I have a friend who loves video games and is also an excellent writer. When a video game blog we both read was looking for reviewers, I suggested he apply.
His refusal was instant. “If I did that, video games wouldn’t be my hobby anymore. They’d be my job and that wouldn’t be fun.”
Clearly, this is a point where we disagree. Everything I do for a living right now—blogging, writing books and articles, and web design—is also something I do for fun. So when Anime News Network put out a call for weekly streaming reviewers this summer, I didn’t need to think twice before I put my name in for consideration.
I’m coming on four months of reviewing three anime episodes a week, every week. Most of the time, it’s amazing! I get to pick the shows I want to review, so I can feel good about a show coming into it. However, I don’t always make good picks. For example, I chose to review an anime, Nobunaga Concerto, that I didn’t like from the start! I don’t know what was worse, having to watch it every week, or letting down a slew of readers every week who were disappointed that I had so many critiques toward a show they loved.
This year I learned that it’s not reviewing anime that makes watching TV feel like a job. It’s sticking with anime I simply don’t like that feels like the worst kind of work.
Some of the shows I watched this year were not my cup of tea, like Nobunaga Concerto. Others were non-negotiably terrible, like Dramatical Murder—a show with animation so poorly rendered that they had to redo episode three. As a BL fan, I am Dramatical Murder’s target audience, and even so I would have given it an even lower grade than its reviewer did. Hands down, this was my worst show of the year. Of course, Psycho-Pass 2 could be the dark horse in that race—it’s getting dumber the more I watch!
I also watched a few fan service anime this year that had little else to offer. I loved the mini, moe Mashiro in Engaged to the Unidentified, but the other characters were barely more than sketches. I wouldn’t recommend the so-so Bakumatsu Rock, a silly manservice musical anime that had trouble keeping up a semblance of a plot. And then, I actually liked Love Stage!, even though it hastily ended on episode 10, a clear sign that it had issues.
You see, I didn’t drop a single show this year. I wanted to document a comprehensive record of everything I watched this year so I could calculate the hours on day 12 of my Twelve Days. As a result, I watched some pretty awful anime to their conclusions in 2014. I wouldn’t recommend this. I’m kind of ashamed that I carved out time in my life to do it. I am not sure who came up with the Three Episode Rule, but it’s a good one. In 2015, if I don’t like something by episode three, that’s the end of it. I’d rather have a job I love—reviewing anime—than to assign myself work I hate based on some misguided principle of finality.
Screencap from the infamous Dramatical Murder episode 3.
This post is the fifth installment of The Twelve Days Of Anime, a blogging series in which anime fans write about shows that inspired or impressed on them this year. For all the posts in this series, visit my table of contents.
10 Comments.
I’m trying more and more to just drop shows that still interest me but the worst are ones like Terror in Resonance that start out good, keep having potential, and I know the creator can make good things, so I follow it to the end and end up disappointed (which is prompting one of my 12 days of anime posts as well! XD )
@wanderingdreamer:disqus Terror in Resonance was a surprise for sure! My worry is that something that starts out kind of meh will be amazing at the end! Shirobako is teaching me that original content shows, which have tighter and tighter deadlines as the episodes progress, probably aren’t candidates for this.
Terror in Resonance was one of my personal “fails of 2014,” series I should have liked but didn’t.
With so much to choose from, and so little time due to competing factors, sometimes we just need to drop what we sort of like, or are on the fence with, and embrace what we love.
Also, Jed Blue uses the term Three Episode Rule all the time, which is where I heard it. I have a two episode rule, but I’m glad I ignored it with Knights of Sidonia.
I say I give shows 5 episodes…but in reality there are shows I purge after 10 minutes (I Couldn’t Become a Hero..) I try to stick with that 5 episode cap for series’ I am on the fence with as too many times something that started out tepid in my mind ended up becoming pretty good. Mekakucity Actors was a series that benefited from this.
I kind of liked Terror in Resonance, even if it was nothing more than a replica of some Hollywood cop vs criminal movie like one of the later Die Hard’s. I really liked seeing a completely different type of story and style from Shinichiro Watanabe.
[…] Dec. 18 — When anime sucks […]
I think the problem sometimes with doing what you love as a job is burnout. It happens to everyone at some point. But, I think a big problem is that whatever people love to do tends to be something that is not always guaranteed to make money right away. Money comes first before anything else. I know money’s important to live, but it sometimes feel that’s the biggest issue holding them back. They can’t see the long-term potential like some people can. It’s another issue when a lot of people don’t save money in the first place (this is why I worry about the otaku mindset sometimes), so that plays into short-term/long-term thinking.
And also yeah, getting into stuff you don’t like is another thing. I sometimes wonder if we underestimate how much we enjoy certain things if we’re not going to explore the bad side of it. Reminds me of when I entered a trial period for Shoryuken.com, but the problem was that I didn’t go to fighting game tournaments and interacted with people there. I was only considered because my writing was good & I knew about the personalities. Then I realized that maybe I wasn’t into fighting games as much as I thought. It also didn’t help that I had little-to-no friends who were into fighting games versus anime/manga.
@MangaTherapy:disqus that sounds like a really valuable lesson. I have definitely accepted blogging jobs that I immediately regretted. There’s a post in there somewhere.
Also, you’re right, some things take a lot of time to make money. I remember when my husband (boyfriend at the time) suggested I quit blogging since I write for a living, and I should only write where I can make money. Fast forward and the blog is making a good amount of money, so. Sometimes it’s not always easy to see at first.
Well, I still like fighting games. But I was more into the characters and art style than the personalities who play the games. I don’t know how well that would translate over to writing about tournaments, mechanics, community, etc.
Some things might never make money either. If someone’s passion was to laze around and play video games all day, then umm, good luck making dough. That “do what you love” mantra needs to highlight that being useful to others (which is something not many people are good at) is the way to go forward.
Hi, I’ve been an otaku (self-proclaimed) for about the past 6 years, though I’ve liked anime much longer than that.
I’d just like to ask a few questions (for a research paper on “anime that’s hidden by the mainstream ones”):
What, in your opinion as a journalist/author on the subject of anime, are reasons why the non-mainstream anime – whether good or bad – are not as well known as the mainstream ones, especially in America?
And what causes these reasons?
Thank you in advance, it’s been very difficult for me to find good sources.
Given how little discretionary time one has, even three episodes can be a lot — that’s a quarter-cour. Plus, if I’ve lasted three eps I might just struggle through to the end. Some anime I’ll drop as soon as I see the drawing style, or the character design (lead character has spikey hair? that’s all I need to know). It’s not that they’re _bad_, it’s just that they’re not _me_. Of course, some of them _are_ just bad. As soon as I saw that Walkure Romanze got their ideas about horse movement from eighteenth century foxhunting pictures, I dropped it.
My backup is, I read lots of reviews (thanks L.O.), and am always willing to reconsider. My constraint is, I can only fit in about five shows per season.