When talking about western animation: Nuanced serious discussion about how it's deep, beautiful art

Basically any time anime is mentioned: "OMG, ONLY REACTIONARY PEDOPHILES LIKE THAT SHIT LOL."

Feels lowkey kinda racist, ngl.

  • Omegamint [comrade/them, doe/deer]
    ·
    3 years ago

    Western animation doesn't sexualize children. Anime frequently sexualizes little sisters/girls/etc, sometimes hiding it behind the fact that the character is a 300 year-old demon queen or some other nonsense. Regardless, the problem is that most of the fandom allow these weird creepy tropes to continue unabated, and honestly it's gotten a lot worse over the last two decades of anime.

    I used to watch a lot of anime when I was younger but I stopped once I realized a lot of it doesn't pass my fairly simple litmus test: "would this creep out a normal woman if I showed her this?"

    • Kanna [she/her]
      ·
      3 years ago

      Normal woman checking in to say there's also a lot of good anime and I enjoy it overall.

      Also normal is such a bad way to phrase that

    • BynarsAreOk [none/use name]
      ·
      3 years ago

      Western animation doesn’t sexualize children.

      It does just as much worse from a materialist point of view with all the Cinderella story crap, enforcing age old patriarchy and gender roles. Disney princess is literaly a major cornerstone of US culture.

        • BynarsAreOk [none/use name]
          ·
          3 years ago

          If you look back the past 20 years, and specialy the late 2000s with 2020 you'll find that the early-mid 2010's was all about pedophile bait(Eromanga sensei, Oreimo) and these days it is all about either high quality originals/adaptations with mass appeal(Your name, Kimetsu, AoT, Fate spinoffs) or isekai trash copy-paste.

          Anime is not static, there have been significant trends that died off, e.g moe-slice of life(of 13yo girls) during Kyoto's golden era(K-On, Haruhi), these days that genre is almost dead.

          In general I'd say these days it is pretty unlikely something like Oreimo would be consistently the most popular of the season again. Does that still exist? Sure go on MAL and see the bottom of the barrel of each season and you'll find some common trends. But if the question is if its changing, yeah I believed it changed quite a bit, if not because of cultural change but because of appeal to broader Westerner/Chinese audiences due to streaming.

    • Express [any,none/use name]
      ·
      3 years ago

      Anime in Japan is complete normal boring person stuff. “Normal women” is carrying a lot of weight here with some built in assumptions on what normal is. Not all anime is, some focuses more on Otaku niches, but most of it is very mainstream, Demon Slayer didn’t hit the top of the box office because of niche appeal.

    • videogame [he/him]
      ·
      3 years ago

      would this creep out a normal woman if I showed her this?

      I don't think this is a good litmus test because there's a lot of non-problematic stuff that would be super cringe to watch with your normal friends/parents but is still super enjoyable if you "get it" (100 gecs, vocaloid music, yeah most anime)