My cousin Daim wrote a nice piece of article in his *ahem* BLOG (http://www.daimation.com) detailing his preferences in selecting his favourite animation/movies. Had a nice discussion with my cousins last night, thought it was a great idea to come up with my own list! :) I invite everyone to do the same!

This is also in tune with the upcoming ahbonk.net Anime Awards 2009, so you will roughly know why I choose some shows over others.

Of course, this is just a writeup about my preferences. To each his own, I’d say.

First, let me tell you the most important factor in choosing the right show:

• As long as it’s not Micheal Bay’s Transformers, it’s good.

Wait, come back! It’s not the only factor…

I agree with Daim in a sense that music, story-telling and art are very important aspects of media. Unlike Daim though, it’s hard for me to put emphasis on one portion of media over the other. For example, I think that music is no more important than visuals, nor are visuals more important than story-telling.

For me, a movie with fitting visuals but bad story-telling is just as guilty as a movie with a good story but unfitting visuals. An anime with an epic soundtrack but ill-suited visuals ain’t gonna compel me to watch the show either.

Back to the Future is not Back to the Future without the characters, the tense music, the changing newspaper articles, the hoverboard and flying cars, etc. It is my favourite movie of all time because it manages to harmonize all its elements into one entertaining package. I agree with Daim: it’s the whole integration that’s important.

Maybe my experience as a multimedia and game developer influenced me to see the whole thing in a big picture.

I *do* agree though that one media element is harder to produce than the other. I think coming up with matching music score and sound effects is a difficult process, one that is super difficult and as a result is only considered as an afterthought.

So far it may seem like the easy way out of dissecting my interests, but I assure you I DO have a list of 3 factors that influence my judgement in media. They are:

• Entertainment Value
• Immersion
• Effort

Half-naked fat men are entertaining. End of discussion.

Nah, just kidding. Thin men are fine too: “I don’t believe in God, I believe in sciiiieeenccee.”

I watch animation and movies to be entertained. Of course how “entertaining” something is depends on the person, but I tend to not like shows that mope and “emo” around one single issue for too long. I’d take 20 repeated runs of Nacho Libre over one round of Winter Sonata any day (What? He’s blind now? COME ON!).

In other words, I wanna feel good after watching something. Sometimes it’s about being happy for the characters, or being struck in awe after watching an intense space battle/psychological thriller. The feeling could also be associated with the production rather than the movie itself, like “Man, I wish I thought of that, that was an awesome idea!”.

Without a doubt, the stirring of emotions play a VERY BIG role in entertainment value.

This is not to say I wanna see a rabbit hopping in the meadows and smelling flowers for two hours. You might think that I’m easily pleased, but to keep me entertained for two hours is not an easy feat, let alone for 26 episodes. If you just look at the story-telling element alone, there are already a bunch of stuff that needs to be considered.

Like the story arc, for example. To build for the feel-good moment, crisis of significant scale here and there is crucial. Even in slice-of-life comedies, characters need to have conflict to handle every now and then. It may seem basic, but a lot of popular anime/movies fail in this department.

Such as:

• One in recent memory is the latest Star Trek movie. Too much going all over the place without solving the crisis at hand.

• The latest One Piece movie, Strong World, in which all the crises were not much of a challenge for Luffy and gang. Villains were swatted down like flies.

• Anime series that rely too much on fanservice for entertainment. Yes I’m a guy, but my brain is bigger than my balls. I want something more intelligent, thank you.

• Don’t get me started on Haruhi’s endless eight!

• Back to the Future, Star Wars (NO, not episode I, II and III!) and in recent memory, Watchmen, rocked. The story flow, the characters and the action had momentum which made for a good ride.

• Gurren Lagann and One Piece manga, for its awesome seemingly impossible-to-overcome odds at every corner. Not to mention that they’re both funny AND full of thrills!

• Also, let’s not forget some feel-good anime, like Aishiteruze Baby, Azumanga, Aria, Hidamari Sketch, Ichigo Mashimaro and Cross Game. Considering all its one-way love relationships, Honey and Clover might seem like an exception to this rule, but it’s not. It’s heart-warming and beautiful, both story and art.

There’s more to Aria than just girls wearing white uniforms that hug… their curvy… body shape… mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.

*slaps himself*

Similar to when I’m playing a game, I wanna forget the real world and be thoroughly involved in the world that I’m watching. It doesn’t only apply to fantasy worlds; I would love to be involved in that discussion room among 12 Angry Men, or shout out from the audience stand to support Ippo in Hajime no Ippo.

You see, when I was watching Aria, I was not only taken in by the future alternative of Venice, I mean, sure it was visually stunning and all that. But if it wasn’t for our lovely protagonist Akari’s commentary and her curiosity on exploring every corner of the city, I wouldn’t have found Neo-Venezia to be as beautiful as I do now. Dialogue and story helped a lot in sucking me into this fantasy world.

It’s common to think that visuals play the biggest role in immersion, but not for me. Aria would’ve struck me on a different note if not for the sound of the waves hitting the docks and the creaking sounds of the gondola. The Italian jazz BGM by Choro Club helped a lot in bringing out its romantic atmosphere. If not for all these, it could have easily been mistaken for a sci-fi show instead of a slice-of-life story of a girl who wants to be a full-fledged gondolier.

Read the Wiki. Just look under the Reception section and you can see all the praises by official sources to see what I mean. Here’s an excerpt:

“The series has been praised for its calm pacing, optimistic worldview, beautiful art, and, for the anime, the quality of the soundtrack.”

Let’s see. Story-telling, check. Visuals, check. Music, check. All of them work together to create, quote, “a masterpiece of storytelling and illustration, gorgeous to look at and a feast for the young imagination in its ability to present an inviting, fully realized world”, unquote.

My love for Venice, including a daily visit to a certain Venice photo blog, is all thanks to Aria.

This is why I love slice-of-life anime, especially the feel-good fuzzy ones. They pay attention to the smallest detail, which deepens the immersion ever further, at least for me. I’m in Tokyo now and I appreciate every little thing it has offer: the people, the dog statue in Shibuya, the sound of the wind chimes, the Sakura petals, the kotatsu, the music the pedestrian traffic light plays when it’s green, ginger ale (and how it’s pronounced). All of them have a high level of significance to me.

Anyway, nothing pisses me off more than that momentary knock-back that instantly transports me back to reality, such as:

• Plot Holes: You come back to reality and think, WTF. This is why I hated Deja Vu, a waste of Denzel Washington talent. It had more holes than my face.

• Character Motivation: I don’t mind characters being one-dimensional and all, as long as their motivation is set straight. Nothing is more unconvincing than a villain who wants to destroy the world for very childish reasons, like “mommy gave you more toys than me” (replace toys with money/empires, it’s all the same). Oh, and Star Wars Episode I, II and III are very good examples of epic fail in this context. *whuang* *whuang* *pshh arrrghhh* What have I done? … Yes master.

• Bad Acting: This is why I can’t stand some Malay comedies, they try to act funny but fail horribly. Remember Batman and Robin, anyone? I’m trying not to. Though game-related, some RPGs have horrible english dub that prevent me from playing them till the end.

• Inconsistent Art: I know that your company is laying off some people and you can’t push that beautiful art direction past episode 6, but I wanna forget about that (immersion, remember?). When characters and scenery look different in certain scenes, I end up trying to figure out what the heck am I looking at. Filler episodes are also a popular victim.

• Horrible Audio: IMO, music and sound effects make or break the mood of the show. The recent anime Fairy Tail had one terrible flaw that I just couldn’t forgive for the life of me. At the end of every episode, a super happy ending theme would fade in 5 seconds before the credits roll. So imagine the awkward feeling when I saw the villain almost killing the main dude near the end, having his sinister laughter overlapped by some hyper jingle. Good Lord, someone kill the director. At least Saki did a better job at this, fading in the right ED song to fit the end.

• Trying to Figure Out Which is the Autobot and Which is the Decepticon: ‘Nuff said.

A lot of creators want their work to be judged at face value, but that ain’t gonna happen. Nuh uh. Production value is proportionate to the number of people and experience, that’s a fact you can’t deny. If you see a solo-produced 3D animation beating a Pixar one in production value, please call the police. It’s a crime.

Makoto Shinkai is a talented artist. A rare one at that. You can’t believe that beautiful works like Voices of a Distant Star can be created by just one man (+composer friend and voice actress fiancee).

Even so, if he works with more people, can you imagine the lengths that he could reach? Just look at his next work, The Place Promised in Our Early Days, where you can see a huge improvement in production value as he worked in a team. Whether it’s a better movie or not is another matter altogether.

This is why I can’t help but consider the amount of effort that was put into the work. Though I’d be a little more forgiving, I will still consider its entertainment value and depth of immersion as important factors. I can tell you that there are a lot of one-man shows out there that fulfill these criteria, even more so than a whole slew of box office hits.

In other words, if solo-produced Film A was just as entertaining and immersive as studio-produced Film B, I would say that A is a better movie than B. Sorry, you can’t talk me out of this one :P Coz for me, it’s about surpassing or falling short of expectations.

This thinking gave birth to my great appreciation for independent (doujin) animation, manga, music and games.

Daim mentioned last night that he stays away from animated shorts in general because they are often a channel to show off the artist’s skills, with disregard to storytelling and audio. In short, it’s a “Hey look at this!” kind of thing.

Though I wholeheartedly agree with him, I say “why not?”. There are many who wanna show off but are just all talk and no action. A select few have chosen to do something about it, with passion. That in itself deserves my respect and a view from me. No matter how pretentious a piece of work is, it always has a story of tell.

This brings me to another related, albeit slightly weaker factor, intention. What is this piece of work intending to do, and did it succeed? You wanna show off how your art direction is related to child abuse? Sure! You have this crazy plot twist idea about the train not moving but the stations are moving instead? Why the hell not!

Once in a while I forgive the lack of plot richness if the creator did what s/he intended to do. For example, we all know that Advent Children isn’t the best example of story-telling device out there (in fact far from it), but I know what the creator was trying to make: an awesome 3D version of John Woo action while being faithful to the game. And it succeeded. I like.

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Phew, sorry about that. Got carried away with all the writing, but that’s who I really am. And remember, there are always exceptions to the rule. It always depends on my mood, the hype, the current technology, etc.

How about you? What are the 3 factors that affect your judgement on entertainment? Let us know!