Over the top

It can be difficult to explain what being over the top means. Sometimes, we use the phrase to help explain why something is good, yet others it becomes something bad, and there is no difference in the phrase itself between the two uses. Even when we are saying it out loud, while we may mean one definition, what someone is hearing may be the opposite. So what is it that makes being over the top good or bad? What even is over the top to begin with?

It's a matter of opinions, of course. A good example for me is the Transporter series of movies. As far as I'm aware, no one actually likes them. They're stupid. They don't make any sense. They are completely and utterly over the top in the most ridiculous way possible. For me, it is fantastically and beautifully over the top. It's downright silly, and I can't help but laugh while watching them. The fight scenes, the driving, the explosions. None of it makes any sense.

But anyone I have shown the movie to looks at me with a look of disgust and confusion at every scene, and they don't find any humor in it. They find the impossibility painful to watch, and the story not only idiotic, but hard to follow.

In short, they find it to be over the top.

The switch back for me is most animes. I have my share that I like - Fullmetal Alchemist, Sword Art Online (partially), to some extent Dragon Ball Z. But many of the ones out there are just completely over the top. They go so far in that direction that their over the topness is over the top to the point where some people seem to think that it is not only acceptable, but exceptional. They love that the characters are schoolgirls who can destroy entire worlds by upturning their skirts.

I fail to see the appeal. It just doesn't create, in my opinion, interesting dynamics when power and drama is trivialized and handled like an argument between students.

Maybe I'm trivializing the concepts of these shows. Maybe there's something beyond the surface layer that I'm simply missing. But I can't get to it over the levels of ridiculousness that are so often presented to me.

But clearly, it appeals to somebody. And somebody intentionally made these things in this manner. They had a vision in their heads of something crazy, and rather than saying that it was too crazy to do, they went with it. And at some times, you have to admire those kinds of people.

But at others...