by the fans for the fans

Incisivis wrote:

I have an odd confession to make: my interest in anime was pretty much built on monster-collecting shows. Sailor Moon was the first time I was aware of "anime", something that came from Japan, but it was only with the monster shows that I followed something regularly, and then moved on to "mature" anime.

I liked Pokemon for a while, the first three seasons of Digimon, the first Medabots series, Monster Rancher, Mon Colle Knights when I could catch it, and Yu-Gi-Oh!

I've fallen out of that craze (which I got into when I was WAY too old for it to begin with) and though I know that newer shoes in that vein are just as bad as the ones I liked, I can't enjoy them in the same in-touch-with-my-inner-child way. Shows like Battle B-Damon, Bakugan, Beyblade, newer Pokemon shows, and whatEVER...I just can't get into them, though the earlier series will have a special place in my heart.

Now, Dinosaur King...I'm a dinosaur/pterosaur geek, but I can't sit through a whole series just for some poorly-rendered fight scenes. The series gets minor cool points for using some more esoteric species (one episode I caught used a Therizinosaurus)...but loses 'em with this weird idea of keeping the dinosaurs in cel-animated "super-deformed" versions until they are needed and then bulk out into photorealistic CGI adult versions.

(Also, the heroine has a Parasaurolophus which is an absolutely boring choice. If they wanted something "girly" they could have gone with a pterosaur of some sort, which would have been much cooler.)

...Did anybody read this whole post?

I diiiiiiiiid

Incisivis wrote:

I've fallen out of that craze (which I got into when I was WAY too old for it to begin with) and though I know that newer shoes in that vein are just as bad as the ones I liked, I can't enjoy them in the same in-touch-with-my-inner-child way. Shows like Battle B-Damon, Bakugan, Beyblade, newer Pokemon shows, and whatEVER...I just can't get into them, though the earlier series will have a special place in my heart.

I only really watched Pokemon and Digimon for a couple of seasons. I watched some episodes of YuGiOh, but I was a busy person when it was airing on TV so I didn't get to watch it often. I couldn't get into the other collector series. Some of them are just generic only some have some originality.

Since Pokemon was the first of that type of series that I really watched, I enjoyed it. After a couple of seasons it lost its appeal. Ash starts learning the same lessons he did in the first season. Ash never forms a relationship with Misty. Team Rocket is still after Pikachu. It's repetitive.

The first season of Digimon I didn't really like, but when the second seasons featured the characters grown up I had a an appreciation for both series.

Nowadays I almost never watched dubbed anime and most of these type of series are usually only dubbed. There's also a ton of other series out there to watch, so these types of anime series wouldn't be on the top of my list. If there was one that was new, more original, or a complete parody of the other ones, I could probably enjoy it. I think we're in the same boat. You watched a few of them and they were new and exciting to you, but after you watch more it just doesn't have that new flavor anymore. It's not just these types of series, but it can happen to any. Harem series can be the same way or certain action ones (like DBZ, Naruto, Bleach, etc.) or magical girl shows. You see a few and unless a series brings something new to the table it all feels the same.

I don't know....I love mecha anime and am always up for finding more. It seems like my interest in "mon" anime expanded and fizzled very quickly in comparison to my interest in any other genre or sub-genre.

Likely it's simply that I've matured in a tiny enough way to no longer be receptive to newer "mon" series, but to have a fondness for the earlier ones.

But there are a few specific reasons that I fell out of love with the franchised "mon" series.

For Pokemon, well, I only ever enjoyed it as a comedy/"cute" series, the same way that others with more sophisticated tastes enjoyed Warner Bros. slapstick. Because of that, it took a longer time for the redundancy of that particular show to really seep in and outweigh my interest in it.

Digimon, it was season 3 that was so enjoyable that it probably "spoiled" me for any other series coming afterwards. I watched the fourth series sporadically, and couldn't get back into it when a fifth suddenly emerged.

Usually mecha series bring new things to the table. They have more interesting characters and plots. With the exception of Digimon, most of the 'mon' series have similar characters, similar plots, and never really achieve much. There's always a bigger and badder enemy or things to achieve. To me it's important to see characters grow and change, other than with just power.

Well, they are made for the kiddies, after all.

Yeah, it's no great mystery why I lost interest in it all, though the nostalgia is still strong.