Anime often gets a bad rap among those stateside who are unfamiliar with it. It is easy to criticize its overly unrealistic scenarios, its fan service, and in a more general sense, its radical departure from the standards of American cartoons. However, real fans of the genre know that anime contains some of the best animation in all of cartoons, and some of the best stories in all of film. Overall, it’s a nice change of pace from the animated offerings our homeland has to offer.

BuzzFeed decided to see how a group of Americans who have never watched anime before would react to it, so they set them up with clips from Attack on Titan and Kill La Kill and filmed them watching it for the first time. To be fair, they did have some valid points. Anime does totally set unrealistic eye expectations, as one viewer commented. Anime also often contains “Butts! Just endless butts!” We’re with them on that one. In relation to most American cartoons, Anime also sure is “bleak as f—.”

While this experiment may not have won over any new anime fans, it at least proved that when given a chance, the genre could be understood and appreciated by a mainstream American audience. One viewer said that it “defied my expectations more than it met what I thought what anime was,” while another offered, “I definitely appreciate it more, but I don’t know if I would watch it.”

Basically, the big lesson to be taken away from this: If you’re reading this and haven’t watched anime before, give it a chance, because it probably isn’t as weird as you think it is, and you might even like it.

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HT: Buzzfeed

Featured image courtesy of BuzzFeedVideo