Others that give random information such as the choice of typeface used have about as much value as a blank canvas claiming to be a work of art.
I lean towards the captions expressing Koyomi’s thoughts being a good thing. At times this is utterly brilliant, never better than the empty playground where the main character converses with a lost child who can never reach her destination. Both of them are wrong, and both of them are right, and the really tricky bit is finding where the two interpretations should meet in the middle.įor me, the success and the cleverness here is in the overall visual style, especially overly-bright scenes with stark contrasts, often locating two characters in large, otherwise deserted landscapes. The other thinks the appreciative one is a gullible fool for falling for the trick of cheapness masquerading as something special. One viewer thinks the other is a philistine for failing to grasp the meaning of the art. At the other end of the scale you have the viewer who sees cheap and nasty CGI and thinks the other viewer can’t see that the emperor is naked. At one end of the scale you have the viewer who will think they understand the animator’s reason for that and consider it creative and clever and making a statement. Let’s take, as a random example, a shot of cars on the road, with every car identical. Think about where viewers might stand on anime as a modern art medium. The biggest problem with that is how effectively it can be used as financial necessity disguised as creativity. This is a conscious move away from visual reality.
No, this is symbolic art, expressing ideas and situations non-literally and/or non-realistically. When I say art, I don’t mean beautiful backgrounds etc. Bakemonogatari is anime as a modern art form, and that presents some problems.