seriously my friends tell me to watch a bunch of shows and so fuckin many of them are obnoxiously pervy right out the gate :stalin-stressed:
Honestly the worst part about it is that you eventually get desensitized. I convinced a coworker to watch Madoka and he was like "hey it's kind of weird how short their skirts are". Meanwhile I never noticed it because they're wearing actual clothes and there's no beach episode. That's better than like 80% of anime off the bat.
Oh good. Brb, watching Madoka Magicka because I'm looking for something upbeat and psychologically healthy.
People who say this clearly don’t watch anime, there are tons of good shows that don’t do this.
I watch a fair amount of anime and I still give most of my recommendations with the disclaimer "but there's some sexualization of underage characters you'll have to ignore"
It's not an overblown issue
Watch better shows? It’s not hard to avoid if you simply don’t watch mainstream shonen trash.
It is hard to avoid even if you don't watch mainstream shonen trash. No need to get so weirdly hostile in defense of your treats. Separate your media interests from your sense of identity. A criticism of media you like is not an attack on you.
Idk what you’re on about tbh. It’s genuinely been a decade at least since I’ve seen a show with loli shit. I’m not being hostile, you are just projecting your own poor taste into everyone who watches anime. It says a lot about you that you think loli shit is common.
Even if you were right (you're not) the fact that practically all mainstream anime sexualizes children is still a problem worth talking about
And the problem is that most sexualization of minors in anime these days isn't even considered "loli shit." Most of these shows are about high schoolers which are broadly sexualized in all media, not just anime.
I would push back, and say you’re wrong, on most anime sexualizes children. Again, if you think that’s true it says more about what you personally watch than anything else.
say you’re wrong, on most anime sexualizes children
But you're the one who said that. You said it was "mainstream shonen trash" which sexualizes children. The fact that mainstream anime has this problem is in fact bad.
Might I suggest that the two of you are having a disconnect on what counts as "Sexualization of minors" and what doesnt? Because I find that these discussions can get poisoned by that.
It may be that they don't recognize sexualization of high school aged children as sexualization of minors, yes, I considered that. They would be wrong, though.
After trying to explain it a few times, Ive decided that I dont really want to get into it, sorry. It gets into stuff about perception of characters ages that gets some people really fucking upset (understandably, but still) and I dont want to make things worse.
Even if you were right (you’re not) the fact that practically all mainstream anime sexualizes children is still a problem worth talking about
This comment is the embodiment of their OP. Nothing else needs to be said.
Someone else posted a parody here which sounds appropriate "sexualization is when there are high school characters and the more high school characters there are the more sexualized it is".
Also its even funnier considering the meme at the top. You can name 20-30-40 anime over the past decade and someone will still come and post "practicaly all anime" as if its even remotely true based on numbers alone.
I think you could listen more to other people's perspectives and judging from anime toplists it is a serious problem.
That you found anime you don't find anything (serious) wrong with is good for you, but in the thread LotGH was recommended and that has a number of serious problems as well.
If it is so easy I would like to give you the burden of proof though and give us up to a dozen of anime in which what you write is rare doesn't happen. If you can try to keep them somewhat popular.
I watch a fair amount of anime and I still give most of my recommendations with the disclaimer “but there’s some sexualization of underage characters you’ll have to ignore”
:cringe:
The weeb brigade is here to imply I'm a bad person for recognizing the rampant sexualization of minors in anime, great.
As soon as I saw the ratio of this post I knew the weebs were here to defend their waifus
In saying that I have watched plenty of good anime lol
Awesome to see chapo.chat going from "don't be defensive" to "oh god oh help me they are attacking me".
It all started with someone simply saying "its easy to avoid just pick better stuff". That is a siberian winter take at best.
You probably need to read more on this website. Many people posting in this thread already had a number of posts over the bad issues in anime elsewhere in the past. Stop making a strawman when literally nobody here denies anime has bad stuff in it. You are not in fact in r/anime.
However you want a hill to die on, apparently everything is bad including the mainstream stuff(I'd say the mainstream stuff is actualy the most innofensive but anyway), sorry but its on you. You are allowed to have your opinion. Just don't expect others to agree.
There is no discourse here, only someone looking for a hill to die on. Pick better stuff. I can make a MAL list if you want.
Awesome to see chapo.chat going from “don’t be defensive” to “oh god oh help me they are attacking me”.
I'm not chapo.chat, I'm just a person.
And they literally did attack me. That's what "stop telling on yourself" means. They are implying negative things about me in the very comment I replied to. I wasn't being vague, I was directly responding to the contents of the comment.
Stop making a strawman
A strawman is when you directly reply to the things other people are saying?
However you want a hill to die on, apparently everything is bad including the mainstream stuff
Again, I'm not even the one who said that. I was responding to someone who said that all the sexualization of minors takes place in "mainstream shonen trash." Not my words.
I’m not chapo.chat, I’m just a person.
And they literally did attack me. That’s what “stop telling on yourself” means. They are implying negative things about me in the very comment I replied to. I wasn’t being vague, I was directly responding to the contents of the comment.
Pretty sure it all started with this
It is hard to avoid even if you don’t watch mainstream shonen trash. No need to get so weirdly hostile in defense of your treats. Separate your media interests from your sense of identity. A criticism of media you like is not an attack on you.
Your strawman is
I’m a bad person for recognizing the rampant sexualization of minors in anime
You should know better, don't make these types of generalizations when people here are the exact opposite. You were rambling about the "weeb brigade" so not even one specific poster.
Your strawman is
I’m a bad person for recognizing the rampant sexualization of minors in anime
No thats literally what the person in the comment I replied to was saying. They were implying that me seeing a lot of sexualization of minors in anime is evidence that I'm seeking it out and am a bad person. Again, that's what they meant by "stop telling on yourself."
You were rambling about the “weeb brigade” so not even one specific poster.
It was two specific posters (and the :libertarian-approaching: s upvoting them)
Yeah for real. Either people are only watching the shit that creepy weebs are pushing or they think that sexualization of minors is when minors exist and the more minors there are the more sexualized they are.
You don't have to hand it to them but even in r/anime some of the shit is controversial e.g Made in abyss. There is definitely also some hopelessly outdated notion that weebs are still 2000's nerd with glass type people that are constantly obsessed with porn.
Your 12yo sister that watched Demon slayer would be considered a "weeb".
Oh yeah don't get me wrong, there's some really fucked up shit in the anime medium. The problem is that most Western discourse about anime treats it like one coherent body of work when it's really just a medium.
Everyone can understand that My Little Pony and Rick and Morty aren't the same kind of media, or that the latest family friendly Marvel movie isn't the same as Cannibal Holocaust, so I think people need to put more effort into not always lumping all anime together.
Also, I think the definition of Weeb has changed a lot. Same as how Star Wars and comic book movies used to be "nerd shit" not too long ago, Anime has gone mainstream.
The fact that there are anime fans when it isn't a genre may speak more about anime fans.
One of the most normie gym bro I've worked with has a full back tattoo of Ashoka Tano and owned a storm trooper armour. And he is a father of two pushing 40. The way that it has become normalised is kind of nuts.
Oh, I can see how I came off like that. Sorry. My intent was to say that people who only watch normie shit (normie by anime standards) say this. If you watch actually good stuff the issue is not present. Ignore what r/anime watchers recommend and you’d have no clue loli shit exists. Saying anime is all noncery is just redditors outing themselves.
normie shit (normie by anime standards)
Normie anime shit by Japanese standards is basically all the shit that they used to show on Westoid TV anyway. If you look up movie box office charts for anime films the top 10 is almost always full of the latest Pokémon, Dragon Ball, Naruto, Doraemon, etc film.
By the standards of most of Japanese society, being into the shows that westoid anime weebs are into would mark someone as a weird Otaku.
Even outside that in adult anime. Gundam Wing, the old Hellsing series etc I can't recall too much wierd shit. Heero and Relena have wierd vibes but they're supposed to have wierd vibes.
Just off the top of my head for popular anime last year we had Spy x Family, Lycoris Recoil, and Gundam: Witch from Mercury.
Lycoris had the whole pantsu episode my comrade. It may be cute but it's not what these folks be talking about.
WfM is definitely possible, but considering Gundam history I'd suggest holding off until we're all done. The high school age kids in Gundam are always gonna be killing and fucking, it's part of the series theme of loss of innocence after all. Kira Yamato fucking the racist girl, etc.
I think Spy actually avoids sexualizing any minors though, which really is great.
Lycoris had the whole pantsu episode my comrade. It may be cute but it’s not what these folks be talking about.
I had forgotten about that one in all honesty. I don't really recall anything sexual about it since iirc they don't show anything and the whole thing is a gag about how the audience expectations rather than anything sexual. To me it obviously wasn't supposed to tittilate but I suppose someone could take it that way.
But that being said, just because someone could hypothetically wank off to a nude Greek statue or Renaissance painting doesn't mean that those works are inherently sexual in nature. I think there's a sort of hypervigilence and double standard when it comes to westerners looking at anime. The panties gag in Lycoris is sexual but the Simpsons had been doing gags about Bart's underwear for decades. Any anime that goes to the beach is "fan service" even though Avatar the Last Airbender also had beach episodes and I've never heard of anyone accusing it of sexualizing minors.
In conclusion: idk, I'm not smart enough to be a media critic.
Hellsing just had character designs with :awooga: boobs, they're all of age at least.
Yeah I'm going to stick to American cartoons where this doesn't happen like Big Mouth or Rick and Morty
"I can't believe those Japanese would sexualize minors!" I huff indignantly as I return to my marathon of Toddlers in Tiaras.
Not wholesome AMERICAN MEDIA, little Timmy is gonna learn how to use a gun, kill a man, admire some tigole bitties, and pray to the allegiance flag! God bless the golden arches of mcdaddy and the fuckin' YMCA!!
I JUST remembered that one of the transformers movies where a character, I shit you not, pulls a fucking card from his wallet containing a portion of the texan Romeo and Juliet law and explains it in detail to justify his relationship with a 17 year old, this is real.
He's texan, I dunno. I didn't watch the movie I just watched someone pointing out this scene
Ok I'm a big weeb but I also hate when they have any sort of fanservice or BS like that so here's a quick of acfually cool shit to check out. First some of the more mainstream stuff:
Full Metal Alchemist (the best shounen), Spy X Family, Studio Ghibli movies. These are all really popular so other people can talk about them.
As for some of my more niche/older personal picks
Baccano: A supernatural gangster anime set in 1930s America, it's actually just the adaptation of the first novel but it's still really good. It's not "slow" but I do think it takes a little while to get engaged in.
Tsuritama: Cute slice of life fishing anime about a boy who claims to be an alien and his two friends. Just a good watch and one of my favorite SOLs.
Odd Taxi: Yakuza/Crime drama based around a Taxi driver. This is one of my favorite modern anime series and an instant classic. Top of the list to check out honestly.
Death Parade: I don't want to ruin the premise, so just go watch the short that inspired it. https://youtu.be/PEqR-MRIasc if you like that you will probably like the series. I don't remember any sexual bits so if there's anything it's very mild and few. Most likely, none.
Shinsekai Yori: A telling of age story about child psychics in what appears to an idyllic village utopia at first glance, but the adults are clearly hiding something. I remember the least about this so can't really give a good description but it's good.
I promise you're not going to be blindsided by any weird sexual bits (outside of reason. There is a little to Baccano but this is 1930s gangsters were talking about) going on, and while many of them have unhealthy relationships, of course the Mafia has some fucked up things going on, they're not glorified.
Baccano is great. Good times and vibes. Isaac and milia are goat. ironic that durarara goes the complete opposite direction w the service angle.
Kara no Kyoukai (Garden of Sinners) is kind of interesting/weird w/r/t this sort of shit, especially because it's type moon. The nudity in it is incredibly uncomfortable (it's a sexual assault/rape), and you're not supposed to feel good about it. Outside of episode 3 (with the SA) though there's very little in the way of sex stuff, just murders, domestic violence, a character that wants to fuck her brother... But I think it's all pretty much treated seriously (except perhaps Azaka's chances). Shiki/SHIKI and Mikiya are great characters.
Still tho, having rewatched recently it's surprisingly non-servicey.
But yeah even some of my most recommended animes can't avoid the service trap. Hidamari Sketch is amazingly comfy, and while 90% of it is wideface cute stuff, the fanservice is inescapable.
Garden of Sinners as well as the rest of the Nasuverse is really weird in this. Some of it is just pure fanservice BS like Fate/Apocrypha and Extra/Extella, but then you get some great things like Fate/Zero or Fate/Strange Fake that aren't at all.
Yeah you get how strange it is. It's like nasu clearly has the capacity to write without turning everything into fanservice, as KnK shows. But then he just has to let his freak flag fly sometimes I guess...
Zero and Strange Fake aren't written by Nasu. Neither is Apocrypha.
I don't know about Grand Order (I think he has some involvement) or Extra though.
The worst offender of Fate the magical girl Illya one is also not him at least.
I've been enjoying the heck out of Legend Of The Galactic Heroes. None of that shit going on, it's nice.
LOTGH is a really fun ride. Its not perfect but im just a sucker for the grand scale of it all.
Agreed. It has many problems, besides antisemitism, "ugly=evil". It glorifies Prussian state apparatus and society, the author's leanings become obvious as well.
Yeah sure it has problematic elements but its a space opera on a scale you rarely see outside of books. There is a certain epos to it that I find missing from a lot of sci-fi. Dont really mind that much that its politics are bad.
Yeah, I don't think it's finished yet (and may never finish, modern anime being what it is). Haven't watched it myself, so I was curious. Finished the OG a month or so ago and thought it was good but has some issues.
Is it just me or is this shit more common than it used to be? I mostly watch anime from the 80s and 90s and I don't remember it being full of this kind of thing.
Lots of isekai anime used to involve young girls/women finding their own inner power then returning to their worlds as more whole individuals. Majority male isekais exist as harem builders in which a man is teleported and becomes a coomer lord in some Tolkien-esque fantasy world. This is because male neets and apartment dwellers that are majority wise Id brained will consume endless stuff to fill their own personal voids.
Apologies if it sounds like creepy greentext shitposting. In a more eloquent/straightforward way the profit motive for anime has shifted towards multi approach consumer markets (i.e. merch shit) and has moved towards immediate returns via target audiences that consume said merch which is largely males with lots of disposable income. Harem style isekais (though there some good subversions out there on it for every 10 creepy harem ones) are made not just to fulfill weird pervy fetishes but also because it allows a large cast of characters to be marketed and consumed (all the anime figure dolls, anime body pillows, etc). It also falls into an area of self wish fulfillment versus how other anime deep dive into far deeper and introspective materials (Ergo Proxy, Perfect Blue, Grave of the Fireflies, etc). Anime can be arthouse, but like western media many companies also want to sell slop (and some of that slop is pretty perverted slop). Sorry if my previous comment came off weird, comrade.
Alienation by capitalism that exploits the feedback loops of people that really need to touch grass (i.e. mental health counseling for some form of addiction filling).
Lots of isekai anime used to involve young girls/women finding their own inner power then returning to their worlds as more whole individuals.
Inu Yasha and 12 kingdoms gang represent.
I watched it so long ago that i honestly don't remember. I only remember the character growth and the MC becoming more and more their own person. It was very weird to see a female anime character that wasn't flat and childish.
If there's SA then i take it back, apologies.
Lol sorry about that. I have no clue though. Unfortunately, "Shojo Anime with SA scenes interspersed" doesn't narrow it down.
I watched 12 kingdoms relatively recently and I'm pretty sure it doesn't. It's possible it implied/discussed and I've forgotten that specific moment, but definitely not every episode.
I'm someone who watches a lot of old anime (around 190/410 shows, movies, OVAs, I've seen are from before 2000) and I think that's the case, but a big part of it lies in the settings and genres.
You have way less shows from say 1991 set in school with a 14 year old protagonist, whose goal in the story is to get a girlfriend despite him being a computer nerd gamer who has no friends or personality for example.
This kind of bullshit did exist, but rarely was it the focus of the narrative. The seasonal format popularized around 2007 encourages a lot more shovelware Anime desperate for sales, so both safe profit plots you've seen a dozen times before as well as horny-bait have become more prominent.
Another factor are the artstyles. The 80s and 90s tended to have more realistic artstyles , where you could more easily distinguish the characters' ages. Of course, more cartoonist artstyles existed, such as in Rumiko Takahashi's work or the later Slayers/Pokémon style, but moe or so called lolis really only took off after 2000, being either rare (the former) or mostly confined to highly questionable VHS-only content during the mid 80s (the latter)
I can't speak to raw numbers, but I think a lot of what used to be considered exclusive to niche ecchi anime has integrated into whatever is considered normal. Like the level of fanservice in, say, Grenadier made it an ecchi in 2009, but it's less sexually charged than My Dress-Up Darling from last year.
”My Dress Up Darling”
You know, we could let a few pieces of archived media be destroyed and not have a problem…
Contradictions of capital do be intensifying at an increasing rate
Come on now. You are 30-40 years removed from the content you're watching. Would you be comparing the cultural trends of 80's American TV and 2020's?
Much of the development of modern anime genres happened after that period. Some genres that were popular back then e.g magical girls have died out and were replaced with some parts being scattered and found elsewhere.
Its more common because there are a lot more anime being made, at least 10-100x more per year. Its more common in absolute numbers because you can find a lot of niche crap that barely anyone watches but still gets made.
But as a proportion its not realy more significantly different from the past 10-15 year trend. Anything before mid 2000 is an entirely different industry honestly.
Unhealthy relationships in fiction are fine. There are a lot of bad examples, sure, but that's usually because the show itself is bad.
Yeah, showing unhealthy behavior is cool and good in media, but I think the show kind of has to demonstrate that it's unhealthy, not romantic.
I have had multiple people say that fighting with your SO constantly is actually good because it shows you're passionate. Conversely, couples who don't fight have let the fire go out and are just living hollow lives.
I have to imagine they pick some of this up through the overwhelming amount of conflict ridden media everyone consumes.
Love is all about being terrible at communicating with one another, being quick to anger, and expecting others to follow a bunch of unspoken rules otherwise it's fighting time.
Also it's romantic to grab people and force them to kiss you.
Also it’s romantic to grab people and force them to kiss you.
Ah yes, the only kiss available to filmmakers in the 1950s
I don't know if you are entirely joking or not but many of the romance tropes in anime are entirely based on Japanese cultural norms.
Shocker I know but things like making a big deal about kissing or holding hands isn't just fluff or inability to write good story. Good or bad its not just an anime thing.
Conversely, couples who don’t fight have let the fire go out and are just living hollow lives.
I mean... there's a certain angle on that which is kinda-sorta true. Human interactions create conflict and its not abnormal for couples to argue or show resentment towards one another for different reasons. Its not good, but it also isn't strictly unhealthy either. On the flip side, couples that are either incidentally or deliberately avoiding one another tend to be in relationships on the decline. So I can see "fewer fights" because you're literally just hiding from one another (either physically or emotionally) as a really bad sign for long term marital health.
But fighting with your SO is also often a sign that you're both under a lot of stress. I wouldn't even say that's problematizing relationships with partners so much as it seems to breeze by why the couple feels under the gun all the damned time.
Unproblematic in terms of content, but didn't a bunch of voice actors get sacked for trying to unionize? I could be mixing up my series here.
Yeah I think that was to do with Crunchyroll trying to fire the english dub actors, I don't know what happened with that in the end. Crunchyroll suck anyway, but the show is still really good
I don't, but it still sucks that the dub actors got fucked over because they wanted better working conditions
Absolutely. I just don't think you can hold that against the original studio. Sounds like a problem with disreputable distributors.
I'll check it out! I've only absorbed bits and pieces of gossip surrounding all of that so thank you for clarifying.
Megalo box is a show about stupid sci-fi boxing. The main themes are PTSD and the importance of accepting immigration into japan. It is done in the old school art style. The show in criminally underapreciated.
You sure you don't want to watch the cartoon about the little girl that climbs down a hole and gets naked? Or the one about the two little girls that drive around a bike and get naked? Or the one about the little girls that get naked with their maid?
Oh and also doesn't glorify the Japanese Imperial Army and ignore their many wanton war crimes against other nations.
That's rare nowadays and actually very uncommon pre... 2010 really.
A show like GATE or Attack on Titan (in light with its unambiguously far-right ending) would stay niche like the openly fascistic Angel Cop (lmao this OVA's plot has jews be the villains who try to destroy Japan by aiding communists) or outright face huge difficulties getting made back in the 80s or earlier.
The 1982 movie Future War 198X, with a nuclear war plot written originally in a novel by an Australian Army General faced a boycott in production by Toei's unions for being too anti-soviet
Honestly just mentioned that due to knowing about GATE and how unambiguously chuddy it is towards the Japanese military. Also God damned Angel Cop sounds like a fuckin' trip... then again you also got the Saga of Tanya the Evil (legit alternative magical world Nazis that also has an episode with the main character killing fantasy inserted Romani coded people alongside a bunch of refugees).
Attack on Titan (in light with its unambiguously far-right ending)
Can you explain this one to me? I know I get fash vibes from AoT based on the extremely little I've read, but I'd like to be able to explain it to other people without going down an hours-long wiki hole on a topic I hate.
Various Spoilers
It turns out at the end of Season 3 that the monsters they fought for three seasons were actually exiled members of (minority - same as the main character ethnic group) in a place outside of the previous main setting, which had a curse that could turn them into giant mindless carnivorous monsters and were dumped on the island on purpose. Plot happens and they come into contact with the civilizations that did this, and they're hostile. Tensions escalate and Eren, the main character, decides to use a secret weapon and start the "Rumbling", which is basically mass genocide of everyone who does not live on the island with them. The other main characters try to and eventually do stop him, but enough damage has been done. In the epilogue the society is a militaristic absolute monarchy prepared for forever war against invaders and the main characters bizarrely thank Eren for having done the genocide for them, even if it was incomplete.
Not only is it shitty out of character writing for the last dozen or so chapters, but the finale is just wtf
members of (minority - same as the main character ethnic group)
Going out on a limb here, I'm going to guess that some people would put an extra two pairs of parentheses around that?
I don't think it was intentional in this case tbh, but still undoubtedly fascistic.
I decided to look into it a little bit, and, uh... yikes.
I was compiling a list but I got bored halfway through, so I'm just going to beg everyone to please watch Kaiji. Please!
Also Kino no Tabi. I love those animes.
But like an easy rule of thumb to follow is that if they're an isekai, a slice of life that is not called Azumanga Daioh or Nichijou, or if it's a shonen that it's explicltly set in high school or features high school characters, they're going to have some pedo bait. Luckily for you, those kind of animes are also fucking pabulum, like a high school setting is as basic of an anime as it gets.
If your anime is a movie that has received animation awards, if it's pretentious as hell, if it's pretentious as hell AND cyberpunk, is made by Ghibli or if the cover features serious adults looking serious with muted colors, it's not going to be pedo. There, those are expert anime watcher tips. Have fun.
if it’s pretentious as hell
I was going to suggest Satoshi Kon and well, yeah. You covered it.
