Anyway, I don’t think of the relationship of the two as something that must be crossed. That implies they’re different in some fundamental way, and I don’t believe they are; they’re merely leanings, as OGT has already said. The “deeper” things you’re describing aren’t necessarily centripetal, and the binary between “deep” and “entertaining” implies that “deep” is NOT entertaining, which isn’t true. Our media executives have trained us to think that way. If it weren’t enjoyable, no one would ever bother (except maybe Andy Warhol, but he was an ass).

I think it’s also important (since you kind of bring it up) to point out more clearly that while a work can certainly have an innate tendency towards one or the other, in the end it is the reader that decides which direction best fits them for the work. It’s difficult to navigate, as you say, because it depends heavily on reader-response. I also don’t consider one direction or the other better than the other: one can be more personally rewarding, while the other can be more socially rewarding. All depends on what’s important to the reader in any given situation at any given time.

I’d also like to point out (my inner crotchety professor is kicking in here) that every work has depth of some kind, it just requires the correct set of tools to bring it out. Treating Evangelion purely from a literary perspective might turn it into narrative mush, but bringing in a sociological perspective gives fresh insight.

In the framework I outline above I would tentatively agree with you. To be slightly more (or less) clear, perhaps, a more centrifugal tendency crops up when it’s easier for the reader to dissociate elements of the work and treat them as independent entities. The ability to be more abstracted from the work proper when socializing seems to be highly conducive to more general discussion and buzz about a given work.

For example, it’s much easier to say “Taiga is cute~” than it is to offer a detailed analysis of her character; you can do either but the former is quicker, more of a casual gloss, and any listener can quickly relate to it (either in agreement or disagreement), and voila: a conversation develops. Analysis has the same effect, of course, but it’s much less of an abstraction and isn’t always as immediately relatable to any given listener, and some listeners might not be able to relate at all (except, perhaps, to gloss and treat it as a more verbose “Taiga is cute~” and react accordingly).

That’s a guess, though, and I don’t how how right or wrong it might be.

There certainly seems to be a disconnect (but not an uncrossable one?) between top-level enjoyment and introspection about meaningfulness, between just wanting to be entertained and desiring something deeper as well. This was a good start into a subject that could be difficult to navigate in detail since it’s based on personal readings but it feels rewarding to think about because of that.

I am somewhat surprised that the ‘net hasn’t developed *enclaves* of intelligent discussion about deeper, more complex works of anime. Why isn’t there some forum dedicated to the analysis of Hayao Miyazaki’s works that we see in, say, Susan Napier’s books? Maybe there is; I know I came across several individual sites that delved deep into serial experiments lain when it first came out. But they were uniformly individual works, not collaborations or active discussions.

My lists are very subjective, and are built on appreciation and enjoyment… more on persuasion rather than proving.

So, I also hesitate to think that you privilege less popular, more inaccessible works that are more challenging to talk about; though I don’t see anything wrong for liking or preferring these.

I too, like many works that even I don’t like talking about and I don’t see anything wrong with that either.

And yet, something like an idea — like this one can be a rallying point for people of a certain persuasion, as can be observed among us your commenters.