The anime is Genshiken (2004), I picked it up on a whim. It's alright so far. Very "by weebs, for weebs". The manga is from 2002.
The 80s and 90s being a pass of the baton from veterans of the early days to more modern staff, which already grew up with anime, and the success of Evangelion and merchandising had some awful long-term consequences even if it was probably unavoidable under capitalism.
straight up the only way to save the anime industry at this point would be to ban the depiction of any children or small people.
in a good year we get maybe 1 or 2 shows that's not sexualizing minors in some way.
:this:
Every high school slice of life now has characters with wrinkles and 5 o'clock shadows. Just like when Hollywood gets a 35 year old to play a teenager.
I also wish fads died out like they used to. It used to be that something like isekai harem self-insert slop or certain art styles (moeblob comes to mind) would have their moment and then everyone would move on. It's been like 15 years, please fucking stop. It feels like the entire industry and most of the fandom suffers from arrested development. They are all literal coomer-brained children from the top down. I want more shit like Perfect Blue and Mushi-shi, not Help! I Woke Up in a World Where Everyone Is an Anthropomorphic Sexy Penguin Demon and I Always Thought Penguins Were Kind of Stupid Animals but Now I Want to Fuck the Penguin Girls!
The wheels of weeb pandering industry require increasingly efficient pandering, where even the title of the weeb pandering directly tells the weeb what specific sexual pathologies that are going to catered to.
See my edit lol
Almost a
post, and I wholeheartedly agree.
The western slop novel equivalent is shit like "My Boyfriend Is A Billionaire Navy Seal Werewolf."
Yes, that's an actual novel for sale (may have got the name slightly wrong) and as far as I can tell it's selling well.
Yeah, the romance novel world got real weird with it after the internet let people share their extremely specific fetishes and ebooks let people self-publish literally anything. Of course, we also get Chuck Tingle, so it's there's some good with the bad.
Chuck Tingle had his finger on the pulse of the pandering horny slop novel world... and then that finger something something pounded in the butt dinosaur something something.
ChatGPTingle, an AI that's only ever read Chuck Tingle and cranks out 1000s of pastiches per day
Only if that one awesome motorcycle with the lady's grinning face is on it.
Romancing the Coronavirus my beloved
ok well that actually sounds interesting, wonder how they would ruin this
Probably the usual way: Self-Insert Epic Bideo Bame Boy uses bideo bame logic and metagaming/cheating to subjugate and take over the penguin world and all the penguin girls (almost certainly not of visibly adult age, so can't say women) mewl at the Epic Bideo Bame Boy's feet and fight for their senpai.
i was going to say that they could at least have the decency to mix up how they ruin it. but then i realized Goblin Slayer and Shield Hero exist and i changed my mind, they should not innovate in the ruining industrial sector
I feel that the only ideological difference between Goblin Slayer and Shield Hero is whether the chuds behind them hate foreigners or hate feeemales more.
100%. Arrested development describes it perfectly.
I can't handle another pathetic male looser coomer teen MC. 99% of all MCs fit these trope now. That or the pathetic male looser coomer teen power fantasy trope. Shows used to have such a broad interesting cast of characters, even bad shows.
Pretty much the entire industry is creatively bankrupt at this point.
I barely have any shows to look forward to these last few seasons.
Animation quality has improved significantly, but by almost every other metric shows are worse now.
There's usually a few good mid to high budget shows each year, everything else is mostly slop.
The pandering is so staggeringly direct now: "mediocre creepy otaku is now the epic video game boy that uses video game cheats/metagaming to build limitless power and have limitless sex."
Mushishi is seriously an absolute masterpiece. It actually upsets me how good it is, because it so meticulously highlights how unbearably trope-ridden and artistically bankrupt more or less all other anime is (yes even the good ones, yes even your personal fave thats “good actually i promise”)
Yuki Urushibara is a goddamn treasure and you should check out her other manga; they're all great. I also really like Chica Umino's work which is more slice of life but really wholesome and cozy.