Controversial Pop Culture Opinions.

[Silverwynde]

Things I like that a lot of other people, or at least a vocal minority of people, don't (though I typically understand why they don't):
•Transformers Energon

O_O
Nearly everyone hates Energon. It was even considered the worst anime in Japan when it was released! (I don't hate it, but it needed a lot of improvement. I will give it this: in one episode, there's a still shot of Rodimus with a group of other Autobots. You look closely and one of them is definitely Bumblebee. The first time I saw that ep, my eyes were drawn to that silhouette and I gasped. My husband thought I was crazy until I pointed him out!)

Some of mine:
-Marvel currently has the better live action movies while DC currently has the better animated fare.

-DC takes itself far too seriously and needs to tone it down. Case in point: Shazam! is probably one of their best films to date, the other being Wonder Woman, which they seemed reluctant to touch. Everything else is far too grimdark for my liking.

-This is the reason I have major problems watching the MCU Netflix series. It's dark to the point of insanity and I can't handle a lot of it. Punisher being one of the worst among them. Daredevil had a few look away moments but it wasn't nearly as bad. Same with Jessica Jones. Luke Cage was pretty much perfect, so there's that.

-WandaVision's major saving grace? Making Darcy from Thor a badass. Other than that, it was kinda 'meh'.

-I ship Sylvie and Loki. Also, Sylvie is awesome and doesn't deserve the hate.

-Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen is actually one of the better movies in the series. Hell, it's Oscar worthy compared to The Last Knight.

-Kate Bishop is a better Hawkeye than Hawkeye himself. Jeremy Renner is a freaking tool as well. The less I see of him, the better.

-Same goes for Chris Pratt, or 'Crisp Rat'.

-The only Voltron that doesn't suck is Vehicle Force. I can't stand Lion Force as the characters grate on my last nerve. I can't even watch the 1980s dub of Lion Force because of this and one of the voice actors is Peter Cullen, the voice of Optimus Prime himself! It's just that bad!

-Out of every genre of music, country is the worst. Especially the dumpster fire crap from the late 1980s and 1990s. (I'm glaring at you, Billie Ray Cyrus, and your crappy "Achy Breaky Heart"!)

-Transformers: Cyberverse is actually a lot of fun. It's only major downside? Not having any recognizable voice actors.

-Hasbro gave up on The Hub network too quickly. They should have stuck with it, then they would have been able to stream their entire library via Discovery, which would have been less of a headache.

-Star Trek: Discovery is absolutely amazing. It was amazing even before we got the furry feline goddess known as Grudge.

-Lower Decks is awesome, especially if you're a hardcore Trek fan. (I agree with a lot of the other fans: at least one of the writers is lurking in the Trek Sh*tposting group! There's way too many inside jokes!)

-The third season of Generation 1 Transformers wasn't more adult. It just had a crap load of new characters that had little to no development and an Autobot "leader" who whined more than a three year old needing a nap. (Not a fan of Rodimus Prime. Can't you tell?) On the flip side...

-The best Hot Rod was Transformers: The Last Knight Hot Rod. He was actually likable. Too bad he was underutilized. =/

That's it for now. I might come back and add more, if I remember it.

 

[Neyo]

-Obligatory star wars comment; The Last Jedi was my favorite movie out of the latest trilogy, and I'm pissed that The Rise of Skywalker just backpedaled on a bunch of stuff that happened in the movie just to pander to all the "hardcore fans".

As a rule, never listen to the hardcore fans of a fandom

 

[Silverwynde]

Controversial opinion:
NFTs are useless crap and all of them--even the geeky ones--need to go away. Immediately, if not sooner.

 

[Neyo]

Controversial opinion:
NFTs are useless crap and all of them--even the geeky ones--need to go away. Immediately, if not sooner.

I’m not even sure if that’s controversial at this point.

 

[swiftfox]

Joe Buck isn’t a bad announcer.

 

[prog rocker]

Controversial opinion:
NFTs are useless crap and all of them--even the geeky ones--need to go away. Immediately, if not sooner.

I agree with this, but I don't think that's controversial. In fact, aside from NFT bros and people making money out of that I have never seen anyone support them...

 

[Archaic]

Controversial opinion:
NFTs are useless crap and all of them--even the geeky ones--need to go away. Immediately, if not sooner.

Agreed with everyone else, not a controversial opinion at all.

A controversial opinion would be more like....Chris Rock should've suffered as much if not more punishment for what happened at the Oscars than Will Smith.

 

[Silverwynde]

Joe Buck isn’t a bad announcer.

He's fine for football. Baseball? Pass. (Still want a Milwaukee/Cleveland World Series so we can have Bob Uecker call it!)

 

[swiftfox]

He's fine for football. Baseball? Pass. (Still want a Milwaukee/Cleveland World Series so we can have Bob Uecker call it!)

Personally, I could listen to Buck's call of Soler's Game 6 homer all day.

And yeah, a Brewers/Guardians World Series with the dueling Ueker/Hamilton calls would be legendary.

 

[Silverwynde]

Slightly controversial opinion: I can't get too worked up either way about Will Smith and Chris Rock. Other than to say at least it was a slap. It could have been worse.

 

[henrymidfields]

A partially controversial opinion:
As a Japanese, I...actually don't like J-Pop outside of isolated exceptions. I grew up with mainly American popular music during the 90s, and I like to keep connected with the rest of the world, and J-Pop not only feels very derivative and uninspired (both with the lyrics and the musical styling), but it also makes me feel isolated. I used to not like rap either, but at least the lyrics and the music developmental history behind it is actually challenging, and I have to respect that.

This doesn't include Enka or those with more traditional stylings, though. They actually feel like their own things originating from Japan, and I appreciate that.

There's also that I grew up playing in a concert band and playing/listening to classical and jazz/latin (both Japanese and elsewhere), and learning that there is actually stuff outside of popular music. Like, one of my favorite artists is Tokyo Kosei Wind Orchestra which performs many quality concert band music, and one of my favorite Japanese composer is Toshio Mashima who created quality original compositions and jazz arrangements for said Orchestra.

Also Boston/Cincinnati etc Pops Orchestra arrangements of non-classical music are not as good compared to Tokyo Kosei's. The former dumbs down popular music rhythms and solo parts that aren't saxophones, trumpets or trombones, the arrangements for the latter fully adopts the rhythm, groove, and the ad-libbing of the solos and make all instruments within the wind orchestra play the rhythms, solos in the jazz, rock, pop etc way.

That said, I also think focusing on classical music to the point of ignoring other genres is a bad thing too. And I love Gershwin, Bernstein, and Ellington (He attempted some more classical-styled works. Including a piano concerto! And they're on Youtube.) for that reason.

 

[dashing_stunning]

I have a few game related ones... (Are games pop culture?)

- Turning a turn based rpg into more action-oriented rpg shouldn't be considered an 'upgrade'. Examples: Persona 5, Legends Arceus. I like Pokemon and Persona exactly because I like my battles slower and more strategic. I have health issues that prevent me from enjoying fast paced action combat so when fans whine about how 'boring' pre Legends Arceus pokemon games are and how they 'can't turn back now' it seriously grinds my gears. These are just two different genres! Action isn't superior to turn based just because you are a sporty kid with good reflexes! Let this disabled loner who likes strategy and history have my virtual chessboard thing please! It's your fault that you don't like to think ahead! I do!

- Trails of Cold Steel series doesn't deserve all the praise it gets. Valkyria Chronicles does everything it does 100x better and Trails' plot is sometimes so clichey I want to cry. But guess which game sells like hot pies and which one gets more and more obscure with ever year, with no news of next installment at all?

- (About Pokemon) Pokemon Conquest is actually one of the boldest pokemon installments and the one I love the most. With time, I started realizing that pokemon actually does have a very thinly spread lore/not very believable worlbuilding which could benefit from crossovers with other franchises. Basically: pokemon is a wonderful strategic tool. But not always so good as a story. Fire Emblem Pokemon when?

 

[prog rocker]

- (About Pokemon) Pokemon Conquest is actually one of the boldest pokemon installments and the one I love the most. With time, I started realizing that pokemon actually does have a very thinly spread lore/not very believable worlbuilding which could benefit from crossovers with other franchises. Basically: pokemon is a wonderful strategic tool. But not always so good as a story. Fire Emblem Pokemon when?

Funny you mention this, because I recall reading that Conquest started as a crossover with FE.

- Turning a turn based rpg into more action-oriented rpg shouldn't be considered an 'upgrade'. Examples: Persona 5, Legends Arceus. I like Pokemon and Persona exactly because I like my battles slower and more strategic. I have health issues that prevent me from enjoying fast paced action combat so when fans whine about how 'boring' pre Legends Arceus pokemon games are and how they 'can't turn back now' it seriously grinds my gears. These are just two different genres! Action isn't superior to turn based just because you are a sporty kid with good reflexes! Let this disabled loner who likes strategy and history have my virtual chessboard thing please! It's your fault that you don't like to think ahead! I do!

This is more or less how I feel. In fact, this (along with open world) is why I'm starting to feel "isolated" in regards of the modern gaming world.

EDIT: "Alienated" might be the term I'm looking for.

 

[Sheep40]

Sword Art Online is one of the best pulpy action series to come out of Japan.

You can tell which parts of Elden Ring were Miyazaki's doing and which parts were Martin's.

There is already an easy mode in Soulsborne. It's actually the inevitable conclusion new players that don't quit come to: overleveling and over-upgrading, as well as trying to push damage output to the max whilst damning the consequences. Eventually, eventually, sheer brute force will win the day. Elden Ring seems to have been tailor built to force this play philosophy due to it's open world as well as the insanity of the first actual boss.

Kingdom Heart's story is actually really interesting. The minute to minute writing is mind-numbingly stupid, but the scenario is extremely riveting. Also, they need to bring back the FF characters.

Final Fantasy's aesthetic is awesome and worthy of merit. It has also always been the same: overdetail for the sake of it, very pretty men, sci-fi and modern infusions and an air of high society and culture. Hardware restrictions are responsible for obscuring it. Also, I want to see FF collaborate with Purdey or Holland & Holland.

Warhammer should be unafraid to be just stupid funny more of the time, and with other factions than just orks. There is comedy gold to be mined out of literally everyone else.

Arknights is how you do grimdark right. Matter of fact, clinical, making people think about messed up implications works better than shoving depravity into people's faces.

Witcher is not slavic fantasy. Witcher is the edgiest fractured fairytale cinematic universe. The author is a slav, hence most of the fairytales fractures just happen to be slavic (like with the first).

Speaking Faux Cyrillic should be done more often. It is hilarious.

Emiya Shirou is not a Mary sue. He may be underpowered, but he has a gigantic mental advantage over his haughty, often mentally unstable opponents. He's just sane and determined. Brute force is a valid factor for success.

 

[prog rocker]

That thing about overdetail in FF... Thank you for giving me a term for Amano's characters, at least costume-wise. People do complain about Nomura, but they forget things like Gogo exist.

My opinion is that Amano was better designing monsters, but when it comes to humans (or at least humanoids) Nomura was better. At least until that weird Final Fantasy I remake(?), where I found Jack to be... extremely plain and boring design-wise.

 

[Sheep40]

Jack was supposed to be plain. Gear does change appearance in that game after all.

 

[prog rocker]

Really? But that plain?

 

[Neo Blaze]

One of the biggest unpopular opinions I have that I can think of is that I don't like Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse. I love Marvel and Spider-Man in general, and I thought I was going to like this movie after hearing so many good things about it, but it honestly did nothing for me. Not to mention I found the artstyle absolutely insufferable. I've only seen it once but I haven't felt like revisiting it whatsoever nor do I have any interest in the sequels.

 

[dashing_stunning]

Another unpopular opinion...
Anime/mangas should stop making so many food jokes. It is the blandest, safest, most pedestrian joke to make and seeing them so widely beloved baffles me. Characters who cook/can't cook/overeat/undereat/have strange food habits...this all has been done to death and also 99,9% doesn't add anything of value to the plot. I especially hate it when anime tries to establish some food as a character's 'staple' when the character in question hasn't even been properly established yet but his tastes and daily habits in general are already detailed and complicated and too specific. 'Oh, this is Suzuki, we don't know anything about him/her, we don't know what their conflict is, what their role in the plot is, what the point of their character is but they are mad about Osaka style okonomiyaki and their blood type is AB! ' I don't @#$& care! Give me actual information and a reason to watch your @#$& show! This is storytelling basics for @#$& sake!!!

 

[Coolsteph]

Things I am Unusual for Not Liking:
Live-action shows and movies in general, for similar reasons. It's hard to find something as focused, interesting, and stylish as the average Disney, Disney-Pixar, or Dreamworks film. Spy Kids and Scott Pilgrim vs. the World are rare exceptions.
Marvel movies. I gave it a fair shot: I watched Guardians of the Galaxy, which I logically would have liked. However, it was all spectacle and no substance. Watching a clip of Avengers: Civil War felt like dull, forgettable boilerplate.
Similarly, I do not like The Force Awakens; all spectacle, little substance. I liked Maz Kanata, though.
I really wanted to like Black Panther (the film), and it did have very good costuming and architecture to show the sophisticated, thoroughly-African feel of Wakanda. However, it is still a Marvel film, with attendant flaws, and it quickly takes itself out of its Wakanan setting, which was its most distinctive, interesting aspect. I'm not sure what it is: the music? The cinematography? The lack of focus in shots? The realism over style? I only watched about one third of it, I think, before I gave up.
James Cameron's Avatar is not just Dances with Wolves in space, because it's made in a different era, with a different feel, for a different audience. The movie is still not very good, though, although the graphics and creature design are very good.

Things I am Unusual for Liking:
Spy Kids (especially Spy Kids 3-D: Game Over). It's stylish and creative with strong music and memorable scenes.