove it that they will come up with same definition of perfect as you. You are making too many assumption. 2. No I won't say it bad but rather whether they matter or not as part of definition of perfect. Not everyone think 3 dimensional character are needed to be perfect anime just like how not everyone think character development or having theme/ message necessary criteria to make perfect anime. It's never by default. I don't get why you keep saying "perfect anime" when I never said that and explicitly said that it's impossible to define it. Being objective doesn't mean trying to judge something as perfect. I don't even know how to respond to the "show me proof that people think like that" argument. As I put it, "three-dimensional characters with depth" is good as an axiom, I can't prove it. If you don't think that's true, just test it by yourself: make a poll asking people if they think it's a good trait. Okay, are you done? Sure, now we can move on. We defined good and bad traits. Now you analyze if a certain anime has some of those. Done, that's it. You're being objective. You are using traits that are known to society as good or bad ones to back up your criticism about an anime. There's no subjectivism here - please spare me of the "there's subjectivism in everything" argument. Sure, there might be something there, but it's mostly objective. Let me give you an example. Society reaches a consensus on the fact that phrases that make no sense aren't funny. Author X publishes the following comedy book, that only contains one phrase: I pizza like potato friends. It's a comedy. It makes no sense. No sense is deemed as society as not funny. Therefore, it's a bad comedy. That's it, you objectively criticized it. Hope you get what I'm trying to say :) That is why I asking if those good and bad trait that you talking about only applicable to you only or if other share the same as you. You said 'we' as if you speak for others or you just assume everyone think like you. Now you are saying good and bad trait known to society. Do you know what equivalent is that? It's called popularity because it base on what majority or as you call it society says what is good or bad. |
| 'America is a stolen country' https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SM8WZ0ztMuc Zapredon said: It doesn't matter if you like LoGH,Monster etc.If you are a jobless or college/school dropout living in your mom basement, you are still an unintelligent loser. Taste in anime does not make you a better person. Totally agree! |
Vyzass said: Azeew said: I don't get why you keep saying "perfect anime" when I never said that and explicitly said that it's impossible to define it. Being objective doesn't mean trying to judge something as perfect. I don't even know how to respond to the "show me proof that people think like that" argument. As I put it, "three-dimensional characters with depth" is good as an axiom, I can't prove it. If you don't think that's true, just test it by yourself: make a poll asking people if they think it's a good trait. Okay, are you done? Sure, now we can move on. We defined good and bad traits. Now you analyze if a certain anime has some of those. Done, that's it. You're being objective. You are using traits that are known to society as good or bad ones to back up your criticism about an anime. There's no subjectivism here - please spare me of the "there's subjectivism in everything" argument. Sure, there might be something there, but it's mostly objective. Let me give you an example. Society reaches a consensus on the fact that phrases that make no sense aren't funny. Author X publishes the following comedy book, that only contains one phrase: I pizza like potato friends. It's a comedy. It makes no sense. No sense is deemed as society as not funny. Therefore, it's a bad comedy. That's it, you objectively criticized it. Hope you get what I'm trying to say :) That is why I asking if those good and bad trait that you talking about only applicable to you only or if other share the same as you. You said 'we' as if you speak for others or you just assume everyone think like you. Now you are saying good and bad trait known to society. Do you know what equivalent is that? It's called popularity because it base on what majority or as you call it society says what is good or bad. Yeah, society was definitely the wrong term, I didn't meant that. I meant to say what I was explaining earlier, a consensus from people knowledgeable on the subject. But still, my whole point stands. |
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Azeew said: Vyzass said: That is why I asking if those good and bad trait that you talking about only applicable to you only or if other share the same as you. You said 'we' as if you speak for others or you just assume everyone think like you. Now you are saying good and bad trait known to society. Do you know what equivalent is that? It's called popularity because it base on what majority or as you call it society says what is good or bad. Yeah, society was definitely the wrong term, I didn't meant that. I meant to say what I was explaining earlier, a consensus from people knowledgeable on the subject. But still, my whole point stands. Knowledgeable as in amount of book or anime they watch? What about those who read equal amount of book and watch same amount of anime as you but still come up with different good and bad trait as yours? Are they not being objective? I completed and watch more anime than you, would that make me being more objective and knowledgeable than you? Or would I still be considered objective even when I analyse anime and what I define as good or bad trait of anime different from yours? If not, then tell me why would anyone follow what you considered as good and bad as if it's Gospel. Why can't we follow our own. Thinking everyone should follow what you consider as good and bad trait of writing just what we call elitism. |
VyzassJan 3, 2018 7:33 AM
| 'America is a stolen country' https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SM8WZ0ztMuc Zapredon said: It doesn't matter if you like LoGH,Monster etc.If you are a jobless or college/school dropout living in your mom basement, you are still an unintelligent loser. Taste in anime does not make you a better person. Totally agree! |
AironicallyHuman said: Vyzass said: But what makes a bad writing or good writing? What makes an amateur and a professional? Those kind of things are totally subjective. Motivations and pacing; the logical and the illogical. If characters come across as human, rather than a creation, then that is the difference between amateur writing and professional. If the story flows from point to point, without abrupt jumps, then it is well-paced. None of that is subjective. Retaining the human aspect in fiction is the easiest way to differentiate between something pandering and something not. Subjectivity is nothing to do with writing and everything to do with fetishes. You can like something someone else will hate but that does not make bad writing good or invalidate the arguments against it. It's perfectly possible to like something and be able to say it's flawed. Even then there will always be a disagreement in what ultimately makes a writing good. This is why there are no definitive rules in what good writing is only "guides". It comes back to the question, how do you know you're right about what makes a writing good? Terkhev said: It's often overused, but there is a big difference between people who say "it's good because I liked it" and those who can actually point out pros and cons based on their knowledge about animation or cinematography. By "objective" people often mean the latter - analysis based on facts and not opinions. Pointing out something like how excellent a cinematography is for example in a scene without explaining how it translates into some positive experience is impossible to do without at least getting your own personal preferences in anyways. I don't think that's being "objective" in all the dictionary definition of the word. Azeew said: Vyzass said: Define what makes a perfect anime first. Without a universal accepted standard on what makes a perfect anime, everyone ended up using their own definition on what makes a perfect anime, thus subjective. Without explaining what makes a perfect anime the claim objectivity is assertion but no evidence to back them. Define what makes a perfect CELLPHONE first. Without a universal accepted standard on what makes a perfect CELLPHONE, everyone ended up using their own definition on what makes a perfect CELLPHONE, thus subjective. Without explaining what makes a perfect CELLPHONE the claim objectivity is assertion but no evidence to back them. That can be used for anything ever. Defining a perfect cellphone is impossible. But we can agree on what is good for a cellphone. The better the camera, the better the cellphone. Same for better screen resolution. Same for better battery length. Anyways, you get the idea. And the same is plausible for storytelling. Three-dimensional characters with depth, original and complex plot, philosophical value and teachings, a perfectly balanced dramatization. These and lots of other things have already been deemed good as a standard in storytelling, and have been studied in literature for years. What do you need a cellphone for and art for is vastly different. Their functions are vastly different. The former relies on functionality while the latter taps on the visceral side of things. So, this comparison is kind of off. How do those things you list up as agreed upon standards of good storytelling translate into a more positive human experience is where it gets subjective. |
ethotJan 2, 2018 11:19 PM
| Certain aspects like frame rate, frame recycling and animation have more defined aspects and thus can be more objectively quantified. While anime quality is rather subjective experience, that doesn't equate to a bad thing. Movies are subjectively judged and yet we still take reviews at face value. So yes I agree with you op, for the most part it's subjective and that is fine so long as people realize their opinions are just that, opinions |
  come, you sweet hour of death |
Yudina said: You have obviously studied literature and I'm not trying to take that away from you. However, there's some logical flaws in your reasoning. Since it is possible, at all, to dispassionately analyze anime, it proves -- not my opinion, it's completely factual -- that passion (i.e. liking) of a work is distinct from structural analysis. If they were necessarily correlated, then you must be passionate during analysis. Understanding what the author tries to convey through structural analysis is, first of all partial because a machine arguably does math without "understanding" the significance of the result, not at all the same as liking, or having one's own thoughts about a work. katsucats said: I mean this isn't true all. How people write or compose are directly related to what they want their viewer to feel or understand, whether it's conscious or not to the viewer the precise mechanisms that the writer or animator is introducing. Counterpoint or fugal compositions or the inclusion of ornamentation are done to mean something, even if that "something" is meaningless, and I think it's extremely dismissive to argue that understanding/love of form/theory is distinct from the love of the music in general. You just make it sound like any learned person of cinema or literature is just using his learned experience to purport his correctness, when it's more likely that he's learned precisely because he's passionate about it. I strongly disagree. There is a difference in the kind of appreciation when judging a work purely on forms and structure that's incomparable, and orthogonal, to the appreciation by appealing to the passions. You can be one, or both. Someone who understands structure can almost certainly articulate better on the subject, and elucidate certain matters that are not considered, until you realize that he is speaking nonsense because he is not answering the same question. It could also be that he is substituting jargon to masquerade as passion, a more sophisticated way of suggesting story/character/art/sound/enjoyment makes one objective. Just because it's possible to dispassionately analyze an anime, which I've done before, doesn't mean that's always the case. Yudina said: How does it? You've admitted that it is possible to dispassionately analyze a piece. There are many other philosophical problems with believing there is some kind of natural or supernatural representation of emotions as an objective property of some thing, even just from an epistemological standpoint.katsucats said: It does, simply because form and any other method of storytelling serves a purpose, and understanding that to a higher degree than others gives access to better experience and understanding, provided you actually "like" what method or form is being used. I am not saying that structural understanding is not valuable. It is not appreciation in the same sense, neither better or worse. It does not explain why you like a piece. Yudina said: You are making dual points here and I'm not sure they're compatible. If you insist that appreciation must be achieved from a structural standpoint, such that the only method of appreciation is to see the work as how the author created it, then you are absolutely not seeing the work for what it is, in the final product. This is why contemporary art moved away from modernist traditions in the first place. Pollack absolutely did want you to achieve subliminal experience through the art by understanding the shape, size, and color of those lines, which probably acts as a proxy, so to speak, into his own emotions. However, contemporary art recognized that authentic experience is one's own and not what the author wanted you to feel. In your case, it's strangely neither, since you lack any feeling about it but still want to assert that you do. You could probably spend a long time expressing the difficulties in creating a Pollack piece, but if anyone asks you if you like it, what rating would you give it, you'd be like "..." Because you're not even answering the question. In a sense, your perspective is exactly what a big data algorithm tries to do: suck out all the humanity of a subject and just pay attention to procedural data.I think you're just making distinctions of appreciation with little to no reason. I dismiss him almost entirely, but the only reason why I have any appreciation for Pollack is in the methodology he uses to paint, and a good majority of novels on my bookshelf I like precisely because I understand literature and literary form, not because I read it for some passionate literary experience and just found catharsis in the "experience" of the language. As a whole, the latter part about just "experiencing" art is such an overstated and overrated aesthetic idea, that we should embrace ourselves in artistry and just see it for what it "is." Yudina said: No, you're mistaking knowledge for appreciation. Theories were developed to explain why people appreciate things. By insisting that the technical aspects of Mozart or Pollack is what's interesting, I can tell that you must hate Mozart of Pollack (even if you don't think so yourself). You think those theories were developed arbitrarily, as if the authors just had some intellectual inspiration devoid of emotion, like it came to them in a dream, and they built this entire form around it, and not because the form works to some effect.katsucats said: You're mistaking knowledge with appreciation. Just because you know what something is doing, doesn't mean you have to like it. I'm perfectly aware what shows like Ghost in the Shell or Cowboy Bebop are "doing," but I just don't like any of what they actually do. You could understand all the accepted ways to deconstruct some medium and feel absolutely dispassionate about it. To you, it is a mere piece of literature, but not art. And if you feel passionate about it, it might be predicated upon some structural fact, but it is not the structural fact itself. Otherwise, every person, upon knowing that fact, would feel the same passion. Yudina said: Attractive in what sense? Would you like to describe how that makes you feel, or is being human too much of a thing to admit?I agree in the sense that yes, you can like something based on cinematic or literary methods you're unaware of, but the more you understand, the more you can explain and sense what someone is doing that makes said method so attractive. Yudina said: Literary analysis doesn't make something look good or bad, it explains why something looks good or bad.katsucats said: I mean, this point doesn't have anything to do with the fact that there's plenty of literary criticism that's just done to make a statement on what a text means or is engaged with, which was my original argument, that literary analysis isn't simply the act of making something look good or bad or whatever. This claim is highly doubtful. Literary analysis does not only contain objectively discernible structure, devoid of all personal feeling. Even the choice of which passages to deconstruct to weave some kind of cohesive narrative for an essay is subjective. Yudina said: We've learned a lot from big data that perhaps you're unaware of, but what's more important is that if processing literature as data is bland to you, then one wonders what makes one kind of processing bland, and the other processing the only way to be articulate?katsucats said: It's a bit of a hyperbole, but this is what digital humanities has been trying to do with literature for the last like twenty years now. Just feed every novel into big data and produce conclusions. It's a decent idea, given that no single human, or even a giant faculty made of professors, could reasonably get through all the books that need to be read out there, but I think the unfortunate part is that the conclusions that can be drawn from the data is notably uninteresting and bland.So if I divide it into how much of the color "blue" there are, how many times the OP/ED songs have middle C#, how many butterflies and dogs there are, how tall MC is, and how many times a dog barked in my neighborhood when I watched it, I can be objective? |
katsucatsJan 3, 2018 12:00 AM
| My subjective reviews: katsureview.wordpress.com THE CHAT CLUB. |
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