Is giving bad anime and/or hentai the MST3K treatment (tossing insults/jokes at the screen) welcome or considered bad form?

Good question!

My position is that MST3King is acceptable in the "Bad Anime" room and during the late night hentai blocks but not in the rest of the video rooms. (I'm talking about our designated bad anime room here, not any anime you think is bad. Remember, what you might find terrible/sappy/campy/etc. might be profound and moving to the person next to you.)

I like to get immersed in an anime (or really any film); it's more emotionally powerful that way. I don't want to be jarred back to reality and reminded that I'm watching a movie with a bunch of other people. Maintain the collective dream; don't be disruptive!

We do have a whole room devoted to stuff that's so ridiculous that mockery is welcome. (I mean come on, a mammoth and a liger??) Still, you should choose your riffs wisely - some people may not be as funny as they think they are. If you don't have something funny to say, just allow the show's inherent train-wreck-itude to shine through.

(And, as for hentai, out of consideration for the hotel's cleaning staff, we don't want people to get too into it; so by all means, mock away!)

I would also say that if there is no one else in a viewing room you're more than welcome to mock the anime being shown in there. I mean, who are you disrupting? The flies that are attracted to your con funk?

Of course, you'll be talking to yourself, and that's just... creepy.

Personally, I know people like doing the MST3K and all -- I've done it myself -- but there's a part of me that questions the morality of doing it. If you realize just how hard animators have it -- a beginning animator can expect a salary of about 1.5-2.0 million yen a year, officially placing them below the poverty line in Japan -- then you come to the conclusion that they deserve nothing but admiration. Somebody worked their ass off to make it in the hopes that it would entertain you.

Don't spit on that, please.

Still...someone worked their ass off to make Wannabes. I personally think they deserve all the mockery they get.

You have a point, though at the same time a lot of those animators probably don't give a shit about the project they are working on. They are all just underpaid inbetweeners on some low budget production being made by some director who either doesn't care about the project and is just doing it to fund his own work, or is some egotist who is so into his own vision and (self-declared) brilliance to realize that he is living in his own world and is making something completely ridiculous.. OR WORSE it is some "directed-by-committee" piece of crap targeted directly towards a predetermined audience that probably doesn't exist, and that anything interesting has been bleached out of in loo of a panty shot and a gundam reference.
So there are probably plenty of works out there that no one actually cared about (besides maybe the sponsor) and while a lot of people worked really hard on them, none of them cared about the outcome.
That being said, it’s probably basically impossible for us to accurately pick them out, and I may only be arguing this so I don’t feel bad next time I heckle something.

As for the bad anime room, MST3K’ing is part of the idea, but at the same time don’t be a jackass. At Ikasucon we had a panel called “The Funny and You”, where we went over the fine points of insulting something with talent. Maybe we’ll put a guide up on the forums. A good rule of thumb though is don’t say more than 1 thing for every two minutes.

Hmm. I guess the super soaker filled with hand lotion >is< going too far.

Mike, post that guide for me. For the sake of humanity.

Just kidding. But, yea. It's generally not a great idea to go into a room where they're showing something like Eva and blurt out, "You can obviously see when the frames change." Or something mean like that. (My mom said that to me during an episode of Eva once, and I told her to leave...)

Just try not to make an ass of yourself, and I think things will be alright, ne?