You see, whether you can draw like this or not, being able to think up this kind of design, it depends on whether or not you can say to yourself, “Oh, yeah, girls like this exist in real life.” If you don’t spend time watching real people, you can’t do this, because you’ve never seen it.
Some people spend their lives interested only in themselves. Almost all Japanese animation is produced with hardly any basis taken from observing real people, you know. It’s produced by humans who can’t stand looking at other humans. And that’s why the industry is full of otaku!
:miyazaki-laugh:
To take things even further I think that the objectification, flanderization, comodification and "othering "of female characters in anime has resulted in it almost exclusively catering incels and otaku that see women (and disturbingly, underage girls) as dolls to fetishise.
Which is frustrating because there is good anime out there that isn't like this, but I can't really say I'm an anime fan without people thinking I'm into moe crap or otakus gatekeeping me because I don't like their moe crap.
I just wanna talk about how cool Full Metal Alchemist is...
This is a good take, but I will say that this trend doesn't really permeate in the best and most popular anime. Like of you look at a list of classics or anime that have stood the test of time, most of them won't be obsessed with making a waifu out of every character. Like if you look at the top anime ranked on my anime list, Code Geass is the only one that has a big problem with objectification of the ones I've seen there (although Gintama is there like 5 times and I haven't seen that so idk). My point is, the major stuff that breaks through to casual audiences isn't concerned with waifu-ism or whatever, so people who watch Attack on Titan in between episodes of whatever Netflix show is popular wouldn't even know what a waifu is.
nah gintama is a comedy and basically every character is an enormous buffoon. iirc there is little to no 'waifu' shit in it.
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Yeah you're probably right, I guess my problem is with the sheer amount of garbage that is churned out because it's profitable and the small but loud portion of anime fans that want that to be the norm (you know, the kind with ahegao profile pics). Capitalism be capitalising I guess.