I dont get why so many hate anime?

[The Lawgiver]

Maybe revisionist history is starting to make its way into the anime sphere by hood weebs but no Anime was not mainstream. It was known yes but not mainstream, mainly because of 4Kids dubs of Pokemon and Yu-gi-oh and Toonami but that's about it. Anime and gaming in general outside of Xbox-type spheres were looked down on easily by normies or seen as kid stuff. There is a reason why a lot of sites online were made because they needed space.

Post-covid was when anime became mainstream and was considered cool to watch. but even then it's mainly limited to a handful of titles and generic shonen.

The rev!s!on!st h!story !s the cla!m that !t was only ma!nstream after 2020. Before that the rev!s!on was that !t wasn't ma!nstream unt!l 2018, and before that !t wasn't ma!nstream unt!l 2014. The year keeps sl!d!ng around and upways and !'m fuck!ng t!red of !t. N!ggers us!ng the !nternet has noth!ng to do w!th th!s.

 

[7/11 Coffee]

The rev!s!on!st h!story !s the cla!m that !t was only ma!nstream after 2020. Before that the rev!s!on was that !t wasn't ma!nstream unt!l 2018, and before that !t wasn't ma!nstream unt!l 2014. The year keeps sl!d!ng around and upways and !'m fuck!ng t!red of !t.

Anime has been mainstream since Disney actually

Anime means cartoon, therefore Mickey Mouse is anime

 

[The Lawgiver]

Anime has been mainstream since Disney actually

Anime means cartoon, therefore Mickey Mouse is anime

!t's actually a french word, though several d!sney product!ons were outsourced to japan for an!mat!on. there's layers to the funny.

Speak!ng of m!ckey and japan...

 

[skykiii]

"most common plot"? It's one of the most common jokes. He is always trying to grope Ranma or the other girls. He's even worse in the mangas.

Again, people always act like Happosai dominates when he really doesn't. I've read all the manga and he's only in like one-fifth of it... even then, most of his appearances are tertiary. It's more common for his past misdeeds to be responsible for something happening now (like the arc where the guy wants a name change and thanks to tribal religion only Happosai can do it) than for him to be groping girls.

Read the post. In the Slayers novel when Lina is captured by the henchmen in the first series they debate who is going to rape her. The joke is the fishman is going to rape her but she isn't able to lay eggs so he can't fertilize them. The TV series turns the rape joke into being kissed and censors the original novel like I said. I read the novels, I watched the series. I know more than you do.

No you don't.

They don't "debate who is going to rape her" they're trying to get her to tell them where the statue is, she refuses, so they threaten her with rape by fish dude to scare her. She still doesn't care so they order him to do it... then the joke of "oh, right, fish reproduce by inseminating eggs" plays out.

This is honestly a joke I think is made funnier by the Tokyopop translation, where they change "rape" to "kiss" like in the anime, but Noonsa still wants her to produce eggs. Then it adds a line by Zelgadis saying "I think something was lost in translation."

Also I find it funny that you're trying to dismiss me as a "weeb that makes anime look bad" when I posted like three long posts talking about how I stopped liking anime.

I meant more like "trannies are weak-willed, porn-addicted manchildren, so if they can turn on something they really like and formed their identity around for not aligning with their values, I should be able do the same thing."

The problem is, they can do it because they're literal ideological robots, probably don't even have souls. Of course when your every thought and feeling is delivered on a punch card, you'll be able to easily turn on anything.

It's ultimately a good thing that your heart has things you just can't reject. That's what makes you human.

Deny it all you like, but see if you can rebut this without resorting to false equivalence, no true scotsman, or ad hominem.

Why bother? I think Biglurker already handled this one.

Also in general, it seems like it's always the worst kind of anime that gets super popular and defines what future anime will do in Japan. Dragon Ball turned shonen manga from poorly-written but inoffensive comics (i.e. Kinnikuman, Saint Seiya) into borderline ecchi and introduced all the cringe tropes (forever fights, fourth-wall-breaking characters that completely invalidate weebs' argument of "muh MCU quips", and just really bad writing) that define shonen.

Honestly dude... Kinnikuman probably helped pave the way for Dragon Ball, and from what I read Kinnikuman is even more gross.

I do agree that Shonen crap has a tendency to become way too visible. I recall when Shonen Jump started publishing in the US, I read it for awhile but eventually was overtaken by a feeling of "all these manga feel exactly the same."

Also agree that fandoms tend to highlight the worst. This is why I have trouble trusting online opinions (even here) because most people will be fine with slop--I'm sure there's people who unironically enjoy Rings of Power (meaning the Amazon show.. I never hear people go to bat for the unrelated Sega Genesis game). Heck I'm old enough to remember when reviewers all said Earthbound was bad.

A big problem with most opinions is too many are the result of either conformity, contrarianism, or some bizarre emotional hangup.

I wouldn't be surprised if Ranma paved the way for tranime/futanari since I've seen lots of trannies credit their "egg cracking" to Ranma and similar genderbender anime.

See, this is why I said Ranma is tough to recommend now.

Nobody in the 1990s watched Ranma and saw it as trans advocacy. Most saw it as just a show with a funny premise. We actually had a topic about Ranma around the time the Netflix reboot was announced and even then we saw examples split down the middle where some woketoids derided Ranma as offensive for reinforcing classical values while others were trying to recast it as being actually totally a proto-trans show.

My own thought is that seeing Ranma as a tranny show is like thinking Popeye is pro-steroid abuse because he gets stronger after eating green stuff he claims is spinach.

80s is full of dark fantasy animation. From Wizards to Lord of the rings, there is a huge gambit of 80's dark fantasy animated movies.

And ALL of them are worth watching. The sadness kicks in once you watch all the animated 70s-80s movies and then need something new. I mean I don't mind watching Watership Down or The Last Unicorn again, but I've seen them so often I can quote them from memory.

And then for some people there's the weird biases. I could tell most people that Bravestarr: the Legend is a really good movie but most will think its a toy tie-in (it actually isn't--the show's concept was helmed by one of Filmation's writers) and then give it a pass.

Maybe revisionist history is starting to make its way into the anime sphere by hood weebs but no Anime was not mainstream.

I was fucking there, dude. It was.

Anime has been mainstream since Disney actually

Anime means cartoon, therefore Mickey Mouse is anime

I've always had issues with this argument. It's in essence true but its true in the same way "Tetris is a role-playing game because you're playing the role of the person who guides the blocks" is true.

I said this elsewhere: I hate when I'm looking at lists of "lesser known cartoons of the eighties/nineties" and then they end up mostly listing anime, because they're just not equivalent experiences, the same way that a Fantasy novel and a Science Fiction novel are not equivalent.

 

[The Lawgiver]

Honestly dude... Kinnikuman probably helped pave the way for Dragon Ball, and from what I read Kinnikuman is even more gross.

!t's great stuff from what ! remember of watch!ng !t as a k!d. 4k!ds !mported the sequel ser!es and !t's l!ke one of the!r few shows they not only d!d not royally fuck up but also techn!cally saved from be!ng unf!n!shed. Granted ! haven't watched !t !n fuck!ng forever but there was also mucha lucha happen!ng at the same general t!me per!od for a western show do!ng "wrestl!ng cartoon with gross out humor for k!ds" type stuff. K!nnn!kuman/MUSCLE !s more a ser!ous show at t!mes though.

 

[Kiwisee]

Also, I know I've said this already--and not to call out anyone in particular--but it is still amusing when people who go on about "degeneracy" also demonstrate an in-depth knowledge of porn trends.

That might have something to do with how prevalent EPI over the Internet has been for the last 25+ years.

Don’t pretend that millennials didn’t get exposed to degenerate materials by much older users back in the 2000s. Kid sites weren’t safe from 30+ year old men spamming their weird hentai fetishes onto boards, without a care that the majority of the user base were minors.

I wouldn’t be surprised if many of those same kids exposed to those raids grew up to despise anime, since their first impression of the medium was via EPI.

There’s also an element of “know your enemy”.

 

[LightDragonman1]

Are they having a good time, though? The majority of weeaboos I see, regardless of age or gender, aren't happy or healthy. They're porn addicted shut-ins who tend to fall into political extremism, are single-mindedly obsessed with anime to the point where they blow money on the crappiest merchandise and art commissions because it caters to their obsession, can't socialize well in public, have strained relationships with their parents, never get into romantic or social relationships unless with it's other weebs, tend to be average at best in school and work, and tend to have mental health problems. Deny it all you like, but see if you can rebut this without resorting to false equivalence, no true scotsman, or ad hominem.

That's a generalization. That's all I say. I have no doubt that there are indeed those out there, and they sadly get the most attention. The internet favors the most absurd and easy to milk lolcows after all.

Literally anime since the Calarts bean mouth and the plastic Pixar look are all anime-inspired. There was a really nice art style in cartoons around the late 90s/early 2000s -- Stargate Infinity and NASCAR Racers have this style --, but that's all gone and replaced by anime.

Really? When I think "anime-inspired", I picture shows more like Avatar TLA, Teen Titans, Boondocks, and My Adventures With Superman. The Cal-Arts and plastic Pixar style are simply the easiest ones to make, and not one that has the detail I associate with anime.

Also in general, it seems like it's always the worst kind of anime that gets super popular and defines what future anime will do in Japan. Dragon Ball turned shonen manga from poorly-written but inoffensive comics (i.e. Kinnikuman, Saint Seiya) into borderline ecchi and introduced all the cringe tropes (forever fights, fourth-wall-breaking characters that completely invalidate weebs' argument of "muh MCU quips", and just really bad writing) that define shonen. Macross, which admittedly did a few cool things, paved the way for idol anime and mecha that try to be romance/slice of life shows instead of serious sci-fi shows. Urusei Yatsura paved the way for harems and ecchi as standalone shows. Code Geass paved the way for trainwreck writing and worldbuilding/sci-fi as even more of an afterthought than it was in Macross. Straight-up hentai paved the way for OVAs, which then became disposable seasonal anime. It also sucks that weebs tend to fixate on the worst aspects of anime (overexaggerated emotions, non sequitur randumb "jokes", moe art, romance) while saying that shows that eliminate all the cringe and dare try to be a bit more original and unpredictable are bad.

The only aspects of anime I like at this point are that it focuses a lot on cool vehicle designs that are too old/expensive/not in the right format for me to own, the music (which even Null says is understandable), and the backstories/tech specs to a few mecha shows. The rest can go in the trash, and anime would be vastly improved if those few core elements were kept and adult characters and a greater focus on originality were front and center. For over a year now I haven't been able to watch anime that's not mecha/sci-fi because whenever I try to, I see how stupid it all is and I feel like I'm getting a lobotomy. Even when I watch toku or western manchild slop I feel so much healthier and freer than when I watch anime.

*Autistic rant incoming*

I really, really hate to say it, but you sound really elitist from what I'm hearing, what with you wanting the stuff you watch to be all the dark and serious tech-driven sci-fi mecha stuff. That would severely limit the medium if that is all that was being made, as again, the age-brackets for anime vary vastly, from shonen, to shoujo, to seinen. What you say would improve anime vastly would very much be seen as a negative by just as many. Regardless of whether or not it makes sense.

True, some of the tropes of anime can indeed be cringe, hence why I avoid long-running shonen anime. But that's just my preference.

What works for you may not work for others and vice-versa. And to be frank, while I too enjoy the dark and in-depth worldbuilding of those shows that you praise, I don't want every show to just be that flavor of ice cream. That being, adult-oriented, world-focused tech-driven sci-fi shows. I agree we could use more of them, but that doesn’t mean we can’t have room for the others just because some hate anything that doesn’t fit into their preferences.

Anime as a medium can be more than just the same thing. And really, throwing away everything that doesn’t entice you (or me for that matter) is just as reductive as saying that all anime are degenerate lol fanservice or formulaic shonen adaptations. I say, just look for the ones you like and ignore ones that don’t appeal to you.

And I really don't understand what you mean when you say you feel "healthier and freer" watching tokusatsu and western cartoons, as if they don't have their own sets of problems.

 

[3deadniggers]

That might have something to do with how prevalent EPI over the Internet has been for the last 25+ years.

Don’t pretend that millennials didn’t get exposed to degenerate materials by much older users back in the 2000s. Kid sites weren’t safe from 30+ year old men spamming their weird hentai fetishes onto boards, without a care that the majority of the user base were minors.

I wouldn’t be surprised if many of those same kids exposed to those raids grew up to despise anime, since their first impression of the medium was via EPI.

There’s also an element of “know your enemy”.

EPI was always around but it wasn't the default. You knew of stuff like Bondage fairies and Bible black as an early anime fan. But it's not like today where I see lolicon avatars on the farms.

That's a generalization. That's all I say. I have no doubt that there are indeed those out there, and they sadly get the most attention. The internet favors the most absurd and easy to milk lolcows after all.

Haven't you noticed the people most anti-anime are all ex fans who have seen how the community changed and how much worse it has got to the point where it is not a minority any more? There was a time when waifu fags were a minority you could ignore but now they are the core market for most anime.

I really, really hate to say it, but you sound really elitist from what I'm hearing, what with you wanting the stuff you watch to be all the dark and serious tech-driven sci-fi mecha stuff.

When weebs say "you're being elitest", "that's a bad faith argument" or "you're just trolling" it shows they don't have a leg to stand on. It's all character assassination because you know the anti anime group are right in what they say. So you have to attack the person and not the argument.

As someone who only watches mecha stuff and usually only 1 or 2 movies a year now (and I do check every season to see if anything has changed) I would like to accuse you and your friends of doing exactly what you're accusing us dark fantasy mecha fans of. Anime is now made by pedophiles for pedophiles and it's core focus is on selling the same bland characters over and over. Every series is now just 'the little girl series' and it doesn't want to be anything more.

Aquarion's first 3 series are shown in the trailer for the new series. The characters look like older teenagers and adults.

Aquarion that's currently airing.

Lets look at Gundam openings. I picked the first of the two most popular series and the most recent to compare. (I'd do more but file limits)

Lots of mecha action, lots of conflict.

Gundam SEED. A series they designed to get the female market in to the point of getting CLAMP involved. It's opening still focuses on conflict while hinting at future story elements when characters appear. Even when they're showing off the main cast it's with their Gundams in the background.

Witch of mercury opening where mecha outside of background dressing appear for about 10 seconds.

This shift has happened across the entire industry where the things older fans like have been replaced with otaku pandering. The otaku culture we complain about isn't some niche group any more. It's the core people who watch anime now and it's been mirrored onto the Western fanbases. It's what the industry is built around and it is degenerate. And when ex-anime fans point this out and say why they went from watching it to rallying against it the anime fans left circle the wagons because they are weird losers with nothing else in their lives. There's no attempt to understand the arguments being made or understand where people like myself are coming from. It's always circling the wagons at light speed while shouting "What about cape shit!?" "Western animation is just as bad!", We see the damage anime and it's community has done to so many of our friends or ex friends in many cases and can see how the community shifting hurt those people in ways they will never recover. Friends who decided to abandon their entire life so they could chase being an animator in Japan in all but slave conditions. Guys who used to be normal and well adjusted and suddenly all they want to talk about are little girl cartoons and My little pony. Anime has been awful on so many people's lives and when you see it from the outside and the inside you realize why it and the issues with pornography, gender identity bullshit and other weird shit has such a strong connection to it. And many of the people caught up in those things never would have been if Japanese cartoons didn't open the door.

 

[Spud]

What's funny is that "Anime" and "Western Animation" are the same thing. Anime is just short hand for Animation.

 

[skykiii]

When weebs say "you're being elitest", "that's a bad faith argument" or "you're just trolling" it shows they don't have a leg to stand on. It's all character assassination because you know the anti anime group are right in what they say. So you have to attack the person and not the argument.

Dude you yourself did an entire fucking paragraph about how anyone who watches anime is, I quote, "a porn-addicted shut in" and how "page 1 is all about people saying weebs suck, plages 6-7 are proving page 1 was right."

If you can resort to character assassination, you don't get to whine like a little bitch when others start doing it.

As someone who only watches mecha stuff

Getting away from the mudslinging for a minute...

Honestly mecha is a genre I had a hard time getting into. Mostly because the mecha genre itself heavily has the "I feel like I've seen this before" problem. Even the great Macross/Robotech would have been hard to stomach had I seen Gundam 0079 or Armored Fleet Dairugger XV (or, getting away from mecha, Star Blazers) first since the three shows feel like they're really similar stories.

For awhile the only anime I was regularly watching was Detective Conan... which yeah, murder mysteries aren't a creative genre either, but part of the joy is you're supposed to see if you can guess the solution before its revealed, so they have a "game" quality to them. The biggest thing against recommending Conan is it takes a few episodes to get into the swing and the quality drops when the art style changes (though that happens around 500 eps in, so you'll probably be sick of it by that time). Skeevy sexual content is at an all-time minimum--there's one iffy joke in the first episode and then that's it.

Sadly I do feel like its a show that just needs to fucking end already.

Usually the yearly movies are the high point, but these last few years they've kind of sucked, mostly feeling like bad fanfiction that somehow got put on screen.

What's funny is that "Anime" and "Western Animation" are the same thing. Anime is just short hand for Animation.

We've had this argument already. To repeat, its true in the same way that a Sci-Fi novel and a volume of the Encyclopedia are both books. A stupid technicality does not make them interchangeable.

I often have this problem from the opposite angle--right now I'm burned out on anime so I've been watching American shows more (currently going thru the 1990s X-Men cartoon). So its massively not helpful to tell me "if you're burned out on anime then you should be burned out on American animation as well."

In the past I deadass knew someone who tried to argue Tetris is an RPG because you "play the role of the guy who guides the blocks." But just saying, if I said I'm burned out on RPGs I would NOT take that to mean I should avoid Tetris.

 

[LightDragonman1]

As someone who only watches mecha stuff and usually only 1 or 2 movies a year now (and I do check every season to see if anything has changed) I would like to accuse you and your friends of doing exactly what you're accusing us dark fantasy mecha fans of. Anime is now made by pedophiles for pedophiles and it's core focus is on selling the same bland characters over and over. Every series is now just 'the little girl series' and it doesn't want to be anything more.

Have you tried looking beyond just mecha stuff and movies? Or is that too “pedophilic” for you? Maybe some people like to focus on the characters and their interactions more. The age also corresponds with the demographic the show is aiming at (the more out there fan not included).

We see the damage anime and its community has done to so many of our friends or ex friends in many cases and can see how the community shifting hurt those people in ways they will never recover. Friends who decided to abandon their entire life so they could chase being an animator in Japan in all but slave conditions. Guys who used to be normal and well adjusted and suddenly all they want to talk about are little girl cartoons and My little pony. Anime has been awful on so many people's lives and when you see it from the outside and the inside you realize why it and the issues with pornography, gender identity bullshit and other weird shit has such a strong connection to it. And many of the people caught up in those things never would have been if Japanese cartoons didn't open the door.

Erm, did something happen to someone close to you who was obsessed with anime that led you to come to this conclusion? Cause I’ve never heard or seen an example of this that you are blaming the otaku community for.

There's no attempt to understand the arguments being made or understand where people like myself are coming from. It's always circling the wagons at light speed while shouting "What about cape shit!?" "Western animation is just as bad!"

So to see where you are coming from, as a newer fan of anime, what exactly led you to this conclusion?

 

[Spud]

A stupid technicality does not make them interchangeable.

STOP RUINING MY JOKE BY TAKING IT SERIOUSLY! Besides this whole thread is just people who like watching Anime DEERing to people who don't.

 

[skykiii]

STOP RUINING MY JOKE BY TAKING IT SERIOUSLY! Besides this whole thread is just people who like watching Anime DEERing to people who don't.

Apologies, its just I've seen a lot of people make that argument and be dead serious.

 

[Space Police]

The problem is, they can do it because they're literal ideological robots, probably don't even have souls. Of course when your every thought and feeling is delivered on a punch card, you'll be able to easily turn on anything.

Weebs are consoom/porn bots as well. Like Shiverpeaks said, all weebs do is watch anime, read manga and light novels, and play anime games and they make it a core part of their identity even when it's unacceptable. I feel so unhealthy when I watch anime nowadays; it feels like living in a void of nothingness, and I'm glad I'm leaving it behind more and more. Also, by the way, people say anime fans are autistic, but they're more like NPCs with arrested development. I've seen all kinds of real-deal autistic people, including autistic weebs, and they're nothing like the garden variety weeaboo. The average weeb is like those normies who constantly talk about sports and Breaking Bad and whatnot; they have no interesting thoughts because they aren't consuming very interesting or engaging media. This lifestyle is cancer to autistic people because there's nothing very deep or interesting to hyperfixate on, and anime is the same way. The few autistic weebs I've seen are the ones who translate stuff and dig into tech specs and background information, but then, lots of translators are also NPCs.

I do agree that Shonen crap has a tendency to become way too visible. I recall when Shonen Jump started publishing in the US, I read it for awhile but eventually was overtaken by a feeling of "all these manga feel exactly the same."

I have never liked shonen stuff; when I tried getting into it I always stopped reading them because I could see the stories getting stupider and stupider by the chapter.

Nobody in the 1990s watched Ranma and saw it as trans advocacy. Most saw it as just a show with a funny premise. We actually had a topic about Ranma around the time the Netflix reboot was announced and even then we saw examples split down the middle where some woketoids derided Ranma as offensive for reinforcing classical values while others were trying to recast it as being actually totally a proto-trans show.

I wasn't really talking about woke stuff but the ecchi stuff. When I tried watching it, I was reminded of egg_irl memes about what it's like to be a woman and, combined with the sexual gags, that was enough to put me off.

I really, really hate to say it, but you sound really elitist from what I'm hearing,

How? Because I'm not exactly endeared the menagerie of squealing noises that's any moe anime, the pile of laughably bad storytelling that's any shonen, and the inhuman cringe that's any romance?

what with you wanting the stuff you watch to be all the dark and serious tech-driven sci-fi mecha stuff.

It doesn't even have to be dark and mature; it can be kids stuff too like the Brave series or the Robot Romance series. I'd say most 70s mecha anime are better than Gundam, even. I'm not exactly a fan of anime that people say is super smart like Gundam 00 or Ghost in the Shell or whatever because they always come across as trying to hide the usual anime nonsense under a bunch of big words. Gundam 00 is literally a Brave show (it even has the self-insert little kid, Saji, and the movie was a blatant GaoGaiGar ripoff) that tries to look smart and serious with overly skeletal designs, namedropping a few imaginary countries, and pretentious preaching. Ghost in the Shell is a fanservice anime that tries to look smart by having high production values and covering stuff you learn in the first few weeks of a first year philosophy course. Anime that tries to be a bit more mature and meatier, like G-Reco or AWOL: Absent Without Leave, gets shunned by anime fans for straying away from those anime tropes. To use a slice-of-life example, the Watamote anime did better in the West than in Japan while the manga devolved into a yuri harem because it was a harsh examination of otaku culture that hit too close to home for lots of people. There was no eroticism like Evangelion or FLCL or NHK or whatever, and the one sex joke in the anime was really cringeworthy and awkward.

For awhile the only anime I was regularly watching was Detective Conan... which yeah, murder mysteries aren't a creative genre either, but part of the joy is you're supposed to see if you can guess the solution before its revealed, so they have a "game" quality to them. The biggest thing against recommending Conan is it takes a few episodes to get into the swing and the quality drops when the art style changes (though that happens around 500 eps in, so you'll probably be sick of it by that time). Skeevy sexual content is at an all-time minimum--there's one iffy joke in the first episode and then that's it.

I don't care about stuff like Detective Conan, but from what I understand it's not degen or harmful in any way, so I'm ultimately fine with it even if it doesn't appeal to me.

Cause I’ve never heard or seen an example of this that you are blaming the otaku community for.

Lots of anitubers are like this; Digibro is the biggest example; his anime obsession turned him into a tranny pedophile who openly proclaims his love of lolicon and couldn't last a month doing things even the most burnt-out young people do like work at Target and go to community college. The fact that so many (I won't say most) weebs tend to fall into "LoliCvnnyClopRapist1488" or "Lilith, Yuri Princess of Love" is a good sign that they tend not to be the healthiest people. I've also first-hand seen how otherwise normal people with lots of varied interests and goals in life become shells of themselves once they go down the wrong path with regards to anime. This last example isn't anime, but Dansburst Studios went from being a bright young man with an amazing future ahead of him to an open pedo/zoophile who's proud of being a NEET because he fell into the anime-adjacent brony crowd (let's face it, MLP only got so popular on 4chan because the ponies had big anime eyes and easy-to-design OCs -- this is also why bronies hate anything that's not FIM).

 

[3deadniggers]

If you can resort to character assassination, you don't get to whine like a little bitch when others start doing it.

It's not character assassination if it's true. Anime communities do not clean up their bullshit and it infects everything.

Honestly mecha is a genre I had a hard time getting into. Mostly because the mecha genre itself heavily has the "I feel like I've seen this before" problem. Even the great Macross/Robotech would have been hard to stomach had I seen Gundam 0079 or Armored Fleet Dairugger XV (or, getting away from mecha, Star Blazers) first since the three shows feel like they're really similar stories.

That's understandable. Real robot shows are very similar and are often trying to be 0079. Sunrise found a formula and tried to cash in as much as possible. I couldn't sit through most of them when I was at my peak either. 50 episode series are too long for the stories being told

Have you tried looking beyond just mecha stuff and movies? Or is that too “pedophilic” for you? Maybe some people like to focus on the characters and their interactions more. The age also corresponds with the demographic the show is aiming at (the more out there fan not included).

I went through anichart just now. As I do at the start of every season change to see if anything catches my eye. The only series that looked interesting was the Red ranger one but it's an isekai series because otaku take over. So that's no good. There is the new Gundam movie/series/whatever that thing is and I've actually booked tickets to see it in the cinema. It's not that I don't pay attention and sit in my box ignoring it. It's that there is so little appealing to an adult male audience and anything you try is likely to be terrible.

Erm, did something happen to someone close to you who was obsessed with anime that led you to come to this conclusion? Cause I’ve never heard or seen an example of this that you are blaming the otaku community for.

It's happened to multiple people I've known in these circles. They lose their cultural identity and want to latch onto Japan and it's sad. And you see the same mentality with the "at least it's not marvel" attitude. Where instead of building their own culture and improving it they want to invade Japan so they can make the little girl animes/games.

So to see where you are coming from, as a newer fan of anime, what exactly led you to this conclusion?

I started watching anime as a kid during the 2000s boom. Gundam Wing was on TV, Dragon ball Z, Sailor Moon, that kind of thing was starting to get big on the internet. I leaned more into mecha so my crowd was late teens to early 30s men. Talking about the mecha and the series story. Early Wiki style websites like MAHQ and /m/ on 4chan were the hubs we used. We'd import games, gunpla and buy series on VHS/DVD and get the mangas off amazon. We were a mature community that rejected the porn elements of anime. People would laugh at the weird hentai and fan service elements were ignored for the most part. There weren't any weird sexual pests running around and the focus was on the story. I think you can understand how a community like that acted towards each other, mostly guys talking shop about fake robots.

Tumblr and Twitter happened and anime communities started to lean more and more into shipping. Porn stopped being this outside thing you looked down on and it became a major part of the sub culture. Porn artists were beacons on twitter and you could see their influence starting to bleed into other communities. A couple of popular series and the community I knew was completely swallowed up by the social media anime fans who's priority was 'cute girls'. The rise of K-on and other slice of life girly animes lines up with the brony era and the infantlization of men creating these weird abominations who are like feminine children but also have a constant need for porn or to tell you about their sexual interests. They had all the worst traits of furries but added in this childish obsession with Asian cartoons. And it wasn't just in the West but it was a shift we saw in Japan it's self. Series started to pander to these whale man children because they would spend all their free money on anime junk. It was female buying habits with the male obsession and income that created a type of very sexual, very shallow consumer and anime and video games have done everything they can to court them. I would compare them to gacha games and micro transactions. How we go from Halo 3 and Reach giving you hundreds of ways to build your Spartan to Infinite where you're charged for basic colours. The original core and quality of the product has been replaced to appeal to this new breed of feminine otakus. And now social media gave them direct access to the creators and they not only impacted the design process, they started to put pressure onto active productions and would often derail things into unwatchable slop, but it didn't matter because they still bought the red hair girl with glasses and the shy blue haired girls merchandise on mass. As long as it fits their general waifu style they will buy and consume. But all this consumerism doesn't even make them happy, so they demand escapeism on top of escapeism, so now every anime has to be Isekai so the feminine men can project onto teenage losers with harems. Instead of harems being a mostly niche genre, it's the default genre for all of the above reason.

The product is now something pretty terrible and the community has become a majority of the people I'm describing above. The older fans have moved on because there's nothing for them any more and companies admit this and release 1 off movies to try to keep them engaged. That's the market I have grown into, I am the guy who will watch the new Gundam movies, but the series are of no real interest to me because they're made for the otaku market. And modern western companies fund those same animes now because the market is so easy to exploit they all want a piece of the pie. So cute girls doing cute things is one side of the coin and now the OAV/Movie side is bowing to Netflix and Crunchy roll pressure to make my interests unwatchable when it does get something. There's no difference between Netflix Gundam and the latest woke marvel film so when you try to discuss it and hear "it's not like cape shit", it is cape shit and it has been cape shit for a long time now. It's just brightly colour autistic cape shit.

Anime went from a niche interest for nerdy guys to discuss without being homos to a hyper sexual life style where your fetish is your primary way to engage with it. If anime is what it is today when I was young I wouldn't have touched it, because it creates personality disorders like nothing else. It's a form of self isolation from all the things that are essential to developing an adult personality (and the fixation on teenagers means this is intentional). They are being specifically molded into a feminine consumer with arrested development because the industry cannot survive without them. The anime fan rejects family, friends and their own culture in favour of cute girls doing cute things, where they watch 10 hours of almost identical animes a week. 50 episode series where nothing sticks with them except the girls name to look up on rule 34 websites. It's an all consuming self destructive life style and it's designed to destroy you and then feed you garbage when you're miserable and lonely so you keep the same life style going.

 

[Space Police]

If anime is what it is today when I was young I wouldn't have touched it, because it creates personality disorders like nothing else.

As a young person who got into anime during the 2020s boom, I feel this in a big way. I have very little in common with other weebs my age; most of them don't even watch anime but instead obsess over crap like Genshin, Vtubers, and random e-celebs who talk about anime. I wish I could say something, but I know I'll get yelled at so I don't. I don't even like to tell people IRL that I'm into anime because I don't want to come across as a mentally-stunted gooner otaku pedophile.

They lose their cultural identity and want to latch onto Japan and it's sad. And you see the same mentality with the "at least it's not marvel" attitude. Where instead of building their own culture and improving it they want to invade Japan so they can make the little girl animes/games.

If I could go back to 2019 and try to make it so that normies continue to appreciate Marvel and Star Wars rather than laughing at them, I would. I'm not into superheroes but weebs act like it's a cancer on media when moe anime is far, far worse. MCU hatred seems to be one of those things that's overly exaggerated and is popular for the sake of it.

It's a form of self isolation from all the things that are essential to developing an adult personality (and the fixation on teenagers means this is intentional). They are being specifically molded into a feminine consumer with arrested development because the industry cannot survive without them.

When Null covered the Chibi Reviews domestic abuse drama on stream recently, he said that one day men are going to have to choose between anime and a woman that's worth something, and they're going to make the wrong decision. The degen stuff is a big reason women don't like anime fans, but even more than that, how are you supposed to be a leader for your family if you're an overgrown teenager? You'll just be a human aphid and you'll lie on your deathbed wondering how you wasted your whole life and how all those things you thought impossible were actually very doable if you turned off the anime and committed yourself to something that matters when you were young. You're not smart or cultured or special for liking anime; you're just a different breed of NPC who copes with wasting your life through porn addiction and, in some cases, drugs and alcohol.

 

[LightDragonman1]

Okay, I’ve read through all you have to say. All I can do is offer my condolences, as someone who loves anime both then and now. I’m sorry that you aren’t finding more anime that appeals to you, and I too wish that more that you are mentioning were being made. Though I’d argue that shows such as G-Reco and AWOL were shunned not because they differed from typical anime tropes, but just because they weren’t very good shows.

That said, I can’t help but feel that a lot of what you said falls into post-hoc fallacy, or at the very least, placing the blame solely on anime when the same can be said for an obsession of any kind. Like, yes they came out around the same time, but the Brony phenomenon coming out around the time slice-of-life more shows became popular for example just seems like one heck of a coincidence, artstyle aside. The rise of social media allowed fans of all things to be seen, and with it, the sadly degenerate side. I can’t blame anime in a vacuum when for me at least, I saw the same thing happen with video games, to a point where Japanese video games were the ones getting booed and mocked everywhere, regardless of quality, and it was the stereotypical COD fanboy that more or less lined up with what you are describing.

And I’m sorry that a few bad eggs spoiled the broth for you in terms of how you view the community. It is a shame that they are the ones who get the most attention, as again, their antics make for the easiest fodder to cringe and laugh at on sites like these. And I can only offer my condolences to you for seeing people close to you get too consumed with their obsession.

I simply can only speak from my own experiences, and say that I’ve personally never encountered people like who you are mentioning. Most of the time, the fans I’ve encountered have been chill and simply like to share their love for the medium in a normal way, while still leaving their homes and getting out to breath in the air. Heck, I have a good relationship with my family, and so do many others I know of that enjoy the medium.

Some anime focus more on the characters rather than the story. And yes, some do indeed use the moe artstyle. But sometimes, I simply want to relax and enjoy a slower-paced slice of life show. That doesn’t mean I or others fantasize about wanting to sleep with the characters, and I agree that those that do need to get a grip.

Like I’ve mentioned, the most I can offer is my most sincere condolences. You had a bad falling out with the medium, and you explained why. My experiences as a fan of anime haven’t been nearly as negative, so I remain a diehard fan. That’s that I guess.

 

[The Lawgiver]

When Null covered the Chibi Reviews domestic abuse drama on stream recently, he said that one day men are going to have to choose between anime and a woman that's worth something, and they're going to make the wrong decision. The degen stuff is a big reason women don't like anime fans, but even more than that, how are you supposed to be a leader for your family if you're an overgrown teenager? You'll just be a human aphid and you'll lie on your deathbed wondering how you wasted your whole life and how all those things you thought impossible were actually very doable if you turned off the anime and committed yourself to something that matters when you were young. You're not smart or cultured or special for liking anime; you're just a different breed of NPC who copes with wasting your life through porn addiction and, in some cases, drugs and alcohol.

I'm not gonna treat a guy that's around the same age as me as some kinda cyber daddy to take advice from, and I'm especially not going to treat an offhand funny statement while talking about internet drama as a 100% serious life altering thing. If you throw aside shit you like to chase coochie you're going to end up fucking miserable because that means your relationship is not built upon a genuine foundation. I've seen enough well adjusted adults who aren't dysfunctional e-celebs or "influencers" be into goofy or nerdy shit on either end of relations without their relationship falling to pieces to know that fuckers like Chibi are the exception, rather than the rule.

Also you have a LEGO name and pfp which makes the talk about people being an "overgrown teenager" over liking cartoons funny to me. Yes before the joke is made I have a homestuck pfp which makes this even more funny of a reply to the reply.

EDIT CAUSE I MISSED THIS LMAO:

STOP RUINING MY JOKE BY TAKING IT SERIOUSLY! Besides this whole thread is just people who like watching Anime DEERing to people who don't.

Seems to be both ways, honestly. Dobby didn't die for this.

 

[3deadniggers]

That said, I can’t help but feel that a lot of what you said falls into post-hoc fallacy, or at the very least, placing the blame solely on anime when the same can be said for an obsession of any kind. Like, yes they came out around the same time, but the Brony phenomenon coming out around the time slice-of-life more shows became popular for example just seems like one heck of a coincidence, artstyle aside. The rise of social media allowed fans of all things to be seen, and with it, the sadly degenerate side. I can’t blame anime in a vacuum when for me at least, I saw the same thing happen with video games, to a point where Japanese video games were the ones getting booed and mocked everywhere, regardless of quality, and it was the stereotypical COD fanboy that more or less lined up with what you are describing.

Video games are part of the anime life style. When I say anime I'm not specifically talking about just animated TV series from Japan. I'm talking the comics, the music, the video games and the places people meet. It's an all encompassing life style. Life style anime is different to watching an episode of bleach each week and getting on with life.

I think you said you were new to anime compared to the rest of us so you're still in the honeymoon phase. As time goes on you will want to take breaks from it and try other things. But the internet doesn't allow that any more. It's very hard to interact online without anime creeping into it. Even if it's just anime avatars or jokes about sexual things you know come from the anime side of things. If we could escape the anime influence we wouldn't be so annoyed by it.

 

[skykiii]

And yes, some do indeed use the moe artstyle.

I've never gotten what's wrong with "Moe" anyway... at least in some iterations. I mean, Lucky Star was adorable.

I never liked a lot of those other shows though, again same deal as with mecha... when I tried to watch Azumanga Daioh I felt like it was just proto-Lucky Star. I've heard it gets better later on but the first three episodes are kinda boring. I tried to watch K-On but it was also just... kinda boring. I don't blame the artstyle, just that I don't need multiple shows that are all essentially the same thing. Lucky Star got into my life first, so it got me.

But I mean, considering one reason I started hating western cartoons is they began preferring aggressively ugly art (Ren and Stimpy for example) I can't complain about moe art.