Philosophers of all times have been wondering what decides a person’s character – how much of it is inborn (what we would now call genetics), how much is decided by upbringing, surrounding circumstances and such. On a smaller scale, anime fans often wonder how a person’s so-called "taste", their personal preferences regarding what they watch, come to be. Personally, I have always thought the more long-term factors were the key here. After all, a mecha fan doesn’t become a moe enthusiast overnight, and while getting somebody to acknowledge the quality of a series from a genre they dislike is often possible, getting them to actually ‘like’ that series is a tall order. This made me think that if somebody’s tastes can change, it has to happen over a longer period of time.
But apparently, I’ve been underestimating how short term circumstances affect what we want to watch. After recently switching from a full vacation lifestyle to an eleven-hour workday, I find myself prioritizing action series (Sword Art Online, Kyoukai Senjou no Horizon) over more artsy or thought inspiring content (Jinrui Suitai, Hyouka, Kokoro Connect). It’s not that my opinion about the series’ relative quality changed that much or anything, I just find myself looking forward to silly sword-swinging more than something that demands I use my brain cells. And it seems I’m not alone in this.
All this makes me think that the main factor behind ‘good entertainment’ is how it fulfills certain needs, rather than any more objective quality. What’s more, anime as a medium can be used to fulfill many different needs because of its varied content, and the priority of those needs can change in the blink of an eye. Almost any series can become a personal favorite if you watch it at ‘just the right moment’, when the message and tone of the show happen to coincide with specific moods and events in our life. Some of those special circumstances can last a day, until you sleep your problem off. Others affect our tastes for much longer periods.
When discussing objectivity, most people mention how no two people can ever see the same thing in exactly the same way. But now I wonder if even the same person can experience something the same way on two different days.
Yaranakya 
I think it’s common to liken the consumption of disposable entertainment as a diet as a reflection of this model.
I also think it’s not so much a matter of taste that you’re describing, but some subjective notion of internal balance or emotional reaction in which we seek to do something as a result of change in stimulus. To that degree “good entertainment” ceases about fulfilling needs, but back to its qualities. Even if you need a screwdriver, you would not say a screwdriver is better than a yacht, for example. Or some people just further divide it into bins.
I wouldn’t say that a screwdriver is better than a yacht, but I wouldn’t say that a yacht is better than a screwdriver either. How could I, with no defined quality to measure them by? But the fact that the screwdriver is the more desirable one in the scenario is the one thing I can say for sure, so it’s better than the yacht in at least one sense.
W dniu 2012-09-11 22:15,
It’s not something you can say for sure because there could be a technician or a case of screwdrivers on the yacht. The point I’m trying to make is that if you go down in that line of thought, it becomes “which screwdriver is the best?” which is basically another way of breaking a group into further bins. But intrinsically, it doesn’t really say anything about screwdrivers.
But a screwdriver is guaranteed to be desirable as it is whereas the technician or case of screwdrivers are not, even if performing action X could possibly result in them providing a screwdriver. The screwdriver itself is the only thing with a “certain value”, as opposed to any other object in this scenario.
That the relative value of different screwdrivers is impossible to establish is a specific example of the issue that nothing has a definite value in the first place without context or additional axioms. But this issue is present with any kind of value judgment you can make.
If you restrict yourself in the scenario by valuing purely what is defined within the scenario, yes. But I guess that’s the thing, right? Most everything has value, it’s about coming up with a way to define it.
It’s sort of problematic to value something purely because that’s what you’re in the mood for, as far as any kind of objective metric. Certainly however we all do it to a degree.
In this way, subjectivity is the mother of evaluation in the first place, since it frees us from a blank slate state with no definitions. But as you say, a (too) fickle basis of evaluation often defeats the point of the whole process. So everyone is somewhere in-between.
The entire question of what anime someone likes to watch is entirely subjective, and also changes depending on mood and available time. I might like some silly harem anime or action anime one week because I cant be bothered to think a lot, whereas there are other times when I would quite like to think about something in more detail.
Entertainment is in the eye of the beholder essentially, although there are clearly anime series that are ‘better’ than others, maybe because of their script, animation, characters or story. But even then it is something subjective and many people might not enjoy that particular series at all.
Also, anime should be there for entertainment, so if you arent enjoying a series, no matter how intellectual or interesting it may be, then clearly it isnt entertaining you at that particular moment. But who is to say that you wont enjoy that same series if you watched it in say a months time when you have free time or are in the right sort of mood.
Indeed. Even with “obviously inferior” series, there is always someone out there who considers the particular series the best of the genre. BaldenOtaku has A Channel as his favorite slice of life, probably because in his particular case it pressed all the right buttons. Nay-sayers can just consider the series a K-On clone, but there’s no way to say whose personal impression is “correct”.
W dniu 2012-09-12 11:17,
I kind of disagree, but I understand better your point about “correctness.” The thing is, anyone can make any kind of claim, but the point about that becomes what value those claims are. People are free to like and watch whatever they want, just like the concept “guilty pleasures” exist–shows we would enjoy but we probably won’t praise it or recommend it to everyone. I think it’s pretty clear that in these cases, everyone is correct.
If establishing the value of things is so difficult, doing the same for claims would certainly be no easy task. Then again, if that were easy (or even possible), human thought would progress in a straight line, rather than the complex web we actually have.
I think while hypothetically that is true, human values tend to be couched in uniform or widely acceptable frameworks that we can evaluate on some basis, such as methods of argument (eg, appeal to emotion, logic, etc) or because of some physical constraint, or, whimsy.
it’s really easy, in fact. We do it all the time all day long. Verbalizing an opinion or claim is comparatively difficult.
Indeed, we do a lot of evaluating and have our tools for it. The hidden issue is, of course, that picking an evaluation basis also requires a subjective choice of what is and what isn’t valuable, so it just shifts the problem to a different place. Though this kind of “stable subjectivity” can certainly be more understandable to others and therefore lead to better communication.
I’ve always been a believer that our environment mostly contributes to who we are (with inborn temperament playing a less conspicuous role), and thus it contributes to our tastes in anime. If we’re tired and stressed out, then yeah, an anime that’s easy on the brain is what we desire rather than something complicated. If something in our life made us develop an interest in yaoi or yuri themes in our entertainment, then those are the anime we’ll prioritize over others. Sometimes we can recognize a series isn’t as great as our taste tells us, but for whatever reason we love it anyway. That’s why I like to follow the “head” score versus “heart” score rankings for anime (not sure if you read my post about that). I’ve been pretty consistent over the past several years of what anime are my favorites and I always enjoy watching both complex and easy-going ones. The only thing that’s changed a bit is that, when I’m tired from a long day of work and have 3-4 episodes of anime to watch, I’ll start with the brain-cell heavy series first and the light ones after so if I start to get sleepy towards the end of the anime marathon it won’t matter as much =P
I remember your “head” and “heart” post. In my ratings, anything up to 8 has to represent a level of quality (plot, characters, animation etc.) fitting for the rating, and I focus on whether I could recommend those series to other anime fans with a clean conscience. But score 9 is something I give to “personal favorites, regardless of quality”. It doesn’t mean that there aren’t any popular and well-crafted series there (quite to the contrary) just that it doesn’t matter what faults those series might have since they did enough things “just right” to make up for it. But I don’t really mention my scores to other people, as I’m not even trying to be impartial with those top series.
As for the sequence in which I watch things when I watch several episodes in a row, I usually try to watch the series I need/want to remember best at the end. Which usually results in the most complicated ones going last. The final series I watch is the most fresh in my mind after everything is over. We’re kind of opposite here ;).
W dniu 2012-09-12 20:17,
Criterion certain shifts over time as to how we rate our shows; I personally began holding plot above all else, switched to characters, and am now (and for the longest time) more concerned about the themes and intellectual ideas that drive a show.
Yet there is definitely something to be said about watching shows ‘at the right time’, or having shows that are more or less entertainment with a few ideas behind them; perhaps the true test for a ‘personal favorite’ is how the show can hold up over time. I’m enjoying Sword Art Online and Kokoro Connect right now, but I doubt they’ll be shows that bring back those nostalgia kicks 5 years down the line.
I ended up putting off the heavier shows this season for quite a while, but when I finally had time and strength to get to them, the viewing satisfaction was enormous :).
But yes, there are “quick fix” shows, and those that remain inside for years to come. Sometimes, it’s easy to mistake one for the other, too.