Which of the following components are the most important in an anime?
>Story
>Characters
>Sound and music
>Animation
>Realism
A recent survey of Japanese college students yielded the following results:
>Story (49.0%)
>Characters （25.8%）
>Sound and music （5.7%）
>Realism （4.6%）
>Animation （4.1%）
How about all of them?
Sorry, you can't have it all.
All of them except realism. Don't understand why that's in there.
>Animation （4.1%）
I hate normalfags
I define realism as realistical behavior of characters as well, not just the setting, so realism is the most important one after story and characters. It can be unrealistic if characters are very good but all good characters, even crazy cartoony ones have usually something you can relate with as well.
I think a good series needs all five of those though. Music is important for the atmosphere, and I always notice how it improves my enjoyment of a series if the BGM isn't just some boring instrumental shit, and animation gives life to drawn characters so I don't really know.
One of those doesn't belong there.
Also who gives a shit about some random poll anyway.
Yeah, it's disappointing that people would rank animation so low.
>>Story (49.0%)
>>Characters （25.8%）
Disgusting plotfags
Why do series still consist of those same few -dere types when people are appreciating good characters? Most series have the same character type three times and the only differences are hair style and color and some single trait or hobby the others don't have. Who creates that?
So where is the remaining 10%?
>not setting
That would have been the most interesting one. To hear what kind of settings they prefer.
Probably gave other answers?
I agree that animation can be very unimportant, but it can also be a great dealbreaker. I'm fine with watching powerpoints, while if something is pure CGI, it'll take a lot for me to watch it. As long as the animation is hand drawn, it's pretty unimportant as long as the other parts are good, but CGI is always terrible and a dealbreaker.
Artstyle is another part of animation, I assume, that can have an effect. Some artstyles are offputting, making me less likely to watch it.
Character designs can also be important. Some are better than average, but it's rare that they actually are so bad it can make the anime much worse. Love Live is an example of an anime with terrible character design (and characters, and animation during certain scenes, for that matter), the same with the Keyani.
Normal people don't buy anime. The only people willing to spend money are otaku who are afraid of characters behaving outside the typical cliches. So the creators have to pander to them.
Could also mean that Japanese people think about other things when they hear character than westerners. Perhaps they interpret "character" as "character design". So the different hair styles is what's important to them, not the personalities or writing.
What makes animation important to me isn't even that I need sakuga but that characters move and express themselves more often, especially when they aren't talking. Most anime feel fucking stiff and the characters are just standing around like puppets. Even when they have some facial expressions it's mostly just the eye brows that change. Animating more gestures and expressions really helps making characters more likeable or relatable.
A lot of it probably boils down to personal preference. Mary-sue main characters can ruin an anime for me, so I'd put characters at the top.
If story is so important compared to animation maybe they should stick to reading novels.
This is bait.
I, too, look for realism when I watch a cartoon.
This is bait bait.
I think a good soundtrack helps the anime to stay relevant years later and can make many scenes more memorable.
My vote is probably story, although with the amount of good SoL out there, characters might be the best choice.
Sansha Sanyou was animated surprisingly well.
Characters. If you have good characters, an anime can be redeemable even with a shitty plot. But a story focused anime with bland, walking cliches are almost always shit.
It's fair to say that roughly 45% of those students are full of shit. Probably 5% genuinely care about story above all else, much like the ~5% choosing animation and realism. The rest are ignoring the fact that they won't even pay attention to a story if the characters don't immediately appeal to them.
I watch for the story because specular stuff is a lot of fun. I barely know any anime with characters that appeal to me enough to make them save the series alone anyway.