Why Netflix Needs Separate Anime Genre

Derrek writes, "Not all anime shows up in the animation category of Netflix. Searching for individual titles or by directors or cast members pulls up all kinds of selections you wont find in the genre browsing. Before the update it was easy to find a disc of a series and add the whole series. Now I have to spend some serious time and effort to make sure I get all of a series and if it had any subsequent series afterwards. This is all forgivable if there is some kind of fix in the works. Full Metal Panic! would be one example of this."

Selecting the Anime & Animation genre shows how Netflix mixes Amime and Animation titles in recommendations:

 

What do you think of Netflix's genres?

Comments

[hannah]

It would be awesome if you could find ever anime show on netflix in one place, instead of having to look far and wide for it.

[gustav]

They also need sub-genres for Foreign movies in the queue view ("Foreign Crime", "Foreign Action", etc) instead of lumping them all into just-plain "Foreign"...

[CJ]

What do I think of Netflix genres? Pathetic! Don't understand why Netflix doesn't at least look at the Blockbuster and/or IMDB categories, which I believe are better thought out.

[Ashley]

At least "Full Metal Panic!" has all of its discs as part of a single series that can be added to your queue with one click. "Baccano!" has its fourth disc separated from the rest of the series, and "Hayate the Combat Butler" isn't organized into a series at all.

Netflix does have sub-genres: Click on the "Browse DVDs" tab and select "Anime & Animation". On the right-hand side of the resulting page you'll see sub-genres you can click on. Lots of sub-genres under Foreign too. But you're right -- Full Metal Panic! doesn't show up when browsing the Anime & Animation genre, even though Anime & Animation is listed as a genre on Full Metal Panic!'s page.

[Andrew C.]

The problem here is Netflix inappropriately categorizing 'animation' as a genre. Foreign films suffer this problem as well. A genre describes the storytelling mechanism by which a particular entertainment is presented: comedy (makes you laugh), drama (makes you cry), horror (makes you cringe), documentary (represents more straight-forward non-fiction), etc.

The fact that a film is animated has no more to do with this type of categorization than a film that is shot in black and white vs color, or presented in English vs. another language. These are mere technical details and have little or nothing to do with the actual story being presented.

Besides, when I decide what I want to watch, I think "I'd like to see a comedy today" or "some science fiction would be cool", not "boy oh boy, I could really use a black-and-white movie about now - it doesn't matter what it's about, just that it's black-and-white!" Who does that?

By pushing foreign and animated films into their own separate categories, they are losing richly deserved advertising. It's a shame that 'Persepolis', one of the more touching, heart-felt coming-of-age stories in recent memory, is completely divorced from the "others like this" lists from very similar non-animated films (see: 'Thirteen', 'The Breakfast Club', 'Harold & Maude'), and instead grouped with 'Beavis & Butthead Do America' and 'A Scanner Darkly'.

[Josh]

Just found avatar on streaming the other day... got 4 more days to watch all the episodes :(...

I was surprised it was recommended... and not I am glad it was...

I don't know if the above is a plus or minus for how it is currently done...

[Matt]

Netflix needs to update their whole website. Especially, their browse movie sections. Sometimes, when I go through a genre a movie is there one day and gone the next then reappears the next. Also, they need to give us more options for our queues. I am glad to hear that they are updating the Roku application. It's a step forward.

[student aid]

This is very nice I think "I'd like to see a comedy today" or "some science fiction would be cool", not "boy oh boy, I could really use a black-and-white movie about now - it doesn't matter what it's about, just that it's black-and-white!". On the right-hand side of the resulting page you'll see sub-genres you can click on. Lots of sub-genres under Foreign too thanks

[art.the.nerd]

Netflix needs a better way to search by tags, rather than their hierarchy of genres.

On an unrelated note ... after three years on NF, and rating over 1000 movies, I will be dropping my subscription (or reducing from 3-at-a-time) in the near future. Why? Because their recommendation algorithm is now totally useless. For the past month the home page recommends stand-up comedy DVDs; I have *never* rented or rated stand-up comedy. I have rented and rated over a dozen movies in genres such as science fiction and noir, but they have no recommendations in either genre.

I expected their recommendations to become better over time, but the opposite has occurred.

I am astonished that NF never implemented a voluntary multiple-choice questionnaire (What did you like/dislike about this film?) as a way to refine their blunt-instrument five-star rating system.

[door2summer]

I agree this ulimatly an issue with casting Anime as genre rather than format. Netflix needs to get rid of the Genre archetype and go with tag clouds. They are much more effective.

[Hbi2k]

Typically speaking, I think most anime fans know what they're looking for and find it via the search function as opposed to browsing. Better categorization of anime would be nice, but not strictly necessary.

The real problem when it comes to anime on Netflix is one of availability / selection (no Monster? wtf?) and the fact that when streaming, you are typically forced into the watching the dub.

[Brian]

There is something seriously wrong with Netflix's search engines and its genre system in general. If you search directly for "The Matrix", you find that it's listed in the genres "Action Sci-Fi & Fantasy, Sci-Fi Thrillers, Action Thrillers" with user ratings putting it at 4.2 stars. When you click on ANY of those sub-genres and look for it, it does not appear in respective list. Period. For how many other movies is this true? I can attest to the fact that it is true for The Terminator, The Abyss, The Notebook, and the list goes on and on. Essentially, this prevents you from searching by type, and forces you to look for specific titles, essentially rendering the genre-based search system useless.

[Asics shoes]

If you don't learn to think when you are young , you may never learn .