How to Enjoy Anime

 After my blog hiatus from this amino and taking a break from anime for almost all of 2021, I am back to watching anime. I enjoy blogging so when I watch anime I always have ideas of what to talk about or blog ideas, so I told you I’ll blog when I feel like it. This blog will be sort of like my common misconceptions part 2. The title is more clickbait and catchy than what it actually is about. The blog is not a guide to enjoy anime but traps that people fall into that make it less enjoyable for themselves or others, like unspoken rules.

A lot of the topics may be seen as obvious, yet I don't hear enough people say this and this is more for inexperienced watchers who may think the opposite because they are forced to. Also, it's what I've saw on review after review from serious reviewers, so I thought it would be cool to talk about. I couldn't think of a better title without it being too long so oop.

No Nitpicking

What a lot of critical reviewers and bloggers like to take maybe non-realistic things in the content and base it off the entire art or show, for example taking something that is miniscule and stuff. A normal viewer not really thinking about but making it a massive deal like it ruins their whole enjoyment of the show while ignoring the art or the rest of the content. An example and the thought of this came when I read some MAL reviews (already reading that site is a mistake to begin with but gives me good stuff to talk about) that were about an anime I was nearly finished with which was a Black Rock Shooter. A guy gave it a mediocre score of 5, the reason I will tell, but I have to show some context first.

The show on the surface may seem your typical school drama, but it’s far more than that and an ambitious masterpiece; so the anime focuses on Mato, a usual HS girl. She dreams about the things going around her as a CGI adventure; I think this anime only got low scores just because of the use of 3d CGI which I think isn't even that bad, the idea of this girl making her corruption of people she meets is insanely cool with the whole portrayal of just say breaking free from a toxic relationship to this high octane battle like in some blame universe with big ass guns and enemy having a weapon that illustrates their struggle like chains that symbolise their mental state which makes something that might be average to masterful with the symbolism and dream.

Now we have this cool sounding and looking anime, but a random dude will come across it to do a review, and pick out that actually the teacher in reality could never treat the students like that because that's not what teachers do for example, which completely misses the point of the content as it doesn’t have to be realistic to be good. It disregards the entire style, art, symbolism, and story of the show just because they are thinking way too hard over something that doesn’t need to be, which brings me to point two. Some anime are not genius creations and not meant to be taken at face value. A lot of these serious watchers come to a point where they think they must be more critical of everything, which completely loses the enjoyment of just experiencing the anime. I would understand to an extent if it was romance anime, because that relies on your emotion and if the relationship is not genuine or a person is some brain-dead character, then I think that’s founded, but even then that's just how some genres are.

Enjoyment Rules Over Everything

Rating systems?? Who needs ‘em!! A common rule of rating anime is the 5-step system, of rating story, music, characters, art, and enjoyment, then adding them together, then dividing by 5, that’s quick maths. However, that rule doesn’t really have to apply to you. If you are not really a critical thinker or don’t want to bother with the world's pedantics then rate it just on how much you enjoyed the show, everyone’s rating system is different and how they like to view a media but for me if my enjoyment overrules the other facts of the anime it will get a lower or higher score depending on the matter.

Some can say it’s bias, but people’s ratings are bias because they are having their own side to the scores, and it’s different for everyone. The first thing comes first when watching anime is if you are enjoying it, enjoyment is something different for everyone. If you are not enjoying then why bother. For me, why I watch anime is something that only someone on high quality joker crazy gas would do. I watch anime because I love numbers just adding to a meaningless list; which brings the fun of watching 20 airing anime then regular watching on top just because I can see a number change, and it gives me serotonin. That’s why I will finish a bad anime just for that enjoyment out of watching it.

The Why of Watching

For normal people out there, to get the most enjoyment out of watching anime; I would recommend a foundation of what you like first. You can taste test a lot of genres or themes and see what ones you like, then you could base your next show on that. Of course, I personally don’t think it should be a 100% true rule because anime like to have a lot of curveballs in the mix, where they are categorised as a genre but actually exceed way beyond the box into even non [genre] enjoyers love it, for example anime’s like Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann and Evangelion aren’t just Mecha anime but actually good amazing works of art in their respective ways.

You can say this is the third and final don’t of the blog: always have an open mind and give stuff you don’t really feel experienced in a chance. Sometimes it can turn out to be fun, and you might like it, or if you don’t, that’s just how it goes. I will have genres I will most of the time dodge like Idol or historical or harem anime, but I always give ones that stand out a chance, a lot of watchers will stick to one lane and miss out on a whole universe of stuff they are missing out on which is a shame. If you somehow hate anime, there’s always manga or novels too. In the end, it’s all about having fun, which is why we all have different views and opinions on stuff. If we didn’t, it wouldn’t be fun at all.

Thanks for Reading!!