Forum - View topic

Answerman - Why Are Some Anime Fans So Cynical?

While I do agree that there are still really good shows being made (Inuyashiki or Vanishing line) it's undeniable that they are sadly a minority in today's anime landscape. I mean, for every Psycho Pass we get 40+ generic shows about some loser otaku getting a harem in some crappy fantasy world. And this is something I don't get,really: a lot of those crappy Sword Art Online (which was terrible to begin with) rip-offs don't even sell that much yet the industry keeps on churning out the same rehashed trash over and over again. I mean, goddamit, stuff like Psycho Pass or Joker Game were pretty damn succesful, why don't we get more series like those?
It's also hard not to get jaded when you see that most of today's stuff have some creepy loli undertones even when they are outside the ususal imoto/harem/moe realm (looking at you, Made in Abbys) and yet a big part of the (western) anime fandom seems to be ok with it. Maybe it's because I'm a father of a 1 year old girl myself but I've become VERY wary of anime obsession with little girls and making supposedly grown up women look like they are 8.
So, yes, there's still hope (I think 2018 is shaping up to be the best year of this decade anime wise) but I really think we are a long way to reach the great heights of anime Golden era (2003-2008). I mean, there's no way in hell we could get something like Monster , Gankutsuou or Le Chevalier d'Eon nowadays... but who knows....

We do, literally every season. Maybe not exactly like them, but wouldn't that be a problem too? No one should be asking for the literal exact same thing over again. That's why people get tired of the "Otaku-bait" shows after a while, in the first place.
We are getting interesting shows that are trying to appeal to your same audience every season though. Stop pretending they don't exist and stop complaining about what you perceive to be a huge majority of anime which is actually just another small segment of what the industry puts out.(I'm sorry if this sounds harsh, I couldn't think of a better or more polite way to articulate it on the spot.).

BodaciousSpacePirate wrote:

If the main husbando still got kidnapped by a predatory male villain and then had his orifices ravaged by tentacle creatures, I'm sure that would still get some complaints.

I think you mixed SAO with F/SN Heaven's Feel and forgot to also genderbend the villian.

While I won't go so far as to say that there are no good anime shows anymore, nevertheless, as another post mentioned, anime as of late has become "cuter and more feminine". I can and do appreciate cuteness and in some cases even "feminine" shows. But at the same time, it's hard to deny the reality that anime shows these days have far less testosterone than they used to.

Shows like K-on, Love Live, and Kemono Friends are great, have their place, and add some nice variety to my anime consumption. However, those kind of shows are not what originally drew me to anime in the first place. Shows like DBZ, Yu Yu Hakusho, Rurouni Kenshin, Jojo's Bizarre Adventure, Attack on Titan, etc are what turned me into (and kept me being) a fan.

I also consider 1987-1995 to be the golden years of anime if you ask me. Studios took bigger risk to make titles that people would not make today. You are not going to see stuff like Take the X Train, Robot Carnival, Wicked City, Twilight the Dark Master and 1001 Nights be made today. People these days don't want to take the risk and choose to keep things easy with anime.

Problem is that the good shows that are aim to adults with dark, mature and deep themes rarely get market or talk about in the US fandom. The Tatami Galaxy was a flop on Funimation's website and most people had no idea that it exist while everyone was watching Fairy Tail. I still remember in 2006 when no one really talk about great gems like Demon Prince Enma and Kemonozume while everyone was going on about One Piece, Naruto and Haruhi Suzumiya.

I don't think these types of cynicism are isolated to anime.

And see this is my issue when I hear people criticize SAO. SAO has not crossed any lines that so many more anime before it have done in much tackier and creepier ways.

Stuff like New Game is aimed at male office workers around the age of 30. Usually people working in information technology. Essentially, male computer programmers around the age of 30 are the typical audience for moe shows like Hidamari Sketch, K-On! and New Game.

I think that M.D. Geist is for the roughly the same audience: young males around the age of 20-30. But certainly less nerdy ones than the fans of New Game. It is certainly not for teens much less "pre-shounen", in fact it looks very much like hyperviolent Seinen manga from the 80's and 90's.

While that character you posted is from a manga aimed at kids actually. Although originally the biggest audience for Lupin 3rd were college students, it was Miyazaki who reformatted the franchise to appeal more to a younger audience.

Anime isn't the only fandom that inspires cynicism. I used to be a Star Trek fan, emphasis on the past tense, and I went through all stages of fandom, with both sides of cynicism. Of course I was younger and didn't know any better when it came monitoring my own behaviour and commentary.

The production side certainly inspired cynicism, with what I saw as complacency and franchise fatigue when there were three shows on TV in quick succession, the marketing that relied on the double dip, to the point where the last films were released in four versions of Blu-ray that you had to buy all of to get all of the extra features, plus needing an itunes account to access the director's commentary. Now with Discovery, you can't even see it without paying first, no TV broadcasts at all.

Then there was the fan side of things, and while I loved the first three series, I saw what I assumed was commercialism affecting the quality of evrything that came afterwards, films that kept remaking Wrath of Khan, TV shows that relied on sex to sell, and dumbed down stories, to the point where in my mind the latter movies had become summer bubblegum cineplex fodder and lost any depth or intelligence. I also hated that the stand-alone novel line had been ditched to concentrate on interconnected novels that required that you had to read them all, good or bad, appealing to the Pokemon collector instinct in fans.

I made my feelings vocally clear, on repeated occasions, but then I crossed the line into denigrating people who felt otherwise. I couldn't accept that the majority of fans still loved the franchise, and liked where the powers that be were taking it. It was franchise fatigue in the end, but fatigue on my part with the franchise, just total burnout as a fan. It's just hard to let go when it is time to let go.

Anyway, now, after some five years away from anything Star Trek, I can at least engage with those aspects of the franchise that I like without stressing about those bits that I don't.

I really don’t want to get into this 80s glorification discussion but I fear that i must.
Most manime tiltes of the 80s ripped of western concepts so saying that the equally western facing Monster ain´t a real anime makes no sense.