sum1

I'll never get why some people seem to think Wesley on ST:TNG was this terrible thing. There was NOTHING particularly offensive about him.

In anime people are usually drawn looking like kids, so that kicks most of that stuff out of the good show category. I looked up the Neon Genesis Dandelion thing and they're supposed to be 14 year olds but they have giant eyes and tiny little mouths. How anybody's supposed to take something like this seriously I don't know. Pictures for the Cowboy Bop thing show people looking less like toddlers, but the art doesn't strike me as having much depth. I'm not a big fan of animation in general, but what I've seen of anime (various bits over the years) has especially not impressed me.

BehrItAll

I just found Wesley incredibly annoying.

Not always. It had so much potential.
But if I had to choose between one great season or executive meddling, I'd choose the former.

basenji

On Wesley: It's more because a lot of Star Trek fans like to point to Moh's Scale of Science Fiction Hardness. And Wesley discredits that. That, and he's as blatant a Gary Stu as they come. (Did I mention Gene Roddenberry's middle name?) And Wil Wheaton actually asked the writers to change his character to make him more likable, but they refused.

On anime: Well, it's not all Pokémon. Most anime fans can't stand Pokémon or anything dubbed by 4kids. (4kids is not unique in this: Saban and DiC have some bad dubs too.*)

*Saban created Mighty Morphin Power Rangers, possibly the worst exercise in macekre ever. "Dead" became "destroyed". (Sort of like how Dragonball Z has "ANOTHER DIMENSION!") The green ranger didn't die. Oddly, it became a six-season magnum opus, ending with the Big Good asking the leader of the current ranger team to "destroy" him. DiC dubbed Sailor Moon. Two words: Lesbian cousins.

In anime, small eyes typically indicate someone is hiding something. Silva of Shaman King has small eyes. So does Kaoru of Neon Genesis Evangelion. Yes, I know, the characters all look vaguely European; actual Westerners are typically portrayed as blondes. (The result is Fullmetal Alchemist where nearly every character is blonde. FMA takes place in an alternate-universe Germany, though.)

Anime often has delayed-reaction horror. Evangelion told us that when you get close to someone, you're raping their soul. (I did mention it's all about Anno's fear of intimacy, right?) Fullmetal Alchemist has us learn that Edward's powers are powered by our souls. Yes, ours. As in, from our world.

This also applies to video games; note that in Final Fantasy X, all Tidus' talk about "Let's go to Zanarkand! Let's defeat Sin!" translates to "Let's go off and sacrifice you so everyone else can be free from my giant monster father for a while." and then It Got Worse: "Let's go off and sacrifice you so everyone else can be free from my giant monster father for a while until I take his place."

DarthyDarth

I'm one of the few SW geeks in my city. And i'm loving it! i'm so geeky, i made a SW fan film... alone at the cemetery in the middle of the day under a the Sun's scorching heat.

FreedomsBullets

How did you make a film alone? Who held the camera?

sum1

Science fiction hardness? Meaning? What's this scale? And Mary Sues aren't always bad. I mind Bash Fender and the Xizor from Sh--holes of the Empire, but not Wesley.

I haven't seen Pokemon.

Oversized eyes make characters look like kids and look ridiculous. It's very hard to take something seriously when that's going on. The oversizing is often taken to extremely painful levels in Anime, judging by what I've seen.

basenji

Hardness is how close it is to how science actually works as we currently understand it.

0: Just repeat to yourself "It's just a show. You should really just relax." Anything with magic, whether or not it's called magic, fits here. Examples: Star Trek (in any form), Barbarella, Star Wars, Futurama, Lexx, Neon Genesis Evangelion, Farscape, most non-literary science fiction.
1: There are technologies that break some law of physics, but we have no idea how they work, or they appear to appease some higher power. Examples: Stargate, Animorphs, Cthulhu mythos.
2: The laws of physics are broken in some way, but it is explained. Expect hundred-page dissertations from fans. Examples: Babylon 5, The Matrix.
3: The only break from reality is faster-than-light travel. Examples: Contact, Avatar.
4: No FTL travel. Can be a 1 or 2 otherwise, but the physicists allow it to appease their Einstein worship. Examples: Firefly, Cowboy Bebop, Max Headroom.
5; Contains theoretical but plausible elements. No FTL travel in any way, shape, or form. Examples: Gattaca, Ghost in the Shell.
6: Real life plus space travel. The only way to grade it within 6 is based on age; newer is generally harder. Home of Zeerust: One can always tell when science and/or technology marches on. Examples: Destination Moon, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Moon just because of the "sound in space" and cloning.
7: Just like real life, but some technologies are more accessible or more efficient. Examples: The Boys From Brazil, GI Joe.
8: Real life: The world's largest MMO, which has spawned its own spinoff genre, known as "the documentary".

Nothing wrong with being a 0, of course. But many fans of mainstream SF like to imagine theirs as at least a 5.

It's so bad it's horrible.

sum1

Snobbiness over how scientific one's sf is is moronic. Scientificness is not a literary or artistic value, so it doesn't count for sh.

FreedomsBullets

It really bothers me when people nitpick at SF for making scientific inaccuracies. It's still a work of fiction.

BehrItAll

Reminds me of that show a few years back on how to make all the sci-fi technology from SW plausible for us.

basenji

It does me, too. But unfortunately, that's where we are. And pointing out that the biggest offending fandom is also a zero on Moh's scale is bad enough.

sum1

Didn't that guy Brin have a hangup about how Star wars wasn't science ficton enough?

FreedomsBullets

Yea, he did. But strangely enough he supported the EU.

sum1

the eu.

FreedomsBullets

I think Brin needs to find something more productive to do with his time.

Speaking of scientific inaccuracies, there are some pretty bad ones in TFU II. As in people going into space without protective suits and surviving bad.