Anime Refined

I simply must post this:




For all it's faults, anime as a genre tends to hit the right notes with me on occasion. The movie "Robot Carnival", of which the above is a short segment, is one such instance.

The segment of "Deprive" in particular is elegant and full of the things that make anime great. The hair spray, inspired 80's synth music, a completely unapologetic and fantastic use of various anime cliches, and -most importantly- awesome things for the sake of awesome appeals to me on such a fundamental level that I nearly squeal every time the camera pans from a dramatic explosion. It is the engineering equivelant of perfection. It is perfect not because there isn't anything they can add, rather it is perfect because there is nothing that they can take away.

I wish more animes would drop the incessant dialogue and hampering use of cliche in favor of refining what makes their respective shows great.

Noein would be better without the cliche Japanese student segments.
Neon Genesis Evangelion would be better without ham handing long philosophical dialogues.
Cowboy Bebop could probably be 3 episodes without all the mid season filler.
Nadia would be great if not for anteing up toward the end of the first season with an unrelated environmental message and utilizing some traditional season finale style cliff hanger episodes that deviates from the rest of the series.
Naruto is a cliche in and of itself...

...and these are just the animes that I bothered to remember the name to.