The Diagram of Badness: Why Excessive Bad Becomes Good at Riuva : Research Institute for Unicultural Visual Arts

The Diagram of Badness: Why Excessive Bad Becomes Good

(No Ratings Yet)

Loading ...

Popularity: 10% [?] Published by tj_han October 5th, 2006 in Culture

For some of you guys puzzled by my recent list of studio rankings, I have drawn a simple explanation, to make clear why Gravion, High School Girls and the like can be considered enjoyable and hence good anime.

Look at the diagram below. Note that this is not a cartesian graph. The circumference of the circle is the locus where every anime falls on. By drawing a line connecting the anime point to the origin, we can get an angle - this is known as the Badness Angle. The left side of the circle is where the good anime is and the right side, the bad anime. The closer an anime is to the horizontal axis, the greater its Ultima or Vomit is.

To illustrate what I mean, look at the following. The tip of the arrow points to the location where something like 08th MS Team would be. It’s close to Ultima-class, with 45 degrees of badness but this still leaves it in the good sector. I drew a Gravion and Love Idol graph but somehow after uploading I cannot open them in Firefox, so I’ll just explain. Gravion has such a HUGE angle of Badness, about 300 degrees worth, that it’s pushed all the way back into the fourth quadrant (the bottom right). This means that Gravion is now considered a great anime. However, something like Love Idol, which is devastatingly bad but with a badness degree of only 200 degrees, is in the 3rd quadrant, leaving it practically ground zero of Vomit.

But what is the definition of the Angle of Badness?

It is the resulting sum of the cliches, fanservice, unintentional comedy, plotholes and deus ex machina an anime has. You can think of it as an athelete’s second wind - push the anime to the limit and it gives you some special bonus.

So does that explain why Gravion, High School Girls, Inukami and other supposedly "bad" anime are so well-loved?

Leele from Gravion. There’s actually NO female lead in Gravion.

Popularity: 10% [?]

18 Responses to “The Diagram of Badness: Why Excessive Bad Becomes Good”

Feed for this Entry Trackback Address

1 Waterfall 29 comments Oct 5th, 2006 at 9:24 pm

Notice the weasel/stoat/ferret on her lap is blushing?
XD
2 super rats 105 comments Oct 5th, 2006 at 9:36 pm

No anime with Leele and Luna can be in the vomit quads.
3 whazzup 12 comments Oct 5th, 2006 at 9:55 pm

you, my fren, have too much free time. pls update riuva more often.
4 Neohybrid_kai 18 comments Oct 6th, 2006 at 1:03 am

And excessive good becomes bad?
5 tj_han 1442 comments Oct 6th, 2006 at 1:11 am

There’s no excessive good. This scale is determined by the “bad” factor. So a perfect anime would have zero angle.
6 Seth 78 comments Oct 6th, 2006 at 1:31 am

Hmm, I think that’s the better explanation than my typical integer wrap-around which would imply that worst-evar is adjacent to best-evar; this is more sensible. I heartily approve of your overly complex explanation of camp-quality-dynamics (including use of the term ‘locus’), and will mentally file it into the list of examples of quintessentially nerdy behavior. Good show!
7 wontaek 4 comments Oct 6th, 2006 at 2:08 am

Try rotation of quantum states on Bloch Sphere.
8 Sasa 82 comments Oct 6th, 2006 at 2:10 am

Arrr, I love this. So in the end, Love Hina’s badness angle is 380° or something? *hehe*

PS. I really find it interesting that you put “goodness” on the left side and “badness” on the right side - also that you turn clockwise and not counter-clockwise. I guess this is the exact opposition of what mathematicians (the direction) and “normal” people (you know about the theory that people tend to associate “good” things with right and “bad” things with left?) would do. (Which means everybody *haha*)
9 Seth 78 comments Oct 6th, 2006 at 2:18 am

btw, tsuyokiss has a badness angle of at least like 320 degrees.
10 jpmeyer 101 comments Oct 6th, 2006 at 2:54 am

NOT SAFE FOR WORK
11 jpmeyer 101 comments Oct 6th, 2006 at 2:55 am

Oops, that’s supposed to go into the demotivator thread
12 tj_han 1442 comments Oct 6th, 2006 at 6:28 am

Sasa: Oh I’m a lefty so probably that’s why I do everything in reverse. But when I do real math problems, I have to follow the rules though.
13 omo 137 comments Oct 6th, 2006 at 10:09 am

I vomit on Gravion any day. But I do concede it is somewhere in the 3rd quadrant coming towards the 4th. A perversion of super robot soul it may be, it still has some redeeming value.
14 Totali 19 comments Oct 12th, 2007 at 7:06 pm

Oh my. The meaning of life has just been revealed to me.
15 Ubiquitial 4 comments Oct 30th, 2009 at 11:30 am

1. People watched the movie Casablanca because all the characters were cliche. Same for anime. If you have enough vomit, logic dictates that the chance of it all mixing together to become something enjoyable, like a vomit nabe.

2. Our taste is superficial to the point where we watch any show with attractive anime girls, and we’re just trying to reconcile with ourselves

Do not use any < and > for your own sake. It will end the comment there and then. Also, there is an automatic IQ filter which weeds out comments made by those who accidentally got transported from the stone age.

Search

Latest

Related Entries

Counter

18 currently online

88 maximum concurrent

4759684 total visitors

Riuva : Research Institute for Unicultural Visual Arts