The paradox of an anime’s quality versus its popularity

In a recent post on Anime September, Alterego9 brings up a great point about a paradox that exists between our individual view of an anime and how popular it is among the general populace. When an anime that we really love is also very well received among overall anime fandom (which can be seen through merchandise sales and social networking discussion), we rejoice in this and use it to further bolster our belief that it truly is a good anime. However, when an anime we really love isn’t popular among overall anime fandom, we say the reason for that is because the overall fandom has bad taste and so popularity is irrelevant when determining quality. It’s a very interesting paradox and one that I felt like examining further…

We all have our own ideas of what anime we feel are truly bad and truly good. Since we tend to hang around with like-minded people, most of us aren’t in a situation where we have to constantly argue our point against someone who passionately disagrees. So we develop our own individual “truth” about the quality of certain anime. Alterego9 points this out in the second paragraph of his post, noting that we have this desire for objective quality, or as close to it as we can get. Whether we share these opinions with ourselves alone, with a small-ish group of like-minded fans, or with a large part of overall anime fandom, as fans we have strong feelings for anime we think are good as well as anime we think are bad. The paradox comes into play when we start talking about popularity in terms of the anime’s quality. Alterego9 touched on a couple of these but I felt like adding a bit more:

– When an anime we consider “good quality” also has “good popularity,” we think “rightfully so, good sales show that this is really a good anime.”
– When an anime we consider “good quality” has “bad popularity,” we think “the taste of the masses doesn’t matter, they only want fan-pandering and don’t recognize quality.”
– When an anime we consider “bad quality” also has “bad popularity,” we think “rightfully so, such a bad anime could never sell well.”
– When an anime we consider “bad quality” has “good popularity,” we think “the taste of the masses doesn’t matter, they only want fan-pandering and don’t care for quality.”

You can see the paradoxes that exist when we use popularity as a way of measuring an anime’s quality. We like to use it when it helps back up our opinion about the anime. When it doesn’t however, we either ignore it or say that the majority of fans have bad taste and so the anime’s popularity is irrelevant to the quality. But to have it both ways is contradictory; either we feel that popularity is a good means of assessing an anime’s quality all the time or it never is (and if sometimes we feel it is and sometimes we feel it isn’t, we should be able to explain why).

Alterego9 came up with a couple of solutions for the paradox. One is the nihilistic approach that there is absolutely no objective quality, that any anime that’s extremely popular or extremely unpopular among the masses is purely at random. Things like chance and luck are at play for an anime’s popularity, but it’s by no means connected to its quality. The other solution takes the opposing side – that popularity really does indicate quality, that an anime that sells well and is a constant topic of discussion has that appeal because it really is doing something right in terms of quality. Merchandise sales and being an iconic title in the fandom are what measure quality in this case, and for the population of fans that feel differently, “it’s just their opinion.”

As Alterego9 mentions, Bakuman, an anime/manga about two boys who want to become the best manga-making team, actually advocates the latter solution. In the series, the way to making the best manga is to make a manga that is, well, noticeably popular. They’re not encouraged to make the best quality manga in terms of creativity and artistic expression…actually, when they do try series that stray too far from the norm, their series end up being flops. Instead, they’re encouraged to make a series that has traits the readers find appealing. Their editors really try to work with the boys’ ideas to make them more mainstream so that they can do well in terms of ratings. In the world of Bakuman, a “quality” manga really is a “popular” one.

I’ll wrap things up by saying that I tend to agree with this latter solution to the paradox that popularity really does have some relevance to quality. In terms of anime at least, I tend to really like the titles that are also the most popular, so I can’t help but think that anime fans as a whole have good taste. Genre is something to consider as well; even if a certain shonen anime is highly popular, if you don’t enjoy the shonen genre you may never understand its quality, which is perfectly normal. But even if I personally don’t like a certain anime that’s very popular, I can usually see its good quality when I do take the time to give it a watch. As someone interested in anime fandom as a whole rather than just individual series, I feel it’s important to be open-minded and try to recognize the merits of all the popular, tend-setting anime, even if you’re not into them yourself.

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  1. >I’ll wrap things up by saying that I tend to agree with this latter solution to the paradox that popularity really does have some relevance to quality.

    I’ve generally found that the type of fan who likes a show tells me more than merely how many fans like it, which is an approach I stole from a book CS Lewis wrote on evaluating literature. Basically, it’s not very relevant if an anime is popular only among people who only view it as disposable entertainment, and just grind through a tonne of works without giving them much thought. However, if an anime is liked by people who really treasure the medium, who think about what they watch, then even if only a few such people like the work in question we can probably consider it a quality show.

    You and Alterego9 are right, of course, about how the more partisan fans can get hypocritical about applying the “popularity = quality” argument. There’s often some truth to it (I can’t think of any really popular shows that I’d consider outright bad), but logically it’s a non sequiter, so I try to avoid it when considering whether something’s objectively good or not.

    • Yumeka says:

      Great point that we should also consider what kind of people a show is popular with as opposed to just how many people it’s popular with. This is true of many things beyond anime too, like TV shows, movies, books, and what not. I actually go by the rule that if something’s popular with a good variety of people – kids and adults, people I consider stupid and people I consider smart, the masses as well as people in my own little niche, etc- then it probably has a special universal appeal that I’d probably like. Franchises such as Pokemon and Harry Potter are good examples.

  2. Joojoobees says:

    We crave some sort of objective criteria for Quality, yet we feel Quality almost completely subjectively. Meanwhile Popularity is easily measured, and is, therefore, quite objective. The temptation, then, is to use the objective measure Popularity as a stand-in for Quality.

    If we had a set of objective measures for Quality, we wouldn’t have to validate our subjective impressions with the easily measured Popularity. I think the paradoxes would fall away, because we would be able to clearly distinguish between Popularity and Quality.

    • Yumeka says:

      That’s a good way of looking at it too, that because we crave objectivity for something subjective like quality, we tend to want to use popularity (something that can more or less be measured objective through sales figures and ratings) as a stand-in for quality. The paradox would indeed fall away if there was an objective way of measuring quality, but alas there isn’t.

  3. Frootytooty says:

    Great topic! It really does make you think about the things you do when you watch a series you think is awesome but nobody else seems to like, haha. Anyway, I’ll throw in my 2 cents:

    I think that the ‘quality’ and ‘popularity’ of an anime are all fairly subjective things. Of course, qualities like art, direction and voice acting can be objectively assessed, but everything else is up to the viewer to interpret. Therefore a popular show is, theoretically, better than an unpopular show, because it’s clearly doing something that the majority of viewers like (which may be related to its quality). In terms of statistics a popular show, when shown to a random sample of people who have never heard about it before, should always have more people like it than an unpopular show. Fans may not be sure what exactly they like about it, but they just do. Similarly they may not really know what they dislike about an unpopular show, but they just do. So, when you see a ‘good quality’ anime that’s unpopular, it’s not so much that everyone else are mindless viewers who only want fan pandering, it’s just you’re in the minority whose interest the show happens to spark. There’s no one anime that everybody loves, nor is there one that everybody hates.

    Of course, there are exceptions where sometimes the anime is very old or made by a small company and doesn’t get much exposure compared to a more recent anime made by a bigger company, so not as many people know about it. In that case it’s very difficult for that anime to become ‘popular’ because the number of people watching it is probably small anyway, even if almost everyone who watched it thought it was good quality.

    • Yumeka says:

      Now that you mention it, animation quality is something that could be measured objectively – it’s pretty obvious that works by Kyoto Animation have better animation quality than works by Studio Deen…but if one wanted to really get technical, we could compare frames per second each studio tends to have for their series. But for the most part, animation quality can basically be objective. Even people who dislike a well animated show can’t usually argue that it wasn’t well animated.

      You’re right that just because a show is unpopular doesn’t necessarily mean the masses are stupid for not liking it. Often times it just doesn’t get as much exposure as a very popular title or simply doesn’t have the objective of appealing to the masses in the first place. And of course, as the anime gets old people tend to forget it unless it was one of the few that had a long lasting impact that people continue to talk about decades later – something like Evangelion for instance. Perhaps long-lasting popularity is a good measure of quality?

  4. Author says:

    I don’t agree with the premise, as expressed by the lead paragraf. In my case it’s manifestly false, as evidenced by the list of “disliked greats” that I compiled one day in 2009. It included such items as Princess Tutu, Mushishi, Dennou Coil, and Hidamari Sketch.

    • Yumeka says:

      I don’t believe any of those series you mentioned are all that popular – Mushishi is pretty popular among English-speaking fans, but not to the extent of something like Naruto, Code Geass, or Death Note. The premise of the post is that people tend to use popularity to back up their claim that an anime they like is great, but then dismiss it as a measure of quality for popular anime they don’t like. Basically they use the measure only when it’s convenient for them. I’m not saying that you’re doing anything hypocritical by not liking moderately popular anime most people consider great, like the ones you listed.

  5. Kal says:

    Hum, that is an interesting one. I do agree that generally, a “quality” anime (high production values, etc) tends to be popular, or has a higher chance of being popular, even if the story is not incredibly great. At least it has a better chance than a regular anime of regular/low quality production values becoming popular.

    The paradox is interesting, but perfectly normal. We do not like to lose, and we do not like to be wrong. So it’s easy to take the stance “everyone must have really bad taste if they like that anime”. So I can’t really fault anyone for that line of thought, it’s perfectly normal.

    I also believe that there is a certain element of “luck”, or at least a factor that cannot be reproduced that can make something popular. There is no written formula that says that doing X or Y will make something popular. If there was such a formula, then everything would be popular by following the same layout. So there is a random element, and that’s where the risk in the business comes in. Do they want to invest millions to have cutting edge animation? or will it be just as popular with animation that costs half as much? will the investment in famous voice actors pay off in the end?

    So yeah, there is a big risk, and no exact formula. It’s a problem, and a blessing at the same time. If there was a formula, we would see lots of popular anime with really big production values, high quality, etc, but all shaped to a certain mold. Since we do not have that, we have a mix of anime with different production values, but also that vary and try out different things. Some work, some do not.

    So in the end, I prefer to live with the paradox, and have a nice variety of things. Some popular and good for me, others popular, but not to my liking. Either way, I think we all win by not having a “popular” formula.

    • Yumeka says:

      I don’t think “quality” anime necessarily means high production values…most people take it to mean quality in the most important attributes, which are story, characters, and perhaps setting. Quality in things like animation, music, and other production values can certainly be a factor though.

      You’re right that there is some element of luck in determining what anime will be popular. If a formula did exist, I don’t even think there would be innovative titles anymore since people would already know what to expect from the formula. All of the really popular anime have a special something that their creators either threw in with confidence or uncertainty that it would be popular. You never know what series will have that special something that appeals to so many fans – much of the fun in the fandom comes from finding such anime ^_^

  6. Alterego 9 says:

    Thanks for understanding my post, and writing more clearly about it than me. I know I have a lot to improve about my own writing.

    One more thing that came to my mind at reading your four-way breakdown, is a common phrase, that nicely demonstares the paradox in itself. A frequent comment in threads about sales data, where there is one preferred show underachieving:

    “Too bad, it really deserved to sell well”.

    Not “It would have been great if it sold well”, or “I wish it would have sold well, so I would get a second season”, but always this specific word: “DESERVED”.

    The very same word that acknowledges that there is an expected connection between popularity and quality, also acknowledges that this connection isn’t working properly.

    • Yumeka says:

      Thanks, you write some good posts =) I may be referencing your post about weeaboos sometime in the future…

      That’s a good point about that phrase acknowledging the paradox. In such a situation, I say “[name of anime] is underrated” or “I wish [name of anime] got more love.” Even if I think an anime deserved more acclaim than it got, having been around the fandom for many years I can usually see why an anime didn’t become a hit even though I personally thought it was great (low production values, little exposure, not enough fan pandering, etc). So I wouldn’t say it “deserved to sell well” so much as “I wish more people knew how good it is.”

  7. Cytrus says:

    An important topic – this is especially bad in Japan where you can replace “popularity” with “sales” (think 2chan’s infamous sales threads), which makes the non sequitur even more obvious. A huge part of the “paradox” is the difference between correlation and causality, something which is probably going to wreak havoc on human reasoning forever.

    Other than Bakuman, Hayate no Gotoku has also recently taken this issue on, with different characters taking different stances on the topic. Now I must say I disagree with your evaluation of what Bakuman has to say on this. The one time the characters resort to fan pandering to increase their popularity, the result is disastrous and the editors object to that way of doing things, arguing that it will never give birth to true quality. Also the most important editor character has always told his protégés that their style is more suited to creating a cult hit that will be remembered for many years and guarantee them a steady readership, rather than a popular hit. It is the character’s own decision that they want to create a manga which sells well / ranks top in the questionnaires. As this is their personal goal, there is no implication that this is the “right” way to write or judge.

    Now, in terms of business, one could argue that the best-selling titles are indeed the most successful. It is because we choose to view anime in terms of entertainment or even art that we have to take on vague terms such as “quality”.

    • Yumeka says:

      You’re right, Bakuman doesn’t downright imply that pandering to the masses is the right way to go. I just felt that it leans more towards the idea that a great manga is one that appeals to the most readers, which is usually done by giving a title mainstream qualities. Even if Takagi and Mashiro make a unique series, they’re told to compromise it for the sake of readership value, and they celebrate whenever they get a good ranking as a result. It is their personal goal to do this, but as their endeavors are the main focus of the series, it gives us the impression that manga considered good, at least in the eyes of the characters, are the ones that are popular.

      I didn’t know Hayate tackles this issue too. I’ve only seen the anime so it must be in the manga.

  8. Mushyrulez says:

    The others have nailed my opinion pretty well – quality and popularity are quite independent of each other. A show can be popular and bad without contradiction. However, since there is a general trend with popularity and quality, I suppose this implies the existence of a true, ‘objective quality’, that exists outside of our perception. We cannot know for certain what this ‘objective quality’ is, because when we perceive it, we perceive it through the bias of our mind. I’d even argue that quality (subjective) is merely an individual’s perception of this impeccable ‘objective quality’, and popularity is a large group’s perception of this ‘objective quality’. Since everyone has different perceptions… the paradox is solved!

    P.S. RE: Bakuman [SPOILERS], during the current (final?) arc, the protagonists resolve on creating a manga that’s not popular, but that they believe is good. Although the ‘objective quality’ of this manga may be contestable, the protagonists strive to make it good in their subjective quality.

    P.P.S. Perhaps we should argue more in the ‘sphere. When everyone agrees on one perception (to create popularity), many other perceptions are locked out. Science (methodological pluralism?) suggests that only by fusing many different subjective qualities may we reach closer to that great objective quality.

    tl;dr: i don’t know

    Oh yes, as a concluding comment: discussion reveals the objective quality that popularity obscures.

    • Yumeka says:

      Good thoughts, I especially like the idea that subjective quality is the individual’s perception of objective quality, and popularity is a large group’s perception of objective quality. Since there is no singular objective quality, we can eliminate the paradox by agreeing that we as an individual have our own and the one that remains – how everyone else views it – is the other.

  9. Logopolis says:

    The problem much of this stems from is the notion of “quality” as some sort of linear scale, in which everything can have a mark out of ten, and things with higher marks are better than things with lower marks. But really, different shows will generally be trying to do completely different things, making them incomparable. If one guy is running the 100 metres, one guy is throwing the javelin and one guy is running the marathon, how do you tell who the best athlete is?

    We enjoy shows based partly on how good they are at what they’re trying to do, but also based on whether what they’re trying to do appeals to us. Which goes way beyond simple things like genre and style, it’s perfectly possible for one person to love a show and another to hate it simply because the writer thinks in a way which matches the thinking of the first person, but really rubs the second up the wrong way.

    The trouble is, telling whether we’re not getting on with a show just because it isn’t very good, or because it just has a view of the world incompatible with ours is difficult, if not impossible. (What does “the quality of a show” even mean?) One man’s plot hole is another man’s “it’s best not to explain small details like this, they’d only make it drag”. (Even if an explanation doesn’t make sense, it might seem to make sense for much of its audience, and maybe this is what the creators were going for.) I suppose calling it “quality” is just easier or more satisfying than saying “I like to think about all the details and get them to make sense” or “I’m not interested in the details, just take me for an emotional journey”.

    Popular stuff will generally be of high quality. Low quality stuff simply won’t succeed. It’s just doing popular things to a high level of quality, and to some people, popular media things can seem shallow, a waste of time, numbing the brain instead of developing it and making it work better. Which isn’t necessarily a groundless criticism, but it’s a criticism of how the audience for the show likes to spend its time, not how good the show itself is.

    It’s just, while popular stuff will generally be of high quality, high quality stuff can very easily not be popular, if it’s doing things which only a few people are interested in to a high level of quality. The relation works one way, but not the other, and that’s what is often missed when asking “is popularity relevant to quality?”

    • Yumeka says:

      Excellent points as always. You’re right that it comes down to the “comparing apples to oranges” argument that there isn’t any correct answer to. As much as we’d all like it to be, quality, at least for anime and other media forms, is not objective but very subjective. Like you said, one person can think a given anime is a masterpiece for whatever reason while another can think it’s a pile of crap for another reason, because the anime’s goal is to appeal to the tastes of the first person and doesn’t even have the other in mind. It did its job well for the audience it was seeking, so is that fair enough to say it’s of good quality?

      I especially like what you said in your fourth paragraph. People who hate moe bash K-ON for not being an intelligent, innovative series. But shows like K-ON wouldn’t be so prevalent if their otaku audience didn’t like them so much. So what the moe haters are actually criticizing is the fact that the majority of otaku find this kind of show appealing, not the merits of the show itself since it’s obviously doing what it set out to do well, as can be seen by its huge sales figures.

  10. Savo says:

    Excellent thoughts on the subject. Quality and popularity are independent of each other, but many times walk hand in hand. What surprises me is how vehement some fans can become over the simple concept of popularity. Unpopular “artistic” shows are lauded as being examples of the mainstream’s inability to comprehend art and series that are purely intended for fun are slammed for not trying to be anything more.

    I try to remove myself from judging something based on its popularity but sometimes it can be hard. What really can hurt a show for me is if I let myself get caught up in the hype created by its popularity and get let down after seeing it. For example, I watched most of Madoka after it aired expecting it to be God’s gift to anime but quickly got let down by a few key aspects of it.

    Simply put, the more popular series tend to be the more well-made ones. You can argue all day about how companies care about nothing more than the bottom line, but in my experience if something is popular there is a reason why people like it. If the majority of people find something enjoyable, there’s a good chance I will like it too.

    What really annoys me is when people hate on something that is popular (this applies to really any entertainment medium) and use the argument that something is automatically pandering garbage if it is designed to appeal to a wide audience.
    Quality works will always find an audience, even if its not as big as they deserve. I really don’t care if a work is designed to appeal to a large audience or if it “sold out” as long as I consider it fun.

    • Yumeka says:

      Great thoughts. What you said in your first paragraph is another kind of paradox actually – when “artistic” shows are unpopular, people complain it’s because the masses have no taste…but what if these shows were the popular ones? Is it because the masses now have good taste?

      I totally agree that if something is extremely popular, especially among a good variety of people, chances are there’s a good reason for it. We shouldn’t go into such series with too much expectation (like you may have done with Madoka) but if something is so universally appealing, there’s probably something we’ll like about it, too.

      And yeah, using popularity as a reason for hating something, especially if it’s something you haven’t even watched yourself and just go by what you hear about it second-hand, is pretty ignorant in my opinion. The idea of “my tastes are better than the average person, so if the masses (average people) all like it, I won’t” isn’t a solid reason for not at least giving the show in question a first-hand try.

  11. Adziu says:

    The only thing I don’t like is when someone does a U-turn because something they liked when it was quite obscure became popular. Early fans of Naruto and Bleach are the most obvious examples, but it also happened with the likes of Lucky Star, Fullmetal Alchemist and increasingly even Ghibli films – I really don’t get people who say fandom ruined a property for them. If you think it’s good and you enjoy it, why on earth would you decide you dislike it just because people you don’t get on with have discovered it?

    • Yumeka says:

      That’s one of my peeves as well. If a series is ruined for you just because of how (most of) its fans are, when the series itself didn’t do anything wrong, then you’re probably not that big a fan of it to begin with. I can’t imagine a dedicated fan of something letting the fandom ruin their interest in the series rather than the merits of the series itself. It’s easy enough to just avoid the fandom if it bothers you so much (don’t go on forums, blogs, or whatever) and enjoy the series your own way privately.

  12. Nopy says:

    I’d like to offer another solution to the paradox: inverse-advertising neutralization (I think that sounds cool enough). I’ve always viewed populartiy as a good indication of anime quality, but only in comparison to anime that have received equal advertising. From what I’ve seen, heavy advertising increases the populartiy of an anime regardless of whether it’s good or not, so an anime with a lot of advertising should have some popularity subtracted when comparing it to an anime with less advertising.

    Using the example of Guilty Crown, it was heavily advertised long before it even aired and has a high popularity despite (in my opinion), low quality. If it were not for the advertising, I do no think the series would have been successful.

    • Yumeka says:

      That’s a good point that exposure should be taken into account when determining the relevance of popularity on quality. The question would then be how much do we take away from an anime’s quality due to advertising alone. There would probably be a lot of debate about that depending on the series. It would certainly help in some cases though, like with Guilty Crown or a series like Kemono no Souja Erin that pretty much everyone who watched it praised but it got almost no promotion whatsoever.

  13. Shadowapple says:

    This topic made me remember a conversation that went along almost exactly the same lines as what you said was the norm. Ikki Tousen had just come out, and out of interest I watched a few episodes. Dear God, it was awful. But it has since become quite popular, with three or four sequel seasons airing. I was quite appalled because I had considered it a very badly made anime with a half-way decent premise told incredibly badly. In fact, in conversation of this very anime I said something alarmingly similar to “the taste of the masses doesn’t matter, they only want fan-pandering and don’t care for quality.” albeit more simplified.
    Indeed, after reading your post I made a brief mental list of all the anime I have ever watched and could place almost all of them in the four categories mentioned above.
    I rambled quite a bit here… sorry about that.

  14. This was a very interesting topic. I loved how there are other users who actually post insightful discussion. They said everything I really wanted to say. Although I should bring up the animation studio and seiyuus involved in the production. There are those who are very loyal and fervent fans, upon seeing the preview/line-up for the next season, jump aboard the anime right away if they see the animation studio they like and seiyuus are going to be part. To better explain myself, here’s an analogy for this: It’s like seeing your favorite actor in a movie. Of course, you’ll want to see that movie regardless of the popularity and said quality. I think anime fans have developed a bias over the years. The reason why you would be a fan of that particular studio or seiyuu is because they have done works that have amazed us before. With that, we assume that it will continue that way. I, myself am guilty of this. I’ve seen all of Key’s works (regardless of the studio)- which is why Little Busters! is automatically on my watch list.

  15. xxyyzzz says:

    hey ya ur right tht popularity is a measurement of quality bt i feels its nt effective enough i can explain wid examples like say naruto the original series really had good quality storyline character development bt after few episodes of shippuden finished most of d people kept on watching it just to see d end its popularity is good enough only cause of d original series shippuden has nt got something so good to get so popular second is d example of most unrated anime i hav ever watched it goes by d name gto(great teacher onizuka)it was a great anime wid unique storyline character development beat humor n gags n a very nice end der isnt an episode in it tht u may find boring and uninteresting n so far frm all d people ik who so ever watched it has bcome a great fan of gto!! so never judge an anime wid its popularity!! for sure dis is juast my viewpoint every one has its own! u can argue by taking d eg of one piece really a masterpiece of anime wid unique storyline (n its so epic!!) or taking d eg of deathnote(or code guess) !!

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