I had a friend over today, and I wanted to show him some of Akira, just so he could see how insane it looks. We only watched the first 40 minutes, but the thing is, I feel like I paid more attention to that part than on my initial viewing, and I got a lot more out of it.
It sounds, very basic, because it is, but I'm wondering how many great shows I gave a 7/10 because they look cool, and then never thought about again because "I didn't get/understand it," when in reality, the root cause could be that I just wasn't captivated by the beginning.
And because of that, I lost interest, and decided to not really pay attention to the rest of it. The Sky Crawlers, GitS 95, Akira, Texhnolyze, Flip Flappers, Trust and Betrayal, F91. The fact that they didn't captivate me off the bat is inherently, a flaw, obviously, even on rewatches, I’m sure that would stand true. That’s the reason I’m thinking about this in the first place.
They're never going to be 10's. But who knows, maybe they could have been 8's, or 9's, if I had just paid more attention. Who knows how much I've watched, given a 7 because they looked cool, and then dismissed from my thoughts entirely. I thought about all this because I watched Summer Wars today.
Summer Wars, same as Akira, same as Ghost in the Shell, looks stunning. Both the fight scenes and more mundane activities are animated with the utmost detail and care, which got me thinking about this topic. Because Summer Wars is deep and has tons of themes and overlapping aspects to it. Simultaneously as the family the movie focuses on is fighting to save the world, a high school baseball team is trying to get to Koshien. These events overlap, and they climax simultaneously, and I think that’s so cool. And that’s just one little detail, which doesn’t even touch on the multitude of themes and great character writing and drama present in this movie. And I would probably have been ignorant of all this, if I wasn’t captivated immediately by the frankly, bizarre beginning (moreso the scene after the long exposition about OZ) and wonderful character designs. How much in all the other things I watched, have I been ignorant of?
This isn’t meant to be an analysis of Summer Wars, that’s for another time. This is moreso me just sharing an experience. So try to pay attention to the media you’re consuming, if it doesn’t engage you right off the bat, wait a little, and focus. Maybe you’ll end up loving it. If it’s bad, and you paid attention to it, well, you probably understand your tastes a lot better, which is by no means a bad thing. If you don’t also experience bad things, you’re never going to be able to properly distinguish between stuff. And who doesn’t want to have a deeper understanding of not only themselves, but also art itself? We may never be able to truly, to properly experience every single piece of art. It's said that you're never done exploring a work of art until you're dead. As you age and develop, so will your understanding of everything you've consumed. And you can never complete that understanding, same as you can never have a complete understanding of our surroundings. But we can increase it, if ever so slightly, if we just put a bit more effort into it.
I also want to touch on the subject of production/aesthethics overshadowing thematics, because I think it's a very interesting concept. You'll often hear this sentiment repeated a lot: "Yeah, the story is bad, but it looks so amazing." In many cases, that can be true, just look at Gundam Wing. But take the previously mentioned Akira, for example. It is impossible to have a discussion about Akira without the stunning visuals and sheer impact portrayed in its animation. Is that a good thing? I don't want to dismiss the importance of incorporating an appealing visual aesthethic in a work either, because, especially in visual mediums, you're watching, or in the case of comics, looking at it. That's obviously important, no one wants to watch something if it looks horrible, damned if it has a good narrative. And that's a flly valid decision, and one I agree with. However, on this last point, I don't know. Maybe I'm not smart enough yet, maybe I just need to think about it more. It's a bit too complicated for me, as of now at least, but I felt it was relevant enough and, if nothing else, worth mentioning.
To summarize: pay attention. You might dismiss something because it wasn't amazing from the get go, but it could very well be a lot better than you expected to be if you think about it a bit more.
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