Much Ado About Everything

That’s a bit pretentious title right there.  I only used it because I hate inventing titles, names and such.  This little post is simply a short commentary on a recent discussion about “worst anime” people have seen.  There are plenty of similar discussions (though far more heated usually) around the web on any given day.

It isn’t possible to have a fully objective assesment of any work of art.  People will never agree even on what criteria to use, much less on what those criteria are exactly.

However, it should be possible to have at least some kind of coarse scale that would assign reasonably objective evaluations, expressed in relative terms.  For example, it is possible to at least determine if something is significantly different in quality that something (concrete) else or if’s significantly better or worse than the average.  There are attributes such as animation quality, story originality and so on that can be used for such purpose.  As such, one should be able to say if something is the worst there is, by doing one to one relative comparison to all of its “opponents”.

For example, it is really hard to imagine that shows like Full Metal Alchemist or even Bleach could be considered “the worst” by majority of criteria.  When I see that some people name as “the worst” stuff that many others find “the best”, I always have to wonder how much of their opinion is an honest objective attempt at evaluation (as nebulous as it may be) and how much of it is clouded by passion.

If I were to take a guess, I would say it often happens because one starts watching the show with preconceptions about it – due to familiarity with source material such as manga – or because the show strucks a painful chord with the spectator.  A perfect example would be me, watching Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers for the first time.  I came out of the theatre really pissed, due to many objections I had on the portrayal of some events and especially some characters (namely Faramir).  As a huge fan of the book, which I’ve read two decades ago and many times over since, I obviously had the entire thing – or at least the parts I care about – fully imagined in my head already (perhaps even with soundtrack).  Any complex work of art is bound to have dozens, or even hundreds of highlights that the “consumer” mind would focus on, and any work of art worth that categorization would light up different set of bulbs in minds of different people as they would percieve those highlights differently and hence reach different conclusions.

Anyhow, because they are passionate about it, people will stubbornly hang onto a handful of issues and voice their opinions very strongly.  They will disregard the sum of the parts and focus madly on a few highly visible issues, not unlike a potential homebuyers would focus on laundry hanging off balconies rather than location, view (sans panties and bras and… heeey, why sans??  What’s wrong with that?), state of property, quality of management and so on.

None of this is either novel or noteworthy.  But I do find it interesting that even when asked, people just cannot put their passion aside for a moment and try to be objective.  At the very least, they will use the oportunity to poke fun at the thing they love to hate the most at least once before assuming a more rational posture.

Maybe this is because it doesn’t happen very often that someone actually asks for our opinions?  Usually it’s us trying to lobby others, to the point they get sick of both us and what we’re talking about.  So when we’re being allowed to, we just can’t resist not to.

And of course, why people put up posts like these?  I mean like the one you’re reading, but I suppose the same applies to the one that prompted this.  Don’t I often say that I don’t really care  about what others think of me and my opinions?  Why should I then be upset about people calling something I like “the worst”?  Because in the end, we all do care, even if just a little, or we’d never ask.

I say “all”, but I’m sure there are people that really don’t.  However, we never hear from them, except sometimes we hear of them on evening news; it is true, you know - hope dies last.

And when we ask others for their opinion on matters such as this, we’re not really asking for their opinions – we want them to say what we want to hear.  In other words, to to agree with us.
Well, unless it’s their job, that is.  Then is both business and pleasure.

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