A couple of weeks ago, I watched this super cool show called The Sacred Blacksmith. Then I looked at its MAL score and at the critic reviews and it appears that the general consensus is that it’s a sack of shit.
In my humble opinion, you’re all doing it wrong. So this post is going to teach you how to watch anime correctly for 45.683934% more effectiveness (numbers are exact, by the way). While my example for this post is The Sacred Blacksmith, you won’t need to have actually watched the anime to understand this. Just mentally swap it out for that show you really like, I dunno, Boku no Pico or something.
Anyway, onto my demonstrative example:
We begin watching anime by loading up the OP. Don’t just skip them, you bastard! Your time isn’t important!
Now sing along, children.
TIE YO SETS OONA HEEEETO WOE MARRRRRRR MORY NUKE IT AYEEEEEEEEEEEE
oh crap I don’t know how you speak this nihongo thing uhhhhhh just make it up guys!
SUSHI MITSUBISHI HONDA TOYOTAAAAAAAAAAA! KAWAII ELVIS PRESLEY TOKYO NARUTO POKEMON!!!
JUSTICE OF LIIIIIIIIIIIIIGHT!
*sniff* that was beautiful, guys
Now everyone knows that you don’t watch anime for the plot. You watch anime for the cute animated girls with big, googly eyes. Like so:
This is your conditioned response every time you see a cute girl. Perfect it, my brethren. It might be possible that you will sound like two whales humping to people who don’t know you. In that case, your mission is a success. You’re not the weird one – they are. They’re such perverts, thinking such awful things like YOU’RE A PERVERT.
Oh wait you ARE a pervert! HAHAHAHA YOU’RE A PERVERT!
I love that joke :’3 In my opinion, it is the height of comedy. This is why anime is so awesome.
(On a side note, holy crap that girl on the left there looks like Asuna from Sword Art Online.)
But anyway, back to the point. Big boob jokes. They’re great. Also flat boob jokes. Like “HAHAHA SHE HAS NO BOOBS THEREFORE SHE IS JEALOUS OF THE GIRL WITH BIG BOOBS!!”
However, the flat-chested girl in this show speaks admiringly of the big-breasted girl. That’s cute isn’t it? D’awwww breasts~
Actually I think the so-called “big boob” girl in this anime has tiny melons. I prefer them bigger. It’s okay to constructively critique anime, guys. Sometimes, it isn’t perfect, no matter how much we want it to be.
Now, the next thing you do when you’re watching anime correctly is to ship. You can ship a 2D character with yourself or you can ship two characters in the show together. Either way is fine.
These two characters argue with each other therefore they’re madly in love <3
And finally, to watch anime correctly, you have to follow the story. You have to get into the emotions of the characters. It doesn’t matter what they’re doing, whether it’s saving the world, killing monsters, protecting each other or just going down for a day trip to the clothing store – they’re all real people to me, even though they don’t actually exist. It’s just *sniff* I get so invested in their lives. I just want to hug that cute little girl with blonde hair. The way she does so much for the gruff MC dude despite him being too awkward to thank her even though he really loves her like a little sister. And then, when he actually does something for her, shows her how genuine his brotherly affection for her is… I’m just… I’m just… CAN’T YOU UNDERSTAND MY FEELS HERE???
I LOVE LISA.
I LOVE LITTLE GIRLS.
I AM LOLICON FROG MAN.
Please don’t call the police on me :(
–
And that concludes this lesson of how to watch anime correctly. I may do this for more series, so feel free to suggest a couple for me to cover. However, I must like the anime, no exceptions. The fangasm is not something that can be faked.
Frogkun.com 
Your post is exactly how I feel like I explain anime/manga all the time. ALL. THE. TIME. (minus the pervert part. We all know you’re the real perv and I am a very pure, innocent 18 year old!) In the end, I’m still unsure of whether to watch this anime or not. Maybe I’ll look at the first episode :3
Also, let me pull out my list of anime pairings for you to cover *whips out never ending scroll of ships* LOL, but more seriously, I’d be interested in Ledo/Amy (If you ever decide to finish Gargantia) or Staz/Fuyumi when the anime is more developed.
I thought Sacred Blacksmith was legit fun. I’m always a sucker for anime with an RPG-esque feel to them. It’s my favourite kind of fantasy.
As for your suggestions, this is awkward, but… I don’t care about Ledo/Amy OR Staz/Fuyumi. But that does remind me I have not done a shipping post lately. Hmmm, I’ll definitely come up with something!
My fangasms are reserved for the inevitabl(y awkward) Chihaya x Taichi x Arata threesome. But that doesn’t mean I can’t appreciate me some good old fashioned HNNNNGasms when the situation calls for it. I mean I practically die every time the cool emotionless girl opens her heart to the generic self-insert MC. Especially when he’s sufficiently generic for the self-insertion to make wish-fulfillment a non-challenge. The best is when he doesn’t choose any girl in the end, because I can imagine myself ending up with BESTO GARRU.
For some reason I feel like you just described your own reaction to Infinite Stratos lolol
Brilliant post!! Not so brilliant anime, in my most humble of opinions :D
Why thank you
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i do not ship characters because I feel that it distract me from enjoying anime in a more holistic manner. Anyway, it is a good idea for an average anime viewer, though.
I don’t always ship, but I think it’s good fun when I do. But I don’t think it stops me from enjoying the themes in a holistic manner, myself. It really just depends on the angle of interpretation. When you ship, you get right in and personal. When you zoom out, you understand why it all fits it in the big picture. I like to think I can have my cake and eat it too.
I was told the manga was chok-full of fanservice. Might take a look sometime, if ever. The TV show really was a sack of shit, though.
You wound me.
[…] Froggykun weighs in on judging anime on its own terms, puts forth a different perspective to judge anime by, and gives an example of how to watch anime correctly. […]
It’s been a while since I watched Seiken no Blacksmith but when I reviewed it, I expressed a simple opinion, the show was decent. The characters were tolerable, the action scenes were fine and the main theme, though it kinda escaped me back then, didn’t really come off as lame. My point is, those who disliked this show or labeled it as garbage were exaggerating. Basically, Blacksmith was not a bad show, although it wasn’t anything amazing either, especially with it being a manga lure show.
This was a very fun post to read! Between the post itself and the comments, I’m having a hard time telling just how tongue-in-cheek you’re being, if at all. I used to never have those “hnnggggggghhhhh”-type moments. I could really enjoy what I watched, but I could never feel like I was being honest with myself if I had said I truly loved any of it. That’s changed over the past several months, though I’m not sure why. It could be because I’ve started to pay more attention to what I watch, instead of completely turning my mind off when I watch something (now, it’s only turned mostly off :P), which may have led to me becoming more invested in what I watch.
Reading your post brought back the thought I’ve had before that it’s important to remember to enjoy what you do. More specifically about the topic of watching anime, I’ve noticed that many people who review anime can seem rather cranky and harsh in their opinions. I wonder if it’s just their personality, or if it’s that they got so invested in the act and process of critiquing, that they sort of “forgot” to enjoy the thing they were critiquing, leading them to become cranky over time. Did critiquing become criticizing? Did trying to watch and critique so very many shows leave the person unfulfilled and cantankerous, dissatisfied that the majority of what they’ve seen was not to their liking or didn’t pass objective muster?
If you don’t enjoy most of what you watch, why do it? Why not use that time to watch shows you would be more likely to enjoy (or do something else altogether)? In the case of professional reviewers, who do it for a living, I can understand that it’s their job to watch as much as they can. But, to my knowledge, that’s not the case for the vast majority of people who review anime.
To be fair, I’ve also seen and read reviews and other kinds of commentary by many reviewers who can be very critical, yet still show genuine enjoyment of at least many of the things they watch. I wonder how much of it is due to personality and how much is due to the person “forgetting” to enjoy what they watch because they’re so wrapped up in critiquing. How much of it is due to the reason a person has for watching something more thoughtfully in the first place?
Thanks for the comment! Glad you enjoyed the post. As for how serious I was being when I wrote, the answer is that I was completely serious and also not serious at all ;)
My philosophy towards writing about anime (or about anything at all, really) is to enjoy it first and foremost. I think it’s important not to lose touch with the raw feelings of immersion you can get from watching something you enjoy, even if it’s very silly and indulgent.
I do understand where you’re coming from, that many anime reviewers appear to have lost touch with their fan sides. It’s easy to show your superiority over something by criticising it negatively. But would you call that thinking critically or just pretending to be critical when you’re actually not considering the other angles at all? I fear that cynical internet wiseasses give criticism a bad name. The purpose of criticism is actually to enlighten us and help us enjoy things from more than one angle.
Bobduh has written a really great article about this, so I recommend you check it out: http://wrongeverytime.com/2014/01/27/why-critics-are-always-wrong/