Megiddo wrote:
Does pretentious just mean that they didn't consist of boobs and explosions? Cause that's the notion I'm getting lately. Or is the mere factor of expecting the viewer to pay attention to what is happening what sets of the pretentious alarm? I see the word get thrown out a lot, and honestly, I never really got quite why. I never really considered anime pretentious. Now theses from my peers? Hell yes. I've never gotten that feeling from anime though. That's not to say it's impossible in visual form. I've looked at modern art that was just squiggles and colors splotched onto the canvas and couldn't see anything of value there.
So I'd like to know what it is about Boogiepop, Lain, and/or Ghost Hound as well as others (say, Kino's Journey? Kaiba?) that causes people to view them as pretentious.
Hmm, that's not what it means to me. oO
But I guess a lot of people use it to mean something more intelligent than they're willing to invest the brain cells in, but I mean it for things that purport to be artistically intellectual or deeply philosophical but fail at it, all the while blatantly drawing attention to their supposed genius. All hat and no cattle, if you will. 
Pretentious is, as you say, a blank canvas in an art gallery. It's a teenager's angst poetry. Okabe is pretentious.
Boogiepop Phantom had some nice bits, but the non-linear storytelling had no purpose other than to be edgy as far as I could see, and the payoff wasn't enough for all the work you had to go through to get it. The whole thing kept screaming "Look at us, we're so cool!" in every segment. I think if I saw Lain again, I would almost certainly like it better (I like ABe's other stuff), but while it was visually striking, and did well at establishing its ominous mood, again, it left me flat at the end.
Ghost Hound, on the other hand, appears at first glance to be pretentious, with all the psychology jargon, but it's actually not, because once those little monkeybutt spirits show up, it's clear the creators are not too full of themselves to have some fun with what's going on (though I can understand that some people would hate that). The psych-speak isn't there to make you feel stupid, or to make them look smart, but just to give you some background as to some real world theories behind what's going on in the series. You can enjoy the series without paying attention to that if you don't like it.
And I've said it before, the sound design in GH is phenomenal. It works precisely because it doesn't draw attention to what it's doing, where a more pretentious anime would have put banners up pointing it out to be sure you noticed what geniuses they were.
Mablak wrote:
There were several moments of genuine terror to be found in this show, I'm quite amazed. I mean I can't remember the last time an anime, or anything for that matter, literally shook me up.
I think a part of this might be the use of sound in this. There is something not quite right in even the most mundane sound effects, like footsteps padding on a wood floor, that seem a little too bright or sharp, and it's not something that leaps out at you, but it still has a tendency to keep you on edge even during the "normal" scenes.
There's also the spookiness of Tarou's eyes, which look unnervingly like the eyespots on moth's wings.
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