If you draw women like children, and then give them high pitched voices, like children, and have them act girlish and foolish like pre-teen girls, and then sexualize them…There is something very very fucking wrong with you. Anime “purists” can deny it all they want, but it’s inherently tied in/related to fake waifu girlfriends and lonely neckbeards drawing naked waifus all over DeviantArt.

It’s skeevy as shit and I refuse to pretend otherwise.

I generally don’t talk about it, but because you asked, I have seen a lot of anime and hate most of it. I have seen Hellsing, Hellsing Ultimate, about 9/10 of the OG run of Fullmetal Alchemist, a lot of Ranma 1/2, Serial Experiments Lain, Akira, some Death Note, La Blue Girl, some tennis one I can’t remember the name of, Castlevania, a few Studio Ghibli movies, Attack on Titan S1 & 2, random episodes of Samurai Pizza Cats, all of One Punch Man, Interspecies Reviewers, Slayers, some DiC Sailor Moon, some early Pokemon, and a few Dragonball, YuGiOh, Digimon, and Naruto episodes.

I don’t count early GI Joe or Transformers even though they’re technically anime, but I didn’t like those either.

Of those, I liked Interspecies Reviewers, about 1.5 seasons of OPM, 1 season of Castlevania, and Hellsing Abridged (because it’s fucking hilarious).

Here’s a random top 10 of reasons:

1. Anime has a horrible habit of having a great premise, a lot of repeated setup, and then zero payoff followed by a new season escalating with the same. In short, great at premise, poor at developing it into a story. And endings? They have no idea how to end a series except for fighting bigger bad guys…
2. And that’s IF they can even be arsed to finish a series. I’m aware of the timeframe dynamic between manga and anime. It fucked over Game of Thrones too. Maybe we just agree not to start a show before the source material is done?
3. Much of the animation looks abysmal and the “serious” ones seem to have an awful habit of just… panning over a background or frozen characters in a scene for fucking ever to fill time. I made note of this during Serial Experiments Lain to my friend who was making me watch it and it basically ruined the show for him. It completely wrecked the pacing and was done CONSTANTLY. There were 45 second pans (which I would start audibly counting after 10 seconds) while the main character just monologued “I’m 12 and this is deep” bullshit that was nearly completely disconnected from the plot. There was no reason to do this. Even recent shows like Castlevania did this.
4. Shit just happens that doesn’t make any sense in context of the world they’ve set up. This is endemic from anime I’ve seen. Anime fans think that randomness is “creative” instead of just “throwing shit at a screen because the writer had a fever dream and it doesn’t matter at all if it makes any fucking sense”. Spirited Away is basically just this. No, randomness is not creativity, Katy the Penguin of Doom.
5. They’re just a different set of tropes than American cartoons, many of which I find to be nonsensical, twee, or cringe-inducing. Bloody nose when you get a boner trope, I’m looking at you.
6. I fucking hate Japanese voice acting (and often for the most part the Americans who dub it, especially in kids shows). This started when Sailor Moon came over and I wanted to kill everyone in the immediate vicinity whenever most of the characters spoke. That shrill panic screaming that was in SM and Pokemon was awful.
7. In the same vein, I also can’t stand constant “reaction sounds”. Someone saying something mildly surprising that you should have easily realized 10 episodes ago isn’t an excuse to stare blankly and make an “AH”, “OH”, or “UH” noise (sometimes followed by a small choking sound) roughly four hundred times per episode. Humans don’t do this.
8. They make movies that just do random shit and don’t have anything to do with the show (if not outright contradict the show). Dragonball is especially notorious for this.
9. A really weird number of them throw in Nazis seemingly at random, appropriate time and setting be damned. Need a bad guy? Fucking Nazis!
10. I am constantly inundated with friends that like anime telling me that I should watch whatever their new anime obsession is despite it conforming to 3/4 of bad things on this list because obviously I just haven’t watched the right anime.

I don’t think people straight up hate anime, nobody is going to pick up a remote and turn of the TV if they see somebody else watching it and angrily leave the room.

It’s just, for the most part (and this is also true for non-animated movies or series), you’ve seen one you’ve seen them all.

There are only so many times you can tell the story of boring guy gets put in fantasy land and is not boring anymore, or mysterious things happen at school and the afterschool mystery club has to solve them.

So what do you do? You cling to what you know is good. Studios, directors, etc. If Miyazaki makes an anime movie you watch it, if Quentin Terentino makes an action movie you watch it. This is also partially why anime’s are less popular than mainstream movies and series. You can watch a movie solely because you like an actor/actress, regardless of whether they play the same character or somebody else. In anime, each new series has a new set of characters, so each time a new personal connection has to be built.

Other than that, a good measure of “is this worth my time?” is pop cultural representation. Rule of thumb, if an anime spawns memes, it’s usually half decent.

But just like with movies and series, there are timeless classics. Like, who hasn’t seen or at least heard of Cowboy Bebop, Evangelion, Trigun, Dragon Ball Z, etc… Even my parents know Pokemon. Those have been around for so long and been shown on mainstream western channels during prime time slots, that they were impossible to miss. I think people who aren’t familiar with those are just not that interested in motion picture as a whole, regardless how its presented.

I’d say without overeaching, anime’s can be put in just a few categories:

• Artistic, Philosophical, Experimental, Parodies: Those are your Miyazaki films, Ghost in the Shell, Evangelion, One Punch Man, Full Metal Alchemist, Attack on Titan, etc.

• Long running: Like, Pokemon, One Piece, Naruto, Dragon Ball, the Fate Series

• Trying to sell you something: Again Pokémon, Yu-Gi-Oh, Gundam, Beyblade, etc.

• Mass produced trash: All the ones where the title spreads 3 lines and tells you 90% of the story

• Otaku soap operas: The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya, the Monogatari series, Nagatoro, Komi-San

But those categories are not evenly spread in appeal, quality and quantity. While the first 2 categories have barely any presence but arguably the most cultural impact, the later ones have the most presence but are individually culturally insignificant. But quality is harder to judge than quantity is to see. So people tend to see the mass produced trash and ignore the good stuff that is being overshadowed. With classical film, a movies intention can usually be discerned with just one look, if for example a modern movie is black and white, its usually artistic. But looking at things like Evangelion, or the Ghost in the Shell Series, you couldn’t guess the deep philosophical implications on first glance. People tend to see cutesy anime art style and associate it with either the mass produced trash, or shows made for children. What makes a film/series good is the intention and execution, if it happens to be animated this usually doesn’t take away from the underlying message. See old animated Disney Movies - Lilo and Stich is about Family Values, Monetary Struggles, Loss and Friendship. Adult topics packed in a medium that both children and their parents can enjoy.

People tend to hate anime for the same reason they hate superhero movies, they see the overarching medium, but not the individual pieces. You can’t compare the significance of Iron Man 1 with Thor 2, or Infinity War with The Marvels, some of these movies are good in a vacuum, without the whole Cinematic Universe attached to them. Same goes for anime, some are simply good stories regardless of them being animated.

Not enough propane or propane accessories (except for King of the Hill, best anime ever).

The facial expressions and the constant noises. It’s like a food dish with too much salt, doesn’t matter what the other flavor is once you decide you can’t stand the overpowering vibe of the thing.

Youre mistaking indifference for hatred.

Tropes, filler, sexualization, the need to categorize or name things and stick to that strict hierarchy (ie. power levels), and laat but not least, the surrounding culture. Probably some other stuff I’m not thinking of as well.

Notably, the anime which doesn’t include these problems can reach some pretty high highs, because anime excels at motion and emotion.

I get asked this question a lot, because I love many traditional Japanese cultures, but not anime. First of all, I don’t hate it, I still respect it, but it’s simply not my cup of tea.

I often find it to be overstimulating and sexualized. someone said it’s like food with too much salt, that perfectly describes it for me. It’s just too over the top sometimes. The sexualization is also off putting. It’s a constant distraction from the plot and undermines the rest of the characters and story.

I also don’t like the voice acting style, where it is again overbearing, especially for women characters. That’s not what people sound like. It’s way too high pitched and trying way too hard to sound “cute”.

Considering most anime is low effort schlock that contains episodic plots that get nowhere (and even linear narratives tend to progress at the speed of molasses), if somebody tells me they “like anime” without elaborating, I think less of them then if they told me they “like music.”

I wouldn’t say I hate it, but I can’t watch it.

I used to love it. I was obsessed in the early 2000’s. Then I went to college for animation, and learning about how that all works absolutely ruined all enjoyment for anime.

I’ve always felt like anime requires a huge time investment to enjoy it; so I’ve always avoided it.

I don’t hate it but I think a lot of japanese anime and video-games have an awful pacing that make it so boring for me. The stories make too much time to move on. So slow.

I have tried a lot of anime (Myazaki, the titan’s thingy…) and videogames because fans don’t stop talking about it but it’s just not my cup of tea.

I’m generally picky about how I spend large amounts of time. As an adolescent I watched like 700 episodes of One Piece but I eventually gave up. At this point I can’t be bothered with any Shonen; they’re the equivalent of junk food. Even Mob Psycho 100 started getting tiresome in season 3.

I’ve never appreciated bishoujo/harem garbage; I had coworkers that watched it regularly and it was very off-putting. They are horny and delusional, pretending there is substance.

But I still think there’s a lot of solid art in manga/anime. I tend to look for popular seinen manga that turned into anime, like Akira, Berserk, Monster, Ghost in the Shell, Death Note, One Punch Man. But even some of those end up going downhill or failing to evolve out of the “edgy and violent” stage, e.g. Attack on Titan.

Clearly the garbage is what makes money, which is a huge shame.

And AFAIK Hayao Miyazaki does not like to be associated with the Anime genre and would prefer being grouped with the likes of Disney. And I think that’s quite appropriate.

I just don’t like soap operas, whatever the form. My kid does though.

I guess we just grew up and Japan still mostly treats and creates anime as media for kids and teenagers, not unlike how cartoons are still mostly “for kids”.

I don’t “hate” anime, like many people here, but some stuff just doesn’t entertain me anymore. I’m too old to find Dragon Ball Z and every other similar shonen even minimally entertaining. Hell, I was probably too old for that shit back when I was 19, I remember checking Bleach and giving up on episode 7 or whatever, though I think it was Naruto that “woke me up” when I was 16, I was watching it but wasn’t enjoying it for quite a while, until I just dropped it around ep 120, “this shit ain’t going nowhere”.

I’ve only watched Evangelion the first time during covid years, and it was clear it was two stories in one: the one they wanted to tell, which was kinda interesting, and their struggles with budget and how that affected the product.

The thing is that the anime that reaches mass appeal is meant for the masses, much like movies with mass appeal are the ones that require you to shut down your brain. The last 2 anime that I watched, enjoyed and wouldn’t mind watching again are Legend of Galactic Heroes and Taxi Driver, both are low on nonsense and bullshit.

More often than not, it’s just better to read the manga, when the anime’s based on one. Slam Dunk is a much better read than watching the anime, plus you end up knowing about the author’s other work, Vagabond, which is amazing.