Well now this is interesting... Someone imposes an image of something they like onto an image, thus seeing him as a manga-esque character, and then there's a great big hoohah that springs up about how it's not right to poo-poo a particular style because you don't like it.
Not only that, but there's also this fantastic argument that you in fact can't dislike an art style because, obviously, you just haven't seen the few fragments of it that appeal to you.
Yes, Askot was a bit politically incorrect in his manner of stating things, making it appear as though the style in question was in itself ugly, rather than him just viewing it as ugly (mind, this argument can be applied to ANY of the applications of the term). That can cause a few more ruffled feathers than making the statement a clearer "I think it's ugly".
However, I have a hard time feeling sympathy for the other party in this matter due to the, quite frankly, horrible arguments that are being used to try and change his views. Some of the comments brought up here are reminiscent of YouTube comments.
Although I personally do not care for the art style most commonly used in mangas and animes, I have no issue with the people who do enjoy it, so long as they don't try to rub my face in it. But what I'm seeing here are arguments along the line of "you can't say you dislike it, because you haven't seen enough of it to find the parts that will make you like it". This is incredibly fault logic, and I've heard it far too many times in far too many places. As emotional beings, we have a disturbing tendency to gravitate towards this kind of rash statement.
If you make some kind of comment along the lines of "you can't dislike an art style", you must also agree that "you can't like an art style". Attempting to enforce one without the other is ridiculous, as the argument that you should only consider the individual pieces within the art style can be applied to both sides of the like/dislike argument. Mind you, I'm perfectly fine with the view that specification is preferable to generalization. I just like to make it clear that it's perfectly acceptable to dislike the individual items, just as much as it is to like them.
However, I don't really think that fully applies here. Yes, certain definitions of the terms Manga and Anime simply refer to general mediums, such as animated cartoons or graphic novels. However, the commonly accepted and widely used definitions of these terms refer to specific art styles, with characteristics shared between the individual pieces. Just as various musical genres and painting styles are grouped together based on shared characteristics.
If you happen to dislike those shared characteristics, I daresay it's quite possible to dislike that genre. For instance, I dislike death metal and abstract art. No, I have not listened to every death metal song nor viewed every abstract painting, and it's quite possible that there are one or two individual instances of each that I might enjoy, but I still dislike those styles due to the fact that I dislike the shared characteristics that make them up.
All in all, what I see here is just a disagreement between people who do like manga and people who don't like manga, communicated with a number of 'round-the-bush attacks and misunderstandings. There's not much good that can come from this.
...and the first thing that popped into my head when I saw that last photo of him was "punk rocker".
EDIT: Goddamn 9 freakin' replies while I was posting... Sod it, I almost lost this post already, I'm not going to re-tweak the whole thing. Doesn't look like the current issue has advanced much anyways.
Although I did forget to include that, yes, this really has no business being in a photo sharing thread.
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Topic: Bay12 Photo Share! Let's share photos and cool things. (Read 1593283 times)