Gold Standards in Anime

One of the things almost no modern viewer likes, is gold standards. You are narrow-minded to believe there is a proper way to tell a story. It doesn’t allow evolution because people reuse the exact same formula, nothing changes and things get boring.

I can see how that would be a problem. After all, the reason modern anime are shit has a lot to do with how formulaic they have become. Half of them are cute girls doing cute things and nothing ever happens. Seen one, seen them all.

On the other hand, there have to be some sort of standards for what counts as good. For example, character development and world building are always a plus, asspulls and retcons are always a minus. Otherwise there would be no sense of quality. I mean, why did nobody like Misty Chronexia’s anime? Just because the colors were not pretty? Nope, because nothing about it was done right. As much as the creator tried to excuse it as an introduction episode, where you only establish characters and do not flesh them out already, he followed none of the established rules of how to do a proper introduction, resulting to nobody liking it. And yes, the animation was atrocious. Even that has its gold standards.

In a lazy attempt to provide fair judgment, the winners of awards are based on majority vote. Instead of having a few narrow minded people telling you which shows are the best, based on their narrow-minded criteria, everyone is free to vote for whatever he considers to be the best and at the end, the majority wins. I mean, if more people are in favor of something, it can only mean it’s the best amongst all available titles, right?

Wrong. As the recent Crunchyroll anime awards have proven, the majority vote is a joke. All they ended up having is a popularity contest, where the shows most people watched ended up winning in all categories, simply because more people watched those titles, than the titles which were clearly superior in their category. Popularity vote does not dictate what counts as good.

At the same time, it is hypocritical to point out these awards are shit, when your standards are shit as well. Many big YTbers made videos, expressing their discontent, when their own taste is questionable.
Gigguk: Kimi No Na Wa is the best anime because feelz
Animeman: I have standards; now watch me do cringe weeaboo shit
Chibi: I don’t like fan service yet I bought a ton of naked anime chicks

In a way, it is not that different from all the butthurt comments I constantly get about my reviews. If I didn’t like it, why did I make a review about it? It’s such an amazing show after all, because it made them cry. Since they enjoyed it so much, can only mean anyone who thinks differently is wrong.

This is why you set gold standards with enjoyment not being one of them. They exist and experience can make them more obvious. My videos are here for that purpose; I help you understand why stuff like time resets and tonal whiplash are so bad, regardless of execution.

Refusing to take them into consideration does not differ from everyone out there who calls them buzzwords and refuses to look deeper into the reasons of why they are labeled as such. They are the narrow minded ones. Not me. I have my gold standards, I follow them all the time. I wrote a book where I uphold them. You should read it.