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!
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.
ChatGPTingle, an AI that's only ever read Chuck Tingle and cranks out 1000s of pastiches per day
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.
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.
Not the janitor. The pedo teacher (worst character and every character in-universe hates him, but whatever).
Azumanga is one of those shows like Tenchi Muyo (funnily, the Azumanga author started by creating basically Tenchi Muyo fanfiction) or Evangelion that are fine, even good by themselves, but contain aspects that would be picked up on and create bothersome trends.
Is this the reason why Christians like the idea of women “saving themselves before marriage?” There is a sadistic pleasure in fucking a virgin?
When dealing with chuds like that, I always tell them. “Now imagine how you’d feel if a gay man said that about Rei if they were a guy.”
Anno's intent and the actual response of the fandom is proof that god isn't real
I think Frieren didn’t have any sus stuff? I remember watching it when it aired. It was a pure 10/10. Give it a watch. I’ve watched a lot of anime over more than a decade. Nothing comes close to Frieren.
Currently, Orb: On the Movements of Earth is very good. Just an anime set in 15th century Poland about people discovering heliocentrism and the church trying to maintain control. Violent cuz of the Church but not sus. Three eps out and DO NOT LOOK UP SYNOPSIS OR DISCUSSIONS. Just watch the trailer and see if it’s for you or no.
Dungeon Meishi is seemingly devoid of any skeevy stuff, coincidentally the mangakas for both Frieren and Meishi are women.
frieren as a character especially has like a comically old-fashioned take on seduction
Frieren had Aura who is definitely right on the line of "But she's a 5000 year old demon!"
Show
I've never heard of Orb but that sounds like a super interesting premise for an anime--I'l check it out!
I found YouTube links in your comment. Here are links to the same videos on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
Link 1:
Link 2:
I was reading Ah My Goddess yesterday and there's an early chapter ripping on weebs which you couldn't make today because said weebs would get mad getting clowned on.
I was there, Gandalf, in 2004 watching Genshiken as it aired. There's a degree of leering but the show does have a bit of a critical eye at least.
Rambly thoughts on anime and the infinite sexualization of the medium.
I feel like the thing about anime that gets exceptionally icky is a product of its animated nature. I can watch Olivia Newton John in the tight leather pants in Grease without feeling like a total creep (though I feel bad because getting into them must have been torture) because she was 30 at the time. Just because the show says she's 17 or 18 does not change the fact she's an adult woman playing a high schooler (same goes for Travolta and the others). The camera's connection to the reality where she's 30 reduces the creepy nature of it all.
Anime though, you can have Yoko from Gurren Lagann who is 14 at the beginning of the show even as she's the object of
constantly. And if she were being played by a 23 year old, it would be gross but not gross in the same way where there's just the choice of the show. And the character designers aren't constrained by "reality" and still choose to sexualize a character they've made underage by fiat. It would be hilarious if it weren't so dark sometimes (Yoko's design is very 'mature' after all - you could have said she was 18 and no one would have questioned it). The reverse is, of course, even worse (2000 year old dragon), but it cuts both ways and I just think its interesting that until Euphoria I feel this kind of grossness was confined to anime. That show, with the age of its cast, feels like it's trying to do the kind of gross service that anime does all the time.I've said before that a lot of it does feel like Hollywood casting late-20s/early-30s actors for teenage characters, because you get characters that scan as like 20 something and act like adults, but then the narrative makes them like 14 for no reason. You also get characters that scan as 30-40 being assigned ages like 20, too. It's weird, like artists are compressing a multi-decade-wide range of adult character designs down into a range of six years and labeling all of them as teens for no story-related reason.
Someone else pointed out that at least some of it is adult writers basically writing a story with adult characters and then aging them all down to make them more relatable to an intended teen audience, but without actually changing their appearances or behavior.
I don't like when y'all post shows I've definitely seen, but can't remember the slightest detail.
The trans depiction in S3 can be a bit sketchy at best in my opinion but it is very much an early 2000s anime, has this vibe that you just can't get these days.
The vibe's one thing, but what's worse about modern shows is that the seasonal format doesn't let the show take any time to develop the story.
Gamers
