Bobduh

It appeals to some of the fantasies most common to the largest demographics of anime fans. Anime fans are, on the whole, a bunch of nerds who maybe aren't the best socially and don't necessarily have total control over their mundane lives. A show like Mahouka, where a trod-upon but secretly talented and respect-worthy protagonist wins admiration and shows up a bunch of bullies through his mastery of a convoluted technical system, is basically liquid ambrosia to anime's young, isolated fandom. Same thing with SAO - you may not be the most charming person in the real world, but HERE, your ability to thrive in an arbitrary, videogame-esque framework is what makes you important and powerful. Real-life social realities can be unfair and frightening - rigid, gamelike systems of mastery are comforting.

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This also feeds into some of the more questionable philosophical underpinnings of each of these works (based on what I've seen in SAO and what I've heard regarding Mahouka) - like the idea that certain people "deserve" to be rewarded more for their innate talents. That's a pretty poisonous mentality, but when you're coming at it from the perspective of a young person who feels like the world is arbitrarily deciding their destiny in spite of whatever talents they may have, it's also an understandably comforting one.

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Even beyond this core audience, action shows with a remotely self-serious aesthetic are always able to attract a broad latent audience. This is a big part of why Titan was so popular - people want to watch fun action shows, but they also don't want to watch stuff that they perceive as childish or pandering, and so covering an action show in a gritty coat of paint results in crazy viewers. I think this is also why I so commonly hear Fate/Zero referred to as a "very mature" show - personally, I think this specific choice of words says less about the show itself than it does about an audience that cares deeply about the ways the shows they watch are perceived, or even their self-image as a viewer of certain things.

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I'm leaning towards dropping them. I'm somewhat tempted to do silly Mahouka writeups, but then I remember how Free! began to feel like torture by its second half, and realize Mahouka is twice as long.

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I might do one for the second week just to test the waters and see if it's fun/there's interest. I only got through the first episode by live-tweeting it anyway, and it already seems like an even more pure expression of the fantasies light novels play to than anything I've seen before. I wasn't around for Guilty Crown and I wasn't around for SAO, so I feel like I might regret missing the chance to hop onto this one on the ground floor.

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But again, it'll have to be fun. By the end of winter, I was putting off Sekai Seifuku episodes even though I really wanted to watch them because I didn't have the energy for writeups - I'm not letting that happen again.

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Biggest disappointment was probably Kyoukai no Kanata. From the moment that show was announced, I basically assumed it would be the KyoAni show I'd always been waiting for - the one that would put their visual powers to use in service of a story with real weight, excitement, and ambition. Stumbling over the jagged rocks and stones of their 2013 output only to be rewarded with an unfocused wreck of a show was pretty dispiriting.

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Wait, it might have also been Evangelion 2.22. Yeah, that's probably it - seeing the creators who'd made my favorite show create something that basically discarded everything that made Evangelion great and embraced all the anime pitfalls the original had avoided was not fun times.

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Biggest surprise might be Madoka? Not any one specific thing that happens in Madoka, just that the production overall exists and is as good as it is. A lot of my favorite shows are actually pretty rambling and uneven (Eva, Utena, Monogatari), so seeing a show that's just so damn perfect is pretty surprising.

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The system gathers people who can look at the big picture from within a structure that discourages broader consciousness for the purpose of sedate social harmony. Its very existence is a contradiction - like Shinsekai Yori's society, it can only work because it relies on humanity being a more passionate and intelligent class of creature than the very society it's enforcing presupposes. It also relies on sociopaths to decide what's right and wrong for people with normal human emotions, another source of systemic discord and dehumanization. And of course the very nature of a system that sands off the peaks and valleys of human experience denies all the passion, irrationality, and insight that defines us as a species.

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I agree with Akane completely. Unplugging Sibyl all at once would cause total chaos, but Sibyl is horrible. We HAVE to be able to do better than that.

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With relief and slight regret, I assume. Though I get by far my greatest satisfaction out of artistic expression, it's also the source of almost all my anxiety, be it through either fear of not being able to create something worth creating, fear that all my best creations are behind me, fear that no one will care about the things I make, fear that I won't be able to pay for rent because I spend so much of my time and energy on personal projects, and a thousand other fears all wrapped up in my constant need to externalize and validate my internal landscape.

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In the Sybil system, creative types are basically stamped out altogether, and the "you are best for THIS job" tests would singlehandedly remove most of the sources of anxiety in my life. I'd be a less emotionally fulfilled, self-actualized, and meaning-generating person, but I'd also most likely be a happier person.

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Film Crit Hulk actually has a fantastic article on spoilers and the four levels on which we can consume art, which I'd recommend to basically everyone:

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http://badassdigest.com/2013/06/05/film-crit-hulk-smash-hulk-vs.-spoilers-and-the-4-levels-of-how-we-consume-a/

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That said, this is one area where I actually somewhat disagree with him. I completely agree that our culture ridiculously over-emphasizes plot, and that overt narrative turns are actually a very small part of what makes a show good or bad. "What happens" is details - HOW it happens is what makes something great. This is also wrapped in how something being "derivative" or "original" on a pure narrative level is a silly complaint - EVERYTHING is derivative, and it's really what personality, intent, creativity, and craft you bring to execution and the way you weave your influences together that makes art great.

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I also think most spoilers are not actually meaningful because most plot twists are fairly predictable. This is INTENTIONAL, and not a flaw of stories - if your plot twists are not either foreshadowed or a natural extension of the stories and ideas you're expressing, they are probably not good plot twists. Twists can be great, but the best twists still fit within a cohesive whole, though there are of course exceptions - like when a plot twist can actually reveal what a story was REALLY about all along. But this is a special case, and most plot twists that come "totally out of nowhere" are either a result of the viewer not paying careful attention or the writer not being very good.

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But all that said, I think it's both presumptuous to assume anyone else won't have their experience damaged by spoilers and important to try and foster a more honest first engagement with a piece of art. Yes, our understanding of craft means there's never a true "first engagement" - we will always bring preconceptions to art, and our understanding of stories will generally "spoil" almost anything to some degree. But art is an act of deception, and the creator uses the tools at his disposal to foster a specific emotional reaction in the viewer. Shock and suspense are all part of this - sure, it's always LIKELY a certain series of events will turn out a given way, but the element of suspense that is still present in a first engagement is a critical piece of the emotional reaction the creator is attempting to induce. This first engagement is a precious thing that should always be respected, so unless someone specifically asks to be spoiled, DON'T SPOIL STUFF.

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