Or the people who say that are obsessed with subtlety and want everything to conform to the Western standards for art due to cultural hegemony brainworms? Sometimes I feel very guilty for engaging with this sort of media instead of something more "serious"
no, and the idea of "maturity" in media is just a way for critics to jerk themselves off and feel superior
Sometimes I feel very guilty for engaging with this sort of media instead of something more "serious"
This is silly, simply do not do this. Even if anime were inherently Deeply Unserious (it is not, there are rad and cool anime) there is no reason to feel guilt over watching anime
Because the feelings of the characters are less subtle (in the general case), “show don’t tell” in general isn’t practiced as much as in western works. This also applies to the themes which sometimes are spelled out instead of being left for the viewer to discover (I consider that a positive because if you have important you want to convey, why not just do it clearly). But many people consider this aspect and the general earnestness of anime childish
anime has plenty of incredibly subtly told stories. watch utena, which is a great mix of subtle and blatant with massive amounts of space for interpretation
and being unsubtle isn't bad either, sometimes it's good to watch something that has the character openly discussing the themes, like ghost in the shell or the climax of every gundam
Damn "many people" are right huh, we all know that no western media has ever been unsubtle about themes or character emotions
Anime delenda est, I guess!
The majority of popular anime targets young people and is designed to be accessible to people with a pretty low level of media literacy. This is equally true for the majority of popular western media as well though. There is plenty of popular anime that is deeper and more mature than any Marvel movie.
This is compounded by the fact that anime targeting adults, with more serious themes, is far less likely to be made available to English speaking audiences. It inherently has less mass market appeal and there is also a self-reinforcing cycle where anime for kids and teens is more likely to be translated because of western prejudice against mature cartoons and so the western audience for anime becomes dominated by the people who want to watch that type of media giving companies no reason to print and market mature stories in western countries.
Translating media also removes a lot of subtlety by necessity, things that a Japanese person would intuitively understand via cultural context and indirect symbols must be made explicit or else be misunderstood by audiences without that context.
The only significant difference is the cultural acceptance of manga combined with the low production cost of the medium means that when an idea gets popular publishers can iterate on it extremely cheaply and quickly, resulting in masses of very similar stories that basically triangulate upon the aspects of a formula that drive sales the hardest, which is how you get the current isekai trend. Again this is hardly any different from "airport thriller" or "bodice ripper" paperbacks in western culture though.
As far as whether you should or shouldn't consume "immature" media, media serves many purposes, people of all ages, races, classes and cultural backgrounds consume light entertainment. Most people mostly consume light entertainment. I think there is value in expanding your horizons and consuming media that challenges you sometimes but there is obviously nothing wrong with watching things that make you happy for no other reason than that they make you happy.
A lot of it is based on assumptions, stereotypes and worst of examples of the medium - generalizing it all
"1000 year old dragons", Isekai, squealing voice actresses, incest, mindless fighting for no reason, catgirls, giant robots, hentai, etc.
Stuff that is not absent from Anime (the reputation had to come from somewhere, I suppose), and people instead just prefer to follow no investigation, but I'll speak anyway.
Add to that bad reputation, some racist presuppositions against Japanese people, and for leftists "they did WW2, they're more morally bad and their art is to be mocked". Also, the main demographic of Anime and Manga are young people, teenagers. Shounen and Shojo for example; very common.
It is of course possible to create meaningful, mature art within the medium, even within the confines of works that usually wouldn't count. Oshii's Patlabor 2 or Urusei Yatsura 2 for example.
Urusei Yatsura
I love this anime but damn, if I didn't know it was made by a woman I'd assume it was made by a creepy guy.
Western standards for art due to cultural hegemony brainworms
Seriously though the other reason for the apparent difference is simply about centuries of sifting thru mass culture to pick the stuff that's had staying power. It's like, pulp entertainment has its place and some things transcend it, but you only really know which things were "art" (a loaded term of course) with time.
You need to make sure you're comparing media appropriately - "Western film and lit" is so broad. It makes as much sense to compare Naruto with The Grapes of Wrath as it does to compare Twilight and Ikiru.
Or the people who say that are obsessed with subtlety and want everything to conform to the Western standards for art due to cultural hegemony brainworms?
This. I wouldn't be surprised if the people who say this are the sort who if they even give anime the time of day, watch the English dub because they refuse to watch it in the original dub and read subtitles (not that I wouldn't watch English dubs; I still refuse to watch DBZ in Japanese for example because Goku's voice is screechy AND YES I KNOW GOKU IS VOICED BY AN OLD WOMAN STOP TELLING ME).
Even among well meaning libs, I think they're just really sheltered from the rest of the world and have no idea how different other cultures can be. The lib I know believes the only reason non-Westerners prefer their own media is because they're not exposed to American media (which he considers peak cinema).
