For all the manga veterans, or consider themselves manga veterans.

Do you guys criticize mangas as you read along? Anime?

When I was first introduced to anime/manga I was just absorbed in, eyes glued and never stopped reading or watching. I enjoyed every one I watched/read.

Now 2 years later, I find myself disliking almost every manga/anime because I just keep thinking what crap it is.

It bothers me, the last Anime I enjoyed was Darker than Black, and recently forgot the last time I enjoyed reading a manga.

I still read/watch them, I just do not really enjoy them. Maybe because one shounen's story is basically every shounen just in a different style. Same with romance, ecchi, blah blah. Sienen is the only genre I have found to be different in almost every case.

I'm troubled...

When I started reading manga I would read probably just about anything including Claymore But now I have my own style of manga that I enjoy. Maybe you should just try to find a common theme that you like in your manga/anime and see how the stories in different series handle the theme. Or maybe you should just go around reading/watching random manga/anime till you find one you'll always find enjoyable, for me it was Eureka Seven.

I can relate to this a lot. Honestly, I think it's mostly as you've said. Initially, it's all new and fresh, but slowly we begin to realize the cliches and similar plotlines and it gets old.

Additionally, standards increase over time. If you've never watched anime or read manga you have a huge array of choices of quality choices to suit your tastes, while after a while the quality of those in the genres that appeal to you begins to drop as you move through them. It's not as though you can compare anime in similar genres to, say, Evangelion and expect them to seem good relative to it.

I still enjoy plenty of new series, but my standards continually become higher. These days I'm elated if I find something I can call even an 8 out of 10. Either I will eventually get bored and move on or find more interesting series to pas the time with, possibly in other genres. It's just how it works, I guess.

As for seinen being the only demographic that's consistently different, I have to disagree a little. I think seinen manga tends to camouflage the themes more skillfully and the themes are generally more appealing to an older audience (keep in mind the ideas are broad, but almost always it's going to be about finding your place in the world/getting over dreams, be it mundane or crazy. Naturally, there are exceptions, but there's an overwhelming number that utilize this). There's also more variance in the accompanying themes. I haven't really read enough Josei, but I think it's probably true for that as well.

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Not up to that point yet. I know a fair number of hardcore anime fans who are really picky about what they watch as they've used to seeing the same stuff over again. It's a shame that they feel that way and it'll be a shame for me if it gets to that point. Sometimes i wish we can experience things as always the first time.

This feels like a coulda been poll to me >.< o well....... I havent really gotten tired of them cause I just love the storylines and ecchiness in some manga. Even though its sometimes hard to find a good 1, When i do I start to feel excited and addicted. Like The first time i read Gantz it made me stay up all night ^_^ So u should just keep searching for mangas that excite u(and not in the nasty way)

Yeah, I felt that way about the last episode of Eureka Seven, you just can't get the same feelings after the first time though.

Same here. I not only criticize all manga I'm reading, but I also label the mangaka and the characters.
"He's/she's just like X, not again..."
Yeah.

On the other hand, I think I might have more fun of reading manga now than before. Making fun of stupid shoujo heroines has it's charm

Still...knowing the ending after the first chapter is kinda sad.
The only manga that is still able to surprise me or make me seriously interested in it, is the stuff that Kotonoha is scanlating.

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Still the bad cop.

it´s true it isn´t the same as before, but from time to time i get to find a pretty interesting manga.

Emperorpogi, it´s true what you said about shoujo and shounen, it´s good there is seinen and josei.

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To an extent.
I still read practically anything, as long as the art and story arn't crud, but I am aware that it is sub-standard filler. I do critique or roll my eyes during a manga when something cliche comes up or predict the obivous outcome.

However I still read just as much or more than I did several years ago and still enjoy it, it just makes it that much better when I do find a manga that breaks out of the mold and introduces something new. I'm the type that will re-read a book 20 times so that may have something to do with me not getting burnt out on manga even though I've read the same thing before.

You could say the same thing about anything. Movies, books, Art, the more you look at something the more similarities you'll start to see.

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"Tu es responsable pour toujours de ce que tu as approvoise." Le Renard en "The Little Prince" Antoine de St. Exupery.

Honestly, it seems to me that people would actually start off with more renowned series and move to less known ones as they continued on. Since the renowned series would generally be of higher quality (generally, not always) it would seem that manga and anime are getting worse as time goes on.

I for one have always had a lot of trouble finding any anime I like so I can't empathize with you on anime at all.

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Oh, good point. I certainly started off with the highest rated and those recommended to me and than when I ran out of those started scouring the net for anything.

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"Tu es responsable pour toujours de ce que tu as approvoise." Le Renard en "The Little Prince" Antoine de St. Exupery.

Agreed. I find this happening to me quite often.

Mostly its in the Shounen sub-genre. I find myself thinking as I try to read a new Shounen manga, "Well, boring. I know whats going to happen to a tee. The same thing happens in -Name 8-12 manga here.-"
Excluding the Horror genre, that is. The Horror genre to me, always offers something new, and is really entertaining.

For Senien, I rarely but sometimes find that happen. Prehaps its because the interests of adults are not limited by things some people might find inappropriate. Although there are a few cliches. Again, this is all excluded in the Horror genre.

For Shojo, I find the cliches endless. Actually, I no longer read Shojo because of the endlessly repeating same plots, characters personalities, and sub-conflicts. Its annoying.

and I don't read Josei enough to judge it.

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Hate to admit it but yes, I'll experience a bit of the same feelings.

Don't get me wrong, I still love reading manga, but sometimes it just feels like a chore. If I get to that point, I'll usually take a break and read something else. Maybe a different series, maybe a different genre, maybe even *gasp* a REAL book. Or I'll get back into movies, or anime, or video games.

Whatever the case, it usually gives me a chance to come back to manga later with a new perspective and I'll be able to enjoy everything again.

I've definitely become a more critical reader over the last few years, but I still enjoy manga a lot and don't see myself totally burning out on it for a long, long time. Sometimes I take breaks & read regular books, or watch dorama, or do other things for a while but (so far) I always come back to manga.

I read manga for entertainment, so while I'm reading it I tend to practice "willing suspension of disbelief" - no matter how absurd the premise is, I'll go along with it and enjoy it while I'm reading. Once I'm done, I'll evaluate the manga a bit more and based on that I may actively look for or avoid other works by that mangaka, or if I really liked it, search out the paper books (even if that means buying them in Japanese). It is getting harder to find manga that I feel compelled to buy, though.

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"[English] not only borrows words from other languages; it has on occasion chased other languages down dark alley-ways, clubbed them unconscious and rifled their pockets for new vocabulary."
-James Nicoll, can.general, March 21, 1992

I find that I only read a few genres of manga these days, and among them, I'm picky about certain plot elements. I read survival (which needs to be a genre here, btw) because I love the twists and turns (I found one recently, oh man, awesome is the only word that comes to mind). When I'm feeling pervy and just want a laugh, I read ridiculously stupid and silly fan service mangas (I really have no requirements here, as long as they're funny and the boobs are free of restraints). And then I kinda over-indulge in ridiculous action stories despite the obvious lack of literary value (Recca, Tenjou Tenge, etc). And as I read them, I have a set list of things that I expect to find (cliches, I guess), and if I find them, I stop reading and move on (I've got something like 60GB of the crap in my download folder, so no big loss). If I don't, then I read it, then move on.

But as for criticing, I don't think to myself 'oh well, that panel was poorly done... he stole that pose from blahblah volume 8 chapter 76 page 16'. I think that when we start to do that, it just means we aren't appreciating the entertainment value of the comics we love. It's like when I was in college and I couldn't appreciate the orchestra anymore because I was over-analyzing everything and thinking about how differently I would do it. I finally just stopped going.