Comments on: Nostalgia Blinds…but it also Heals

By: moritheil

moritheil — Wed, 13 May 2009 19:14:15 +0000

@wah – Fully tongue-in-cheek, there, in case it wasn’t clear. ^_^

By: ETERNAL

ETERNAL — Sat, 09 May 2009 00:23:55 +0000

@ egads: Technically speaking, you're right. Our feelings affect our personal preference, but it's all a part of our subjective opinion in the end. I guess it comes back to the notion of separating one's personal opinion from their objective opinion, especially when claiming that a is better than b. @ tj han: You're right about remembering things fondly, I've been noticing that with myself lately. I played the first Tales of Symphonia in the sixth grade, and I spent hundreds of hours trying to get everything. I even got a few friends to help out. We were all obsessed with the game, and we treated it like one of the greatest RPGs ever made. Now, as I'm playing the sequel for the Wii, I can only enjoy it if I don't take it seriously. It's a decent game, but very, very flawed. And yet, if I think back on that final dungeon and the scene before the credits, I feel warm and fuzzy. It's a vague way of describing it, but yes, it's definitely funny how memories make everything seem better :P @ OGT: Explicitly stating that would have required a few hundred more words that would make the post even more needlessly verbose, but yeah, blindly praising modern shows is just as bad. Like you said, closing your mind off is the real danger. @ animekritik: For some reason, I can't help but feel that I've used that argument before, though I know it wasn't in this post. Anyway, that's a good point, especially considering the fact that the community as a whole watches almost everything that's airing at any given point in time. Lots of moe anime/VN adaptations end up failing miserably, but old-school mecha probably had the same problem - it's just that we only talk about the ones good enough to live for decades. @ Stevo: Of course! I don't think K-ON is all that great and I know there's nothing spectacular about Saki, but I'm watching both of them because they're fun. Doing things in the name of entertainment is natural, and certainly not a bad thing - it's only bad when you start blurring the line in your mind between "fun" and "good" that it becomes a problem. @ Martin: Acceptance of different time periods in a medium is like acceptance of different genres; it might not look that appealing at first, but it's usually worth it, and it's a necessity if you want to properly understand what you're watching. That's the main reason why I decided to finally go back and watch some old Gundam :P @ ghostlightning: Repeating the mistakes of the past is probably the worst thing they can do. If we've already had to put up with certain careless mistakes or plot holes a decade ago, we definitely don't want to see them again today. @ wah: Like I said, his accusations against you may or may not have been fair, but the fact remains that the non-dorama content of the post captures an important concept. I don't doubt that you're still in touch with modern anime, and I expect that a Kaede fan wouldn't try to claim older anime to be unconditionally better :P

By: wah

wah — Thu, 07 May 2009 01:26:27 +0000

Well DM's post was total bullshit anyway since at that point I had only just seen the original Gundam Trilogy one year ago, and until that point had only really partaken of a sampling of AU series. And I guess Zeta Gundam, which I appreciate now more than I did then. >>Shhh! Don’t tell WAH that classic shows aren’t better! :P Uhhh, even if I used to do it just be pretentious, I do not at any level think old shows are better than new ones. I'm pretty knee-deep in modern otaku subculture, especially now that I'm living in Japan. wahs last blog post..Comic 140: Secret, underground base

By: M12

M12 — Wed, 06 May 2009 11:00:34 +0000

Well, the new developers can learn from the old skool guys. So, in theory, their games should actually be superior! This applies to everything, pretty much. Having said that, I am often biased towards old school stuff, just because of the nostalgia factor. Well, for all the stuff that I consider nostalgic, I reckon they are excellent products, even when seen objectively, as you suggested. I'm referring to Doom, etc. But yeah, nice post :D. M12s last blog post..Sushi (and) train

By: moritheil

moritheil — Tue, 05 May 2009 07:35:40 +0000

Shhh! Don't tell WAH that classic shows aren't better! :P

By: Nostalgia is Beautiful « GAR GAR Stegosaurus - because I always watch the contrails disappear

Tue, 05 May 2009 02:53:12 +0000

[...] Because I can’t leave well enough alone. [...]

By: ghostlightning

ghostlightning — Sat, 02 May 2009 14:43:42 +0000

There’s also something to be said about expectations for a new show that I consider legitimate, such as:

1. If a show is part of a franchise such as Gundam, I appreciate homages in the form of ‘easter eggs’ and aren’t done for their own sake. Macross is very clever with this. However, I expect the newer show NOT to repeat the mistakes the previous shows made (similar plot-holes)
2. All other things being equal, animation quality must be better (Macross 7 I’m looking at YOU. I don’t expect Frontier to look as good as an OVA like Zero, but the case of 7 is particularly bad. Also, GSD w/ its recycled battle animation comes to mind.)

How to play nostalgia in an awesome way: hire Imagawa Yasuhiro. Just look at his work in re-presenting the really old shows like Giant Robo, and this season’s Mazinger Z.

By: Martin

Martin — Fri, 01 May 2009 18:44:14 +0000

As always, it’s a balancing act. I can go on about how awesome Macross Plus, Gunbuster and Bubblegum Crisis are but as long as I’m open to more recent shows of brilliance such as Mushishi, Denno Coil and (if it continues its standard of excellence) Eden of the East, I won’t be worried. I often find myself splitting my viewing time between interesting new shows and revisiting old favourites…the diehard nostalgics who reject anything less than X years old and the n00bs who refuse to admit anything existed before Haruhi are as bad as each other, and are sadly missing out on a lot. Nostalgia is indeed fun and not harmful at all…as long as it’s in moderation, as is the case with most things! ^_^

By: Stevo

Stevo — Fri, 01 May 2009 13:27:38 +0000

Well, I tend to separate ‘fun’ from ‘good’. There’s quite a few shows that I watch because even though they are mediocre from several ways, they are still fun to watch.

By: animekritik

animekritik — Fri, 01 May 2009 05:19:36 +0000

There's another element which is key here: selective memory. What I mean is this: it takes time for the anime community to decide once and for all if a series is great, and when that is agreed on we call it a classic. Series today might or might not be as good, it's too early to tell if they can stand the test of time. But what happens is when we old folk think of the past, we recall only the classics (as we should) whereas when we look at the present we see a host of series good and bad and middling. The past will always look better. I myself tend to read books at least 100 years old. The reason is because the chance a "classic" will turn out to be a lousy work is much less than just picking out today's bestsellers at the bookstore. This doesn't mean in the past people were better writers, it just means those bad writers have been thrown into oblivion where they deserve to be, so what's left is the good stuff. Hmm, this is kind of a pointless comment but there it is! animekritiks last blog post..Chidejika Saga (you know it’s epic when ABe steps in)