[MeechMunchie]

Judging by the first two examples WoF gave, though it may be a coincidence, I think he's complaining at me specifically.

As a rule, anime/manga is not my thing. I dislike the art style, and by either coincidence or the nature of the cultural divide, I also dislike pretty much every element of conventional anime/manga stories.

The four elements that will occasionally stack to produce something I like are:

An altered/unusual art style
A compelling story
Intriguing characters
(And most importantly,) General suitability to my personal taste

The fourth feeds back into all the others, since my idea of a compelling character might be radically different to yours. As I just said, by coincidence or whatever it is that shapes a person's personality (you're the psychology student), the things I'm not particularly fond of in stories happen to be the things that seem to come up in every anime that I would recognise as such.

I have no doubts whatsoever that you know more about anime than me. However, I know more about what I like than you.

That said, I do still have my guilty pleasures. I may be a black-hearted miserable sod, but a 10-year-old Welsh boy being hired as a teacher for a single-sex school for girls six years older than him, in Japan, and also he's secretly a wizard... Well that's just adorable.

The long and short of it is, I don't instantly hate all anime. It just tends to count negatively towards my enjoyment of it. If I enjoy an anime or manga, it's because it's managed to appeal to me to a degree that I can forgive/forget about the style.

EDIT: And no, the Death Note live action movie was not an anime. The anime was an anime, then they remade it (and by your words half-assedly) into a live-action movie. Hence I was able to enjoy it more without the art style that I PERSONALLY DISLIKE 'getting in the way'.