Forum - View topicHey, Answerman! - Y'all Ready For This
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Kikaioh
 Posts: 1205 Location: Antarctica |
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I disagree with Brian's perspective on old vs. new anime, mainly for two reasons.
For one, we don't only have to look to the past because of nostalgia, as Brian suggests --- we can look to the past to be entertained by the types of stories that the current generation largely doesn't offer. 60's-80's anime had lots of children's works, the 80's had lots of sci-fi and mature works, and the 90's had lots of charming and slapstick works. Are there any modern works that have the same spirit as Sherlock Hound, City Hunter, Dr. Slump, Area 88, Samurai Pizza Cats, Marco, Ryu Knight, Riding Bean, or Dominion: Tank Police? I'd say no (but if there are, please let me know!) The modern generation is pumping out an awful lot of anime titles about Japanese high school teenagers, and you'd want to look to the past if you're interested in different genres of anime that appeal to different age groups/tastes/sensibilities. Secondly, not all 'classics' continue to 'endure with a contemporary audience', as Brian seems to suggest. Pull aside any modern day teenage or young adult anime fan and you'll often find that many have never heard of Barefoot Gen, El Hazard, Giant Robo, Plastic Little, Project A-Ko, Record of Lodoss War, Area 88, Irresponsible Captain Tylor, Cutey Honey, Megazone 23 and even Patlabor. The 'old farts' of today may consider these titles classic in their own right, but that doesn't mean they're well-recognized by modern audiences --- classic works regularly fall into obscurity as new generation's worth of material gets released. If you're of the disposition that you don't have to look back because you'll only be entertained if you have nostalgia for older works, you're liable to miss out on anime that you might really enjoy. I do, however, somewhat agree with Brian when it comes to fan-service anime --- not in so much as that I find excessive fan-service anime creepy (I do personally find the sexual objectification of little girls to be pretty disgusting however), but maybe more so because of what it seems to reflect about modern Japanese society, and what it may be contributing to. Some of the modern-day social problems in Japan seem especially prevalent in the otaku demographic --- negative birth rates, decrease in marriage rates, increases in the hikikomori population, men wanting to date dakimakura/marry virtual characters/build sex doll collections/etc. Modern Japanese otaku culture often seems to be one of social awkwardness, sexual frustration and excessive entertainment escapism, and it's worrisome. For me, though, it's especially problematic in that Japanese otaku are largely involved in financially supporting the industry, and it's their investments that seem to be driving the current glut of fanservice anime --- which gives studios less incentive to make the broader variety of titles I enjoy.
I agree. Fan-service has always been around, but it wasn't until the 2000's that the industry seemed to start wholesale catering to the fetish. In my experience, fan-service in the past was nowhere close to the level of saturation that it is right now. I don't hate fan-service per se, but I do dislike that there's so much of it now compared to everything else (that, and the fact that so many shows these days are about handsome/pretty/stylish/sexy high school teenagers). |
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VORTIA
 SubscriberPosts: 941 |
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Chicken or egg? I think it's far more likely that a society which refuses to accept any deviation in behavior from personal norms, strongly suggests that a successful romantic relationship isn't possible for someone who isn't pulling down a massive income, and where individuals are forced to live with upsidedown loans on ever decreasing wages is creating individuals like you describe in prolific numbers while refusing to do anything about the problem it is creating. 2D>3D is nothing but denial and self-deprication projected onto the internet. |
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dragon695
 Posts: 1377 Location: Clemson, SC |
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Tell me about it! There are also the ones who use skimpy censor bars for glorious Nippon customers while the rest of the world gets shafted with gigantic, ugly pixelated masses. Fortunately, there are ways to get around it if you are clever, but outsmarting them is part of the fun. BTW, they are deluding themselves if they think that their own aren't just as bad at piracy as we are. After all, these xenophobic policies have done absolutely nothing to stop it. |
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TitanXL
 Posts: 4036 |
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The fact you talk about 'getting around it' and 'outsmarting them' sort of proves their point. They have total justification for doing this. And sorry, but 99% of the piracy leaks come from American websites and download sources, there's no trying to shift the blame away from that. |
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Chagen46
 Posts: 4377 |
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So do you seriously believe that the Japanese aren't the ones givig ot the raws for fansub groups? |
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RyanSaotome
 Posts: 4210 Location: Towson, Maryland |
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I can't exactly post the Alexa link since the site is banned here, but the top American anime torrent site is ranked #210 in Japan, with over 50% of its total userbase being Japanese. Its ranked #1,694 worldwide. American websites might be the root, but its the Japanese using them. |
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TitanXL
Posts: 4036 |
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Ripping RAWs is not what we're talking about. |
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Fencedude5609
 Posts: 5088 |
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Then what are you talking about? Because if you aren't talking about anime RAWS (and Manga scans) then...what, exactly? |
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Chagen46
Posts: 4377 |
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It's still piracy. |
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dragon695
Posts: 1377 Location: Clemson, SC |
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This is by far a minority of artists, as many doujinka I've dealt with have been more than happy to correspond with me and sell me product. I suppose it helps that I can read and write Japanese at a passing level. Needless to say, I am happy to support the artist and will be more willing to respect them for being open to doing business with a barbarian. However, I have nothing but contempt for those who play these games and try to screw me over with inferior product. As such, you will not see me respect their wishes in anyway whatsoever. But that has little to do with this thread since Japanese overseas piracy concerns are a red herring. One need only look to the mass availability of HQ doujin raws and cg sets on share and perfectdark. |
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dandelion_rose
 Posts: 657 Location: Kuala Lumpur |
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I'm glad that you've agreed with me on the catering to fetish bit being a more recent development. I can understand why some newer anime fans may be defensive about the stuff they love, but I don't think it's at all accurate to say that older anime fans who complain are ignorant or prudish about the anime industry and subcultures in the anime fandom. At this point in my fandom, I've gone past the stage when I used to check out almost every single thing that emerges. I select just a few things that I think are good, and if it means waiting for several years and catching it late, I'll do that. My anime and manga fixations are just part of my interest in Japan, which also extends to an interest in its fine art and literature. The more hardcore fans here will probably say that I'm no longer part of the fuel of the anime industry, and they'd probably be right. But the same can be said of the film industry and book publishing -- there's a lot of mediocre stuff that is consumed by fans, and there's no arguing that they keep the business afloat, but I don't think it's out of lack of love for the medium (aka being 'casual viewers / readers') when a film buff or a book lover says that a lot of the stuff produced is unsatisfying. |
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Fencedude5609
Posts: 5088 |
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This is a general phenomenon across lots of media, not just anime and manga. And there have always been tons of really obscurely niche manga for almost any conceivable taste. Its only been of late that some of them can reasonably get anime, elevating their profile a bit. And of course, due to the uneven skew of who precisely will buy anime on disc, certain fetishes get more anime than others. If fujoshi bought discs as reliably as male otaku do, they'd get more shows made for them. And its only a very recent phenomenon that basically every show that airs in Japan and isn't 100% for kids, will be available subtitled and easily available for overseas viewing, legit or not. Within my memory of being an anime fan, there were always at least a few shows each season that never got subtitled at all, and go back just a bit further, and most overseas anime fans would have no clue at all just what was airing right this moment in Japan. But now that is trivial to find out, and something like 50% of them can be viewed legit for free or a very nominal price. |
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TitanXL
Posts: 4036 |
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Doujins, CG sets, and all that good stuff.
There were plenty "fanservice trash" anime back in the 90s. Agent Aika I remember seeing advertised on TV... and you had Burn Up W and a lot more. There was even more if you get into the realm of stuff not released on R1 and had to be fansubbed. Plenty of these shows have always existed. It really does question just how much anime they actually remember from back then or if they're just cherry picking their favorites and thinking there was nothing they didn't like from back then. |
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dandelion_rose
Posts: 657 Location: Kuala Lumpur |
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I do think so too. This is why I call a lot of the hip hop club appealing music in 2000s 'porn chic'. It does seem that in recent years, that's all the kind of popular Western music that is produced. Some of my musician friends complain that it's impossible to produce music anymore, everything they do that isn't a break into the mainstream circle of club music, they have to give it out for free. At the same time, it can't be helped -- clubs are one of the few avenues of income for a shrinking industry where piracy is a big concern. After a while, listeners become attuned primarily to club music, and it becomes very jarring to their ears to listen to anything else. The economy shapes audience taste, audience taste shapes economy, etc. It's a good thing I don't care much for music.
In terms of manga, I certainly don't disagree with you. There's still a wide variety of material for those who are still keen on looking. One of the things I really enjoyed growing up is going through a comics store and being surrounded by rows and rows of manga. I really liked the feeling of being surrounded by pulp fiction, brawling heroes getting into fights with blood and guts and skimpily clad women. That was one of the reason I picked Get Backers much later, when I saw it on sale at a convenience store -- only to find that it was also trying to pander to yaoi fangirls at the same time. Sigh. (Incidentally, I do like BL, but somehow I felt disappointed when it showed up in Get Backers) Anyway, I really liked, and still like, that experience of browsing through a row of manga and then picking out a gem -- that was how I picked the English translation of Kurogane. As for the sheer volume of material that is present as anime, I agree, and I do admit that being an old fan can result in a lot of 'but those days people made better stuff' when in fact what we got was what was the cream of the crop, and that the sense of jaded-ness may come from the huge amount one has to wade through. Last edited by dandelion_rose on Sat May 19, 2012 11:49 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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Fencedude5609
Posts: 5088 |
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Those are definitely overwhelmingly scanned/ripped by the Japanese.
The difference, of course, is the decline of the OVA and rise of the one cour TV series. Things that used to be exclusively in OVAs are now seen in those TV series. Look at a lot of ADV's early output, for example. There is an awful lot of "fanservice trash" in there. Hell, Devil Hunter Yohko, their very first release, is a great example of the sort of thing we're talking about. Yohko spent an awful lot more of that series naked than was strictly speaking necessary. |
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