Mongoose here being a good example. I find his comment scary, honestly. But I won't hold it against him, as long as he won't try to force feed me his views.
Scary?
I have to say, that's the first time I've had my preferences in entertainment described as such. And I'm not even that "hardcore" of a fan; I've gotten to know a great group of people on the [adult swim] forums over the past few years, and the majority of them have probably seen several dozen times the amount of anime I have, at least. I honestly wasn't trying to come across as some sort of rabid fanboi; I just saw in Ryan's post the same close-mindedness that I had myself experienced for so long, and I wanted him to at least consider the possibility that his opinion was based on generalities that aren't exactly accurate.
What I can say about the reason I like anime as a whole is that, until the point when I first saw a few episodes of a fairly serious and intelligent show (which was primarily Wolf's Rain, if anyone knows the series), I'd never imagined that animation could be used in that manner. I've been a fan of animated entertainment my whole life, but up until that point in my life, I'd only seen it as really being applicable to kiddie cartoons or Simpsons-esque adult sitcoms. The fact that there were a lot of serious, intelligent, and flat-out beautiful animated works out there targeted at adult audiences completely blew my mind, and I've been trying to immerse myself in the medium more fully ever since. I think a quote from the New York Times about the American premiere of director Satoshi Kon's latest movie "Paprika" sums my feelings up best; it goes something like, "This film proves that Japanese animators are reaching for the stars, while their American counterparts are stuck playing in the kiddie sandbox." It's that very sentiment that explains why I became a fan in the first place. Sure, there are a lot of ****ty anime series out there, just like every other form of entertainment, but the potential of the genre as a whole is so much greater than anything that the rest of the world has been able to churn out.
At any rate, for anyone even remotely considering giving an anime series a shot, try finding yourselves a copy of the English dub of Cowboy Bebop, and watch at least through the fifth episode or so. I think that series, more than any other I've ever seen, exemplifies what the genre is capable of, and how truly artistic it can be.
