Anime/Manga Slice of Life.

[Mr. Meme]

As you may know from some of my "antics" here, I can't stand slice of life stuff. In fact, I don't even wanna call that stuff "Slice of Life". I have instead adopted a new name for the genre: "Slice of Idiocy".

Allow me to summarize my hatred in a bullet list:

-Annoying little girls.
-Stupid plots.
-Forced fan service and similar forms of pandering.
-Annoying big girls.
-Every anime feeling the damn same.
-Overused running gags (OMG HIS FACE IS IN HER PANTIES ROFL LMAO XDDDDDD HILARIOUS AND ORIGINAL).
-The utterly cancerous fan bases that waste their time making dumb, unfunny compilations, and setting their profile to some little anime girl, even though they're actually a male high school senior.
-The genre and it's fanbase being one of the primary reasons anime fans have received such a bad name on the Internet for as long as one can remember.

Do you agree with some of my points? And after taking all of these into consideration, what are your thoughts on the genre as a whole.

 

[gimmepie]

Gotta be honest, the fact you seemingly only post in this section to bash a medium every other poster here likes is starting to get on my nerves. You don't have to like the medium but you don't have to be an irritating troll to those of us who do.

Still, to the best of my knowledge your thread doesn't actually break any rules so I'll reply. I think that in general there is a lot of merit to some of your points about this particular genre, but not all slice of life is ecchi - which seems to be what you're describing. A lot of it fits much more into genres like drama, romance and comedy (all of which can also be ecchi or not). So whilst you're not exactly wrong about a large chunk of the genre, you're also completely ignoring some of it too.

A lot of your bullet list is also very vague or just makes no sense.

Annoying Little Girls - Completely subjective and extremely vague. What you find annoying isn't going to be annoying to everyone, so you might want to be more specific.

Stupid Plots - Slice of Life as a genre is by nature almost completely devoid of sequential plots. It's episodic in nature like watching Friends or How I Met Your Mother - even if there is an overarching story it almost always takes a backseat to the subplots of each individual episode. I can certainly get why that'd bother people, I'd prefer a coherent plot myself most of the time, so it's not invalid as a complaint but it leaves a bad taste in my mouth to call it stupid for doing what it is meant to do.

Forced Fan Service/Pandering - I'm not huge on excessive fan service or anything either, but I don't understand why this is a bad thing either. Every form of entertainment throughout history has pandered to its fanbase in some way, why should Anime be any different? Not everyone is going to like it but that doesn't make it inherently bad. Also, what is the difference between "forced" and "unforced" fanservice?

Annoying Big Girls - See my response to your first comment.

Every Anime Feeling the Same - We're talking about an extremely specific genre here. There's going to be a lot of similarities between different productions in that genre - the same is also true of western media and non-animated eastern media. I think that you are working with a small sample size here though because even in slice of life there's a decent amount of variation if you actually look for it. WataMote, Clannad, Free, Kokoro Connect, K-On, Au Haru Ride and Gakkougurashi all technically fall under the Slice of Life genre and are all extremely different from each other for example.

Overused Running Gags - Not going to lie, we could do with a little more variation here.

Cancerous fanbases - This has exactly nothing to do with the quality of the genre and is also extremely vague. What makes them cancerous? How is this even relevant? What is actually wrong with anything you listed? How is this worse than coming into a community of anime lovers just to crap on what they enjoy?

The genre being responsible for the perception of anime - I think it's certainly a contributor although I think the Shounen genre is equally as responsible if not more so myself. I think the biggest reason there is a stigma against people liking anime though is because it's slightly outside the norm and because it (and its fanbase) suffer from a lot of misconceptions held by those unfamiliar with the medium.


As a whole, I like the genre. I wouldn't call it my favourite - although there's some Slice of Life works among my favourites - but I think in general there's a lot of good quality stuff in the genre and a lot of potential. It's certainly not for everyone, which I respect whole heatedly, but I don't think the genre itself is inherently flawed.

 

[Satoshi Ookami]

I thought this was a thread about Slice of Life?

 

[gimmepie]

I thought this was a thread about Slice of Life?

I mean... technically it is.

 

[Skip Class]

I am curious to know what kind of slice of life anime you have watched (and the ones you do like) if the plots are all stupid and they feel the same...

Especially if everything feeling the same has all annoying big girls and forced fan service (Yup. Totally. Definitely all Slice of Life totally does...)

The utterly cancerous fan bases that waste their time making dumb, unfunny compilations, and setting their profile to some little anime girl, even though they're actually a male high school senior.

So ... Slice of Life fan bases are cancerous because we like to contribute to the fandom more by doing awesome things that other people will appreciate? How is this any different from any other fandom genre who likes to contribute to the fandom? Every other genre does it and fans from games, movies, tv shows, music etc. they contribute to their fandom. So why is this any different/ worse than any other contribution.

Just because you think something is dumb, unfunny or a waste of time, doesn't mean that everyone else will. There are people who appreciate people making that sort of things. Don't need to rain on someone else's hobby and call it 'cancerous' just because you hate it.

Just because you're a guy in high school and you like anime girls (little or what not) - so what? Sure i've met a bunch of creeps creepily into young female girls, but there are a lot of cool guys I know from high school to university who enjoys those female characters as the characters they are. Nothing wrong with having something you enjoy.

Ain't your slice of cake? Then don't eat into it. Let them enjoy the cake for themselves.

Gotta agree with gimmepie for most of it, but you're basically bashing every other genre or medium...
Slice of Life is definitely far from my favourite genre, but there are definitely some anime that are worth the watch.

 

[Lipstick Vogue]

How can such atrocious bait get a 700 word essay response, from a mod none the less?

 

[donavannj]

How can such atrocious bait get a 700 word essay response, from a mod none the less?

Because while I'm 99% certain it is bait, it's still an opinion many people (people who are dead wrong, IMO) have about slice of life, because they can't differentiate between a slice of life anime and a harem anime, or the only ones they watch straddle the two genres.

If it gets too far out of hand, the thread will be closed, but until then, it will remain open.

 

[gimmepie]

How can such atrocious bait get a 700 word essay response, from a mod none the less?

If you mean me, I didn't write it for his benefit. I did it to clear up the misinformation perpetuated in his post for the sake anyone who might want to give the genre a fair try.

 

[Life]

Slice Of Life? I think you're thinking of Ecchi/Harem dude.

 

[Mr. Meme]

How can such atrocious bait get a 700 word essay response, from a mod none the less?

Who the hell knows?

 

[Pinkie-Dawn]

So ... Slice of Life fan bases are cancerous because we like to contribute to the fandom more by doing awesome things that other people will appreciate? How is this any different from any other fandom genre who likes to contribute to the fandom? Every other genre does it and fans from games, movies, tv shows, music etc. they contribute to their fandom. So why is this any different/ worse than any other contribution.

The answer is simple, it's not the genre of anime they grew up with (at least for western anime fans). In the 90's, western anime fans who hate slice of life anime grew up with shounen anime like DBZ, Sailor Moon, Pokémon, and Yu Yu Hakusho, and when they got older they were exposed to uncut versions of their favorite shounen anime as well as other shounen anime like Cowboy Bebop, Big O, Fist of the North Star, and Gurren Lagann. In the late 2000's, during the early years of YouTube, you see popular ranters posting videos ranting about anime going downhill because of the rising popularity of slice of life anime with shows like the Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya, Lucky Star, and K-On, because none of them involve manly men and tomboys doing manly things in a fantasy setting but instead moeblobs and bishonens living in a more grounded reality, which defeats the whole purpose of escapism. It's why these western anime fans are praising AoT, KLK, JoJo, OPM, and, to a certain extent, Keijo for being the few good anime in a pool of slice of life anime whose only purpose to appeal to otakus that will eat any form of anime regardless of how terrible they may be. It's also why Miyazaki's "anime was a mistake" quote is still a relevant meme in the internet community.

 

[donavannj]

The answer is simple, it's not the genre of anime they grew up with (at least for western anime fans). In the 90's, western anime fans who hate slice of life anime grew up with shounen anime like DBZ, Sailor Moon, Pokémon, and Yu Yu Hakusho, and when they got older they were exposed to uncut versions of their favorite shounen anime as well as other shounen anime like Cowboy Bebop, Big O, Fist of the North Star, and Gurren Lagann. In the late 2000's, during the early years of YouTube, you see popular ranters posting videos ranting about anime going downhill because of the rising popularity of slice of life anime with shows like the Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya, Lucky Star, and K-On, because none of them involve manly men and tomboys doing manly things in a fantasy setting but instead moeblobs and bishonens living in a more grounded reality, which defeats the whole purpose of escapism. It's why these western anime fans are praising AoT, KLK, JoJo, OPM, and, to a certain extent, Keijo for being the few good anime in a pool of slice of life anime whose only purpose to appeal to otakus that will eat any form of anime regardless of how terrible they may be. It's also why Miyazaki's "anime was a mistake" quote is still a relevant meme in the internet community.

That's literally stating that it's the genre they grew up with, though, just in a wordier way.

 

[Satoshi Ookami]

I gotta thank Pinkie for making me laugh everytime =D

Anyway, that's implying you only like what you grew up with. That's pretty narrow-minded.

 

[Sektor]

*stops reading. scroll scroll*

Meh. Personally, slice of life anime is . . . bland, mostly. If we're talking about true slice of life and not little snippets of it in a huge blood brawl. The technique grows strained in terms of anime, some people just don't like watching anime or 'cartoons' (animated cartoons . . . yeah) about someone else's life much. For one thing, I don't think people typically watch shows for their portrayal of basic life much; I think most people watch anime because of that certain glamour of escape.

Some of it can actually be pulled off quite well as evident in many long-time running soap operas, but in films? Not so much. Birdman was perhaps the last true Slice of Life style film I watched and the reviews are a 50-50 split down the middle. You love it or you hate it, so for film usage, yeah, not so much.

I would beg the question as to what a true Slice of Life style would entail. Being, would a movie about Boba Fett be a 'slice of life' because it's his life? Or would it be shuffled under science fiction or action? The Slice of Life term isn't my favorite; it lacks . . . accuracy. I much prefer the Hero's Journey explanation much more than 'slice of life'. Even the term can be boiled down to its base elements in A Hero's Journey.

I don't have an accurate anime title so I'll make it up as I go along.

For instance, we find a highschool girl who desperately loves a boy. Check, we instantly identify that the Heroine of our story is the girl. Her mission or the end of her journey is perhaps obtaining the love of this boy. Well, here the similarities depart from Slice of Life and the basic goals of the journey. What happens?

Does he reciprocate? End journey.

Does she kill her self? Tragedy, end journey, new hero?

Is he, plot twist huge shocker, gay? Friend zone, end quest.

It's all pretty much basic stuff. As to the story lines of 'this is human X, human X goes to the store and plays piano' I don't prefer it and stick towards more science fiction with more chess pieces on the board. I don't think I've actually suffered through a novel or film using the technique. Is Moby Dick or Treasure Island a 'Slice of Life' or a Hero's Journey?

I suppose it's up to whomever views it to decide. But, if it's something akin to Azumanga Daioh, no thank you, it's not for me.

*goes back to reading Vengeful Spirit*

 

[Pinkie-Dawn]

This video by Digibro explains why Slice of Life is hated by western anime fans (warning: may contain language):



And yes, Slice of Life anime star mostly cute girls.

 

[Satoshi Ookami]

Wohoo! Hated by western fans! What a beautiful praise!

Btw, if anyone is going to watch that video, give me tl;dw version, need some laughs =D

 

[donavannj]

This video by Digibro explains why Slice of Life is hated by western anime fans (warning: may contain language):



And yes, Slice of Life anime star mostly cute girls.

??? You linked a video where he explains what differentiates the different tiers of quality in the genre from a bad one for those who can't be bothered to tell the difference (or for those who can't be bothered to do anything but recycle /a/'s self-hating "opinions"). If you actually watched video you linked from start to finish, you'd know that was the whole purpose of the video.

Wohoo! Hated by western fans! What a beautiful praise!

Btw, if anyone is going to watch that video, give me tl;dw version, need some laughs =D

Yeah, that video doesn't do any of what Pinkie-Dawn says it does... it's explaining how to tell the bad shows from the mediocre shows from the good shows in the genre. It pans Pan de Peace for having huge flaws (which it definitely does), establishes Anne Happy as watchable show in the genre, and then praises Sansha Sanyou as a show that does most things right and as an example of a good, but not great, show in the genre. Digibro's favorite anime of all-time is K-On!, so he's firmly in the "guys there are actually great shows in here if you'd actually bother to try stuff here".

 

[Pinkie-Dawn]

??? You linked a video where he explains what differentiates the different tiers of quality in the genre from a bad one for those who can't be bothered to tell the difference (or for those who can't be bothered to do anything but recycle /a/'s self-hating "opinions"). If you actually watched video you linked from start to finish, you'd know that was the whole purpose of the video.

I have already seen the video myself months ago, and I was focusing on the bad/mediocre shows he was covering to explain why Slice of Life is hated by a non-Otaku western audience. Also, /a/ only enjoys obscure anime from all genres (and underage waifus).

 

[Satoshi Ookami]

>video maker's favorite anime is K-On
>video apparently only shows that Slice of Lifes are different
>Pinkie posts it as anti-Slice of Life

Oooooohkay? :D

 

[Lipstick Vogue]

This thread is going to incredible places.