Anime & Manga "Infamous" Anime

Captain X

Well-known member
Osaul
NGE is a great metaphor for what happens to depressed and lonely males in a society without healthy male role models; Shinji is not a role model or a good person.

But just because the story doesn't deal with masculine men like TTGL doesn't make it a bad anime.
First off, that isn't really a problem I have with NGE. Secondly, while I do like TTGL, it is hardly the measuring stick I use to measure other shows by. Shinji's problem is that he's pretty much just a one-note character, but he's still only a part of why NGE is a bad show. My main problems with the show are that it's a combination of J.J. Abram's "mystery box" and nuBSG's grimdark, where everyone is fucked up in some way or other.

I only ever read the Higurashi VN, but overall I found it tame. Higurashi's anime is generally considered a bad adaptation though.

I'm fairly young for this forum (young enough I didn't grow up watching Dragonball at all) and it didn't shock me.
I only ever watched the anime, and I found it okayish. I was mostly frustrated by it when it was being the stereotypical harem anime, even if it was mostly being done to try to make it that much more tragic when everything went to shit later. It didn't shock me all that much either, but I can see why it came off that way with the other anime watchers I knew, probably because the kind of stuff they watched was more in line with the stuff that I didn't like. The kind of stuff that got me into the fandom was stuff like Cowboy Bebop, The Big O, and Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex. But I can see why your average Naruto-watcher was shocked by the likes of Higurashi and Elfen Lied, by design most likely. Both shows were pretty much about being edgy, with Elfen Lied being really obsessed with that when it wasn't busy being obsessed with fan service.

No, we are not supposed to sit back and accept Lucy's excess violence, someone didn't read the manga and finish the story.
*Looks at thread title* Yeah, and?

Like, is NGE or FLCL really INFAMOUS in the same way that Bible Black or Boku no Pico is?
Incidentally, this is actually more in line with what I had in mind when I started this thread. Those other shows are only really "infamous" with a particular crowd, which is to say exactly the crowd they were designed to piss off.
 

ParadiseLost

Well-known member
First off, that isn't really a problem I have with NGE. Secondly, while I do like TTGL, it is hardly the measuring stick I use to measure other shows by. Shinji's problem is that he's pretty much just a one-note character, but he's still only a part of why NGE is a bad show. My main problems with the show are that it's a combination of J.J. Abram's "mystery box" and nuBSG's grimdark, where everyone is fucked up in some way or other.

That's kinda the point, though. NGE isn't a mecha anime with psychological themes; its a psychological anime set in a mecha world.

Also, everyone IRL is fucked up in some way or another.

I only ever watched the anime, and I found it okayish. I was mostly frustrated by it when it was being the stereotypical harem anime, even if it was mostly being done to try to make it that much more tragic when everything went to shit later. It didn't shock me all that much either, but I can see why it came off that way with the other anime watchers I knew, probably because the kind of stuff they watched was more in line with the stuff that I didn't like. The kind of stuff that got me into the fandom was stuff like Cowboy Bebop, The Big O, and Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex. But I can see why your average Naruto-watcher was shocked by the likes of Higurashi and Elfen Lied, by design most likely. Both shows were pretty much about being edgy, with Elfen Lied being really obsessed with that when it wasn't busy being obsessed with fan service.

Yikes. Higurashi should not be a harem anime. The only girls that are ever romantically into Keiichi are Mion and Rena.

I don't think the comedy sections were done to make it more tragic; its more that Higurashi (at least the VN) needed them to keep its pacing and provide relief from the darker sections (and also because the story wouldn't work otherwise).

Clips of Higurashi do look edgy. When I look up violent clips from the original anime I don't even recognize some of the edgier scenes. Most of the edgiest ones have a lot of context lost.

*Looks at thread title* Yeah, and?

Incidentally, this is actually more in line with what I had in mind when I started this thread. Those other shows are only really "infamous" with a particular crowd, which is to say exactly the crowd they were designed to piss off.

I mean, that's fine, but if that was your intent I feel like "Bad/Overrated anime" would've made it more clear what you were looking for.
 

Undertone

Active member
FLCL
P&S
Kill la Kill.
Darling in the FRANXXX.

Plotwise, FLCL has very odd moments, and it's terribly short even by modern anime standards, but I'd say that it's still celebrated for its animation style and soundtrack. It's certainly well-known enough to be famous, and I feel that it does have some redeeming factors that would keep it out of the infamous pile, but as the times change and our heroes change... it's certainly open to discussion. I'm certainly guilty of suggesting it as an early-watch title to neophytes, but perhaps this is ill-advised. Is it too bizarre for audiences today? Is it better to watch a dozen bog-standard school-life shows before indulging in this complex work that turns the paradigm on its head?

Both Panty and Stocking with Garterbelt and Kill la Kill were shamelessly mocking prudishness and the cult of the "pure" waifu. If they are indeed infamous, then they wear that badge with roguish honour.

I don't care one way or another about Darling in the Franxxx, but it's probably too new to be picked on as an 'overhyped classic'.

Like, is NGE or FLCL really INFAMOUS in the same way that Bible Black or Boku no Pico is?

I agree with at least that much. But there are many categories of fame and infamy. Someone could argue that the Ghost Stories English dub is infamous, and they'd probably be accurate. But I wouldn't stop liking Ghost Stories -- in fact it's one of a handful of shows that I find time to rewatch.

Eva is also a show with a certain rewatch value, in that it's rather incomprehensible on a single watchthrough. And I can understand it's Hideaki Anno's therapy session, getting revenge for the Nadia deal, rubbing the anime industry's (and fans' !) noses in the messes they made, and all the while getting rich off it at the same time.

But almost everything I like about Eva is not in the show itself, which is a chore to watch, and the day cannot come fast enough when it is mainly recommended just for the psychological horror crowd and not to the general fandom.
 

Captain X

Well-known member
Osaul
I mean, that's fine, but if that was your intent I feel like "Bad/Overrated anime" would've made it more clear what you were looking for.
My intent when I started this thread was simply to discuss anime that anime fans found to be infamous, because while I know of a few of them, I was hoping some people might bring ones up that I might not know about.
 

ParadiseLost

Well-known member
I agree with at least that much. But there are many categories of fame and infamy. Someone could argue that the Ghost Stories English dub is infamous, and they'd probably be accurate. But I wouldn't stop liking Ghost Stories -- in fact it's one of a handful of shows that I find time to rewatch.

I agree that Ghost Stories is great. The dub is a wonderful, irreverent comedy anime.
 

Lord Sovereign

The resident Britbong
Incidentally, this is actually more in line with what I had in mind when I started this thread. Those other shows are only really "infamous" with a particular crowd, which is to say exactly the crowd they were designed to piss off.

I don't think Eva actually meant to piss anyone off, it is just a mess inextricably tied to the mind of its deeply unprofessional creator. Even many of the most die hard Eva fans have finally (thanks to the Rebuild films) come to the conclusion that Anno is a very poor story teller indeed, mostly because he has little self control and easily gets carried away with himself. Case in point, the character study segment of the original Eva grew so far out of control that it snowballed into an avalanche and crushed the plot and character development in the process.
 

Bear Ribs

Well-known member
So, does anybody else remember Samurai Pizza Cats?



Interestingly it was basically trash in the original Japanese, an unlamented, unremarkable cash grab on the Ninja Turtle phenomenon. It had a lame generic plot, and lame generic voices and it died in Japan quite promptly.

In English, it's a cult classic that retains a loyal following. Due to the budget in Japan literally being so nonexistent they didn't keep any paperwork on it, the company could not find any script at all for the dubbers to use, or in some versions of the story, the script was badly damaged and unreadable. So... the dubbers just ad-libbed the entire thing and went with an LSD trip of nonsense.

"The Big Cheese is the villain, whose lower than low. It's a rotten shame he lives in Little Tokyo. We got a nasty bad bird and some nasty ninja crows, as soon as someone finds the script we might begin the show."

This line in the intro was a literal shout-out to their lack of any script to work with. Reportedly the singer for the intro was also rather drunk and flubbed a couple of lines which they decided to keep anyway, making it even more surreal.

Not as remembered today but when it first came out in 1991, this show ignited an absolute firestorm in the dub/sub wars (which were taken about as seriously as StarDestroyer.Net takes Trek vs. Wars debates) and provided plenty of ridiculous ammo to both sides, which proceeded to immediately shoot themselves in the foot. It was also a critical piece to Saban's eventual dubbing strategy, Samurai Pizza Cats was their first foray into disregarding the original and completely redubbing everything and it's success led directly to Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers and all the shows that followed.

Interestingly the show's coming back into public consciousness again now, over 30 years after it first appeared, due to various controversies ranging from the copyright issues it has due to referencing everything from Ninja Turtles to Garfield and claims of... what else? ...That it's racist. I'm not sure how race enters into a show in which every single character is a robot shaped like an animal but everything else is racist too, the Robotic Cat-Shaped Pizza Delivery/Samurai Vigilantes were feeling left out.
 

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