Eliezer Yudkowsky has once again mentioned anime at Overcoming Bias, and even mentions how the differences between Japanese fiction and western fiction may reflect on culture and “real life”:

The way it works in Western superhero comics is that the good guy gets bitten by a radioactive spider; and then he needs something to do with his powers, to keep him busy, so he decides to fight crime. And then Western superheroes are always whining about how much time their superhero duties take up, and how they’d rather be ordinary mortals so they could go fishing or something.

Similarly, in Western real life, unhappy people are told that they need a “purpose in life”, so they should pick out an altruistic cause that goes well with their personality, like picking out nice living-room drapes, and this will brighten up their days by adding some color, like nice living-room drapes. You should be careful not to pick something too expensive, though.

I have to admit, this puts some of the advice I’ve gotten over the years in perspective.

I heard the song “Crazy” at work recently, and it made me think about anime a bit, and what I like about it. The song is very pessimistic, and angsty. Well, anyone can angst, but what are you going to do about it? And are you really sure everything’s all bad, or are you just suffering from bias?

In the best anime, there’s always some sort of challenge that the characters are facing. There are exceptions, but generally anime without a challenge isn’t good anime. The challenge can be as simple as “make it through the day as an apartment manager with several tenants who are perfectly capable of killing me while I study for my entrance exams” — but it is almost always present. Often, the challenge is even more over the top.

Too many movies nowadays are just lowest-common-denominator body horror, or at least it seems that way to me. Take the Saw series, or the latest Alien vs Predator. Where is the message? Where is the soul?

There are exceptions, of course. But overall, with competition like this, that consistently goes for high-budget effects and cheap gross-out plot lines, how can I not like anime?