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What do you look for when choosing an anime?

digi-kun

digi-kun

Hourai NEET
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    • Age 35
    • Seen Mar 12, 2018
    Genre, plot, character depth. There are many things that people look for when deciding to watch/like an anime. What's yours?

    Throwing some examples out there:
    Genre
    Amount of action/drama/talk
    Art style
    Character design
    Good plot
    Setting of the story
    Friends told you it was good
    Lots of character development
    Uniqueness
     
    Last edited:
    I look for;
    Genre; Action, comedy, slice of life, romance, harem, etc.
    Plot; Has to be good.
    Has to be well drawn otherwise I don't really get motivated enough to watch D:
    Something I could relate to. Even if it is a little thing.

    And a LOT more. XD
     
    Last edited:
    Studio: Namely SHAFT and KyoAni. Brand Loyalty.
    Word of Mouth/Popularity/That season's hit anime
    Friends rated it high
    Saw a random clip of it on YouTube and it looked intriguing enough
    General MAL rating: High 7s/8+ should definitely be worth checking out
    Genre: More of an avoid list: Gore, Horror, Shoujo, Children's

    I can't tell how an anime will be beforehand, so I just roll with it.

    As for why I like certain anime and not others, I like what I like. That's all I have to say on that matter.
     
    I look at genre first. There are several genres that pique my interest, and prompt me to look into the anime enough to decide for myself if it warrants further research.

    Next, I look to the amount of popularity it enjoys. If I know several fans of the series then I can usually be willing to research it a bit. That varies from looking it up on Wikipedia/Google, to simply asking the closest friend I have who is a fan of it what it's about. If it's too popular, and there are a lot of idiots who worship the series, then I won't watch it until the craze has died down good. I like to be able to criticize it among true fans and not be crucified by stupid immature idiots who can't take any criticism at all about themselves or anything they like. Seriously, over-popularity ruins a lot of things for me. Something in me can't help but want to slap people for being attached to something I can't like just as much, for some reason or another.

    If it passes my requirements, I queue it up for viewing, when I can find it and watch it. I don't prioritize anime, but I do love watching it, especially when I can find a good fansub. <3
     
    When I generally go searching, I find the anime by titles and if the titles catch my attention, I go look them up on MAL and then my attention draws to the art. That's not the important part, I usually look at the synopsis afterward, and if it sounds interesting, I'll either add it to my Plan to Watch list or look at the genre. Then if I see genres like "harem, ecchi, mecha" I'm usually turned off, but I would still give it a chance as long as the plot sounds like it's worth looking at.

    I don't usually go by other people's recommendations because my tastes differ from a lot of different people's tastes and I like watching a variety of anime just so I can see a little bit of everything. Plus, if someone says something is really good and I need to watch it, I automatically have high expectations and then I'm disappointed. I like the feeling of discovering titles for myself more. It feels all the more rewarding when I stumble across a rare gem.
     
    Charizard★ said:
    I look for;
    Genre; Action, comedy, slice of lice, romance, harem, etc.
    Plot; Has to be good.
    Has to be well drawn otherwise I don't really get motivated enough to watch D:
    Something I could relate to. Even if it is a little thing.

    And a LOT more. XD
    Click to expand...
    …Slice of lice.

    Just the plot and character depth. I would like to believe that I can get into an anime no matter what genre it is if it has interesting characters and an ever blossoming story.
     
    The exact three genres I try to avoid:
    Hantsuki said:
    "harem, ecchi, mecha"
    Click to expand...
    Other than that, there's not much else. Ratings mean nothing to me since MAL is full of trolls who don't know how to use the rating scale and don't give a single rating under 8. (I troll the crap out of Pokemon though. ;p)

    Also, there aren't a lot of things you can judge an anime on until you've actually watched it. Obviously synopses and trailers don't usually give away much plot and such. Reviews are really the only way to gauge certain specific aspects of the anime, but seeing as though my taste in anime conflicts with pretty much everyone else's (My average MAL compatibility in the 30s :s), they're of little use to me.
     
    Well sometimes I find out about different anime by various clips on youtube and mainly by word of mouth. When this happens first it search it into wikipedia to read a list of the characters, plot, genre, reception, and I like to evaluate the art style to see if it beautiful enough and good art envokes creativity.

    I also like a lot of uniqueness and character design and development. Uniqueness give it that extra qurik that stand out from other anime or even historical references its derived from. Character development is good as it helps me pick apart my like characters and my disliked ones with ease. These personalities are usually the silent but cool and strong type guys and the cute, sweet, and adorable girls along with kick ass hothead girls as well. Design wise I think every chracters design should match there personality. Its odd to she a orange flame haired girl being nice and sweet as opposed to being hotheaded.

    That is all I think :3.
     
    With a proper, well-written story, any genre is good enough for me. Oh, and the character designs should be at least decent, not like SA's art.
     
    The plot should be interesting and no sudden twists; I hate those. The characters should be bearable and they should develop over the anime. I really don't care what genre the anime is, with the exception of reverse harem, which I don't like at all. The art and character/object designs should be detailed and easy on the eyes.
     
    I am a huge animation and music fan, so if something manages to catch my eye (ex. via previews, a nice poster, or opening and ending sequences), I'll almost certainly give it a try. MAL gets a lot of crap for its rating system, but I've found that anything that earns an 8.0+ score is enjoyable more often than not. Plot is nice, but it all depends on the execution as to whether it can be considered good or not. Plenty of shows I've enjoyed lacks an overarching plot.

    jigglyppuff8 said:
    Studio: Namely SHAFT and KyoAni. Brand Loyalty.
    Word of Mouth/Popularity/That season's hit anime
    Friends rated it high
    Saw a random clip of it on YouTube and it looked intriguing enough
    General MAL rating: High 7s/8+ should definitely be worth checking out
    Genre: More of an avoid list: Gore, Horror, Shoujo, Children's
    Click to expand...
    And this sums up whatever else I have to say.
     
    I think I can fit in with any genre. But to mention some; action, romance, a little bit of humor. The art style has to be decent and character designs are important. Characters are one of the main things I look into, besides plot.

    I try listening to my friends and look up MAL whenever choosing an anime.
     
    I'm... fairly selective, surprisingly.

    Yeah, I watched K-On, and I just called myself selective.

    Put your submachine guns down. Let me explain...

    A show has to meet one major requirement for me to like it:
    Is it something that is more objectionable than a typical American war movie?

    That's my standard, because, let's face it, anime does typically go overboard, and I'm a Catholic (No, not in name only. I just tend to be really irreverent. But that's another story for another day).

    Violence is fine (And loved!) so long as it's not pools of blood without reason. Cute lolis are alright, but giant breasted women tend to grate on the nerves very quickly.


    Other than that, an anime has to be able to hold my (fairly limited) attention, and motivate me to move on to the next episode.

    Shows like Geass and Azumanga succeeded at this (Although, hilariously enough, Azumanga probably wouldn't pass my test now. I've grown sick of comedy anime), while shows like R.O.D. tend to fail, just because the episodes were extremely... boring and generic. Read or Die OVA was awesome, though.

    Additionally, a show has to not contain mass amounts of squick. Because this is more subjective, I really don't use it that heavily. But... I tend to like anime that doesn't make me shiver with the thought of extreme imagined pain for the next few hours.

    Because of this, I have not seen Higurashi yet.
     
    Character design, plot, and whether it fits one of my preferred genres.

    I'm more for romance anime than anything else, especially in a high school setting. Unless it's a magical girl anime, I typically prefer the level of violence, magic, and the supernatural be at a minimum. Not to say that I avoid these elements entirely, but the anime I typically watch doesn't have a big focus on those aspects.

    I use reviews as a loose guide, because I've noticed that my preferences and opinions about anime are not of the typical anime reviewer.

    I avoid anything too graphic; I really don't need to see blood and gore in what I watch for pleasure.

    I have a rather short attention span. I shy away from the 500-episode shonen series that never seem to end (well, it's because of the length, the level of violence, the supernatural, and the fact that many have unappealing character designs). My target length for a series is within the 12-26 episode range, though I'm more willing to give longer series a try now.

    With that said, sometimes a series that fits none of my criteria will completely blow me away. Macross Frontier is a good example. It's a show that I wouldn't have watched if not for my school's anime club, and I found it to be very good.
     
    The art style/quality is a lot more important to me than I think it is for most people. As far as genre goes, I generally like comedy/slice of life. Ecchi is optional.
     
    Genre
    Amount of action/drama/talk
    Art style
    Character design
    The Plot
    Setting of the story
    Comments or Recommendations
    Number of Episodes(I don't really want to watch something that is 6 episodes long)
     
    Kenshin5, I'm the opposite. I hate long runners, because I know I'll never finish them unless they are absolutely excellent.
     
    Genre is primary, then characters, then setting and plot (I consider them related), then animation quality and art style. Unfortunately, the past few seasons I've been settling for any two, since there hasn't been much I've been interested in. And I've still been dropping pretty much everything I've bothered to pick up.
     
    For me it's quite random as i don't really have a single favourite genre/production company/art style...ect.

    I choose by mood, I try to have a couple of options ready to watch depending on this.

    I usually choose by recommendations from friends or folks on here/MaL.
     
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