That time a redditor told me my anime takes were too surface level

Someone on a forum pointed out I was only watching shonen battle series and missing the slower character driven shows, so I tried March Comes in Like a Lion last month and it completely changed how I look at storytelling. Has anyone else had their taste shifted hard by a single recommendation?

3 comments

3 Comments

parker_webb18d ago

...so my buddy Dave used to be exactly like that. He'd only watch the big shonen stuff, Naruto, One Piece, MHA, all that. I tried getting him to watch Violet Evergarden for like two years straight and he'd always brush it off as "slow and boring." Then one night his girlfriend was watching it and he sat down next to her just to scroll on his phone and ended up binge watching the whole series with her. He texted me the next day like "dude I'm not okay, what did you make me watch." Now he's got a shelf full of box sets of stuff like A Place Further Than the Universe and he wont shut up about how much he used to miss out on lol.

craig.olivia18d ago

i mean, is it really that deep though? like yeah march comes in like a lion is good and all but i feel like people get way too caught up in what's "surface level" versus what's "real art" or whatever. at the end of the day we're all just watching cartoons on our phones lol. idk, maybe i just dont buy into the whole thing where you gotta have some super specific taste to be considered a real fan. but hey, if it made you happy then good for you.

oliviabutler18d ago

Gotta disagree with you here @craig.olivia. Saying its all just cartoons on our phones kind of misses the point for me. I watched March Comes in Like a Lion during a really rough patch and those quiet scenes with Rei just staring at the ceiling hit different than any shonen fight could. Yeah its not that deep to some people but then again neither is a painting of a soup can. Different stuff hits different people for different reasons and thats fine.