/ANIMETA/ General Thread discussing, analyzing and criticizing anime from the meta perspective of Capitalism, Media Culture (Industry) and Socio-Economics & Politics.No shitflinging, drama, bad faith or baiting posts (e.g. "Trap is transphobic" or "Muh shounen trash" or "(all) Anime is misogynistic"). Keep it cool comrades.
Animation: Treatment of Animators Thread
>>617 Leftist Anime Content: Communist Anime Thread
>>1417 Communist Anime Girls Thread
>>964 Miyazaki Thread
>>469 Anime Hot Takes
>>1993 so-bad-it's-good animu
>>2551 Sources and Questions: Questions and Answers
>>4229 E-celebs/Social Media: Ani-tube
>>3128 V-tubers
>>3388 Story Ideas: /WYOA/: write your own anime thread
>>4263 Shounen complaint thread
>>3200 Weeb-Otaku-/jp/ thread: /weaboo/
>>4715 Basic topics and questions:
>Is anime bad/stupid/boring or good/smart/interesting? >Is anime inherently a reactionary/capitalist product or can it be a communist or pro-communist one? >What Tropes and archetypes are good or bad? >Will anime be produced under socialism? Could Japan have produced anime if it had become a Soviet State in the Cold War? How would anime look like or differ under socialism? >Why are nearly all weebs and otaku right-wing or radlibs? Why are they so cringe and self-entitled? >>10491First, "weeb" used to mean "obnoxious anime fan who thinks Japan is the greatest and claims to know all about Japan only from watching anime but actually has an offensively poor understanding of Japanese culture" especially if said anime fanboy/fangirl uses random, non-sensical Japanese words and phrases while speaking another language just to sound Japanese.
Liking anime isn't bad in itself, and it also doesn't make you a weeb. It's just that anime is popular so it's not weird to talk about it in public anymore. Unfortunately the word "weeaboo" AKA "weeb" has lost its original meaning and now replaced "otaku" as a descriptor for any person who likes anime or manga-style art to any extent. It's retarded to try to insult someone for being a "weeb" in this sense, when most people like at least one piece of media with a manga art style.
Second, a lot of millennials and zoomers grew up watching anime (that does not necessarily make them actual weebs either). A lot of said millennials and zoomers are also rightoids and liberals, not only leftists.
Pic is sarcastic >>10495>>10497>Anime is the most aggressive escapism there is I'd say vidya and cartoons are similar judging by the Youtube chanels built on just those topics.
>if you think about it said character looks like a real woman you'd find on the street and that what offends those weebs, they relinquish of the very image of anything outside their fantasy.So they're incels (that does explain the 2D > 3Dpd shit).
Liberals: "MUH ANIMU IS BAD AND MYSOGINIST"
https://archive.ph/q4FJ4>implying that modern anime isn't directly influenced and targeting American markets.>implying that modern anime isn't a product of US control of Japan>implying that enjoying media without going into its ideological ramifications is impossible. <This assumption that all animation produced in Japan is basically the same reveals critics of anime as ridiculously ethnocentric.I think that those /co/fags and liblefts that tar anime as being nationalist when most American movies and almost all capeshit are just as nationalist are fucking hilarious hypocrites. Typically "the Left" when going after an anime due to its ideological ramifications also tends to hate on the anime itself because it doesn't fit their ideological morals. Most Americans also don't realize just how nationalistic their own film industry is. They don't notice because it like any propaganda that works has been drilled into them since long ago.
The military is involved in Hollywood; it's literally their propaganda arm. The military and CIA both have offices devoted specifically to "consultation" where they review scripts, nixing the ones that they don't like and funding the ones that they do. Trumbo is a great film that covers this. See
>>>/hobby/13010 and
>>>/hobby/10316 Hollywood is also known for their ability to rent military equipment to Hollywood on the cheap. The film "Captain Marvel" had airforce adverts running before the screening. Superheroes are the ultimate Randian wetdream. Ubermenschen dealing out justice where the government fails to show results. Not that the medium is reactionary as a whole. The "British Invasion" created a space for nominally more liberal, even leftwing publication. That's excluding the machismo of US military in the Bayformers series.
>>10544This is not to say that Japan is clean of this shit either.
https://archive.ph/zmB41 There was a fascinating article by Eiji Ōtsuka (pdf) that was translated and published by Thomas Lamarre in Mechademia a couple years ago called
"An Unholy Alliance of Eisenstein and Disney: The Fascist Origins of Otaku Culture". It basically showed how Japan's animation industry has roots in Showa fascist recuperation of Constructivist film theory (imported from the Soviet Union) to create Disney-like propaganda films. These circumstances are very unique as far as state propaganda goes and the advent of the "Cool Japan" reignited discussion of this. An unfortunately common "leftist" (I would say, liberal) interpretation tends to frame all anime as fascist (or at the very least, reactionary) but this is usually just cope meant to explain away all of the anime avis in their mentions who're unironically spewing fascist talking points. Neither are particularly interested in the industry, its history, nor its workers' struggles. Rather, they're just looking for something to complain about.
I vividly remember seeing photos of anime girls painted on the sides of attack helicopters a couple years ago. But it goes deeper than that. The JSDF under Abe leaned heavily into anime for recruitment. Of course Militarism in anime predates the Abe administration by decades; academics have been talking about its influence in mecha anime in particular for a long time.
The "soft power" of Japan's cultural output is all they're really allowed to have on the world stage, so anime is their go-to influence (such as GATE
>>1658 ). With Shinzo Abe's resignation and plan to complete his grandfather's dream of expanding the JSDF foiled due to Ulcerative colitis, I assume this will remain unchanged for many more years to come.
Hayao Miazaki is everyone's go-to example of criticism of Japanese militarism and it's results; by the late 90s we clearly see fewer instances of graphic violence and sexual themes in his films, coinciding with discussions caused by the Heisei era's Otaku Killer Case and . It's dismissive to call it all "facist natalist propaganda" as Japan's government didn't really start to seriously help fund productions until the turn of the millennium. You're ignoring the years of left wing influence on anime/manga, as well as its many nuances (which would likely be deemed politically incorrect by western audiences anyway). A lot of this has to do with the language barrier, too; I don't wanna say it can't be helped, but most people who so quick to dismiss a whole industry's output like this aren't normally interested.
>>10496But why do so many youth these days prefer the East though, it must be asked? It's not a bad thing obviously, but it's something to wonder about, is it because the cultural products there are "better", or is it just because of this sort of exoticization of "over there"? Or is this exaggerated all out of proportion because otaku are yet to exit niche subculture even now?
It's not the samurai that really get them, at least not truly because otherwise the films of Akira Kurosawa would be much more in the forefront of discussion by japanophiles and other /jp/ lurkers. It's not vidya either, despite the popularity most Japanese videogames are functionally and popularity wise no more or less popular than Western content. This leaves us with anime and travel vlogs going over tourist attractions.
>>10552>Japanese businessmen depend on it literally still using fax machines<fax machines<outdated I use that shit plenty, fax machines are great.
but yeah you make a good point, it's an excessive case of "The grass is greener over there"
>>10594>Why haven't animefans done anything to keep rightwing cucks from shitting up their community?The same reason most real leftists (in the West) are outside or lurk on obscure sites like this - having a nuanced understanding coms with complicated conceptualizations (the above posts or /edu/ are good examples) and this means that people generally don't care enough to listen, loud and simple ideas are easier to digest and so more attractive, this is how the right-wing remains popular despite being functionally horrible, it's also the reason the Bolsheviks started their movement on simple terms of "Land, Peace and Bread" rather than lengthy spouting of Marxist dialectics; they left that for post-revolution.
Additionally the liberals are the face of what most people consider leftist, despite them not being leftist at all, and liberal takes on anime are cringe as fuck; it's either LARPing as cute animu girls or screeching about big boobs being sexist (and not capitalism being it's usual self again).
>>10489 >Anime is reactionary for re inforcing and capitalizing on the concept of Moe and Manime. Slice of Life and the Shonen genres are guilty of this the most The fact that moe/manime/shonen series often are garbage and might be full of sexist cliches doesn't mean that they're inherently reactionary for having a certain storytelling or visual style. Every genre in every media has tropes and trends. It doesn't make everything reactionary. Reactionary isn't a synonym for "things I don't like". It's not progressive to find sexism in harmless gags and humor or purposeful extreme machoism. It isn't realistic, nor meant to be because it's specifically a massive exaggeration for the sake of humor and enjoyment. Nobody thinks Dragon Ball Z is a complex intelligent show, or that the tits on a hot anime grill have deeper meaning.
>reactionary gender roles in conservative imperialist Japan Traditional isn't a synonym for Reactionary either. Reactionary means to use government policy to force things to go back which makes it other side of progressive which is government policy to go forward. The terms are relative to what the past and present of any given country is. What government policy is working to backtrack Japanese culture when it comes to gender roles? They are moving forward not backward although slowly compared to some countries which is conservative not reactionary. As for it enforcing, no that all depends, because it's not all like that and just portraying something isn't same as enforcing it. Enforcing would more be actually making it portrayed favourable for everyone overall in it's narrative rather than it merely existing.
It's unfair to write off "anime culture" as a totally reactionary one, because the presence of regressive things in works that are of this medium does not preclude the possibility of productions that accelerate in a progressive direction. For example, a good number of older anime even today bring excellent themes which are antiwar and anti-imperialist, and they often put the progressively disguised but nonetheless imperialist movie productions of the Anglo nations to shame. And, to provide another instance, even while supposedly circumscribed by conceptions of gender roles, plenty of shoujo manga find ways to give resistance against the aforementioned expected roles that don't involve generic liberal takes. Tit's n' ass are fanservice, for low-brow enjoyment, if you don't like that, don't watch it. And don't claim that it's defended, when weebs call out pointless fanservice for being shit constantly - Mari Makinami is a great example of "tits and ass" that people disliked because it was a shitty insert for fanservice and bad plot shoe-ins.
"Otaku culture" today does have one serious drawback that could limit its usefulness in its current form to the Left, and that is its hyperconsumeristic nature. In light of the radical leftist histories of figures in the industry and the statements from previous paragraph that means that any mainstream manifestation of progressive themes risk recuperation under the current capitalist system. But that's again not particular exactly to only anime and otaku shit, although there admittedly aren't many other subcultures as consumption obsessed as this one.
TL;DR: Reactionary, traditional, and conservative all mean different things. They can overlap, but not always. A culture can't be reactionary unless it is a reaction to change in culture. Also progressive doesn't mean a specific narrow thing being good. In the past progressives were all for eugenics for example because they thought that was totally progressive to breed people into being healthier and fitter and stronger and smarter. Anime is not inherently reactionary and the problems lie in individual shows and people. It's not progressive to find sexism in harmless gags and humor or purposeful extreme machoism. It isn't realistic, nor meant to be because it's specifically a massive exaggeration for the sake of humor and enjoyment. You can criticize it for being low effort but that's not the same thing, heck there are plenty of awful shit and dumb tropes in anime but they aren't reactionary or need to be reactionary to be criticized.
>>10545>>10544A recent article on this 'shocking' fact of US movie censorship and funding by the military that I found very informative:
https://www.mintpressnews.com/pentagon-leaned-hollywood-sell-war-afghanistan/278568/ (It's all archived on archive.is or wayback for the pdfs).
The article goes really into depth on several films and their producers, directors, actors etc. and the sheer involvement of the US Army in trying to hype up their forces. They also go into gaming, streaming and sports funding of the US military and the effort it goes into making itself look good. I also very much suggest clicking on the links and other articles as they contain a myriad of information that keeps spreading and spreading like an hegemonic octopus of capitalist militarism.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CIA_influence_on_public_opinion >>>/edu/8394 A couple months ago the US military released an animated recruitment ad that featured a lesbian soldier from lesbian (petite bourg) parents that lived the American Dream but she sought more and signed up into the army doing cool athletics (all animated of course) and it's just
so cool and empowering gurlz, RLY! And obviously people had been fast to point out A) The impotence compared to Russian and Chinese military recruitment videos
B) The obvious animu inspiration (or more accurately ripping off the aesthetic of the lame yuri-baiting She-Ra reboot…
>>>/hobby/7671 that ripped off Magical Girl anime).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kfe6d6MzeLM&ab_channel=CensoredNewsNow (comparison of the 3 ads one after the other).
>>10999 >Everyone that points out problems is the same person Are you the autist that tried to defend beanface Cal Arts? Also funny but you're posting is distinct by the fact that you say "U-ur dat autist" to anyone that calls you out, lel. I have to ask are you the Spinel-fag?
>something I don't like draws inspiration from something I like, it's a rip-off No, it's a ripoff if it just blatantly imitates something and has little to do with the original source material as a reboot.
Since you brought up Steven Booneyverse I suggest you read the effort post on Revolutionary Girl Utena in that thread because it's statements are very applicable to She-Ra.
>>>/hobby/3758 >>10996 >not [that] badCompared to some cartoons of the past 5 years, no. But it isn't that good either and it's got too much liberalism in its monarchist fantasy.
Regardless you're digressing from the main point - that the US CIA controlled industry is using every blatant manipulation it can to ideologically and culturally impact people. This isn't a discussion about "muh She-ra" I'm just pointing out an example. On that note a good anime-inspired but clearly independent work is Avatar the Last Airbender - that is something I'd call one of the best cartoons made. It's sequel is one of the most disappointing and for the same reasons as She-ra
>>>/hobby/2562 it inserted needless liberalism and got indolent in its story-telling and later it's animation.
>>11001No you fucking idiot, I'm not the only person on the whole site who finds you extremely annoying, and I certainly wasn't the only person in the Steven Universe thread watching you sperg out about le beanface. And no, I'm not Spinelfag either. You might have Asperger's.
I don't see how the fuck She-Ra is a rip-off. It seems that it's just inpired a lot by magical girl anime and uses a lot of the common tropes. That's not a rip-off.
>>11018>that finds you <everyone I dislike is the same person Get over yourself and take meds. I've posted ~10-15 posts in the entire SU thread over the past 2 years.
>I certainly wasn't the only person in the Steven Universe thread watching you sperg out about le beanface <PEOPLE discussing animation style and arguing over its merits is "sperging out" Are you actually retarded or you think that everyone pointing out that stupid style is the same person? Are you mentally ill or just stupid? These are boards dedicated to media topics, it's the POINT to argue and discuss, no?
>inb4 muh IP countThe site only counts IPs from before the split, so even if a thread had 100 posters, if nobody posted after the split you'd see 1 recorded IP, the OP's.
>I'm not Spinelfag either See that's the difference, I
asked if you are, you just make up accusations
>I don't see how the fuck She-Ra is a rip-off. <inpired a lot by magical girl anime and uses a lot of the common tropesBecause it's unoriginal. This is like saying Darling in the Franxx is just "inspired" by Evangelion… the similarities to it are so damn close that the differences are nigh irrelevant. Hell ORIGINAL She-Ra predates the Mahou Shoujo of Sailor Moon and it shared tropes but as link related points out, they're not directly related.
https://archive.ph/SFntG They literally pull iconic scenes from Sailor Moon and Utena in She-Ra. If the show hadn't been such a mess over-all I don't think I'd care, Utena is a brilliant show and Sailor Moon is a classic 90s anime, but instead I feel like I'm bootlegging a better show. What do people get out of reboot She-ra? Magical Girl Adventures? There are better ones that it's based on. A Western /co/ instead of anime? Again there are better ones (Ex: ATLA) or the original. For lesbian bait? There are much better and more poignant things than the edgy libshit here. The fact that the best scenes in She-Ra ripoff iconic moments of other Magical Girl Shows indicates that there is no point to it. I might just as well read fanfiction.
The pandering to "le animu style" is obvious and acknowledged in modern non-beanface cartoons. That's literally all media outlets on anime and cartoons talk about in relation to that shit.
If you wanna get to the point - I dislike the She-Ra reboot, it's annoying and poorly done…. But I can't just say that, because peopl online jump down your throat if you dare to state an opinion unelaborated. Thus lengthy replies that you call "sperging out" The fact that others also reply at length or post at length like this is indicative of that.
>>11017>Not as good as the He-man reboot thoughLel, that's a good one.
the animation is top-notch but I'm kinda meh about it's plot If the Soviets or other communists had made Japan also communist, how would anime be like nowadays? Would socialist realism be the aesthetic of slice of life? Would it be possible even for otaku culture to exist, in that case, without the constant urge to promote hyperconsumption? The reason Otakuism is so unhealthy is people's deep obsessions about various subcultures nowadays come from the state of postmodernity and a sort of "alienated from society" mentality, as consumerist identities replace identities based around more intrinsic personal and action-based aspects.
In my opinion Otaku as hyperconsumers wouldn't exist, but they would exist as fans, that's for sure. Anime wouldn't have pantyshots and all that jazz, but eroticism and the subversive female power are deeply ingrained in Japanese culture, so I guess we'd still have some titties. Who said that eroticism (not pornography) and socialism aren't compatible? Look at the collaborations of the USSR and Japanimation they made a few anime together and several more were approved for sale in the USSR. Basically stuff from the 80s was pretty approved by leftists.
>>3735 In the USSR and former states there are a large community of LOTR fans who wrote essentially fanfictions and apocryphal sequels. In the USSR we still had 'fandoms' they just didn't have internet on which to organize, Высоцкий and many other musicians, actors and cultural figures (including fictional ones such as those of the Three Musketeers) were what people liked.
TL;DR: IMO Under socialism fandoms will still exist but be more healthy in their attitudes.
>>11353Short and to the point, nice.
>>11354>bothkek
>>11360Even Steven Universe, as much as I loathe it, actually did references to Mahou Shoujo and other anime that didn't just rip-off scenes, there's a difference. It's also the reason I respect RWBY, despite it's massive flaws; it does references but stays original.
>Homage This excuse is abused; it's not an Homage if the entire scene, it's context and preluding interactions are basically the same - that's plagiarism - You could only get more similar by literally tracing the figures. The biggest difference of Nu-Ra to prior Magical Girl content is the Zoomer-humor and lumpy-sandbag body designs.
This is a primary reason people dislike High Guardian Spice
>>11233 it's formulaic and too similar.
A proper Homage (for example) is Quint's Obsession in Jaws, paralleling Captain Ahab in Moby Dick. It's not directly 1:1 and so not a ripoff unlike something like Orca that did scenes from Jaws but using Ice Floes and lacking the originality of the Shark original.
In media if a scene is directly similar to almost all details, it's either a parody or a ripoff.
Regardless I addressed this and more, the pic is just an example of the unoriginality of Rhee-ra.
>>11363In this case it's definitely true, people gushed about it. The only differences is that they had Adora and Catra go back and forth at RPing Anthy and Utena:
In "Save the Cat" Adora/Utena goes to the "The Castle where Eternity Dwells/ Castle in the Sky" which is Horde Prime's ship to get Catra/Anthy out of this brainwashed toxic loop she is in. skip to her becoming She-Ra again and that is pretty much a direct shot from later in the Utena series where the sword is in her right hand and Anthy/Catra is held just like that in the left.
The pic I posted is one of the reverses; Adora being trapped/enslaved to Destiny much like Anthy had no volition of her own. Her wants and needs are swept aside for everyone else. Catra/Utena says she's not going to let her keep doing this alone, like Utena.
On paper this is a fine homage, but the execution is important, and copying it just feels cheap, since the rest of the writing is more like Sailor Moon's filler episodes than Utena.
>She-Ra is pretty open about its magical girl inspirations for that to be "intentional" plagiarism This is also true, but frankly that really isn't my main point of contention, it's the unoriginality combined with the modern "humor", shapeless, tumblr-type artstyle and liberal idpol inserted that just aggravate me. Utena never hid it's Yuri but simultaneously made it gracious and beautiful - art instead of cheap drama - and so even as a straight person it didn't bother me in the slightest.
I also dislike it because it' not JUST a Magical Girl Series but a Reboot of an existing series (by a person that hadn't even been around during She-Ra) and it just felt lame. it's not even the gay stuff, that's normal, it's the hyperfocus on that and only that, ALL the girls are Lesbian Caricatures and the only male protagonist is a pathetic stereotypical soyboy. The original Bow had been a beefy yet flamboyant man and gay or not seemed like a good fellow and supporting character, the new Boiw has the character of a moist noodle.
Link related kinda explains it at length and from a female perspective:
https://theladyfromplanetx.wordpress.com/2018/07/22/im-a-woman-and-i-dont-like-the-new-she-ra/ >>11539 >Why do otaku worship capitalism? Because they are a result of Capitalism, its alienating effect on people and hyperconsumerism promotion.
Article on hyperconsumerism:
https://archive.ph/yjckq Speaking of Hyper consumerism and the article, lolberts began coping and seething about "muh Vuvzuela" and "muh Yeltsin at Supermarket" garbage:
https://archive.md/c4XFr
>like otaku consumer.Capeshit? /co/fags? There are numerous examples of comparable consumption and exploitation.
>>12022>I don't see why it should be banned as long as what artists make is legal.It's a kind of capitalist market.
It was illegal to sell your art in such markets even in USSR
>>12023Making fanworks for profit is illegal in Japan too, doujin are extremely cheap because they price covers the cost of printing with no profit to the artist. Original works are of course more expensive because the artist wants to make a profit.
We might want to get rid of the market part of comiket but I can't see why it should be banned outright.
>Can otaku culture exist as we know it under communism?Nothing we know will stay as we know it in communism.
>Will anime be produced by the state Are you a libertarian or something? Retarded question, anime will be produced by anime studios.
>What about comiket? >Will artists be allowed to work on commissions? If we're talking communism why would artists need to sell their shit?
If we're talking lower stage artists would be paid to release their work for free.
>What about degenerate shit in otaku media? I imagine the majority of people wouldn't agree to give up their labor time over for production of pornography so that's something artists will have to do in their free time.
>Will lolicon content be legal?I don't care about legality but the real question is how workers having a say in production will affect it.
Will typography workers agree to print child rape manga if not for money? Will data center workers have scruples on pulling the plug on a server they know is hosting child rape manga if not for money? Who knows, who knows.
>>12019Unlike anime that requires team effort, there's not much you need to do vtuber stuff, all can be done by single person with internet connection. Not something that should be heavily policed unless the person is talking nazi shit or straight up misinformation.
>>12032In every socialist state it's the government that does everything.
>but it's not communismShow me a country with communism then.
>>12067Please go to the animator thread and repost that discusses this topic in detail. OR post this rather meta topic in ANIMETA.
thanks
>>13841>The Nazis fled to South America because they knew it'd be impossible to find a trace of them among the mass searches for "SS" by Brazilian Dragon Ball Z fansLMAO
>links?
>>14000This is pretty cool and a good idea, kinda like leftypedia.
>>14174 brings up a good point, what should be added? Plot summaries? Leftist analyses etc?
>>14177That honestly was sort of a half-joke, but yeah it could be done.
>>14174Basic data that hasn't been filled in like author information and episode intros, multimedia such as topic-relevant pictures to enrich the pages, little corrections here and there, and if more ambitious whatever pages the Portal has on the to-do list could be a few simple tasks? There are probably guidelines over there available to follow and random menial duties to complete if these aren't suitable.
>leftist analysisAddition of "leftist anime analysis", even though obviously the meme of "neutral nonpartisan objectivity" is a delusion, is not that good of an idea in this situation because the "environment of an encyclopedia" bestows an aura of objectivity, even if illusory, and to grant that upon some capitalist countries' imageboard shitposters' opinions or even a more prestigious source is undesirable. Leftists probably cannot even agree on what our takes on the
Gone with the Wind franchise should be. And to try too hard to frame popular media, from the currently majority bourgeois culture industry, into "leftist analysis" comes off somewhat liberal and immature in a way. Again, this should just be predominantly very ordinary work, like summaries of episodes or spinoffs and such.
Plus the administrators might suspect vandalism and haul out the bans. >>15350Do you have an argument
Because what I’m hearing is “I know your right but because I have nothing to say I’ll insult you than confront my dying community and the industries god awful practices”
>>15364>>15366it's about office politics, geopolitics, starting a career and young adulthood, and the fallout of unrealistic dreams colliding with reality
it's seinen, targeted at college student and older males, not really something most teenagers would be into
OP's problem is that he watches shonen for middle schoolers and gets mad that they aren't seinen when he should just google seinen anime
>>15370meant to reply to
>>15369Anime is all about having perspective. Know what it is and what it isn't. OP blaming an anime for using color is stupid.
>>15555>Do Japanese teens want to get away from their society that badly<or are the LN writers simply too lazy to do stories that aren't isekaiBoth. Isekai can be good but it lends itself to shitty cheap and no-effort 'writing' and its popular because people seek to escape their reality, especially in the socially repressive capitalist society that Japan has.
>Have consumers not gotten bored They liked [X] product and so after they finish it, they want more of the same, trying to recapture the excitement of the first time they read such a story, that's the reason many popular Isekai play on some kind of twist like Konosuba or Shield Hero.
>Is anime gonna get less popular paradoxically as it becomes more mainstreamBeing mainstream makes it have more general of an audience, but the Isekai trend is going to die down as the consumer market gets oversaturated and people become tired of no-effort schlock.
1. The military would still commission recruitment shows in which soldiers are little girls.
2. The state would still need anti-history indoctrination shows. For example:
2a. During Sengoku the population came to rightly perceive roaming samurai and most warrior monks as demons who robbed, raped and murdered as they pleased. This evolved into a general and correct opinion that those whose profession is war are repugnant scum. Demon hunter became a respected line of work for women whose job was to gain the demons' trust and slit their throats. No demon could fall asleep in a village, drunk after a rape session, and expect to live until dawn, so they needed to sleep in places such as caves. The state became desperate to reverse the soldiers = repugnant scum perception, not unlike European rulers with their knights. The pretense of respect could only be restored with a reign of terror, so you get things like rudeness (shitsurei – lack of bow) to a samurai being punishable by death on the spot. You also get shows like Inuyasha in which the roaming samurai and the warrior monk, the actual demons, are presented as being defenders of the people and fighting alongside the demon hunter women against fictional demons.
2b. For more than a decade after Tokugawa won at Sekigahara and restored the feudal system, Osaka/Naniwa remained a thorn in his side. The resistence Osaka put up during the winter and summer campaigns, against impossible odds and a foregone conclusion, created a general perception that daring to oppose the might of the state is true bravery and abject obedience to the state is cowardice. No state can afford to allow this perception to persist. The state needs to present abject obedience to authority as doubleplusgood and defiance of authority as abhorrent. So Japan went on a 400-year anti-Osaka campaign. This is how you get the anime trope whereby most characters from or named Osaka must be presented as dumb, lazy and useless.
>>15362>>15394no gay
most of the porn is guro or jailbait and not milf porn
>>16758>Why do anime fans have such low standards when it comes to anime Because it's become mainstream and computer graphics are much easier to do than the old 2D hand animation as a result Japanese anime series can be practically spammed and the effort into making them is almost zero, especially since very few good western cartoons are being made in the past 5-7 years.
Basically
- Have become easy to mass produce, and a glut of cheap Light Novels means that nobody needs to bother hiring full-time writers
- High demand means that people are going to eat up even shitty products en masse
- lack of competition by Western studios in terms of animated series (and movies TBH) means they dominate the market.
>Is it literally only because it looks pretty IMO it doesn't even look all that pretty anymore, not like in the earlier decades, but yes, the cutesy big-eye moe-shit is attractive to terminally infantile and/or terminally online NEETs that are steadily becoming the majority of the First World (i.e. areas of significant US influence).
>they think it's the greatest thing since sliced bread Because they have shit taste and anything to escape from their pointless reality is better than trying to self-actuate or do anything of meaning in their lives.
>>17094imo the "fuck US influence" people should look positively towards the time when the new left had an impact on anime cuz 1. it wasn't modern trendy "leftism" and, more importantly, 2. that was when creators, while appreciating stuff like disney & fleischer artistically, were politically critical of america instead of tending to lean US-friendly liberal like far too many do now. there was a legit feeling of "they want us to be their imperialism puppets, fuck that"
Tezuka for example fought against the insane restrictions US companies wanted to put on Kimba & Astro Boy's pre-chapter mini-comics are full of "lol these people thought my cartoons were too violent when the Vietnam war was still seen as a good thing, fuck off". now the attitude to localizers seems to be more just "oh well, whatever sells"
(pics are from Fujiko F Fujio and Akatsuka Fujio tho)
Japan is quite Westernized, but even then to claim that Japan or the Orient somehow don't find "lolicon" or excessive sexualization to be problematic, allegedly unlike the Occidental imperial core, is extremely ridiculous; if one is to be candid the U.S.A. has far more acceptance of hypercommodification and child sexualization than Asia, Africa, or the Middle East. That not everyone shares the "fetishization" of sexuality by overly prudish traditional norms of the West does not entail that the non-Western civilizations embrace bourgeois decadence, degeneracy, and full hedonism as the today's West more and more does. What could be considered "Puritanical" sexual norms were also common for socialist countries and aren't actually contradictory with socially progressive policies, as for instance restriction of prostitution as an industry and pornography was relevant for sexual and gender equality.
>>18014**Japanese otaku subculture and otaku-targeted media however often are indeed quite sexualized but usually, if the material
is not directly pornographic, the sexual content is done by more "repressed" ways.**
>>18090Good for them.
Freud was a mistake.
>>18123My normalfag friends sure do.
The japanese and chinese tend to watch a heap of anime.
I've noticed there's a tendency in a lot of anime to go for this underdog trope, it's a common story trope in general for a lot of protagonists, however in recent times a lot of anime has made a focus on characters that beat magic and the like through "physical power" and "training" and the like. A recent example being Mashle which sounds like someone watched Black Clover and decided to take the "magicless underdog" concept and make it even more hardcore by not even giving the main character something like an anti-magic sword/powers or the like.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mashle?useskin=vector Earlier shonen protagonists like Naruto or early DB/DBZ Goku or Luffy were technically underdogs but that had hidden potential or could train to become much stronger or used technique to overcome their weaknesses and even creative utilization of otherwise weak abilities to beat superior opponents. But this hardcore hobbling of many newer generation shonen protagonists forces the authors to make up convoluted story lines to keep them relevant at all, or resort to One Punch Man-tier "fuck it"s. Maybe I'm thinking about this too hard though.
>>20043>why is there only like one girl in the main party and four dudes? Reverse harem, duh.
>>20040 That is true, I guess, it's just kinda getting extreme.
>>20047 Huh?
>>20444>Mangakas are horny and the Japanese are more sexually repressed IRL. FTFY
>>20651 >Lolicon fascists are dimes to the dozenNot untrue but there's just as many liberal weebs with autistic radlib ideology too, who support the same things in the anime "community" from a different side.
>Does anime autist obsession easily lend partly itself to reactionary and bigoted politics Not really any more than anything else, it's just a result of hyper-consumerist communities primarily made up of burgers and the primary political beliefs of burgers are often similar to Japanese ones (thus people like Attack on Titan, in spite of its fascistic pro-imperial messages).
>>20656 NTA but your argument is flawed, twitter is not anti-anime, if anything it is the home of many anime autists, as is reddit and 4/a/, primary communities of anime communities in the West.
>>20657 >if youre gonna bring up muh normalcy you cant complain about sexualizationNTA but how does that make sense?
>>16714>No demon could fall asleep in a village, drunk after a rape session, and expect to live until dawn, so they needed to sleep in places such as caves. The state became desperate to reverse the soldiers = repugnant scum perceptionThis reminds me of an excerpt from Musui's Story: The Autobiography of a Tokugawa Samurai by Katsu Kokichi (Author), Teruko Craig (Translator, Introduction) University of Arizona Press (July 1, 1991)
where he reflects on most of his colleagues being dead as a result of their marauding.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nQY3dbUsVgE&ab_channel=VoicesofthePast https://tildes.net/~humanities.history/19h2/mediocre_samurai_describes_real_life_in_historical_japan >>22944To be fair Ganguro is a subset of Gyaru, but yeah this is a retarded take, I don't even know what the fuck this mall goth analogy was supposed to mean.
Also Gyaru thread
>>639 >>22958This is what a race basically is
THOUGH. Just a phenotype.
>>16813Needs a Dakimura edited under his arm
>>16809 I gotta say that screenshot made me laugh. In the 90s and early 2000s those kinds of race jokes (and vice versa for white people) were pretty common, and people didn't get offended over it because it was just casual humor. But I digress. But yeah fuck 90% of moeshit.
>>25359 I think the point is that moeshit took the "cute, kawaii!!!" aesthetic so far, that it became an almost universal style. Almost every anime today has the female characters have almost the same exact faces. Sure the 90s, 80s and 2000s had some similar aesthetics, but characters, series and OVAs still had distinct faces and designs, you could never confuse Bleach with Naruto or One Piece or Dragon Ball and vice versa. In Miyazaki's and Anno's works the characters have similar aesthetics and similar faces to an extent as part of their artistic stylization, but I wouldn't mix up Rei with Asuka or Misato or Nadia, despite similarities. Now people can edit 'moe' anime girls from different series into a single show and nobody would be able to tell the difference. It's not as problematic with male characters but still exists for them too.
TL;DR: Modern anime through the proliferation of the 'Moe' aesthetic has made many characters and anime series too samefaced.
Seriously as a random comparison. The girls in K-On, SAO, Konosuba, Love-Live and I've Been Killing Slimes for 300 Years all have similar-faced girls. Literally just swap clothes and hair colors.
Unique IPs: 116