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Hi, I wanted to talk about the 'me fan experience in the west in this, the year of the monkey 2016 Me and my good buddy srice actually started hangin' in the penny arcade forums circa 2005, back when forums were not dead and gay, they were alive and well. There were a few anime threads, they all had torrenting links everywhere, they were barely moderated, over time they grew into strange creatures, and then they were banned, starting a very long process that eventually culminated in the complete banning of anime discussion a few months ago. I don't give much of a hoot about PA these days, but it's odd that the forums attached to one of the biggest nerd geek whatever sites around has completely banned discussion of one of the most popular and rising 'nerd' interests out there. I was chatting with an old friend today about it today and he mentioned he thought the ban was good. Anime fans aren't moddable. They'll always post the 10,000 year old vampire in the body of a child titty or be creepy in one of the zillion other ways base 'me fans are able to be. In the same vein I'm sure no one needs to be reminded that zorak's reign had a pretty drastic cooling effect on what people felt comfortable talking about, or even what was allowed to be talked about. The culture of the subforum to this day, such that it exists, is still largely defined as a reaction to that era, and the general dislike of anime shared across most of the boards. Anime fans in general seem defined by their reactions to outside forces. It's odd. Especially in an era where anime and manga are still on the rise. attack on titan sells like gangbusters, compared to any other graphic novel or comic on the market. more and more influential western shows and film are influenced by anime. hell, Yuasa directed a freaking episode of Adventure Time. culturally, we're working more closely together and trading ideas much, much faster than in the past. and love it or hate it, crunchyroll and other streaming services have made it easier than ever to watch subbed shows online, no fiddling with torrents or low quality pirate stream sites. youth that grew up on toonami and the like are also getting older, entering the creative workforce with those influences, and making a bigger impact on sales with their increased budgets. so why does it feel like nothing has really changed in the past few years? by and large people that watch anime are considered perverted until proven innocent. anime clubs still have a fairly well deserved reputation of being full of cringingly awkward enthusiasts. otherwise sane and likable people think that any time people get together online to talk about 'me with their friends, it will inevitably descend into a freakshow. i'm not trying to imply that i feel crucified or in any tangible way, but i do think it's annoying, and i believe it's worth talking about why it still seems firmly entrenched in the pop culture ghetto. there's also the reality that the animation and manga industry does in actuality release a number of pretty hosed up things. looking at you, valkyrie drive. that's essentially this season, but there's one or two almost every year. the whole ironic 'nuke it again' sentiment is horrifyingly obnoxious and offensive, but it's fueled by regular social concerns and mores, and i don't believe you can argue in good faith that we produce material of the same quality and professionalism here. not to say we are better, just that the realities of anime production have created a market where extremely niche products can thrive, for now. so, that's the general state of things as i see it, but i'd be interested in getting some new perspectives, from people younger or older than me, ones that hang out in different social groups, different countries, whatever. what's your take on being an anime fan these days? do you mostly keep it to yourself ~I R L~? how do you reconcile the stuff you like with the creepy stuff you don't, or do you not feel the need to? what if you were explaining it to a friend? what do you think the freaking normie tier average person thinks about anime these days? is the idea of genre respectability actually worth considering? do you make it a point to cherish your "sane anime friends"? that is probably enough questions for now. i'd like this to be an opportunity to just have a general chat about anime perceptions and how consumers of anime see it these days. my only requests as OP: if you're all like 'well, actually, i don't define myself by my interests' i'm going to be very sad at you for thinking that's an insightful thing to say in this thread, please don't do that to me also don't be all 'well it's dumb to walk up to someone and say hi i'm like anime, how are you? i like anime, by the way. anime?' that would be dumb and it's not what i'd like to see! (i realize i will most likely be trolled with these...but guess what? i foresaw that too) do not make the thread a referendum on the current mod's term and that's it! pplease feel free to share your feels, if you're so inclined...and thank you as always for being my friends 
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Feb 8, 2016 10:20
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valkyrie drive is way less offensive to me than the western comics where a terrorist plants a bomb in a woman's womb or whatever and people can post about that on the lauded penny arcade forums all they want
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Feb 8, 2016 11:24
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In my experience the vitriol anime generates is mostly online. I find it pretty easy to talk about anime and manga in real life. Then again, I mostly hang out in nerdy circles, but I think most of the people I hang out with wouldn't consider themselves anime fans.
Theowulv fucked around with this message at 11:53 on Feb 8, 2016 |
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Feb 8, 2016 11:49
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There's a whole lot of double standards and nonsensical reasoning against anime, the sooner people get over it the better. I don't really talk about it to anybody I know other than family, mostly because I don't know anybody who is into it more than a casual level. Reds fucked around with this message at 12:28 on Feb 8, 2016 |
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Feb 8, 2016 12:08
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Anime backlash is only a gay rear end gringo thing, where I live there's a billion dweebs walking with death note shirts and they fill the giant convention centers where they hold anime cons. Latinos win again.
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Feb 8, 2016 12:52
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TheLovablePlutonis posted:Anime backlash is only a gay rear end gringo thing, where I live there's a billion dweebs walking with death note shirts and they fill the giant convention centers where they hold anime cons. Latinos win again. white people suck
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Feb 8, 2016 13:02
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North Americans should be murdered.
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Feb 8, 2016 13:05
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K. Flaps posted:North Americans should be murdered. this
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Feb 8, 2016 13:10
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in an era where sectors of popular culture that began firmly rooted in the fringe have grown into the mainstream, perhaps continuing to be unrepentant weirdos is how anime fans keep the girls out of their treehouse so to speak, like a wild animal pissing on itself to repel predators
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Feb 8, 2016 13:54
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Four Score posted:in an era where sectors of popular culture that began firmly rooted in the fringe have grown into the mainstream, perhaps continuing to be unrepentant weirdos is how anime fans keep the girls out of their treehouse so to speak, like a wild animal pissing on itself to repel predators There's a shitton of girls who like anime and except for the sexy cosplayers they are mostly as repellent as the men.
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Feb 8, 2016 14:01
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K. Flaps posted:North Americans should be murdered. I hate them so much.
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Feb 8, 2016 14:01
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My ex-girlfriend loved anime and wasn't a cosplayer or repellent... Sigh
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Feb 8, 2016 14:02
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Endorph posted:valkyrie drive is way less offensive to me than the western comics where a terrorist plants a bomb in a woman's womb or whatever and people can post about that on the lauded penny arcade forums all they want actually, that was ground zeroes, and it wasn't just any terrorist: skullface was the villain responsible
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Feb 8, 2016 14:16
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Tarranon posted:actually, that was ground zeroes, and it wasn't just any terrorist: skullface was the villain responsible
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Feb 8, 2016 14:19
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Endorph posted:didnt it happen in a frank miller comic too? mark millar, who is actually a real nihilistic piece of poo poo; an impressive distinction in a field of pretty subpar writers. he also did kick rear end and wanted. the movies were toned way down if ya can believe it. but I agree with you, comics get a pass for a lot of the stupid poo poo they pull in nerd circles. but if your point is that the level of dysfunction is about the same I'd really have to disagree, at least for these days. maybe we can agree both have a lot of machinery constructed to churn out some questionable stuff.
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Feb 8, 2016 14:35
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The simple fact that one of the biggest faces of the marvel multimedia machine is called Captain America is already more disgusting than what most manga and anime can produce. American comic book writers and readers should be first against the wall.
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Feb 8, 2016 14:47
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iunno anime has weird sex poo poo and some shows with really bizarre/wrongheaded political messages but comics do too. and frankly a lot of the poo poo modern comics pull in an attempt to be 'socially relevant' annoys me way more than a gay joke in anime or w/e.
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Feb 8, 2016 14:48
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TheLovablePlutonis posted:Anime backlash is only a gay rear end gringo thing, where I live there's a billion dweebs walking with death note shirts and they fill the giant convention centers where they hold anime cons. Latinos win again. the latino game is amazingly powerful..what's more, they're in a great position to grow stronger yet in the years ahead i suspect the whole american preoccupation with hyper focusing on the kinkier poo poo Japan does is based at least in part on orientalism. how do people react to that stuff where you are? do you just laugh it off like we do here? or does it just not come up unless someone actually likes it.
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Feb 8, 2016 14:51
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Tarranon posted:i suspect the whole american preoccupation with hyper focusing on the kinkier poo poo Japan does is based at least in part on orientalism. I think another part is how anime was and still is brought over. I wasn't into anime back then, but back in the VHS days I get the impression there was a time when some companies really focused on bringing over sexviolence stuff to sell purely on the novelty of being sexviolence cartoons. skip forward to the digital age, and everything that gets scanned or uploaded generally gets grouped together in the same places. so while some porny show or comic might be relegated to a midnight slot, an obscure magazine, or a doujin work in japan, here it's all grouped together on the same anime/manga sites, unofficial and even official to an extent. Motto fucked around with this message at 14:58 on Feb 8, 2016 |
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Feb 8, 2016 14:56
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I have only one friend that I'm willing to talk about anime with, and even then we don't share what we're watching very often But I'm white and north american soooo
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Feb 8, 2016 14:57
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Thanks to the efforts of the Daily Mail in the 90's anyone here who's not a fan or grew up watching Pokemon or whatever instantly associates anime with 'oh, those porno cartoons, right?'
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Feb 8, 2016 15:03
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K. Flaps posted:The simple fact that one of the biggest faces of the marvel multimedia machine is called Captain America is already more disgusting than what most manga and anime can produce. American comic book writers and readers should be first against the wall. loving american pigs
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Feb 8, 2016 15:05
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Thing is, though, it's always going to be on the sidelines. Even in Japan, the place where this kind of stuff originates, if you talk to the average person on the street - "Do you know about anime?" - they'll reply either "Oh, like Doraemon or Pokemon? I used to watch that when I was little!" or "It's something for otaku/freaks/perverts". I'm sure there's all sorts of sociological, cultural, and historical reasons for why this is, but just offhandedly, I would suspect that it's because by and large there's two types of anime out there: 1) Childrens' cartoons and 2) shows for perverts. Shows that fall in between those are few and far between. And it continues to be this way because each new generation grows up watching cartoons, never quite grows out of them, moves on to the more "edgy" stuff as they grow older and their tastes mature, and by the time they've committed to the soul-grinding churn that is working as an animator, they've basically assimilated into the pervy culture that dominates. To wit - you have to be a pervert (of sorts) to even want to be an animator in Japan in the first place. So when an industry is defined, shaped, molded, and staffed by the most extreme/committed of its fandom, naturally what comes out of it is either going to be entirely commercial works to sell to the broader public, so essentially marketing of toys and so on, or works dedicated to appealing to its extreme creators and the audience culture from which they came. Not that it really matters, but my personal experience is that other people my age -- Millennials -- might know about some anime or manga and generally think it's "cool", but less than me. I don't have any friends or contacts who are more fanlike, so I don't know what a "true anime fan" is like in the wild.
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Feb 8, 2016 15:29
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Back in late October I was at a Halloween party with a bunch of people I had never met and I made some sort of offhand reference to One-Punch Man. Immediately, about four people called me on it and launched into a hearty discussion about the show's merits and how it compares to the manga. These folks were normal, well-adjusted, married working adults. None of them were wearing DBZ Hawaiian silk shirts. None of them were fat stinky neckbeards. None of them felt it necessary to go on tangential rants about Madoka. What I'm trying to say is, One-Punch Man saved anime's reputation with the normies, and that's really cool.
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Feb 8, 2016 15:39
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Mentat Radnor posted:Back in late October I was at a Halloween party with a bunch of people I had never met and I made some sort of offhand reference to One-Punch Man. Immediately, about four people called me on it and launched into a hearty discussion about the show's merits and how it compares to the manga. thanks to bebop,'ghost in the shell, trigun, ttgl, jojo, random miyazaki film, and one punch man for saving anime's reputation with the normies
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Feb 8, 2016 15:43
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DrSunshine posted:Thing is, though, it's always going to be on the sidelines. Even in Japan, the place where this kind of stuff originates, if you talk to the average person on the street - "Do you know about anime?" - they'll reply either "Oh, like Doraemon or Pokemon? I used to watch that when I was little!" or "It's something for otaku/freaks/perverts". I'm sure there's all sorts of sociological, cultural, and historical reasons for why this is, but just offhandedly, I would suspect that it's because by and large there's two types of anime out there: 1) Childrens' cartoons and 2) shows for perverts. Shows that fall in between those are few and far between. But mangs tho e: I don't think that dichotomy bears out, but it depends on how broad the "for perverts" market is in your mind. Motto fucked around with this message at 15:46 on Feb 8, 2016 |
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Feb 8, 2016 15:43
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Endorph posted:black people work out in dbz shirts and and talk about how much they want to gently caress chun-li I can't believe I'm just now learning that I'm black Mentat Radnor posted:Back in late October I was at a Halloween party with a bunch of people I had never met and I made some sort of offhand reference to One-Punch Man. Immediately, about four people called me on it and launched into a hearty discussion about the show's merits and how it compares to the manga. How many of them said that it's not REALLY anime, it's not like all those others
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Feb 8, 2016 15:43
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DoubleDonut posted:How many of them said that it's not REALLY anime, it's not like all those others None of them included any qualifiers or felt it necessary to distance themselves from other works. It was a Halloween miracle.
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Feb 8, 2016 15:44
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you should have told them about chihayafuru
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Feb 8, 2016 15:49
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Endorph posted:you should have told them about chihayafuru I got fairly drunk at that party, so for all I know I did exactly that.
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Feb 8, 2016 15:49
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DrSunshine posted:Thing is, though, it's always going to be on the sidelines. Even in Japan, the place where this kind of stuff originates, if you talk to the average person on the street - "Do you know about anime?" - they'll reply either "Oh, like Doraemon or Pokemon? I used to watch that when I was little!" or "It's something for otaku/freaks/perverts". I'm sure there's all sorts of sociological, cultural, and historical reasons for why this is, but just offhandedly, I would suspect that it's because by and large there's two types of anime out there: 1) Childrens' cartoons and 2) shows for perverts. Shows that fall in between those are few and far between. I have it on good authority that every animator in the entire world is basically a hosed up pervo with an insanely twisted take on reality. that's not really what sets them apart. what you're missing here is you're needlessly separating commercial works with the pervy stuff. the perv stuff is some of the most cynically commercial stuff out there. it's created for a niche audience because most companies believe only niche audiences are interested in paying for anime. Not to mention the insane pricing scheme they've had for decades. and honestly I'd even question the idea that most Japanese people, at least the ones our age, don't have a firmer understanding of anime. it's nearly ubiquitous in American pop culture if you're looking, in our information saturated age, especially one as network driven as Japan, it just doesn't make sense if their equivalents of X and millennialist are as agnostic as you imply. you are right though, in that niche markets create very specific and largely impenetrable products. I hate to keep diving back to comic books but they had and largely still have the same problem of finding new markets to tap when their instinct is to just create stuff that appeals to their aging core fan group. luckily for anime it's proven to have a strong global appeal with emerging markets in several countries, and Japan is getting better about facing outwardly with the industry every year. the kinds of shows that pick up in new markets arent the kinky ones or even the moe slice of life series if that gets your goat. it's stuff like OPM, sci fi shows, fantasy, etc. if it keeps trending like this, 'me shows will only become more broadly appealing. at least as appealing as all the other lauded normie tier shows.
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Feb 8, 2016 15:59
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Nerds are really scared of sexy cartoons, I guess. It's why you had people on CineD freaking out about the nipples that are on screen for five whole seconds in Redline, and it's probably a part of why Jojo gets to be "not really anime" despite being a mega-popular manga franchise that's been running for thirty years - there's one major female character across everything that's aired in the anime adaptation. Now, I don't get why anime has to be represented by KLK's costume design and twenty year old tentacle rape jokes instead of the stuff that people actually agree is good, but if I had to guess I'd say it's mostly just that anime, despite being around in the west for decades now, is still the weird new thing. It's new, and more importantly it's foreign, so it must be inherently hosed up and perverted. The fact that so much anime insists on being about high schoolers probably doesn't help, though.
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Feb 8, 2016 16:10
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On SA I think it's internet olds continuing to play into stuff they used to say to make fun of japanophiles. Much of this site is basically an internet nursing home.
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Feb 8, 2016 16:13
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DoubleDonut posted:Now, I don't get why anime has to be represented by KLK's costume design and twenty year old tentacle rape jokes instead of the stuff that people actually agree is good, but if I had to guess I'd say it's mostly just that anime, despite being around in the west for decades now, is still the weird new thing. It's new, and more importantly it's foreign, so it must be inherently hosed up and perverted. Is tentacle rape even "a thing" anymore?? I've only ever seen it played as a joke/satirized.
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Feb 8, 2016 16:28
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DrSunshine posted:Is tentacle rape even "a thing" anymore?? I've only ever seen it played as a joke/satirized.
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Feb 8, 2016 16:30
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I literally work at an anime convention and most of the people who come are not wierd and creepy. For as long as I've been on staff (like 11-12 years at this point) there've been mabye 3 people thrown out of the convention for being creeps. Admittedly, the convention I work at does make a serious effort to be family friendly since most of the attendees tend to be middle and high schoolers from the surrounding area, and also has a pretty good staff.
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Feb 8, 2016 16:47
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maybe... anime fans are just normal people.
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Feb 8, 2016 16:49
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Endorph posted:maybe... anime fans are just normal people. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-7neGRLjA3I
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Feb 8, 2016 17:12
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I admit I don't talk much about anime and manga with people in real life, but I got the impression that the anti-anime/manga backlash was almost exclusive to Something Awful. I do agree that anime fans have no sense of appropriate boundaries sometimes, but I think they're better about it than they used to be.
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Feb 8, 2016 17:12
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Silver2195 posted:I admit I don't talk much about anime and manga with people in real life, but I got the impression that the anti-anime/manga backlash was almost exclusive to Something Awful. it's fairly common in my experience, but outside of SA it usually comes as part of the general mindset that believes all media has gotten worse since the speaker was a child.
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Feb 8, 2016 17:15
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