Anime exists in a weird spot now where the community is so varied its not united but outside looking in anime and anime fans still get lumped together as one thing
agreed, not trying to do the "i'm more of a fan than xyz person" but as a hardcore anime fan I have run into these other "anime fans" in public and it's frustrating when I think I've found another weirdo who grew up watching part 6/12 of a fansub anime on YT only to find out they have only watched the most marketed mainstream shows in the past 5 years lol and tbh thats ok, everyone has to start somewhere! But the problem is a portion of these people (most likely younger ignorant individuals) then get online and think they are the target demographic/ core audience when in reality they aren't. They are just now showing up into a medium that is uniquely different and that's why it has blossomed to the point that it's at today. But the moment you try and push out the weirdos who cultivated this uniquely creative environment you are going to end up with a bunch of corporate garbage that's just created to appeal to the most amount of people. Hell the reason so many have flocked to anime now is because most of their franchises that are western based are simply not delivering quality like it used to. Anime is a medium of entertainment that can fit everyone's desires into it but the rising purity culture that's being pushed online is making it seem like there isn't enough room for both highly engaging critically acclaimed anime and your fanservice ecchi shows. These people aren't willing to let it exist side by side because they are afraid of being labeled a weirdo or gooner by some person who hasn't even bothered to watch any anime.
@NitehawkGaming You're god damn right. (Breaking bad references) As someone who was born in 2002 and started anime around 2017 and 2018, I 've a good amount of shows. Including battle shonens, slice of life, romance, horror and ecchi. Right now I've noticed the division between anime fans. You're ever part of the mainstream crowd who started anime during Kovid 19 and than there's the weird crowd who watches ecchi shows and weird anime trope elements. Battle shonens are a big hit for the casual fans and probably the most popular genre but other genres like ecchi (or any show having fan service) gets demonised as "gooner bait" I may not know what the fandom was like in 2010 because I didn't know anime existed but I did watch pokemon which I thought it was a cartoon. (technically it is a cartoon)
agree I get lumped in with people who only watch just shounen (specifically HxH or Demon Slayer) and tell me that anime got "worst" for being super niche or has no action, like bro not every anime is just high stake action and just cause you watch ONLY one genre doesn't make you a anime expert and how anime should be 🤣
@@sagemaster1357 yea and the thing is you can rightly label a show as gooner shit bc sometimes it is LOL but some cazy ppl are taking it as a sign of moral depravity of the person when in reality it truly is just fiction. I watched Highschool of the dead in middle school and other ecchi show like nobody's business yet no part of thinks that is the avg woman or that i deserve a harem or something lol. but anyways i'm glad to have you around I'm curious what show made you want to get more into anime? and yea same if we're counting stuff like pokemon & DBZ I would consider myself having watched anime when I was like 5 or less haha. I thought those were just cartoons bc it was so widely common even in the early 90's for kids
Well Garnt, you got your wish Anime/Manga being main stream but the cost of being the community we had back in the day. It blows my mind how many people get up at arms over a fictional character over a real person. Or the amount of death threats over skin color, a certain ship not being canon or character being horny.
Yeah and now they're saying stuff like anime doesn't have any representation. First, It's a Japanese media mainly focused for a Japanese audience. Second, we've have plenty of coloured characters in old and recent shows.
1:20 THIS! Exactly! Back then we were the one constantly getting told that "they're fictional characters. They're not real", now it's the complete opposite cause these tourists treat fictional character as if they were real beings.
To me anime has always been about japanese weirdness. And now that we are mainstream we have a lot of new faces that do not tolerate weirdness. The community did not become "more horny". Nothing changed about the "core fanbase". We were merely shone a light on as anime became more mainstream and at the same time the core base expanded with an influx of new generational viewers/casuals that do not tolerate this "weirdness". Basically a culture shock moment. But instead of cross-pollination, the newcomers are trying to erase the core fanbase and change the culture to their image.
Yeah, major gen Z problem when they act like both Christopher Columbus - who are discovering everything for the first time - and Main Character Syndrome, where they think only their opinion is the right opinion. Imagine being insufferable in two ways simultaneously!
I agree so much with Garnt here. Back in the 2000s, anime fans were mostly just that: fans of anime. We loved the medium and would recommend this series and that series to others, rather than just be in a silo for one or two. Also back then most of the crazies in the anime community frequented 4chan and stayed there, but now they are everywhere.
Yeah, and those of us who'd been there since the 90s were making much the same complaints about you lot coming in and ruining stuff. I still recall the wars waged over whether you could be a 'real' anime fan if you liked Pokemon, and the Sailor Moon fans vs Card Captor Sakura. To be fair though, we got much the same thing back in the early nineties (albeit mainly in letters to magazines/fanzines), along with similar complaints - is Akira overrated? why do insist on bringing over only the stuff and not ? The more things change ...
It shocks me how normal anime is these days, for so long I thought it was a lie that anime is now "mainstream" but in recent years i've literally been seeing guys in cars with ANIME STICKERS on them unironically. Just the other day I saw some buff guy at the gym with a WAIFU CUP from GamerSupps, it's so mainstream it's actually insane, you'll just be chilling somewhere and anime will come up in conversation.
Y'all remember when the biggest issues in the anime community was arguing if labelling yourself a weeb was a bad thing. We sure have came a long way lol
The new wave of anime fans just kind of took over and terraformed the whole landscape of the anime community. What made you an anime fan previously, the whole culture that has been slowly build up from pure passion of Japanese pop-culture and community input, has been completely wiped out. What is left is essentially people that treat anime medium as a whole with less passion and understanding. What made watching anime more special is kind of gone, but that's literally a story that repeats itself with everything that has been underappreciated. It always ends like that. Next step is to wait for companies to jump on the hype and ruin it completely.
I kinda disagree, it hasn't been wiped out we're still here aren't we? I think the OG people just need to get more vocal about it and let it be known it's not acceptable to just disrespect the anime culture that has been around for so long. The pond has just gotten larger and the new voices are pretty loud but tbh we just need to maintain our community that has been built over the years, having one that wont judge what you like to watch vs one that does is a pretty simple choice to make of who will have more people lol. But the threat of companies is very real, they are just waiting to make an anime that is the MOST marketable and LEAST controversial to market everywhere and slowly take a stronger stakehold in anime. I really started to notice it with kaiju no.8 which sucks bc the source material isn't bad, but man the way CR was pushing that show in everyone's faces was obvious they are trying to make it a big hit instead of people naturally gravitating towards the show.
@@NitehawkGaming Yeah, I was kind of exaggarating. The problem is that sure, there is still quite a bit of OG's, but from what I've seen most of them gave up on the community aspect, which makes it impossible for them to be vocal in any way. The places that used to be accommodating just are not good enough anymore for proper discussion, which makes everybody disconnected from eachother. One of the choices is going to deeper, more niche places, but these usually are overrun with exceptionally weird people, so a lot of oldheads just avoid those type of places. More commonly I see people essentially living in their bubble with IRL friends, completely abandoning the anime community on the internet. If you don't have that, the last resort is to just give up, and look from afar at the new version of the community. What it does is that it divides everybody, and with that division it makes it impossible to maintain the community. Not having a proper "town square" that everybody can agree on is a really big debuff. That's what I was kind of referring when it comes to "wiping out" the community. When it comes to companies, the thing I worry the most about is trying to rewrite the culture to be more suitable for people outside japan. I bet in the next years we will see great cleansing of the weird aspects of anime which an average person outside japan doesn't understand. We already see the beginning of that with Re:Zero, where the whole designs were changed to appease essentially the US audience.
@@HyperKryst all true shit man. Idk if i count as an old head (mid 20's) but you're spot on with the community outlook lol, those more niche places just aren't for me .somewhere along the line it just turns into some weird alt-right / racist space most of the time lol. And yea pretty much just talk to my irl friends about anime besides theses comments I leave on YT or reddit sometimes. Also hearing about the re:zero outfit change for capella was disappointing but when the news broke I dont think it was ever confirmed if it was changed bc of JP TV broadcasting or bc of CR streaming. Either way RE:zero is clearly an adult themed show so having someone decapitated over and over being ok but seeing a loli in a skimpy outfit beeing too much is hypocritical regardless of who is responsible lol.
I disagree, we are getting way more anime and new seasons faster. If Baccano was made today it would have gotten a s2 by now. Something getting popular is always going to attract some awful stuff.
Exactly. It's not even just Twitter. It's all of them. The communities between social media sites are so different, and the discourse becomes so splintered.
Is not the platform, it's the people who using it Twitter nowadays just feel like 4chan for normies. Back then people know internet etiquette, now it's literally battle royal. Who ever owned the biggest group will decide how the platform work.
Real life experience is like heaven in comparison to the internet,yes there are some toxic people irl, but thats only a minority and irl conversations are and always will be better than the 99% internet people
That’s just the nature of things,the more people the more segmented the group becomes,even then doesn’t remove how stupid some of it is. The cringiest thing I learned this year was the term “hood weebs”,it’s just a group of miserable people that used to bully weebs back in the day but now that it is popular they want to push their taste into everyone else,which is only,like,five shonen series,that’s it.
If you're referring to that people in the hood did not watch anime then it's just a sad and false claim. We used to watch anime a lot, it wasn't as a a stigma as in the way more privileged community. You can even see the influence of anime in the culture. Most artist, musicians and celebrities(from the hood or from black communities) have a very profound relationship with anime. The only thing is those people were not as online as now(the reason being most people in the hood didn't have access to internet as early)
That's actually crazy bc I agree. Would rather go back to the days when I had to read Manga in the school library only bc if you read it in class, you got bullied. Hate the braindead takes, brainrot memes, leak culture, Twitter and tiktok manga readers. Hate it all.
@@teeemtee5739you know what’s weird i actually kind of agree with you even if i do acknowledge there are positives to where anime is in the grander pop culture now a days
@@evgenkhersonets880 no but just feels like the old days when you found something special it wasn’t all over the place with the worst take, dramas and controversies for the little things in it
@@evgenkhersonets880 as an anime fan for more than a decade, I never felt special to begin with. And I rather be bullied than have my favorite medium be ruined by tourists. And gatekeeping does have its benefits ngl.
I also miss mid 2000s anime where you saw a lot of VN adaptations. There was just a vibe that has been lost. Anime fans were also more chill. The waifu wars were mostly memeing, liking lolis was ironic, idol worship wasn't as common, and no one got cancelled over dumb drama. Good times.
Current anime community is absolute filth. Like before, the most stupid thing would be sending deadthreats but now people get arguments about race, lolis and how they can write the story better than the author. Miserable people. I wish the time when I would fight about which character is stronger or which girl is best girl. Now I just need to see people fighting over shades and age of fictional characters.
In my opinion it's only that way because you are unconsciously seeking it out. All those things you brought up are more a product of the internet and social media and less about the content itself. If you enjoy sports you can find the same exact thing. Movie and video game communities are the same with the race baiting and woke vs non woke arguments. I still have great anime discussions with strangers in person, but the internet always adds a layer of toxicity
@@aiwash2766 But many people also don't have the opportunity to discuss/share their opinions offline, thus its inevitable for people to search for these stuff online. And also, now days, no one is capable of completely getting off social media, its the biggest source of our entertainment and makes up a huge portion of people's life
@@aiwash2766it's on the comment sections of anime websites Instead of actually talking about what happens in that ep they all just talk about those things and worst part of all would be that it still goes to like ep 8 or smn at that point you should've been dropping the series if you didn't find the premise to your liking
Don't get me wrong i know i can just not look at the comment sections but i sometimes want to see some reactions especially when it's something sad that happened in the ep
Honestly I've been the biggest advocate for gatekeeping cause the amount of people that comes to the community or say they're "fans" just to leave a bad taste in the community. It used to be about recommendation, niche anime discussion, and enjoying the anime for what it was. One example is isekais like yea many people hate it but dude it's not for you then don't say shit or watch it, I didn't like Kill La Kill or Guilty Crown (later episodes) but did I tell people that they were shitty? no, because people enjoy what they like, and it's not for me. Another is tropes like lolis or incest like i get nothing but "Why I hate anime" or "Anime fans are GROSS" like bro STFU it's not real or based on real people and everyone in the community knows that it's bad but we enjoy the absurdity because we let the author/creators cook. Like imagine if monogatari was released today, both manga or anime. Oh boy there would be HELL all over the internet 🤣 I used to love anime's rising popularity cause we got new stuff and WAY better quality but the "community" got WAY shitter and it's harder to tell who's just there to be shitters and who's actually there to enjoy anime.
Some of the biggest gatekeepers from the "OG era" were also the people that would try and gatekeep you into only liking the "good shows." You were absolutely looked down on for liking shows they deemed bad. And you would be called a fake fan bc you haven't watched x, y, or z shows from 10 years prior. Also, gatekeeping is a just a fools errand. It has literally never worked for anything. People have failed to gatekeep things that require money and time to even try and get into and was inherently gatekept by needing to learn from someone else who acted to vet anybody getting into it. So, unfortunately, for you, something that has 0 cost to get into will literally never be able to be gatekept, especially not in the age of the internet.
@Pfish1000 true, I should've said "agree or at least try to gatekeep" instead of advocate. Gatekeeping is rough and not a big positive to the community, but it's rough for fans anyway. I can also agree that the "hardcore" people were as obnoxious as the new "fans" because I had (former) friends and relatives that were telling you that if you didn't watch what they were, you weren't a real fan. But the same goes with people who only watch a small amount of series or just 1 genre. It's just rough for the anime community overall
I was just thinking about this the other day. I finally got friends into things like Chainsaw Main or JJk, or whatever new Shounen is, but as a kid born in 2001 I was in middle school catching up on that stuff and graduated highschool right before the era ended. It felt like then people just watched anime in general and weren't so pidgeon holed into one small subsect. Like it wasn't that weird for a big DBZ fan to turn around an recommend some random shit like xxxHolic, Lovely Complex, Shiki or whatever. You had people go watch Ergo Proxy, or Elfen Lied, and then turn around and love Clannad or Your Lie in April. And then we all collectively turned around and watched the dumbest crap like Nichijou with a smile. Now it just seems like people are Isekai fans, or Shounen fans, etc. and the industry is just pumping things out left and right to fit certain genre molds. Not that its all bad, some of those genre mold shows are excellent, and there are still plenty of unique things being produced. But the tone of the whole thing just seems different. Granted even back then there was some homogony in the stuff being produced. I remember horny ecchi harem romcoms being a dime a dozen. But it would be nice to be able to sit in a room again discussing something like Bleach, and then randomly switch to talking about something like Kaichou Wa Maid Sama or Angel Beatrs and not lose people
0:26 Dont worry garnt just wait until 2029 when chainsaw man season 3 drops and the public opinion of makima mostly changes when manga spoilers happen : )
Black Lagoon (2006) wouldn't be released today, as described by the TH-cam channel - No Bones. I agree; too much toxicity over fictional pop culture such as anime in unnecessary ways. Wasn't the case for me back in 2009. Time to read George Orwell's book- '1984'
I dont fully disagree, but thats more bc i dont think a studio today would take the risk on it to give it a proper adaptation and probably wouldn't be sure how to market it to get a good roi. But there isnt anything in it that isnt being done in one way or another. We have WAAAY more sexualized stuff. More violent stuff. Hell, so many things now have the main character literally buying slaves. Hell, we got redo of healer, and that is just revenge porn slop, emphasis on the REVENGE and porn. The only possiblely contentious thing that i cant think of being in a recent show is there are nazis in it a one point. And they kill them. We definitely could get it, it just probably wouldn't be good.
I remember "The Weeb commander" uploaded a 20 minute rant about the final chapter of jjk being terrible because it was only 6 pages long. Dude only read the leaks and didn't realize the chapter had 13 extra pages for about a month.
@@alterrondo4179 well, I know that, but thanks to people like Garnt and the other Trash Taste boys, they exposed anime to normies so I partially blame them for this and it's ironic that Garnt is now complaining about it when he was one of the people who caused this issue in the first place.
@@DenLim123 not sure they made that big an impact, but yeah i get the sentiment. Id think stuff like netflix and twitter pushing anime mainstream as the real problem. Lost its soul somewhere in the last 5 yr
@@alterrondo4179 I mean they influenced other anime creators to come out and why I said partially blame them, they were not the main cause but they certainly did have some impact on it becoming mainstream. And the thing I hate most about anime becoming mainstream is corporations trying to intervene on the industry and westernised the medium. The reason people enjoy anime is because it's different from western media.
Back then we just didnt have shit like twitter. There was way more anime/manga discussions on forums. I really dont think we are not in a bad time for anime. Twitter just thrives on negativity. There was stupid drama going on with dandadan on twitter, but there was none on reddit/mal/anilist.
I feel this so much, because the same happened with Gaming. I miss the times when the community was still smaller. Sure, we even had try-hards back then but still…
I feel like gaming was always destined to be a segmented community regardless of how big or small it was. Because as an interactive medium, genre separation plays a bigger role.
@@BioMatic2 It always has been due to the medium - if you had an Atari back in '77 you didn't have access to the exact same games as someone with a Coleco, and thus the console wars began ...
Yeah, it's sad that the answer is "the internet is different now." Social media forces us into all these bubbles, and when those bubbles eventually bump into each other through shared interests, everyone absolutely loses their minds for no reason.
Back in the day anime was the weird hobby that only non-judgmental people could get into because others would be scared off before even trying. That and other was a lot less tribalism.
A good example would be Spice and Wolf, top tier back in the day, and a remake came out and i barely heard anyone talk about unless you were already a fan. In a way, some shows would do better if they had come out now while others would do worse
Oh god I am so happy I watched anime in early 2000' alone in my room Today's community would ruin moments like Soul society from bleach Monster's ending Naruto The Naruto - Sasuke thing was cringe even back then imagine Naruto in 2024 Not to mention I was spoiled by a thumbnail on Aot season 4 I wanted to delete their channel
This is why some true anime fans afraid of anime going too mainstream especially in the west,it has it's positive and negative, for positive it will have more fundings and recognition, but it will get much censorship and be controlled and be more prying eyes. back in the early 2000s you only talk anime mostly in private forums mostly civilized, now public social media which all non anime watcher and anime watcher collides.
I know it's a pretty hot take but I definitely think this is still a better era for anime than when it was just a niche community. Sure, the result of anime becoming mainstream is the entry of non-genuine individuals who never fully embrace the medium as it is. Political correctness is slowly seeping into this community that doesn't go there. However, I would still rather take that over thought of being ridiculed for having a hobby like this. I never had an experience of bullying like that but I can totally understand the pain of going through that period. And by the way, even with all of these people complaining and bitching about fanservice or sexuality whatnot, what the heck have they even changed to the medium anyway? From as far as I could see, almost nothing. If you really look at it, these guys are real losers here. Plus, if you're talking about the possibility of anime lasting for more than 1 season, the comparison is indisputable. I would not want to go back to those days when more than half the anime I like will never get a sequel. The community has gotten unbelievably massive with many different factions. I can agree with that. To me, that just means there are so many more options to choose from now. I couldn't possibly get tired of being an anime fan, at least not in the near future. 😁
Anime should have never become mainstream. I want my good old days back 😢 early 2010s were peak Exactly back in the day you wouldn't get judged for liking l0lis but now they act as if you are PDF just for liking cute stuff 😅
2:00 if deathnote comes out today, people would be like ah this anime starts off great, and falls off immediately after L ......., after 15 eps it becomes a total drag to watch and this sh has 50 something episodes in total, and introducing neer and others in last 10 eps is so boring, who gives a f about neer anyways. This show wouldn't have popped off if it comes out today
Idk I feel people are complaining about a loud minority. It's actually crazy to me that people are like "I'd rather get back to being bullied". Like... really??? No, I'm absolutely certain you're just saying that because you can just speak of it as a hypothetical. You're saying that just to make a point that actually makes no sense. Having to hide yourself, getting bullied, that can't be ignored. But the crazy people on Twitter? Just close Twitter, dude. Like, seriously. You're letting them live in your brain rent-free so much that you wish you would get BULLIED instead? That's ridiculous and you know it. I probably wouldn't be an anime enjoyer if anime didn't become more popular during the past 10 years. I just wouldn't be here. Heck, some great anime we are getting today might not exist either. I cannot agree with takes like "Anime becoming more mainstream was a mistake". Yes, we get more crazy people. But we also get more cool people at the same time, more people who can bring something interesting to the discussion. Y'all are focusing on the negative way too much (which, to be fair, is something we humans absolutely excel at). I sympathize more with the idea that it used to be a more united community, I can understand that sentiment. It think this one's fair. But with more anime coming out in terms of pure volume, and with genres just developing more and more as distinct things, it was inevitable. I don't actually think the Western anime community staying small would have prevented that part.
Theres nothing wrong with finding enjoyment in a community when it's more niche and doesn't have mass appeal. To sit here and act like the mainstream aspect of anime hasn't changed it is ridiculous and disingenuous. Yes I'm in agreement with you that it's better for it to grow than stay stagnant and underground, but don't ignore the bad sides to that. In my opinion global audiences of anime, more specifically western audiences are super aggro towards series these days, and they are constantly trying to push the cultural standards of the west onto japanese creatives. You see it largely in the dub community, or even the backlash some of these mangaka receive online which clearly bothers them at times since they occasionally feel the need to speak out and apologize. The anime fascination has also ramped up tourism in Japan, which is a good thing ....... if only the tourists flooding over were actually being respectful of the culture and the people, instead they walk around Japan as if it's their own personal anime fantasyland and there's a certain portion of them that are incredibly inconsiderate. To circle back to my first point as well, anime is now even dealing with censorship through credit card companies and various online transaction services that are putting pressure on the industry as a whole. Not to mention the improved success of anime has put way more pressure onto the individual animators, and it seems the working conditions in some of these studios is regressing instead of improving the quality of life for these artists who bring us this medium. Again I'm in support with your sentiment, but let's not ignore glaring issues that come along with mass appeal and financial success. Some of these issues will only get worse imo
@@Insaniac969 I'm not ignoring the bad side. I'm saying people focus too much on it, especially when they say things like "I'd rather get bullied". Some of these issues are also things that can be fixed and aren't necessarily inherent to the popularity of the medium. Working conditions in Japan, for example, are a general Japanese problem as a whole. Anime studios are just one part of it. And I don't think anime growing in he West is the main factor for conditions worsening. In my opinion, it's just that capitalism is gonna capitalism, and the worsening of working conditions is just expected when you aren't protected by the government or unions, and sales have absolutely nothing to do with it. The credit cards thing: Again, capitalism is gonna capitalism. Don't blame the anime community, blame the companies for this one. They're the ghouls who only care about profit and are willing to cater to the idiots for it. Plus, it's not like censorship is a new thing either to begin with (remember 4kids). About tourism: Yeah, well, I could say that Americans have been seeing the rest of the world as their own amusement park for a few decades by now, but I might be seen as a troll for saying that. Like, yeah, sure, it's more of a problem specifically in Japan right now, but, like... Tourists are gonna be tourists, there have always been idiotic tourists in all countries. And, again, I feel like that's another case of a loud minority (and we humans LOVE to focus on drama, don't we? We love to feed that fucking fire). So yeah, I'm not denying issues exist, but I definitely think people hyperfocus on certain things that could just be ignored, or blame the size of the Western anime community for things where it's not actually the culprit. As Gigguk said at the end, some of it is more the state of the Internet as a whole (I would say society as a whole tbh), and isn't specific to or caused by anime becoming more popular.
The problem is that those people affect anime and manga culture as whole. Those new fans even may affect manga authors or people who make anime. So it is not that simple like shutting Twitter or any social media platform because in the end it will still affect you when you read manga or watch anime. 100% percent social media like Twitter will affect anime productions especially when anime studios will start aiming at foreign markets.
I like this take, a way less doomer way of looking at everything but still acknowledging the truth of the matter. I do think it's also only a portion of new gen anime fans being so worried about moral policing in anime. But another problem is I feel like I barely see people calling it out, stuff like this from garnt should be the most shared thing in the anime community but here we are with a comment section of like 20 ppl haha. And the avg anime fan isn't trying to get into fights online they just watch their shows and go on about life haha. If anything I just think we need an organized effort or new content creator to have a place for the community of non judgemental people to exist again. There are a couple of prominent ones that I enjoy but with the medium being so big it feels like everything isn't as tight knit as it used to be.
@@Insaniac969 The mainstream hasn't changed, or at least it hasn't changed anymore than anything else has changed according to the vagaries of fashion - we're not all sat in flares and listening to disco these days either. That's not new though; the purpose of producing an anime has always been to make money, that's as true of Dandadan as it was of Astro Boy. It's also the saving grace; as the old saying goes money talks and BS walks, and most companies know Twitter is BS, as long as the bottom line keeps heading in the right direction they'll continue doing what they're doing irrespective of how much howling there happens to be on social media. It's a non-issue though; the mainstream is the mainstream precisely because it's largely built to appeal to the lowest common denominator; it's also why the community as a whole has always tended to look down on it and refer to those who admit to being fans to it with whatever derogation happens to be de rigeur - I believe tourist is the popular one with the kids these days - while they themselves try to convince everyone that they're a "real" fan by engaging in the age old genitalia waving competition of 'who likes the most obscure crap nobody else cares about'. As for your other points, idiot tourists are hardly new or a problem exclusive to Japan. They get a bit more prominence these days because there's a few more people willing to do daft things in the name of content, and a few more idiots desperate enough for content to cover them. You only need to look at the history of the US presence in Okinawa to see the problem in Japan stretches back longer than I suspect most of us here have been alive. Similarly the censorship issue isn't unique to anime; several jurisdictions, including the US, EU and even Japan itself, have tightened up their laws regarding what is and isn't allowed over the past decade, not to mention the emergence of China, with it's far more severe censorship regime, as a key market.
Anime exists in a weird spot now where the community is so varied its not united but outside looking in anime and anime fans still get lumped together as one thing
agreed, not trying to do the "i'm more of a fan than xyz person" but as a hardcore anime fan I have run into these other "anime fans" in public and it's frustrating when I think I've found another weirdo who grew up watching part 6/12 of a fansub anime on YT only to find out they have only watched the most marketed mainstream shows in the past 5 years lol and tbh thats ok, everyone has to start somewhere!
But the problem is a portion of these people (most likely younger ignorant individuals) then get online and think they are the target demographic/ core audience when in reality they aren't. They are just now showing up into a medium that is uniquely different and that's why it has blossomed to the point that it's at today. But the moment you try and push out the weirdos who cultivated this uniquely creative environment you are going to end up with a bunch of corporate garbage that's just created to appeal to the most amount of people. Hell the reason so many have flocked to anime now is because most of their franchises that are western based are simply not delivering quality like it used to.
Anime is a medium of entertainment that can fit everyone's desires into it but the rising purity culture that's being pushed online is making it seem like there isn't enough room for both highly engaging critically acclaimed anime and your fanservice ecchi shows. These people aren't willing to let it exist side by side because they are afraid of being labeled a weirdo or gooner by some person who hasn't even bothered to watch any anime.
yup
@NitehawkGaming You're god damn right. (Breaking bad references)
As someone who was born in 2002 and started anime around 2017 and 2018, I 've a good amount of shows. Including battle shonens, slice of life, romance, horror and ecchi.
Right now I've noticed the division between anime fans. You're ever part of the mainstream crowd who started anime during Kovid 19 and than there's the weird crowd who watches ecchi shows and weird anime trope elements. Battle shonens are a big hit for the casual fans and probably the most popular genre but other genres like ecchi (or any show having fan service) gets demonised as "gooner bait"
I may not know what the fandom was like in 2010 because I didn't know anime existed but I did watch pokemon which I thought it was a cartoon. (technically it is a cartoon)
agree I get lumped in with people who only watch just shounen (specifically HxH or Demon Slayer) and tell me that anime got "worst" for being super niche or has no action, like bro not every anime is just high stake action and just cause you watch ONLY one genre doesn't make you a anime expert and how anime should be 🤣
@@sagemaster1357 yea and the thing is you can rightly label a show as gooner shit bc sometimes it is LOL but some cazy ppl are taking it as a sign of moral depravity of the person when in reality it truly is just fiction.
I watched Highschool of the dead in middle school and other ecchi show like nobody's business yet no part of thinks that is the avg woman or that i deserve a harem or something lol.
but anyways i'm glad to have you around I'm curious what show made you want to get more into anime? and yea same if we're counting stuff like pokemon & DBZ I would consider myself having watched anime when I was like 5 or less haha. I thought those were just cartoons bc it was so widely common even in the early 90's for kids
Well Garnt, you got your wish Anime/Manga being main stream but the cost of being the community we had back in the day. It blows my mind how many people get up at arms over a fictional character over a real person. Or the amount of death threats over skin color, a certain ship not being canon or character being horny.
the monkey's paw curl its finger.
Yeah and now they're saying stuff like anime doesn't have any representation. First, It's a Japanese media mainly focused for a Japanese audience. Second, we've have plenty of coloured characters in old and recent shows.
Ironically I just discovered r/monkeypaw today
1:20 THIS! Exactly! Back then we were the one constantly getting told that "they're fictional characters. They're not real", now it's the complete opposite cause these tourists treat fictional character as if they were real beings.
To me anime has always been about japanese weirdness. And now that we are mainstream we have a lot of new faces that do not tolerate weirdness.
The community did not become "more horny". Nothing changed about the "core fanbase". We were merely shone a light on as anime became more mainstream and at the same time the core base expanded with an influx of new generational viewers/casuals that do not tolerate this "weirdness".
Basically a culture shock moment. But instead of cross-pollination, the newcomers are trying to erase the core fanbase and change the culture to their image.
Yeah, major gen Z problem when they act like both Christopher Columbus - who are discovering everything for the first time - and Main Character Syndrome, where they think only their opinion is the right opinion. Imagine being insufferable in two ways simultaneously!
I agree so much with Garnt here. Back in the 2000s, anime fans were mostly just that: fans of anime. We loved the medium and would recommend this series and that series to others, rather than just be in a silo for one or two. Also back then most of the crazies in the anime community frequented 4chan and stayed there, but now they are everywhere.
Yeah, and those of us who'd been there since the 90s were making much the same complaints about you lot coming in and ruining stuff. I still recall the wars waged over whether you could be a 'real' anime fan if you liked Pokemon, and the Sailor Moon fans vs Card Captor Sakura. To be fair though, we got much the same thing back in the early nineties (albeit mainly in letters to magazines/fanzines), along with similar complaints - is Akira overrated? why do insist on bringing over only the stuff and not ? The more things change ...
It shocks me how normal anime is these days, for so long I thought it was a lie that anime is now "mainstream" but in recent years i've literally been seeing guys in cars with ANIME STICKERS on them unironically. Just the other day I saw some buff guy at the gym with a WAIFU CUP from GamerSupps, it's so mainstream it's actually insane, you'll just be chilling somewhere and anime will come up in conversation.
It's also because Hollywood is so inept and can't make good stories or good characters to save their lives
Y'all remember when the biggest issues in the anime community was arguing if labelling yourself a weeb was a bad thing. We sure have came a long way lol
I thought it was waifu wars? Was that a thing back in the day?
@@sagemaster1357 waifu wars was def a prominent one, I just remember the whole weeb discussion also being one as well haha
Went from being labelled as a weeb to a pdf file over drawings
@chiizuu752 life comes at us fast 😭
The new wave of anime fans just kind of took over and terraformed the whole landscape of the anime community. What made you an anime fan previously, the whole culture that has been slowly build up from pure passion of Japanese pop-culture and community input, has been completely wiped out. What is left is essentially people that treat anime medium as a whole with less passion and understanding. What made watching anime more special is kind of gone, but that's literally a story that repeats itself with everything that has been underappreciated. It always ends like that. Next step is to wait for companies to jump on the hype and ruin it completely.
I kinda disagree, it hasn't been wiped out we're still here aren't we? I think the OG people just need to get more vocal about it and let it be known it's not acceptable to just disrespect the anime culture that has been around for so long. The pond has just gotten larger and the new voices are pretty loud but tbh we just need to maintain our community that has been built over the years, having one that wont judge what you like to watch vs one that does is a pretty simple choice to make of who will have more people lol.
But the threat of companies is very real, they are just waiting to make an anime that is the MOST marketable and LEAST controversial to market everywhere and slowly take a stronger stakehold in anime. I really started to notice it with kaiju no.8 which sucks bc the source material isn't bad, but man the way CR was pushing that show in everyone's faces was obvious they are trying to make it a big hit instead of people naturally gravitating towards the show.
@@NitehawkGaming Yeah, I was kind of exaggarating. The problem is that sure, there is still quite a bit of OG's, but from what I've seen most of them gave up on the community aspect, which makes it impossible for them to be vocal in any way. The places that used to be accommodating just are not good enough anymore for proper discussion, which makes everybody disconnected from eachother. One of the choices is going to deeper, more niche places, but these usually are overrun with exceptionally weird people, so a lot of oldheads just avoid those type of places. More commonly I see people essentially living in their bubble with IRL friends, completely abandoning the anime community on the internet. If you don't have that, the last resort is to just give up, and look from afar at the new version of the community.
What it does is that it divides everybody, and with that division it makes it impossible to maintain the community. Not having a proper "town square" that everybody can agree on is a really big debuff. That's what I was kind of referring when it comes to "wiping out" the community.
When it comes to companies, the thing I worry the most about is trying to rewrite the culture to be more suitable for people outside japan. I bet in the next years we will see great cleansing of the weird aspects of anime which an average person outside japan doesn't understand. We already see the beginning of that with Re:Zero, where the whole designs were changed to appease essentially the US audience.
@@HyperKryst all true shit man. Idk if i count as an old head (mid 20's) but you're spot on with the community outlook lol, those more niche places just aren't for me .somewhere along the line it just turns into some weird alt-right / racist space most of the time lol. And yea pretty much just talk to my irl friends about anime besides theses comments I leave on YT or reddit sometimes.
Also hearing about the re:zero outfit change for capella was disappointing but when the news broke I dont think it was ever confirmed if it was changed bc of JP TV broadcasting or bc of CR streaming. Either way RE:zero is clearly an adult themed show so having someone decapitated over and over being ok but seeing a loli in a skimpy outfit beeing too much is hypocritical regardless of who is responsible lol.
The result of mainstream
Anime going mainstream had a huge negative impact
I disagree, we are getting way more anime and new seasons faster. If Baccano was made today it would have gotten a s2 by now. Something getting popular is always going to attract some awful stuff.
not just anime
the internet as a whole is so toxic
I blame twitter, they like those negativity so you would use their site more
actual shit of a site
Exactly. It's not even just Twitter. It's all of them. The communities between social media sites are so different, and the discourse becomes so splintered.
Is not the platform, it's the people who using it Twitter nowadays just feel like 4chan for normies. Back then people know internet etiquette, now it's literally battle royal. Who ever owned the biggest group will decide how the platform work.
Real life experience is like heaven in comparison to the internet,yes there are some toxic people irl, but thats only a minority and irl conversations are and always will be better than the 99% internet people
That’s just the nature of things,the more people the more segmented the group becomes,even then doesn’t remove how stupid some of it is. The cringiest thing I learned this year was the term “hood weebs”,it’s just a group of miserable people that used to bully weebs back in the day but now that it is popular they want to push their taste into everyone else,which is only,like,five shonen series,that’s it.
If you're referring to that people in the hood did not watch anime then it's just a sad and false claim. We used to watch anime a lot, it wasn't as a a stigma as in the way more privileged community. You can even see the influence of anime in the culture. Most artist, musicians and celebrities(from the hood or from black communities) have a very profound relationship with anime. The only thing is those people were not as online as now(the reason being most people in the hood didn't have access to internet as early)
Guess Anime fans back then just to discuss and share what they like 😭😭
I would rather get bullied again as an anime fan rather than having anime as mainstream media right now
That's actually crazy bc I agree. Would rather go back to the days when I had to read Manga in the school library only bc if you read it in class, you got bullied.
Hate the braindead takes, brainrot memes, leak culture, Twitter and tiktok manga readers. Hate it all.
@@teeemtee5739you know what’s weird i actually kind of agree with you even if i do acknowledge there are positives to where anime is in the grander pop culture now a days
Do you like gatekeeping and feeling like you're spcial?
@@evgenkhersonets880 no but just feels like the old days when you found something special it wasn’t all over the place with the worst take, dramas and controversies for the little things in it
@@evgenkhersonets880 as an anime fan for more than a decade, I never felt special to begin with. And I rather be bullied than have my favorite medium be ruined by tourists. And gatekeeping does have its benefits ngl.
2:00 Imagine black lagoon being released today...
"WHY CAN'T REVY BE HOT AND COOL WITHOUT BEING SEXUALIZED" me: man those fucking gun/fight ANIMATION! 🤯
I also miss mid 2000s anime where you saw a lot of VN adaptations. There was just a vibe that has been lost. Anime fans were also more chill. The waifu wars were mostly memeing, liking lolis was ironic, idol worship wasn't as common, and no one got cancelled over dumb drama. Good times.
Current anime community is absolute filth. Like before, the most stupid thing would be sending deadthreats but now people get arguments about race, lolis and how they can write the story better than the author. Miserable people. I wish the time when I would fight about which character is stronger or which girl is best girl. Now I just need to see people fighting over shades and age of fictional characters.
No lie bro get of social media and all that’s gone, I am blissfully unaware of any of that stuff and I am wayyy happier for it
In my opinion it's only that way because you are unconsciously seeking it out. All those things you brought up are more a product of the internet and social media and less about the content itself. If you enjoy sports you can find the same exact thing. Movie and video game communities are the same with the race baiting and woke vs non woke arguments. I still have great anime discussions with strangers in person, but the internet always adds a layer of toxicity
@@aiwash2766 But many people also don't have the opportunity to discuss/share their opinions offline, thus its inevitable for people to search for these stuff online. And also, now days, no one is capable of completely getting off social media, its the biggest source of our entertainment and makes up a huge portion of people's life
@@aiwash2766it's on the comment sections of anime websites Instead of actually talking about what happens in that ep they all just talk about those things and worst part of all would be that it still goes to like ep 8 or smn at that point you should've been dropping the series if you didn't find the premise to your liking
Don't get me wrong i know i can just not look at the comment sections but i sometimes want to see some reactions especially when it's something sad that happened in the ep
Honestly I've been the biggest advocate for gatekeeping cause the amount of people that comes to the community or say they're "fans" just to leave a bad taste in the community.
It used to be about recommendation, niche anime discussion, and enjoying the anime for what it was. One example is isekais like yea many people hate it but dude it's not for you then don't say shit or watch it, I didn't like Kill La Kill or Guilty Crown (later episodes) but did I tell people that they were shitty? no, because people enjoy what they like, and it's not for me.
Another is tropes like lolis or incest like i get nothing but "Why I hate anime" or "Anime fans are GROSS" like bro STFU it's not real or based on real people and everyone in the community knows that it's bad but we enjoy the absurdity because we let the author/creators cook. Like imagine if monogatari was released today, both manga or anime. Oh boy there would be HELL all over the internet 🤣
I used to love anime's rising popularity cause we got new stuff and WAY better quality but the "community" got WAY shitter and it's harder to tell who's just there to be shitters and who's actually there to enjoy anime.
Some of the biggest gatekeepers from the "OG era" were also the people that would try and gatekeep you into only liking the "good shows." You were absolutely looked down on for liking shows they deemed bad.
And you would be called a fake fan bc you haven't watched x, y, or z shows from 10 years prior.
Also, gatekeeping is a just a fools errand. It has literally never worked for anything. People have failed to gatekeep things that require money and time to even try and get into and was inherently gatekept by needing to learn from someone else who acted to vet anybody getting into it. So, unfortunately, for you, something that has 0 cost to get into will literally never be able to be gatekept, especially not in the age of the internet.
@Pfish1000 true, I should've said "agree or at least try to gatekeep" instead of advocate. Gatekeeping is rough and not a big positive to the community, but it's rough for fans anyway. I can also agree that the "hardcore" people were as obnoxious as the new "fans" because I had (former) friends and relatives that were telling you that if you didn't watch what they were, you weren't a real fan. But the same goes with people who only watch a small amount of series or just 1 genre. It's just rough for the anime community overall
I really miss when we were a smaller community of otakus too ):
Posting on forum threads was peak.
There are too many TOURISTS around, that's the issue
0:58 *Oh sweet summer child*
I was just thinking about this the other day. I finally got friends into things like Chainsaw Main or JJk, or whatever new Shounen is, but as a kid born in 2001 I was in middle school catching up on that stuff and graduated highschool right before the era ended. It felt like then people just watched anime in general and weren't so pidgeon holed into one small subsect. Like it wasn't that weird for a big DBZ fan to turn around an recommend some random shit like xxxHolic, Lovely Complex, Shiki or whatever. You had people go watch Ergo Proxy, or Elfen Lied, and then turn around and love Clannad or Your Lie in April. And then we all collectively turned around and watched the dumbest crap like Nichijou with a smile.
Now it just seems like people are Isekai fans, or Shounen fans, etc. and the industry is just pumping things out left and right to fit certain genre molds. Not that its all bad, some of those genre mold shows are excellent, and there are still plenty of unique things being produced. But the tone of the whole thing just seems different. Granted even back then there was some homogony in the stuff being produced. I remember horny ecchi harem romcoms being a dime a dozen.
But it would be nice to be able to sit in a room again discussing something like Bleach, and then randomly switch to talking about something like Kaichou Wa Maid Sama or Angel Beatrs and not lose people
0:26 Dont worry garnt just wait until 2029 when chainsaw man season 3 drops and the public opinion of makima mostly changes when manga spoilers happen : )
Black Lagoon (2006) wouldn't be released today, as described by the TH-cam channel - No Bones.
I agree; too much toxicity over fictional pop culture such as anime in unnecessary ways.
Wasn't the case for me back in 2009.
Time to read George Orwell's book- '1984'
I dont fully disagree, but thats more bc i dont think a studio today would take the risk on it to give it a proper adaptation and probably wouldn't be sure how to market it to get a good roi.
But there isnt anything in it that isnt being done in one way or another. We have WAAAY more sexualized stuff. More violent stuff. Hell, so many things now have the main character literally buying slaves.
Hell, we got redo of healer, and that is just revenge porn slop, emphasis on the REVENGE and porn.
The only possiblely contentious thing that i cant think of being in a recent show is there are nazis in it a one point. And they kill them.
We definitely could get it, it just probably wouldn't be good.
I remember "The Weeb commander" uploaded a 20 minute rant about the final chapter of jjk being terrible because it was only 6 pages long. Dude only read the leaks and didn't realize the chapter had 13 extra pages for about a month.
We should have just gatekeep anime, Garnt and other anime fans wanting it to get mainstream are now regretting it.
Gatekeeping is good, why tf would you want normies in your hobby. They will simultaneously not take it seriously, and also want everything changed.
@@alterrondo4179 well, I know that, but thanks to people like Garnt and the other Trash Taste boys, they exposed anime to normies so I partially blame them for this and it's ironic that Garnt is now complaining about it when he was one of the people who caused this issue in the first place.
@@DenLim123 not sure they made that big an impact, but yeah i get the sentiment. Id think stuff like netflix and twitter pushing anime mainstream as the real problem. Lost its soul somewhere in the last 5 yr
@@alterrondo4179 I mean they influenced other anime creators to come out and why I said partially blame them, they were not the main cause but they certainly did have some impact on it becoming mainstream.
And the thing I hate most about anime becoming mainstream is corporations trying to intervene on the industry and westernised the medium. The reason people enjoy anime is because it's different from western media.
Back then we just didnt have shit like twitter. There was way more anime/manga discussions on forums. I really dont think we are not in a bad time for anime. Twitter just thrives on negativity. There was stupid drama going on with dandadan on twitter, but there was none on reddit/mal/anilist.
I feel this so much, because the same happened with Gaming. I miss the times when the community was still smaller. Sure, we even had try-hards back then but still…
I feel like gaming was always destined to be a segmented community regardless of how big or small it was. Because as an interactive medium, genre separation plays a bigger role.
@@BioMatic2 It always has been due to the medium - if you had an Atari back in '77 you didn't have access to the exact same games as someone with a Coleco, and thus the console wars began ...
Gate keeping will always be good too much tourist
I just imagined if Monogatari was released today 😂😂😂
Yeah, it's sad that the answer is "the internet is different now." Social media forces us into all these bubbles, and when those bubbles eventually bump into each other through shared interests, everyone absolutely loses their minds for no reason.
DBZ would be the most slandered anime/manga out there for admittedly extremely valid reasons given how much it is embraced plot inconsistencies.
Not really OG DB
that's mainly the dub's fault, and I'll stand on that
Back in the day anime was the weird hobby that only non-judgmental people could get into because others would be scared off before even trying. That and other was a lot less tribalism.
Twitter and other social media sites purposely create tribalism with their algorithms
A good example would be Spice and Wolf, top tier back in the day, and a remake came out and i barely heard anyone talk about unless you were already a fan. In a way, some shows would do better if they had come out now while others would do worse
Imagine to love ru comes out now 😂😂
I agree garnt, I agree.
Back in the day the anime community priased the fan subs on random anime on piracy sites
Oh god I am so happy I watched anime in early 2000' alone in my room
Today's community would ruin moments like
Soul society from bleach
Monster's ending
Naruto
The Naruto - Sasuke thing was cringe even back then imagine Naruto in 2024
Not to mention I was spoiled by a thumbnail on Aot season 4 I wanted to delete their channel
This is why some true anime fans afraid of anime going too mainstream especially in the west,it has it's positive and negative, for positive it will have more fundings and recognition, but it will get much censorship and be controlled and be more prying eyes. back in the early 2000s you only talk anime mostly in private forums mostly civilized, now public social media which all non anime watcher and anime watcher collides.
I know it's a pretty hot take but I definitely think this is still a better era for anime than when it was just a niche community.
Sure, the result of anime becoming mainstream is the entry of non-genuine individuals who never fully embrace the medium as it is. Political correctness is slowly seeping into this community that doesn't go there.
However, I would still rather take that over thought of being ridiculed for having a hobby like this. I never had an experience of bullying like that but I can totally understand the pain of going through that period.
And by the way, even with all of these people complaining and bitching about fanservice or sexuality whatnot, what the heck have they even changed to the medium anyway? From as far as I could see, almost nothing. If you really look at it, these guys are real losers here.
Plus, if you're talking about the possibility of anime lasting for more than 1 season, the comparison is indisputable. I would not want to go back to those days when more than half the anime I like will never get a sequel.
The community has gotten unbelievably massive with many different factions. I can agree with that. To me, that just means there are so many more options to choose from now. I couldn't possibly get tired of being an anime fan, at least not in the near future. 😁
Makima ❌
Reze ✅
Fight me
Anime should have never become mainstream. I want my good old days back 😢 early 2010s were peak
Exactly back in the day you wouldn't get judged for liking l0lis but now they act as if you are PDF just for liking cute stuff 😅
You'd probably still get judged, but it would be a minority opinion, so it'd be drowned out by the majority
Westerners cannot accept cute things cuz they are real criminals irl who love self-projecting
2:00 if deathnote comes out today, people would be like ah this anime starts off great, and falls off immediately after L ......., after 15 eps it becomes a total drag to watch and this sh has 50 something episodes in total, and introducing neer and others in last 10 eps is so boring, who gives a f about neer anyways. This show wouldn't have popped off if it comes out today
they say that right now tho
chainsaw man movie take aged
Idk I feel people are complaining about a loud minority. It's actually crazy to me that people are like "I'd rather get back to being bullied". Like... really??? No, I'm absolutely certain you're just saying that because you can just speak of it as a hypothetical. You're saying that just to make a point that actually makes no sense. Having to hide yourself, getting bullied, that can't be ignored. But the crazy people on Twitter? Just close Twitter, dude.
Like, seriously. You're letting them live in your brain rent-free so much that you wish you would get BULLIED instead? That's ridiculous and you know it.
I probably wouldn't be an anime enjoyer if anime didn't become more popular during the past 10 years. I just wouldn't be here. Heck, some great anime we are getting today might not exist either. I cannot agree with takes like "Anime becoming more mainstream was a mistake". Yes, we get more crazy people. But we also get more cool people at the same time, more people who can bring something interesting to the discussion. Y'all are focusing on the negative way too much (which, to be fair, is something we humans absolutely excel at).
I sympathize more with the idea that it used to be a more united community, I can understand that sentiment. It think this one's fair. But with more anime coming out in terms of pure volume, and with genres just developing more and more as distinct things, it was inevitable. I don't actually think the Western anime community staying small would have prevented that part.
Theres nothing wrong with finding enjoyment in a community when it's more niche and doesn't have mass appeal. To sit here and act like the mainstream aspect of anime hasn't changed it is ridiculous and disingenuous. Yes I'm in agreement with you that it's better for it to grow than stay stagnant and underground, but don't ignore the bad sides to that.
In my opinion global audiences of anime, more specifically western audiences are super aggro towards series these days, and they are constantly trying to push the cultural standards of the west onto japanese creatives. You see it largely in the dub community, or even the backlash some of these mangaka receive online which clearly bothers them at times since they occasionally feel the need to speak out and apologize.
The anime fascination has also ramped up tourism in Japan, which is a good thing ....... if only the tourists flooding over were actually being respectful of the culture and the people, instead they walk around Japan as if it's their own personal anime fantasyland and there's a certain portion of them that are incredibly inconsiderate.
To circle back to my first point as well, anime is now even dealing with censorship through credit card companies and various online transaction services that are putting pressure on the industry as a whole. Not to mention the improved success of anime has put way more pressure onto the individual animators, and it seems the working conditions in some of these studios is regressing instead of improving the quality of life for these artists who bring us this medium.
Again I'm in support with your sentiment, but let's not ignore glaring issues that come along with mass appeal and financial success. Some of these issues will only get worse imo
@@Insaniac969 I'm not ignoring the bad side. I'm saying people focus too much on it, especially when they say things like "I'd rather get bullied". Some of these issues are also things that can be fixed and aren't necessarily inherent to the popularity of the medium. Working conditions in Japan, for example, are a general Japanese problem as a whole. Anime studios are just one part of it. And I don't think anime growing in he West is the main factor for conditions worsening. In my opinion, it's just that capitalism is gonna capitalism, and the worsening of working conditions is just expected when you aren't protected by the government or unions, and sales have absolutely nothing to do with it.
The credit cards thing: Again, capitalism is gonna capitalism. Don't blame the anime community, blame the companies for this one. They're the ghouls who only care about profit and are willing to cater to the idiots for it. Plus, it's not like censorship is a new thing either to begin with (remember 4kids).
About tourism: Yeah, well, I could say that Americans have been seeing the rest of the world as their own amusement park for a few decades by now, but I might be seen as a troll for saying that. Like, yeah, sure, it's more of a problem specifically in Japan right now, but, like... Tourists are gonna be tourists, there have always been idiotic tourists in all countries. And, again, I feel like that's another case of a loud minority (and we humans LOVE to focus on drama, don't we? We love to feed that fucking fire).
So yeah, I'm not denying issues exist, but I definitely think people hyperfocus on certain things that could just be ignored, or blame the size of the Western anime community for things where it's not actually the culprit. As Gigguk said at the end, some of it is more the state of the Internet as a whole (I would say society as a whole tbh), and isn't specific to or caused by anime becoming more popular.
The problem is that those people affect anime and manga culture as whole. Those new fans even may affect manga authors or people who make anime. So it is not that simple like shutting Twitter or any social media platform because in the end it will still affect you when you read manga or watch anime. 100% percent social media like Twitter will affect anime productions especially when anime studios will start aiming at foreign markets.
I like this take, a way less doomer way of looking at everything but still acknowledging the truth of the matter. I do think it's also only a portion of new gen anime fans being so worried about moral policing in anime. But another problem is I feel like I barely see people calling it out, stuff like this from garnt should be the most shared thing in the anime community but here we are with a comment section of like 20 ppl haha.
And the avg anime fan isn't trying to get into fights online they just watch their shows and go on about life haha. If anything I just think we need an organized effort or new content creator to have a place for the community of non judgemental people to exist again. There are a couple of prominent ones that I enjoy but with the medium being so big it feels like everything isn't as tight knit as it used to be.
@@Insaniac969 The mainstream hasn't changed, or at least it hasn't changed anymore than anything else has changed according to the vagaries of fashion - we're not all sat in flares and listening to disco these days either. That's not new though; the purpose of producing an anime has always been to make money, that's as true of Dandadan as it was of Astro Boy. It's also the saving grace; as the old saying goes money talks and BS walks, and most companies know Twitter is BS, as long as the bottom line keeps heading in the right direction they'll continue doing what they're doing irrespective of how much howling there happens to be on social media. It's a non-issue though; the mainstream is the mainstream precisely because it's largely built to appeal to the lowest common denominator; it's also why the community as a whole has always tended to look down on it and refer to those who admit to being fans to it with whatever derogation happens to be de rigeur - I believe tourist is the popular one with the kids these days - while they themselves try to convince everyone that they're a "real" fan by engaging in the age old genitalia waving competition of 'who likes the most obscure crap nobody else cares about'.
As for your other points, idiot tourists are hardly new or a problem exclusive to Japan. They get a bit more prominence these days because there's a few more people willing to do daft things in the name of content, and a few more idiots desperate enough for content to cover them. You only need to look at the history of the US presence in Okinawa to see the problem in Japan stretches back longer than I suspect most of us here have been alive. Similarly the censorship issue isn't unique to anime; several jurisdictions, including the US, EU and even Japan itself, have tightened up their laws regarding what is and isn't allowed over the past decade, not to mention the emergence of China, with it's far more severe censorship regime, as a key market.
It has been an L year for games and Anime
I hate these new gen fans so much