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List of Summer Season 2011 TV Anime in Japan

Top Gun wrote:

*wistfully yearns for the days when anime as a whole was known for awesome sci-fi and giant robots instead of moeblob nonsense*

Truth is moe has always existed as a large part of anime, we just didn't have a name for it in the 80s and 90s. Think about it: Many Rumiko Takahashi titles, most of the Ghibli library, Sailor Moon along with all other magical girl series, Tenchi, Saber Marionette, Orange Road, Project A-KO, Gunbuster, and many other titles released outside of Japan along with hundreds that never were would all be called "moe" had they been released today. Moe isn't a new concept to anime, the label is.

And just like how many of those shows are truly awesome and have stood the test of time, a lot of the modern moe titles are just as good or better. Personally I enjoy moe now just as much as I did nearly 20 years ago.

Emerje

Emerje wrote:

Top Gun wrote: *wistfully yearns for the days when anime as a whole was known for awesome sci-fi and giant robots instead of moeblob nonsense* Truth is moe has always existed as a large part of anime, we just didn't have a name for it in the 80s and 90s. Think about it: Many Rumiko Takahashi titles, most of the Ghibli library, Sailor Moon along with all other magical girl series, Tenchi, Saber Marionette, Orange Road, Project A-KO, Gunbuster, and many other titles released outside of Japan along with hundreds that never were would all be called "moe" had they been released today. Moe isn't a new concept to anime, the label is. And just like how many of those shows are truly awesome and have stood the test of time, a lot of the modern moe titles are just as good or better. Personally I enjoy moe now just as much as I did nearly 20 years ago. Emerje

Well said, Emerje!
People don't realize that a lot of the anime with great and epic stories were moe.

Top Gun wrote:

*wistfully yearns for the days when anime as a whole was known for awesome sci-fi and giant robots instead of moeblob nonsense*

Truth is moe has always existed as a large part of anime, we just didn't have a name for it in the 80s and 90s. Think about it: Many Rumiko Takahashi titles, most of the Ghibli library, Sailor Moon along with all other magical girl series, Tenchi, Saber Marionette, Orange Road, Project A-KO, Gunbuster, and many other titles released outside of Japan along with hundreds that never were would all be called "moe" had they been released today. Moe isn't a new concept to anime, the label is.

And just like how many of those shows are truly awesome and have stood the test of time, a lot of the modern moe titles are just as good or better. Personally I enjoy moe now just as much as I did nearly 20 years ago.

Emerje

Emerje wrote:

Top Gun wrote: *wistfully yearns for the days when anime as a whole was known for awesome sci-fi and giant robots instead of moeblob nonsense* Truth is moe has always existed as a large part of anime, we just didn't have a name for it in the 80s and 90s. Think about it: Many Rumiko Takahashi titles, most of the Ghibli library, Sailor Moon along with all other magical girl series, Tenchi, Saber Marionette, Orange Road, Project A-KO, Gunbuster, and many other titles released outside of Japan along with hundreds that never were would all be called "moe" had they been released today. Moe isn't a new concept to anime, the label is. And just like how many of those shows are truly awesome and have stood the test of time, a lot of the modern moe titles are just as good or better. Personally I enjoy moe now just as much as I did nearly 20 years ago. Emerje

Well said, Emerje!
People don't realize that a lot of the anime with great and epic stories were moe.

I think what most people mean when they complain about an overabundance of moe shows is not merely a show with certain potentially moe elements but this new type of overbearing moe were moe is a genre unto itself, were moe cuteness is the be all, end all point of the show. This is pretty much new to the last decade or so.

That seems like a pretty semantic defence to me. I mean, if you're going to start telling me most Ghibli movies are moe then you're stretching that term nearly to the breaking point. Yeah, I suppose that many of them do contain certain elements that could invoke a moe reaction in fans. Even putting aside the issue of intent though, at best it's just certain parts in a much larger experience. Does that really make it a "moeblob anime"? I guess you could argue that it is, given that there isn't really any ironclad definition of when a show becomes moe. But then you're really just using a fallacious equivocation (your own very general definition to what others actually mean by moe).

I think what most people mean when they complain about an overabundance of moe shows is not merely a show with certain potentially moe elements but this new type of overbearing moe were moe is a genre unto itself, were moe cuteness is the be all, end all point of the show. This is pretty much new to the last decade or so.

(Also, regardless of the prevalence of moe, you can't possibly deny that while anime was once known for mecha and SciFi, these genres have withered away in recent years).

Sure, but that's just how trends work. One day moe will be out and something else will be in. But just like moe still existed when giant robots were king, We do still have mecha shows today while moe is on top. In five years, who knows, maybe all we'll see is slapstick office comedies will be big, there'll still be moe and mecha around.

This is pretty much exactly what I meant. I guess if you really expand the concept of "moe" to its breaking point, you might be able to include some of the series that Emerje listed, but to be perfectly honest, I don't think I'd qualify any of those as falling into that category, at least not going by the general modern definition of the term.

I mean, the majority of the Ghibli catalog are epic fantasies of some kind or other,

and things like A-KO or Gunbuster are full-on action titles.

There's a big difference between series that happen to have cute girls in them but have some general overall purpose, and series that are designed from the ground up to be "cute girls doing cute and/or somewhat creepy things" to the exclusion of pretty much anything else. The latter is what I see in spades when I look at this season listing, and as ikillchicken pointed out, it's a very modern phenomenon.

Emerje wrote:

Sure, but that's just how trends work. One day moe will be out and something else will be in. But just like moe still existed when giant robots were king, We do still have mecha shows today while moe is on top. In five years, who knows, maybe all we'll see is slapstick office comedies will be big, there'll still be moe and mecha around.

The Office?!

Even if you consider moe and moeblob two different things examples of both still exist from before the word came into common practice.

The volume has changed, sure, but that's about it. The way I see it there's "moe" which is shows about cute girls doing things (harems, fighting wars, going on adventures, etc), and "moeblob" which is the "overbearing" moe you describe (cute girls being cute). I only see 3 or 4 shows this season that I would absolutely call moeblobs out of the 25 new shows.