Ambiguity
Jason: Your thoughts on movies remind me very much of my feelings towards Anime.
Basically, I love Anime, but more specifically I love the Anime series or movies that leave things ambiguous more than ones that spoon-feed me everything. Magic Knight Rayearth was a fun romp through a magical world, but in the end I never had to think about anything at all. I was spoon-fed mindless adventure after adventure. RahXephon was very different from that, leaving large holes for me as the viewer to fill and speculate on. While some of the holes were filled by the story later, it was fun to speculate on them while I could, and see how I did. It is still fun to speculate about the remaining holes which were left behind.
What it boils down to is that the anime that do the best in my sight are the ones that make room for the viewer to think, to speculate, to be given some revelations but withheld others, to wonder how I fit in, and left ambiguity inside.
It is important to note that too much ambiguity, or an inability to relate to important characters, can be just as bad as spoon-feeding. Neon Genesis Evangelion was such an Anime for me. I couldn't relate to the ultra-depressed main character, Shinji, and the ending (with or without the End of Evangelion movie) was so ambiguous it was hardly worth watching twenty six episodes of a series to build up to. The story ended up being so full of holes it couldn't keep shape and fell apart for me. It went from being something I could speculate about to being something I had to practically write myself.
In any case, let's hope more movies that allow one to think come out. I'm still hoping to see Howl's Moving (or was it Magic?) Castle before it drops out of theatres.
Basically, I love Anime, but more specifically I love the Anime series or movies that leave things ambiguous more than ones that spoon-feed me everything. Magic Knight Rayearth was a fun romp through a magical world, but in the end I never had to think about anything at all. I was spoon-fed mindless adventure after adventure. RahXephon was very different from that, leaving large holes for me as the viewer to fill and speculate on. While some of the holes were filled by the story later, it was fun to speculate on them while I could, and see how I did. It is still fun to speculate about the remaining holes which were left behind.
What it boils down to is that the anime that do the best in my sight are the ones that make room for the viewer to think, to speculate, to be given some revelations but withheld others, to wonder how I fit in, and left ambiguity inside.
It is important to note that too much ambiguity, or an inability to relate to important characters, can be just as bad as spoon-feeding. Neon Genesis Evangelion was such an Anime for me. I couldn't relate to the ultra-depressed main character, Shinji, and the ending (with or without the End of Evangelion movie) was so ambiguous it was hardly worth watching twenty six episodes of a series to build up to. The story ended up being so full of holes it couldn't keep shape and fell apart for me. It went from being something I could speculate about to being something I had to practically write myself.
In any case, let's hope more movies that allow one to think come out. I'm still hoping to see Howl's Moving (or was it Magic?) Castle before it drops out of theatres.
posted by Matoushin at 7/04/2005 09:55:00 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home