Noto disu shitto agen...
Evidently, some kind of epic cross-blog discussion began. It starts on hontou ni, though perhaps it truly began months ago on We Remember Love? It spreads like wildfire through the blogosphere, with one post inadvertently being related, and somewhere between the post on FunBlog and the comments on Omonomono’s post, I see a revelation!
I don’t want to tread familiar ground here, so I’ll summarize everyone else’s stuff – your top 5 anime say a lot about you, and, according to Ghostlightning, create a sort of brand for you (i.e. if all you like are mech shows, you sell yourself as a mecha fan, and people will see you as just that.) However, in another post, Ghostlightning brings up ‘guilty pleasures’ (his post being about the inherent wrongness in feeling guilt for liking something) and the idea of a ‘guilty pleasure’ suddenly adds another view to my observation in Omo and FunBlog’s posts as well as in my own Top 10 list.
Favorites lists: Serious Business.
The observation is all about ‘personal rules’ (or as I shell henceforth refer to them, ORE NO RUURU!) Starting with FunBlog, he writes 2 different lists (and since he says ‘draw your own conclusions,’ I will!) One is a list of the shows he enjoys most. The second is a list of shows he admires most for their artistic quality. Wait, what? What the hell does that mean? The shows he likes aren’t necessarily his favorites? There are some overlaps, which implies that the idea of artistic quality is already a factor in determining which anime he likes most, and yet liking an anime most does not necessarily make it a favorite.
Is he saying that there is some objective reasoning that the shows on the second list are the five best anime out there from an artistic standpoint? No. I don’t think so. This simply can’t be true. I say so because I disagree – I don’t think that, if there were some master list of great anime, these would be the top five. It’s bullshit! So that’s not what he means. Fuck all, even he’s not sure what he means! He says so! We should not take from this that he is making a bad attempt at being objective. This, my friends, is an example of ORE NO RUURU. And it has no explanation.
Digiboy, always taking perfectly good discussion and blowing it out of proportion~
We see it to a far more perplexing extent in Omo’s top five, which should probably just burn! He, too, makes two lists, one that is ‘his top five list’ and one that is ‘what he would rather his top five look like.’ What in the HELL does that mean?! Did you also notice that there is NO overlap in the two lists?! This is just disastrous – he’s saying that none of the five shows he would like to consider his top five are on it! It’s a top five of LIES! This, my friends… is ORE NO RUURU. And in this case, it’s much easier to explain. But to save on time, I’m going to use my own ORE NO RUURU to explain his.
My ‘Top 10′ page is a fucking disaster. I have ten shows on there, and you will notice they all have a score. This is not an objective score – this is my pure subjective ranking of all shows. And you’ll see that the highest on the list is 9.9 (which has been perplexing me for my entire life) and that the lowest in the list is ranked ’9.0′. You will then see a ‘potential additions’ list wherein the top show is ranked 9.8. Meaning that if it were in the list, it would be my second favorite anime of all fucking time. How did this happen? Well if you look at the top of the page, you will see the following guidelines:
Rules for an anime to be in the Top 10:
- Must have been at least 6 months since I first completed the show
- Must have seen it at least twice in it’s entirety
- Must not be on probation (meaning I want to watch it again or post about it before allowing placement)
Yes, folks, guidelines. What do guidelines mean? It means that I am not using my gut. It means that the show ranked at number two is not the number two, and that the real number two is being held back by some arbitrary guideline. It’s a lie! you know it is because the score proves it! This is just like Omo. The real reason for his top five is that something in his soul refuses to let the shows he has there be removed. He knows that they shouldn’t be there and yet he doesn’t remove them due to ORE NO RUURU. I, too, know that Toradora belongs in my top five, but ORE NO RUURU prevents it from access until the regulations are met. As soon as I rewatch Toradora, it will be in my top five, and maybe in ten years, Manabi Straight will be Omo’s number one.
Gintoki lives by ORE NO RUURU
Now, where does GL’s talk of guilty pleasures come into this? Well, I think ORE NO RUURU can be partly created by guilt. When you like a show for long enough, you can honestly feel guilty about no longer considering it your favorite anime. It took a long time for me to admit that Neon Genesis Evangelion was no longer my favorite anime, and ever since I didn’t like certain shows as much upon rewatching, I’ve felt guilty about proclaiming my love for a show before rewatching it. Silly, right? Shouldn’t I just edit my top five every time I feel the need to change it? But somehow, I can’t feel it until it has passed through ORE NO RUURU. If I watched a show that I honestly liked more than Eureka Seven, I couldn’t admit it at first. I would know it in my heart, and even if I put it on my number one spot, it would still take six months and multiple watches before it truly felt like my number one favorite.
I think we all have ORE NO RUURU in our hearts, and while it can sometimes feel dishonest, I feel that ORE NO RUURU is truly what gives my favorites list the weight and gravity that lets me take it seriously. So let me ask you: what is KIMI NO RUURU?
If my top 5 anime shows say alot about me, then I must be compassionate, or a sex starved crazy woman since…..Wait let me think about that for a moment. I like bishounen anime a lot, but I don’t think there’s any in my top 5. Let’s see, I like Inuyasha, Mushishi, Code Geass, Naruto, and what other show rounds off my top 5….is it Trinity Blood? I have to think about that one, but if it is, then I am a sex starved crazy woman, ’cause I love those sexy bishes!
ROFL. If I saw the top 5 of ‘Inuyasha, Mushishi, Code Geass, Naruto, and Trinity Blood’ these would be my thoughts: This person is really succeptable to liking anything. The problem is, she only watches what is aired on TV (which I would assume if I saw that list of all shows that either aired on Cartoon Network or the FUNimation network.) I would think that if you saw much more anime, you would be able to have a broader range of favorites and I would probably start throwing recommendations at you. (Incidentally, if you want them, I will give.)
Re your rules. Who watches anime that much and in that way? Your rigor is feasible for only a tiny number of the viewer population, and most of these viewers live in your house.
lol. I only know one person in the meat who views heavily, No Name, who doens’t live with me. Everyone who lives with me is more like you – they have lives. Actually, you’ve seen a lot more anime than any of them, but partly because you’ve lived a good 10-15 years longer than any of them.
As for my rigor. Anime is the only thing in life I give a damn about. That’s really what it comes down to. Anime and blogging, that’s all I have. Everything else makes me depressed and misanthropic and suicidal. Stripped entirely of anime and blogging, I don’t think I’d last long.
You’d be surprised–a lot of people who watch anime are quite rigorous.
digitalboy makes a good attempt at guessing why I have two lists, but the problem is that what people use as metrics vary AND the metrics themselves can be subjective. It’s not even a matter of Your Rules or whatever, because the rules themselves aren’t even rules at times.
Oh, right, I should participate.
What does my top 5 say about me?
With ORE NO RUURU the 5 is: Eureka Seven, End of Evangelion, Manabi Straight, Lain, and FLCL
Without ORE NO RUURU it’s the same minus Evangelion plus Toradora.
It says that I like to be overwhelmed. This also explains my affinity for ‘epic’ shows, but being ‘epic’ does not define overwhelming me. I like to be overwhelmed with emotion. Eureka Seven overwhelm me with the emotions from a true spiritual bond of two people. End of Evangelion overwhelms me visually, symbolically, and through it’s views. Lain overwhelms me in similar ways as well as overwhelms me with information. Manabi overwhelms me with passion and the weight of humanity and life. FLCL overwhelms me with imagery, production quality+effort, and the sheer power represented in youth.
Whoa, what’s wrong with liking anime that aired on TV? Actually, I saw Mushishi and Trinity Blood on DVD, but nevertheless, It’s just coincedental that my top 5 happen to be popular anime shows.
lol, nothing wrong with being on TV at all! I’m just saying that if I see someone with all TV shows, I usually assume they’ve ONLY seen TV shows, and it’s good to see a lot more~
Watch this: http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/zero-punctuation/35-Super-Smash-Bros-Brawl
and then this: http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/zero-punctuation/37-Mailbag-Showdown
after you do I think you’ll understand my opinion on rankings
hehehe. I’m actually a HUGE Yahtzee fan and have seen all of his videos several times, but you bring up some good ones. Yes, rankings can be quite silly. Mine are totally worthless, really, they have meaning only to me and absolutely no one else so seeing them as quality control will get you nowhere~
Well, that kind of explains why sometimes when I read your posts I hear Yahtzee’s voice in my head
could be. I kind of do the opposite of yahtzee seeing as I am almost always positive, but both of us share some principles. Don’t take things too seriously, say what you want to say, and try to be entertaining. I definitely admire him even if I don’t really care about what he reviews or what he think so of it lol.
If I went by your rules, I would have no anime in my top 5, because I never re watch shows. I will re watch episodes though or several episodes, of a show…for example, I’ve seen episode 52 of InuYasha….oh say, 12 times over the course of several years. I mean, what happens if you watch a really long ass show, and absolutely love it? That’s gonna take a while to re watch. I dunno, I just don’t have the patience. That being said, Your rules for top 5 lead me to believe that you have a very solid grasp on your what exactly your top 5 are. I don’t know if I can say the same for my top 10…or even 20 for that matter.
Right now, I’m starting to fall asleep and forgot what I was talking about, so I need bed.
I make exceptions – none of the rules are absolutes. For instance, I’vve alrady set it up so that Ranma can enter the op 10 afterr rewatching 20 episodes.
I use your first two rules, but the third, not so much. Actually, my is pretty much a ranking of shows I’d always rewatch, given time. Like, if I were stranded on a desert island with an HDTV and DVD player, and could only have x number of anime with me, I’d start at the top and work my way down my favorites list.
Yes, rewatching plays a HUGE part in deciding favorites, IMO. There are shows like Eureka Seven that I love even though I couldn’t see myself watching it more than once or twice a year, but the fact that I could rewatch, say, Lucky Star at any provocation is definitely a bunch of points in it’s favor. Rewatching frequently integrates a show more into your personal life, increasing your connection with it, increasing your love for it.
What I value most in the series I love is the pure feeling of emotion as something that grips my heart and never lets go. I like a series that will make me cry and will make me enjoy crying. It’s that release that comes after building a relationship with characters and having everything explode, for better or worse. I want to love and truly care about — inside and out — a show I would consider a favorite.
Very well put, and it’s something I look for too, and contributes to me sense of being overwhelmed. For me, ordinary drama, however well done, won’t be enough. Take Nana for instance, which had an immediate effect on my (depression) but which didn’t stick with me for long because it felt so ‘facts of life’. Something like Eureka Seven, ef, or Manabi, their emotional reaction from me comes not just from something I feel, but something that pervades through me. Something that really encapsulates my entire existence. All three of those shows made me cry with a big smile on m face (well, Manabi also made me have a nervous breakdown, but that’s history now!)
Couldn’t have put it better myself!
I was expecting you to talk about Lelouch.
All this talk about top fives gets me thinking about trying to make one for myself. But it was hard enough coming up with #1, after all.
A lot of people find it hard. My friend No Name refuses to assign favorites because he has seen SO much (approx 4X what I have) I tried to help him make a list and at the minimum we had like a top 50 of all shows he considered number ones.
What you just said. I obviously haven’t seen as many series as No Name, but picking five favorites when I could come up with at least 10 contenders for #1 is… well, not happening.
Plus, I can never rank different ‘types’ of anime against each other. Like, how the hell do I tell if this action anime is better/equal/worse than this comedy anime. Some people can conceptualize that; I can’t.
I think it comes to filing down what elements of a show make you like it. My rating system is determined like this
story-
characters-
audio/vidual-
“meat”-
and optional bonus-
each on a scale of 1-10 with .25, .5, and .75 intervals.
story is worth (1)
Characters is worth (2.5)
AV is worth (2.5)
Meat is worth (2)
Bonus can be worth (1) or (2), and it is always 10 points score.
So let’s take my ranking of The SoulTaker
Story – 6
Characters – 4
AV – 10
Meat – 9.5
This will become
6
10
25
19
Adding up to: 60
Divide it by 8 to get the ranking: 7.5
Say I think 7.5 is too low, so I add on 1 bonus of 10 points, then divide by 9. I get a score of
8.2 or so?
Anyway, because the scores are all my own opinion, it’s all totally subjective, but it also categorizes the worth of a show to me via what I hold important.
I find the guilt and Evangelion talk really interesting. I get what you mean exactly. Maybe the reason I can’t get to do a top 5 or top 10 list is because oldies like Eva might end up tossed aside, and I feel I owe them.
Rewatch value is important, definitely. I mean, the best definition of “favorite” is “what you would take to a deserted island”, which means you mean to watch and watch and watch again. I feel the same with books. I’ve read my favorites 4, 5, 6 times..
Yah. As for my favorite book, I think I’ve read Boogiepop and Others at least 12 times, if not more.
>> What in the HELL does that mean?!
See, this is the correct question to ask, which you should. Because I have answers.
By all means answer.
Pete over at ani-nouto casually said it’s “cheating” (IRT to FunBlog). That’s cluing in on what’s going on. Part of the fun or challenge in making a top 10 or top 5 list, for serious fans, is that it’s hard to eliminate all your favorite titles. I mean I like a lot of anime out there, so it takes a lot of thought to reconcile why I would leave out, say, Manabi Straight for Cowboy Bebop in the fifth slot. So you could say that’s also cheating, because I would like to slot those shows in somewhere (and I do when I do a top 20 list).
Which is why, when I’m just making random top-5 lists, I could make one with a vague heading, because why the hell not. It’s the same reason why some people would list shows that project a brand or whatever, when in reality who gives a damn what your favorite show is.
The real reason, of course, is that I want to not only namedrop those shows, but also to make a point about age. I know Utena is an older anime, but if you looked at my list it is very age-biased.
I’m somewhat confused. You are saying that you are cheating. I am saying that cheating is ORE NO RUURU. So what are you getting at?
I think it depends on how the person feels about what he’s doing. It’s hard to shift and slide favorite shows without making you feel like you’re “cheating” a show out of a spot in some way, making arbitrary justifications about why you place things where you place them and such. It’s a good kind of guilt? :P
I have about 13 anime I would consider my favorites. I don’t set any guidelines…I just feel that they’re my favorites because of how “into” them I get and I continue to love them even long after I’ve watched them.
When I made a list of my five favorites of the fall ’08 shows last year, I recognized that the five that were my favorites were not necessarily the five I thought were the best. So yeah, I know that there are shows I think are better in quality than my favorites (same can be said for characters actually) but that isn’t always a factor in determining my personal favorites.
That rule of yours about having to rewatch a show is good; I’m sure if I rewatched some shows that almost made it to my favorites, they would become favorites. But I have little time and motivation to rewatch an anime unless I really loved it. But I’m trying to work on that.
When I’m done counting down my favorite characters, I may have to make a list of favorite anime. Sounds like fun =)
It’s because I have that same feeling that the rule is there – indeed, there are some shows that, over time, I have thought ‘don’t I really love this show? so why isn’t it a favorite?’ so I aim to rewatch those shows and figure out if I do indeed care that much. (great example, Haibane Renmei, which I suspect has a high probability of breaking my 10.)
I actually have been intending to do a ‘my top 100 anime’ thingy before too long. Need to be comfortable with it first, though, and that will take watching.
I really don’t see anything wrong with doing a my favorite 25 ten anime list, and also doing a my 25 best anime list (sorry, I’ve been watching anime for 31 years, so a top 10 list is too small) because they are two completely different things. In my opinion, one example of this would be, I would place NGE in my 25 best list but not place it in my 25 favorites list because what makes an anime a favorite in my book is re-watchibility, can I watch and enjoy a anime over and over without becoming bored or sick of it. So I would place Kodomo no Omocha and Akazukin Chacha in my top 25 favorites list while neither would make my top 25 best list. Example of anime that I would place on both lists would be Future Boy Conan and Kare Kano, just my two cents.
I’m curious as to what judgment you use to determine the shows in your ‘best’ list.
Yea, it’s a tough thing to try and list some written rules when making judgements about what makes my favorites list, and what makes my best list. At work, the person that works next to me is a fellow movie lover, so we talk movies all the time and we I asked her what her favorite move was, she told me that Pretty Woman was her favorite. But, then I asked her was Pretty Woman on her best movies she’s ever seen list, and she said “no way” it would probably be Casablanca or the Godfather. If I was talking regular movies I would say that Casablanca, Bridge on the River Kwai, Tokyo Story, The Passion of Joan of Arc, and The deer Hunter would be my 5 best movies of all time. But, if I listed my 5 favorite movies of all time I would say that The Fifth Element, Blazing Saddles, The Life of Brian, The Evil Dead, and The Fog would be my top favorites.
I’ve been struggling with making a top 25 and a favorite 25 for over a year now, I’ve revised and edited both lists multiple time, and I’m still not satisfied. Since blogging is fairly new, I expect many top/best/favorites list to reflect the fact that new technology is adopted/embraced by younger more passionate fans of something earlier that other fans, and those lists tend to reflect those facts. I find it very amusing how a lot of favorite/best lists are made up of shows that are very new (1-5 years old). This is not a criticism of younger fans it’s just an observation that lists are only as good as the depth of the viewing experiences of the person making the lists.
Years ago, when I used to be a college anime club advisor/content provider I used to try and mix the new with the old in order to give newer fans a greater prospective on the breath and depth of anime; if I was showing Cowboy Bebop I would mix in Galaxy Express 999 (both space operas), or I would show Love Hina along side with Ramna 1/2 (both harem shows), or I would show Cardcaptor Sakura along with Magical Princess Minky Momo (both magic girl shows), or I would show the End of Eva movie along with Robot Carnival. I was surprised to find that many of the club’s members told me that some of the older series I showed became some of their favorites like; Goldfish Warning, Future Boy Conan, Ramna 1/2, Kodomo no Omocha, Nadia, and Rose of Versailles.
I don’t approve of your ‘best’ versus ‘favorites’ lists, and I submit that your having 2 lists is your ORE NO RUURU. Because I don’t agree with the notion of a best movie. My favorite movies are The Dark Knight and Pulp Fiction. If you aked me what the two best movies of all time were, I’d answer ‘The Dark Knight and Pulp Fiction.’ I am only able to think they are my favorites because I like them MORE Than ANYTHING ELSE and if I like them more, they are better. This is proper logic.
As for the rest of your comment, it’s true that people these days are underexposed to older shows, however, there’s also a matter of what’s your thing. Most of my favorite anime came from the past 5 years or so. This has nothing to do with being all I’ve seen or even how I got into anime – I got into it was predominantly 90s shows and I’ve seen greats from every era. It just so happens that the things they are doing now are the things I like best.
I, too, have been working on my favorites list, though I’ve been doing it for over 2 years now. As a matter of fact, the main purpose of this blog is to help my favorites list (see the page ‘The Epic Journey’) come to perfection. I have found the core of what it means to be one of my favorite anime, and everything else is inconsequential. I don’t give a fuck how ‘good’ a show is supposed to be. If it sucks it sucks – I’m not going to try and show extra respect for a ‘good’ show if I honestly don’t give a damn about it. Because that, my friend, is the whole concept of ‘guilty pleasures’ embodied. That’s like saying ‘my opinion isn’t representative of what makes a show worthy.’ You are purposefully downgrading your own favorites which, in my opinion, is a backslap against fandom.
I’ve love your mention of The Dark Knight and Pulp Fiction as your best and favorites, I feel that The Dark Knight is “the pinnacle of the genre” for comic book movies and maybe the greatest comic book movie adaptation ever, and Pulp Fiction would make both by best/favorite movie lists (I love most QT films).
But, the rest of the comment was not directly intended as a shot at anyone in particular, but don’t you find it curious that when you go and visit MAL what shows rate much better than others, a example of this would be how K-On! rates slightly better than Lupin III: The Castle of Cagliostro, go figure. I kind of almost feel that these best of lists need a waiting period like many of the halls of fame require like, baseball, football, hockey, and basketball to give the voters time to fully think about their choices.
No, I’m not downgrading my favorites by excluding some of them from my “best” list, because I take lot of stuff into consideration if I’m placing it on a best list like; did that series change how a genre is viewed or did it establish how other shows of that genre operate, and is the scope and method of the storytelling far superior to other shows of that genre. A good example of this would be that I would place NGE in my best list while I wouldn’t list it as a favorite. While I love NGE and consider it to be tremendous series I wouldn’t just stop what I was doing and watch a episode if I came across it while channel surfing, while on the other hand if I stumble across a episode of Akazukin Chacha I have to stop and watch because that series always brings a smile to my face.
Hm. I would use any term but ‘best’ for your list case, though. ‘Most Influential’ or ‘Most Classic’, because ‘best’ is just so… nonexistent, while the others are definite through factual evidence.
I like Lupin III Castle of Cagliostro a lot, but I’d put most of today’s moe anime above it in terms of personal favoritism. Maybe not K-On! exactly (as I haven’t finished it) but nonetheless, just because Lupin is classic and important doesn’t mean I think it’s better than a totally unimportant show that I love.
And let’s not bash MAL’s ratings too hard here, I mean there is Legend of the Galactic Heroes at the top, and many under-the-radar classics litter the top rankings like Hajime no Ippo, GTO, Monster, and the more recent Mononoke, none of which are popular or known for being made so recently, but are genuinely amazing shows that are almost unilaterally loved. In addition, I think if a new show receives too much attention all at once, it will eventually get dragged back as it ages, as has happened with some of the sudden-tops in the past. I think the list is pretty well balanced and may really reflect the favorites of the people of the site whole-heartedly.
[...] D-boy and his ORE NO RUURU [->] [...]
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Actually, because of the inherently vague nature of a ‘Top 5′ or ‘Top 10′ or ‘Top {x}’ list, I tend to avoid them. Instead, I opt for stating, “Some of my favorite shows are…” In this way, I avoid the whole issue of ranking completely, and leave open the possibility that I have additional favorites that I am not mentioning for whatever reason. However, I will admit that I do have a favorite show; everything else, though, doesn’t get a set ranking position.
Ah, another interesting ORE NO RUURU in opting out of a list. As for me, I can’t do that. I compulsively find myself listing everything in my life at all times, so a list for me, especially one with ‘officiality’, is crucial to me existence.
[...] the deal here? All of a sudden there seems to be some obsession with people’s top 5 shows. Suddenly top ten isn’t good enough? Now we need to narrow it down to top 5? Why don’t [...]
Well even following those “ORE NO RUURU” guidelines my current top five would still be these series (in no particular order):
- Cowboy Bebop
- Ghost in the Shell
- Aria
- Kimi ga Nozomu Eien
- Elfen Lied
I’ve watched Cowboy Bebop fully four times now (excluding watching a random episode here and there), Aria all seasons three times, KGNE and Elfen Lied three times each, GITS series twice, the GITS movies I lost count. Having bought those series on DVD helps to decide to break them out now and then and give them another watch.
Put these in my personal favorites because I not only really enjoyed them but they had an impact on me when I first watched them.
But there’s other shows that approach that too but still need to stand the test of time, like say “K-ON!” or “Code Geass”.
Don’t mind putting my favorites like that but it doesn’t especially need to be a top 5 for me. People may have reservations against a top 5 but those arguments usually all go both ways.
[...] there’s been some back and forth (and more!) on the subject of ranking one’s “favorite” shows or what [...]
[...] mentioned in the other post, as well as in this study of favorites lists I did way back, I pointed out how many people have two separate favorites lists. Those people usually call them a [...]