What makes a good anime? No, I’m not talking about the details of the anime itself. Leave aside what is actually inside the package, I’m talking about reception. This also has nothing to do with popularity or sales, although they are closely linked. What I’m referring to is how do you know how ‘good’ an anime is. Sorry I can’t come up with more exciting vocabulary to convey my point. How would you define if one anime is better than another through sheer objectivity?
Many would say there is no objective way to define if one anime is better than another because all opinions on whether a show is good or not is entirely your own opinion. This is completely and utterly true. How good something is is based entirely off your own subjective opinion. What you might have thought of as good someone else might have thought was crap and neither of you are wrong, at least not subjectively. However the more people’s subjective opinions you collect, the closer to the objective quality of the show you have.
The quality of a show is defined purely on whether the people watching it thought it was any good and how good they thought it was. While you can define things that happen inside the show through purely objective eyes, these do not define whether the show itself was well-received. You can use them to explain why it was well received but nothing more. Using this wordy logic, if the vast majority of people thought a show was good, then it objectively is a good show.
tc;du (too confusing, didn’t understand) If an anime is rated highly on sites like MAL (or movies on imdb or whatever) then it is a good anime. Good is defined by whether people thought it was any good. Subjective opinions become objective fact through sheer numbers.
Counter-Argument or I am my own worst critic
But people are thick and honestly thought that Code Geass R2 was good
Then they are right. Oh sure, you could point out parts of the product itself to show why it shouldn’t be rated so highly, but if the majority of viewers thought it was good, then it was good. You didn’t think it was good? Great, that’s your own subjective opinion and you’re not wrong. But you’ve been drowned out by thousands of others who thought otherwise.
But the ratings on MAL are flawed. Someone who likes RahXephon might rate it an 8 while someone else who likes Afro Samurai just as much as the person who likes RahXephon might rate Afro Samurai a 10. Also, ratings are defined by who’s rating them. If only BL fans rate BL anime, then Junjou Romantica ends up far higher than it should. Also sequels get rated higher etc. etc.
Ah technicalities~. Theory rarely works properly in real life because life is such a complicated mess. The main point of this post still stands, you just need to take the ratings with a pinch of salt. Comparing like with like works quite well for certain genres. If Bleach is rated higher than Naruto and they attract the same type of fans to rate them, then Bleach is better than Naruto. If Evangelion is rated higher than RahXephon, then Evangelion is better. If Kaiba is rated better than Kemenozume…you get my drift.
The Cart Driver 
@Scamp: Hmm… Interesting article, Scamp. I do agree that there are subjective arguments to judge whether an anime is bad or good. Normally, I feel that the judgment lies within the viewer himself.
For some, certain series are good while for others they may say that it is bad. If let’s say that 80% says that the series is bad, that doesn’t mean that it would be bad for the remaining 20%. Those 20% may see something that attract them in the series to say that it is good (or I shall put fanboyism into the picture as well).
True, that a higher skew of the scale would tip new viewers to either avoid or watch the series in question. But what if the judgment is wrong, and that a badly rated series to most people ended up being a particular masterpiece to the viewer’s taste? Tough question.
Let’s take last year for example. Most people rated “White Album” badly (I’m not using the MAL rating for this example; just some word of mouth and reviews on anibloggers). However, I love the series a lot. True that it can be slow, but that’s how I like to see.
So, it truly depends on the viewer in question. I wouldn’t let ratings affect my viewing pleasure; I’ll just use it as points of discussion to find out differences and iron them all up.
I can’t say I agree with your conclusion there. If the measure of goodness is just an aggregate of opinions, then it just depends on who you ask. For example, MAL is a site catering to obsessive anime fans, the kind that are trendy with the internet and follow new anime as they air in Japan. The kinds of people that take the time to make an account on MAL and search for say, R2, and rate the thing, collective hold an opinion that’s wildly different than randomly polling people off the streets, the norm. MAL popularity is a sort of ‘false’ popularity since its such a narrow population sample.
A great anime should be measured in part by its ability to appeal to many people outside of its specific target audience, e.g. Ghibli films.
In the end, I think popularity is an indicator of something, might be quality, novelty, pre-installed fanbase, or commercial advantages, and it should be part of the equation for overall Goodness, but it’s only a fraction of the whole picture.
@jusuchin85
Oh of course you shouldn’t let the rating affect your own enjoyment. It’s purely from a referencing aspect. I can use Haruhi or Monster as an example of a good anime even though I’m not much of a fan of these myself. On the flipside, I love Love Hina but I wouldn’t use it as an example of a quality anime, at least not without referring to the fact that it’s only quality in my totally biased eyes and everyone else sucks for not liking it
@kadian
My post works if you could get everyone to watch everything and then rate them with the same mean score. Ah theory~
One thing you have to remember is that we are part of the narrow population sample you are referring to. We are anime fans, as are those who are doing the rating, so for us the ratings are pretty darn accurate. Even outside of typical anime fandom, those anime that usually act as the gateway to fandom are the highly rated ones. The MAL scores work quite well for the most part.
Popularity though…I can’t explain. Again, if you got the Narutards to also watch the moe shows, you might start to see a closer representation of Goodness, but that’s all an ideal world that will never exist and leaves me despairing as my theories fall apart because softcore fans won’t venture outside their comfort zone. I still think the MAL score is the best method to discovering true Goodness of an anime and even when you start factoring in all these other suggestions for what makes an anime good, the list won’t undergo any serious changes. It’s like for the ‘predictions for the best anime of the 00’s’, we took different routes to choosing what would be the frontrunners and yet we ended up with the exact same bunch.
I think the best measure as to whether something is “good” should be measured by the reception it gets years after it’s released from both new viewers and re-watchers. In other words, I’d peg timelessness as a major component. If an anime series can appeal to someone 10 or even 30 years after it’s released, I think you definitely have a quality show. In the same vein, if an anime that appealed to my 18-year old self appeals to me when I’m in my mid-40s, then you definitely know it’s a quality show.
Example: I watched the Super Mario Bros Super Show as a kid and loved it. Watched it again when the episodes were streamed 18 years later and it was so silly as to be unbearable. I watched Shawshank Redemption when I was about 15 and loved it. Fast forward to now and I find myself enjoying it even more than I did then. Excellent film.
@zzeroparticle
Don’t entirely agree with that. Looking outside anime for a second, take the Avatar movie. In 30-40 years time, the CGI for other movies will be at that level and there will be movies with far better storylines. By your measure, Avatar would end up being rated a pretty average movie. But that doesn’t take into account the effect and shock of the quality of CGI it had at the time. Think oldfags who complain that when a youngster doesn’t like an old anime says’ it was revolutionary at the time’. Timelessnes is a factor but it’s foolish to leave aside the original impact it had.
I tend to do this when I look at things, though my view is much larger. What defines a good anime?
Does this anime make someone smile? Then yes, yes it is~ All anime are good in my book, just some dont hit their target audiences, and therefore arent viewed by the same light all around.
Well idk about necesarily making you smile, but something being defined as a “good experience” in the end is important. Like Elfen Lied, there wasn’t a lot of “smile” moments, but was a GREAT anime.
p.s. Oh btw, Scamp, you never let me know about the blogroll exchange thing 😦
I agree with Kadian that popularity is just one part of the equation. It’s a mistake, I think, to say, “This [whatever] is popular and highly ranked; therefore, it is great” because popularity (or lack thereof) is the end result of a show’s efforts toward “goodness” (along with a host of other circumstances and other things that come into play), and not so much a reason in and of itself to call a show good.
For example, The Boondock Saints is a highly-ranked movie on IMDb (a 7.9 the last time I checked, which denotes a very good to great movie, I think), but frankly, it’s garbage and fails at everything it does except for maybe one or two action sequences. Everything else is just a bad ripoff of other, better movies or just silly tripe thrown in to make the movie appear to have depth. I would never in a million years call The Boondock Saints a good movie despite its high rating. Dragon Ball Z has a near 7.7 rating on MAL, which while not great, is certainly a solid score … but I wouldn’t call DBZ good either (and I actually enjoy watching it). There are reasons for their popularity, but they’re not good because of their popularity. I don’t mean to sound like an elitist asshole (I think you know by now that I’m not one, haha), but mass opinion can be wrong, or to be more fair, can be exaggerated for various reasons.
The main problem I see is that you define a condition of “goodness” (i.e. popularity and high ratings), but not really what constitutes being good. Just like there is not one absolute standard for how to tell a story, how to write a song, how to direct a movie, etc., there is not one standard to determine what is “good”. Ratings and mass opinion certainly tells you what is well-loved (and a good portion of these series may actually be good), but they do not by themselves provide a solid basis for someone to say, “This is definitively good, and this is not”.
Also, regarding the timelessness point zzeroparticle brings up, I think there is a difference between being good for an era and possibly historically influential, and being timelessly good. I haven’t seen Avatar, so I don’t want to comment on that, but I think Final Fantasy VII works as a good example: If you look at it by today’s standards, FFVII is a dinosaur — the graphics are ass ugly, the battle system is busted and easy to take advantage of, the dialogue is horribly translated (an American-based complaint; I heard other translations might have been a bit less dodgy, and I doubt the original Japanese has too many problems :p), and the storytelling is pretty clunky and confusing at times. But it was a huge game at the time it came out, and is definitely historically important as the first J-RPG to make a big impact in America. That does take it only so far, however. FFVII is a good game, but its flaws absolutely need to be taken into account when considering its “goodness”.
Compare that to something like Rose of Versailles, which even though it has its flaws (completely dated animation, insane melodrama (that I like, haha), a bit repetitive, and so on), it also transcends those flaws and becomes timeless by virtue of its visual style (which was enormously influential), its strong storytelling and complex, memorable characters. Rose of Versailles is both good in a vacuum and also a series that transcends the limitations of its time period.
That’s the kind of thing that tells me there are different levels of “goodness” and so many things that tell the story — all of which contribute to its standing in public opinion and ratings.
(Just so I don’t come off as a complete hater, I want to say I enjoyed reading this post and thinking about everything involved with it. Looking forward to your reply!)
Yeah, I’m not big on this idea that the “objective” good is in the numbers, since, if you take this to its logical conclusions, it’s not amenable to disagree with the mass average opinion, because you’re disagreeing with the “objective” opinion, which is implicitly treated as the truth of the matter. Similarly, I’m not a fan of the idea that opinion is entirely subjective, since the idea that the only opinion that truly matters is your own means that there’s no point in discussing/debating it. And as tempting as it is to deny sometimes, discussion is good for everyone (good discussion gives us a chance to better understand the material and refine our opinions and give/get feedback, etc, etc).
Is there meaning when an anime has a high favourited-to-watched ratio? Yes, I won’t disagree with that, and one of the conclusions you could draw is that there’s a good chance that the anime is good and you’ll like it. But “chance” is the key word here. MAL ratings shouldn’t be considered the objective mark anymore than the AnimeSuki Choice Awards are, or Rotten Tomato ratings are for movies. Is there such as thing as an objective opinion? Maybe. I don’t see any reason to discount that there is. But the markers for finding it need to be just as complex and thought out as the work being judged (in fact, probably moreso… which is why academia probably has a much better chance of objectively criticizing literature in the true sense than anything else). I think the “global average” rating might work reasonably as a first approximation, but that’s probably about as good as it’ll ever do.
This topic has been and will probably be, directly or indirectly, discussed forever because anime is work of art and there’s no way to objectively measure its quality. It’s all subjective.
BTW, maybe it doesn’t matter whether an anime is good or not as along as it affects the viewers. I often find myself fall in love with anime that I think is bad.
Inspired by that [typo’d] comment on my blog you made, eh? (:
It’s hard to define what “good” really means. I can’t say that databases as big as MAL are “wrong” in defining good anime, but I can say they’re not completely “right.”
You can see charts floating around on 2ch and 4chan titled “Great Anime” or “Recommended Anime,” and there are things like the “Critics and Connoisseurs” club on MAL. These all try to float above the supposed “hype” of shows like Death Note and Code Geass (not picking Bleach and Naruto, since the opposition to those is ridiculously strong) with more “refined” tastes, but are they really right? IMO, Death Note and Code Geass don’t deserve to be ranked so highly, but they do deserve to be ranked very high.
But then again, that’s in my opinion.
P.S.: Some anime are almost universally regarded as “good” or “bad,” though. Truly “bad” shows are regarded as “bad” by just about everybody – it’s hard to argue that Mars of Destruction is good, because it simply isn’t. Yet the other side is a hell of a lot harder to prove. Not many anime have received nothing but compliments. After Story, top dog on MAL, has had a lot of criticism, especially for its ending.
Are there truly “good” anime out there? The only contender for this spot would be Mushishi, the one show that was on just about every “top ___ anime of the decade” list and consistently in the top ten of every database, but does that fulfill the requirements?
Bah, what do I know, anyway? I think GTO is a terrible show. Brb refining tastes 😐
@luffyluffy
Noooo, don’t fall down the trap of saying ‘all anime is good’ because that then implies that all anime is exempt from criticism, which is most certainly NOT true.
@fas
I did actually respond so I’ll copypaste what I said last time:
I’m going to have to respectfully decline your offer to a link exchange. I have a policy not to include links to H-sites. My little sister reads this blog ya know, sorry
@Shinmaru
tl;dr
just kidding.
MAL and imdb are hopelesly flawed versions of this equation because you’re not getting a proper picture of what everyone thinks. It’s the best version currently available but there will always be irregularities.
Where I differ is that I think mass-opinion is the defining factor to whether a show is ‘good’ or not. Wild theory now, but if everyone watches something and think it’s the best thing ever, it IS the best thing ever. Mass opinion of a show can’t be wrong if they all thought it was good. Now if there was one person in that audience who didn’t like the show, he is correct in saying ‘I didn’t think it was good’ but if he was to say ‘It’s not a good show’, he is wrong.
zzeroparticles version does mess things up a bit. When you consider that people’s opinion of a show changes over time, does that mean a show can go from being good to not being good? Which means good is not something definite…urgh, I’m getting all philisophical here and it’s hurting my head. Damn you and your long comments!
@Sorrow-kun
Opinion is the definition of subjective. You cannot be wrong in saying you liked something. No amount of evidence to show the show is terrible will change the fact that the person enjoyed it.
However you do have me with the ‘disagreeing with objective quality of the show means you are wrong’. Yeah, that’s some faulty logic I’ve implied there and I haven’t got a counter-argument to that.
Actually there’s a bizzilion holes in the theory of global average defining quality. A universalliy average show that everyone thinks is average will score better than a show that 40% of people think is amazing while 60% think it terrible, when clearly the split-opinion show has more value.
There’s more flaws but I’m not going to mention anymore because my readers are doing a pretty find job of it already.
@Canne
Oh yes, this is one of those subjects that will be done to death across the board in every arts area.
Next on the Cart Driver: the fansub debate and dub vs sub!
@fangzhao
I was actually part of the critics and connousiers club but damnit, those guys are idiots. Rise above the hype is dumb because often something gets hype because its a bloody good show.
The thing is practically everything has someone who likes it, even Akikan has glowing reviews on MAL. Also everything has someone who doesn’t like it, including Mushishi. Bah, my theory in defining good anime has been torn apart by the commenters up there but MAL is still the best way currently available at finding whats generally considered better than everything else.
Also, I thought GTO was pretty average myself.
I think the best way to determine if a show is good or not is to categorize every anime, and then make an average of the opinions of the fans of that particular genre.
That way, you’ve got to accept that Clannad AS is a masterpiece, just because the MOE fans love it. Even if you don’t like it, you can’t say it isn’t good, you can just say you dont like that kind of things.
Of course this would apply for almost every genre: Romance, Sci-Fi, Mecha, psicological, etc.
Of course you can exclude from this ratings genres such as ecchi and shows like Naruto and Bleach, just because it would be more than ridiculous to say that Naruto is a masterpiece. You can like bleach, as I do ( Rank it 7/10), but you can’t say it is a masterpiece, that is just absurd.
For rating shows, everyone should consider aspects as the story, the animation and art, and the characters above other things as music and the seiyuus. Although, if an anime has an outstanding animation, such as ( in my opinion) 5 Centimeters per second, but has a “just good” story and characters, then it could still be called a Masterpiece, just because what is has of good is really good.
@Scamp
But what about my other point? If opinion is entirely subjective, what good is there in debating it? Is discussion of opinion just meaningless mental masturbation in a group environment? I mean, I don’t doubt that’s part of it, but I think there’s more to it than that.
Opinion might be subjective, but it’s formed out of interpretations of observations, and part of that process is objective. Thinking about it from this point of view, a clear divide between “objective” and “subjective” is probably an overly simplistic way to think about it. If you look at science, which values and strives for objectivity, the main point is to draw conclusions by analyzing and interpreting the data. But it’s still possible for two people to draw different conclusions from the same set of data. That’s the whole point of scientific controversy, and from the debates that follow, these conclusions turn into testable hypotheses for future experiments, with the aim of trying to find out which conclusion is closest to the true nature.
The point I’m trying to make is that, while judging anime is largely subjective, and science is largely objective, neither is completely one or the other, simply because of process and human nature. I think we need to start thinking of subjectivity/objectivity as a scale rather than a dichotomy. Because if we define objectivity as “without opinion” as opposed to “without emotion” than nothing is truly objective, because opinion is the inevitable consequence of interpretation, something that must be done with everything we experience.
@fmaestri90
Not all anime fit nice and snug into genres. What is Full Metal Panic? Or Shakugan no Shana? Does Higurashi go in the same genre as Lucky Star because they’re both moe? Plus appeal outside of the genre itself is important. Death Note is shounen, but people outside the shounen demographic love it.
@Sorrow-kun
gajgasibgsaibgfheb
(see twitter)
Besides the obvious “your argument is a non-sequitur, idiot” I’m just going to leave you this google trends link for you to judge what’s the worth of mass opinion/interests. If, after taking a look, you still don’t abandon your absurd “democracy-rules!!1!!!1@11” theory then simply your opinion doesn’t deserve consideration, such as the opinion of people who got Lord of the rings to the first place in IMDB list and then got the Joker’s movie with Batman’s participation, yet they don’t even know who Dreyer, Bresson or even Tarkovsky were.
http://www.google.com/trends
(Today people seem to be searching for “better” things, ussually it’s just gossip, scandals and twilight)
Must of what I said is, of course, purely subjective. But still, your argument is a non-sequitur and your opinion is idiotic.
Cheers!
I can’t entirely agree with you here but I do see part of your point.
I think everyone is entitled to have a different opinion and popularity is an objective sign of something being considered “good” by the majority, but that doesn’t necessarily mean it will stand up to further scrutinity or that it can be universally classifed as “good” period, particularly when comparisons to other works start being made.
At the same time, there are critics who are far too cynical and won’t appreciate this or that product on any level if it doesn’t meet their personal standards, which aren’t necessarily as objective as they’d like to pretend since personal tastes and expectations, which tend to be pretty subjective once you get past certain basics, also play a role.
While a critical analysis might be more detailed than the average fanboy rant (although sometimes that’s actually not the case and the results can be incredibly ironic…but nevermind), I think we shouldn’t focus on popularity and instead think about the specific arguments that are brought to the table at any given tiem. It doesn’t really matter if something is supposed to be “good” if your statements can’t properly back that up or vice versa. Studio Ghibli’s movies aren’t great just because they have mainstream popularity.
@Sorrow-kun
Urgh…right, let me give this another go.
Mental masturbation is group form? I’m going to say yes, critique is nothing more than that. It can certainly increase your enjoyment of a show as you learn different insights about the show itself but the actual quality of the show itself remains the same. Discussing it will not change the show itself. In a way, discussing a show only fills in the gaps you weren’t intelligent enough to fill in yourself.
Objectivity and subjectivity sliding scale…I’m sorry but I’m going to have to give up. There’s an element of truth in what you’re saying but I do believe there is such a thing as true objectivity but whenever I tried to explain it I ended up in a web of contradictions.
To give you an idea of a thought process I went through: If someone says something is red, then that is fact and therefore an objective statement. They know it is red. But in the past saying the earth was flat was an objective statement since they ‘knew’ it was flat. By that logic, someone saying something a harem anime was original because they hadn’t seen any others was an objective statement, which went on until I ended up saying a subjective statement was objective and dividing the whole thing by zero and you get 42.
I still don’t entirely agree with you. It’s just I can’t play ball back because my legs have fallen off.
@flamer
Hurrah, my first flame! And it’s my favourite, one of those who get unhappy when their favourite obscure piece isn’t adored by the masses. You have, of course, missed the point where I pointed out that any real life application of this theory messes up when humans get involved because they are not the machines and do things like start campaigns to get Lord of the Rings up the charts, but I doubt you’re coming back. Seriously though, use your name next time. You’re obviously an anime blogger since there’s no other way to find this blog at the moment, so man up next time.
@Camario
Right, as you can see I’ve had to rethink my ideas on the post. Basically, I’ve had to throw out the idea of anything ever being objectivly ‘good’. Subjective en masse seems to be the closest you’ll get to definine the quality of the series.
‘Stand up to scrutiny’ is not a phrase I like because that therefore defines that you can judge a show by objective standerds. Sorry, I know I’m changing my tune here but there’s been some quite enlightening comments. While you can critque something, that does not change the view of the show one has. It’s like I said to Sorrow-kun, arguing about the show doesn’t change the quality of the show itself.
Also, popularity is not what I’m talking about, I’m talking about percentages. If 10 people watch something and 9 of them like it, then that’s better than 10000 people watching something and 5432 liking it.
Urgh…sorry folks, my own thoughts on this have been scrambled on the subject so sorry for incoherant comments
“Seriously though, use your name next time. You’re obviously an anime blogger since there’s no other way to find this blog at the moment, so man up next time.”
Is Scamp your “real” name? What point will it make for me to give you mine, or either a random internet alias? No, I’m no blogger, in fact I barely even watch anime. My brother, who is a fan of you, told me about your post.
“when their favourite obscure piece isn’t adored by the masses.”
By no means, but using popularity to demonstrate the “goodness” of something is non-sequitur, a concept you must have not understood…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non_sequitur_%28logic%29
“You have, of course, missed the point where I pointed out that any real life application of this theory messes up when humans get involved because they are not the machines and do things like start campaigns to get Lord of the Rings up the charts”
No, I understood perfectly, your the one who clearly doesn’t quiet know what a non-sequitur argument is.
Neodarkness
@Neodarkness
You came back? I admit I didn’t expect that.
I ignored the non-sequitur statement because that is no more than a poncy way of saying you suck at formulating a point.
Right, so the part you have a problem with is that you don’t think that if everyone watches two movies and more people like the first than the second, then the first is a better movie, am I correct? I’m assuming in this post that everyone has seen both movies. You are saying that humans will get things wrong and they will prefer a movie that’s not as good? Now that’s where I disagree, well, up to a point. The quality of a movie is not something that can be defined without people watching it. It is whether the people who watch it think it is any good that decides whether it is good.
Since you came back last time I’m going to assume you’ll come back again. This time please take better care to explain more clearly where you disagree. Not a single commenter agreed with me, which has kinda showed me that I’m wrong with my conclusions I’ve drawn here, but they all formed their points with a bit more courtesy. Please follow their examples next time
It’s not that I suck at formulating a point, I just assume I don’t have to spell every word and letter for a argument to be pretty clear. Such as in non-sequitur, latin for “doesn’t follow”, as in “from popularity doesn’t follow goodness, what ever that may be”.
Truth is something being artistically “good” is beyond logical/rational analisis. First, because such a concept is not properly defined. Good for what? for whom? in what way? And second, because even if it were, the mesurement of qualities still remains subjective.
Essentially, the qualities that define good are subjetive and their agregation doesn’t sudenly turn them objetive. A anime being good doesn’t follow from it’s weighted ratings, even in your hipotetical scenario.
Oh, you were calling your own argument non-sequitur? OK, that clears up a lot.
“Truth is something being artistically “good” is beyond logical/rational analisis”
That’s the statement that bugs me. Leaving aside logic and taking the side of common sense, it’s clear that (since you’re not an anime fan, I’ll take two movies I’ve seen recently) 12 Angry Men is a way better movie than The Break Up. Why? Because everyone who watches the two movies says so and clearly rate it higher. Trying to convert that common sense into a logical all-encompasing theory hasn’t exactly worked though. As you said, subjective masses doesn’t turn into objective fact because it, amongst other things, suggests that anyone who goes against popular opinion is wrong.
You lost me there, no idea of what your tryinh to say.
But, anyway, that common sense your talking about is everything but common. Regular people seem to think that something made in the 90’s is old and hence bad (which I find amusing, since my favorite movie is from 1926)… You, yourself admited to a certain prejudice against pre-youtube works in a article concerning Akira, if my memory isn’t failing me. That’s very indicative of the kind of audience that consumes nowadays. Audiences with extremely short memorys and attetion spams (which has less of a potential to affect anime as it ussualy is very short).
But anyway, all that is subjective. The point is, sadly (sadly because someone needs to tell twilight fans and narutards how stupid their opinions are) we cannot establish a objective “good” scale. The common sense of which you speak, is rather uncommon, and very unreliable.
Take the most crazilly intelligent anime in existance, so complex that nobody can understand it. We are all too dumb to fully comprehend the show and therefore we don’t like it. That doesn’t mean it’s a good show. Narutards opinions aren’t stupid and many of them do watch quite a phenomenal amount of other anime. If something only appeals to a bunch of high-class elitists that doesn’t make their opinion more valid.
Prejudice though…that’s hard to argue against. Something like not liking older anime just because they’re old, fair enough. But if something portrays neo-nazi ideals then it’s hard to honestly assess it without keeping your prejudice against nazi-idealism out of it.
Which of course all works against my theory ever working…
Ah, I see, that’s perfectly cool 😛 at first I thought you were being a d-bag and just ignoring me 😦 but thanks anyways, I have you on my blogroll anyways.