Analysing my own top 30 by Animation Studios

I dont really look for Stu­dio to Stu­dio, but hot damn, Stu­dio GAINAX can have my children.

I like some KyoAni stuff (like Lucky Star and Haruhi [except I hate Mikuru]), but evey single other show I hate. Espe­cially K-On. What a piece of shit. And they’re mak­ing a second sea­son. I won’t make the same mis­take I did of watch­ing the first sea­son though.

Inter­est­ing. I always hold Pro­duc­tion IG with such high esteem.

I think Ghibli films are either so good in gen­eral that they are usu­ally taken for gran­ted or so unique in their own term that we feel like they do not belong in the same group as other anime.

Can’t help but feel all of these sud­den anime stu­dio lists came out in response to that hys­ter­ic­ally awful one by Jason Miao who tried to yet again BS Kyoto Anim­a­tion to the top and shaf­ted (no pun inten­ded) everything else to the bot­tom based on hor­rid criteria.

This is far bet­ter of course (not hard when you aren’t Jason) and yeah I agree that unless you are Jason Miao it’s kind of tough to jus­tify Kyoani as a real top pick unless you are a die hard moe fan. I think you might need to take another look at the Ghibli movies though. Pay atten­tion to the way the images are con­veyed through the anim­a­tion, the con­sist­ent smooth­ness of said anim­a­tion, Hisaishi Joe’s music (usu­ally it’s him) and be sure to sus­pend your dis­be­lief and allow your­self to be taken into whatever world and tale they are try­ing to spin. They use a lot of sym­bol­ism too so try to pick up on that as well and you could very well find your­self hav­ing a great time. As for A-1 I agree that there new­ness is a fair reason to exclude them from any favour­it­ism yet. Same reason I had for Kyoto Anim­a­tion after Haruhi.

@Scamp: Take er’ easy there now. What I did was what I like to call a coin­cid­ental mus­ing, not an implic­a­tion that it was the case. I’m aware of the total dif­fer­ence in style and pref­er­ence between you and…him. Didn’t mean to cause any con­fu­sion there.

As for Jason.…there is no love lost between me and his blog­ging style. I’ve always had a rule and that is that whatever I see him doing I take note to either do the oppos­ite or simply not do it at all. His blog is hil­ari­ous to read on account of how pre­dict­able it is with all of his self-coined memes that he uses over and over and over again and how he often stumbles over a near total lack of accur­ate inform­a­tion and reas­on­ing to appar­ently nobody else’s aware­ness but my own. All of this is the source of much hil­ar­ity for me, but yeah IMO it’s really just awful read­ing when I get right down to it.

So no com­ment on my sug­ges­tions for watch­ing Ghibli with a dif­fer­ent view­point then? Not say­ing that you ought to, just that it might be worth considering.

@Scamp: Hmmm…I usu­ally find Ghibli leads to be highly flawed and/or por­trayed as hav­ing beha­viour, man­ner­isms and beliefs that are fairly real­istic for their age. Take Chi­hiro from Spir­ited Away for example who is a whiny little child stuck in the ego­centric phase of devel­op­ment and who is res­ist­ant to any­thing not going her way. When asked to work she whines, when forced to grow up she is ini­tially reluct­ant, but even­tu­ally does so out of a need for sur­vival. There’s a fair bit of nature vs. nur­ture going on in that one, but that’s just one example.

Now take Seita from Grave of The Fire­flies. Raised as the elder son of a showa era fam­ily liv­ing dur­ing the twi­light of the Bushido he is a stuck between two dif­fer­ent view­points and with no way out of the chan­ging era but for death. On the one hand he finds him­self act­ing on pride and the need to pro­tect his brother and sis­ter, but see­ing that the war effort is futile refuses to throw him­self and her into it dir­ectly and thus is tossed out of soci­ety and forced to fend for him­self and his sis­ter. His acts of sens­ib­il­ity and pride com­bined with the folly of youth­ful dis­cre­tion ulti­mately leads to his own sister’s demise in what can be described as a clas­sical tragedy and finds him­self in the Grave of The Fire­flies he had no way of avoiding.

There’s a cer­tain matur­ity and sense of pur­pose to Ghibli’s col­lect­ive writ­ing and present­a­tion that is masked in a child­ish and whim­sical exter­ior that reminds me of how Tezuka Osamu con­struc­ted his much cel­eb­rated manga. This is among the reas­ons I enjoy their works greatly. Any­way which Deus Ex Mach­ina end­ings are you refer­ring to? The only one that I can think of right off the top of my head is Naus­icaa of The Val­ley of The Wind.

About the other topic.…the reason I and many oth­ers dis­like Jason Miao is that he’s still doing the same things he did when he ran Blog­suki (which used to be an aggretator of blogs) wherein he tried to enforce his views upon it by del­ist­ing and black­list­ing any­body that dared to post any­thing about anime that he dis­agreed with. It was incred­ibly petty and car­ries on to today where he will black­list and i.p block­ing any­body that dares to chal­lenge any­thing he writes on the new blog­suki rather than own­ing up to it by respond­ing to or defend­ing it.

To you and “his read­ers” he may come across as some sort of hero for not caring about what other people say (I think it’s reas­on­able to ignore some of the things other people say, but not to the full extent nor in the way that he does), and that’s your view of him to have in all fair­ness, but too me and many oth­ers he comes across as a legendary cow­ard and hack of the highest order who lives in his own fantasy world of made up facts and ideas about anime, it’s pro­du­cers, and a whole bunch of other con­cepts he seems obsessed with enfor­cing. It’s all funny in my eyes but in a pathetic way that has me com­par­ing him to Big Brother from the book 1984.

It’s his loss to have though as all it’s going to lead to is him never learn­ing or exper­i­en­cing any­thing about what the blo­go­sphere, anime and the whole pic­ture has to offer in it’s true real­ity. I might call it a tragedy at some point, but his final story isn’t writ­ten yet so I’ll hold off on com­mit­ting to that con­clu­sion for a while.