The attached video inspired me to make this post.
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What was your first series or movie?
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What were your first impressions?
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Best series or movie? Why?
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Worst experience with anime? Why?
I heard one of my siblings watching something in a language I didn’t understand. It turned out to me Love Hina. It made me fall in love with the language and culture. My interest in the medium itself, I discovered later, perhaps with Pokémon and Dragon Ball. I don’t remember my initial impressions, but it was warm and fun, I do remember. The immense sexualization of females was definitely encouraging to my adolescent cisman self, to the detriment of the female demographic, of course. Rose of Versailles is probably one of my favorite anime. Other than being an amazing story - considering that it was written by a TWENTY year young girl - the way that it conveys emotions visually and through the soundtrack is, to me, unparalleled. I don’t really have any bad experience with anime. I guess I was shocked when
First anime was .hack//SIGN.
First impression of anime was, giant robots, fights that took several episodes, and girls way too young to show that much skin. I asked my anime obsessed cousins to show me something intelligent that didn’t have any of those three things, and they delivered — see first answer.
Favorite series is Sword Art Online, but I prefer one season and done miniseries like Erased end Your Lie in April. Also The Promised Neverland and Tokyo Ghoul — we don’t talk about their seasons beyond the first. Favorite movies are your name. and Wolf Children.
Only one bad experience with anime I can think of. My cousins who got me into anime were watching one when a child goes into a changing room and it shows everything. That was creepy AF. We were all teenagers so it wasn’t like “I should report this to the police” but more like “let me catch you looking at that again and I will kick both your asses.” I don’t remember what they were watching, if they told me.
I have never given isekai a fair chance. I don’t know what put me off… For some reason, I have ONE book of .hack//SIGN in my cellar. XD Maybe I’ll give the anime a shot later. :)
Sorry for the late reply. .hack//SIGN has not aged well. I first watched it in Japanese with fan subs, and I had nothing to base my expectations on. It was bad, but I didn’t know any better. Years later I watched the English dub, and it was borderline unwatchable, so I tried going back to the Japanese version, and it wasn’t any better. I don’t think it was meant to be good (in that way) and I don’t think it can be saved.
The second season of .hack (Legend of the Twilight; also called Legend of the Twilight Bracelet in fansub) went full chibi. This actually started, I believe, with an OVA to SIGN (the first season) called .hack//GIFT, which ended with the boys spying on the girls in the bath. The whole thing was a farce, but the chibi element dominated the second season. .hack tried to take itself way more seriously with the third season, but I couldn’t get into it. I think I got 8 episodes in before throwing in the towel?
.hack is not good, IMO. Maybe there’s a point to be made. SAO, on the other hand, works very hard to make you think it’s cool. And it is cool. As an old guy who grew up with Star Wars, I think it’s a great modern media franchise. Certainly better than any of the last three mainline Star Wars films, and arguably SAO is also better than Phantom Menace, and a case could be made for the other two. It does borrow quite a bit from .hack (or maybe they both just borrow MMO tropes; I never played MMOs), but it expands on those ideas greatly. For example, .hack//Another Story. Another OVA where one of the main girls is telling one of the guys about her first friend in the game, this unbeatable girl warrior and the sacrifice she made. So when the last third or so of SAO season 2 came out, and here comes a similar purple-haired female duelist, I said “oh I bet she’s logged in 24/7.” And I’m not going to spoil it, but while SAO took the story in the same direction, it went way deeper, and was so much more satisfying. I knew how the story was going to end because I’d seen the original. But SAO did it way, way better. Honestly, if the Mother’s Rosary (name of the book it’s based on) section of SAO were a standalone anime, it would probably be my favorite anime of all time.
Wow! Thank you so much for taking your time and sharing your point or view! No need to apologize!
My takeaway is, that, for now, that one volume of .hack shall stay buried in my cellar. 😅