the avatars up in here
What about them?
Otaku USA: As Geek Culture Assimilates, Otaku Remain Outcasts
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What about them?
they're animu avatars therefore lols
probably just a drive by comment
CaviarMeths
Member
I think it's important to note that comic books and other "geeky" stuff as we know it today has permeated our culture for much longer than anime. Modern comics have been around since about the 30s.
But it wasn't until the 70s or so that geek culture was approached with any legitimacy by adult fans. Even Star Trek TOS was unpopular and canceled after only 3 seasons. Star Wars, Silver Age of Comics, there was a major cultural shift around that time, probably with the rise of personal computers and video games as well, where this stuff started to open up and become mainstream in America.
Whereas anime wasn't significantly popular in America until about the mid-90s. I like anime, but I wouldn't hold it against anyone who took a cursory glance at it and wrote off the whole medium. It looks childish, the majority of it is childish, and you can couple that with all of the creepy, morally questionable content rising to the top and getting all of the attention.
But what consumers want is never static. I don't think it's likely that manga and anime will never achieve acceptance as other geek culture has.
But it wasn't until the 70s or so that geek culture was approached with any legitimacy by adult fans. Even Star Trek TOS was unpopular and canceled after only 3 seasons. Star Wars, Silver Age of Comics, there was a major cultural shift around that time, probably with the rise of personal computers and video games as well, where this stuff started to open up and become mainstream in America.
Whereas anime wasn't significantly popular in America until about the mid-90s. I like anime, but I wouldn't hold it against anyone who took a cursory glance at it and wrote off the whole medium. It looks childish, the majority of it is childish, and you can couple that with all of the creepy, morally questionable content rising to the top and getting all of the attention.
But what consumers want is never static. I don't think it's likely that manga and anime will never achieve acceptance as other geek culture has.
Skellig Gra
Member
Because they know what a wiener Otacon was in MGS.
Snkfanatic
Banned
Can you hear my eyes rolling from over there?
"My geeky avatar is better than your geeky avatar"
enanogrande
Member
I'm not even convinced comics and overall geek/nerd culture actually has gone mainstream. Certain franchises have gone mainstream sure, specifically the ones that have a successful cinematic element, but I think comics as a whole are still considered 'man-child living in basement' territory.
John Kowalski
Banned
also the reason why the kamichu manga is weirdly lewd and full of unsuspectingly big butts
T
Transhuman
Unconfirmed Member
You avatar is pretty cool. Let me just do a quick google sear-
daviyoung, apologise to the nice man for insulting his tasteful anime avatar.
I don't think they stopped entirely. I have a number of friends who, despite not giving a shit about anime, got into Attack On Titan. If the plot and pacing of the show had lived up to its cool premise and art it could have been something.
the avatars up in here
Gaming as an acceptable hobby is mainstream, but the most mainstream parts of current gaming either didn't exist earlier or weren't nearly as big.
I don't think gaming as it was prior to becoming mainstream (I'd say this occurred during the PS2/XB/GCN era), is mainstream now. The genres and games that drove the industry pre-Halo are mostly stagnant, in decline, or not as big as they once were (JRPGs, Action Platformers, fighting games, RTS). Instead, gaming itself mainstreamed by expanding and creating new genres that were more easily scalable due to less punishing game design choices ( XP in most big genres so players are rewarded with their time even when they lose, auto saves instead of starting levels over, DLC to make games easier).
All of this is to say that Anime will need to shed some of the things that makes it "anime" to fans in order to become more mainstream in the US. Just like with gaming, you'll have the old fans kicking and screaming about change, but once it is more mainstream overall, you can start creating games/anime that harken back to the old genres people used to love (Souls games, Shovel Knight)
I don't think gaming as it was prior to becoming mainstream (I'd say this occurred during the PS2/XB/GCN era), is mainstream now. The genres and games that drove the industry pre-Halo are mostly stagnant, in decline, or not as big as they once were (JRPGs, Action Platformers, fighting games, RTS). Instead, gaming itself mainstreamed by expanding and creating new genres that were more easily scalable due to less punishing game design choices ( XP in most big genres so players are rewarded with their time even when they lose, auto saves instead of starting levels over, DLC to make games easier).
All of this is to say that Anime will need to shed some of the things that makes it "anime" to fans in order to become more mainstream in the US. Just like with gaming, you'll have the old fans kicking and screaming about change, but once it is more mainstream overall, you can start creating games/anime that harken back to the old genres people used to love (Souls games, Shovel Knight)
User 73706
Banned
Chmpocalypse
Blizzard
No, because it's a nonsense conclusion.
A lot of anime is just really, really bad in terms of narrative, acting, production values, you name it.
Yes, I agree, a lot of everything IS really, really bad in terms of narrative, acting, production values, you name it.
Why does anime get singled out for a problem endemic to every medium?
wait hold on tho
weeaboo is not a slur lol
calm down
Cornbread78
Member
Careful, it's "that guy" again...
You so edgy and cool....
Hey look, that is a profile of the whole article... nerd on nerd hate crimes...
partyphone
Banned
it's a consequence of it not being mainstream. the stuff that pokes through tends to not be the best. early on it was stuff like akira and eva. akira is beautiful but mostly nonsense. eva is mostly a deconstruction of giant robot anime and is a poor first exposure. adult swim didn't help much with all the inuyasha. and even the stuff that I'd consider good has weird, off putting content. especially when you're catching it in the middle of a series.
so there's discovery issues(for the longest time anime had been ridiculously expensive) and cultural issues and overzealous fan issues. it puts up a big barrier. and things like crunchyroll won't actually help because anyone who doesn't already like anime isn't going to care. western TV and movies are full of shitty writing and inexplicably popular crap(see: big bang theory) but we have hundreds of channels and dozens of weekly movie releases along with services like netlfix and amazon flooding us with more original content than we could ever possibly watch. so anime has to overcome its stigma while competing for time with all of that. it's daunting and I'm not sure why anime fans care.
Ehh, I think Adult Swim did a good enough job back when they started their own block. It had enough as an introduction, with Bebop, Trigun, and even Yu Yu Hakusho, which was a poor man's DBZ. Hell, they even ran amazing drama and mysteries like Witch Hunter Robin and journey type like Wolf's Rain.
Nowadays Adult Swim Action brought Toonami back and they're doing better now than back then.
Nowadays Adult Swim Action brought Toonami back and they're doing better now than back then.
I mean for sure, those are are practical and logical reasons for why anime is unappealing to the masses. I completely agree with you on that.
But I generally expect someone who frequents an online gaming forum to be able to distinguish between "everything is bad" and "everything LOOKS bad but there's some good shit out there if you look for it". It'd be like someone saying all video games suck because the most popular stuff is free-to-play mobile garbage. Nobody here would say that, though. Well, I don't think they would, anyway!
Most people like us are already familiar with digging through shit to find the gold. A lot of us (me included) have been doing it our whole lives. I definitely played a lot of shit when I was a kid, but I've gotten better at identifying the gold as I've grown older.
As for why I care... It's basically because I'm tired of being the butt of the joke at all times. I talked about this earlier in the thread. Do you like being the butt of the joke at all times? It's as simple as people acknowledging that just because they're not interested it doesn't mean they have to be an ass about it all the time.
It seems to be creatively stuck in its own rut. Anime is very incestuous when it comes to its own devices. It seems as though nowadays anime shows want to copy each other and look for other anime for its inspiration. Sure, there's the rare exception here and there but there's a reason shows like Cowboy Bebop and Lain stand out: they take their inspiration from a variety of sources to make it distinct.
Plus, western media is currently at a breakthrough with diversity involving race, gender, and sexuality. Anime...isn't.
That applies to all media! Everything is insular. Western media isn't some perfect paragon of progressiveness. It's getting better at a faster pace, but that's because the West is in general just ahead of Japan in terms of progressive movements. This has been true for many many years.
But... there's always stuff trying to break through, even in anime. Yes. Even in anime. One of my favorite recent examples is Princess Jellyfish, which non-judgmentally features a cross-dressing man as one of the main characters. It's a good show. A very good show. Do we ignore that because the mainstream stuff is still shitty mainstream stuff? If so, it'd be an incredible double-standard to hold up western media as something better when the mainstream stuff is still shitty mainstream stuff.
This idea that everything from the 90's was gold is funny. The 90's had a lot of cool stuff but thats because we didn't get everything and or did not have access to everything like we do today thanks to the internet. And even then..there was a loooooot of trash you had to dig through to get to the Bebop and such. The reserves have not run out...it just that there wasn't as much as you think. People mostly mention around like 10-12 series as the "good ole days"....this encompasses like 10 years...the good is still very much there. Its just that it is harder to ignore the "bad" because we have access to everything now.
I get what you're saying (and someone will say that in 2025) but that aspect of anime isn't the only thing keeping it from being mainstream in the US, just as games being intentionally super hard back in the day wasn't the only limiting factor to gaming catching on over time. It's a combination of things, but the common factor is resistance to change.
If we stuck to the same genres we had in the 16 bit era, gaming would likely be much smaller than it is now. A number of changes (aging gamer population, online console gaming, consoles as multimedia devices, smartphones, new or increased popularity genres, shift away from a "kiddie" aesthetic, widespread adoption of broadband, quality of life improvements in games)
the avatars up in here
Thanks for the drive by troll post.
Hatty
Member
I'll fight you
kuroneko0509
Member
You avatar is pretty cool. Let me just do a quick google sear-
daviyoung, apologise to the nice man for insulting his tasteful anime avatar.
How was this of any meaningful contribution to the discussion in this topic?
Hey man, I didn't mean that it was bad. In fact, I love YYH more than DBZ because it's more dynamic in the characters and it's way shorter.
striferser
Huge Nickleback Fan
You might want to check out Wandering Son a.k.a hourou musuko if you want to see anime that focus on lgbt.
I have, great series.
I just wish that ensemble shows would feature open LGBT folks (that aren't obvious fetish bait). At least with a lot of western media I can do this.
a lot???
Sorry, not A LOT, but a good amount, especially on TV. Certainly a hell of a lot more than Japanese media.
Have you taken a census of both Western and Japanese media on this?
I mean I'm not disagreeing with you necessarily but you can hardly be an authority on the matter as a non-Japanese person. I doubt you've perused every single instance. (I am making an assumption here; maybe you are Japanese and that's why you speak with such authority?)
It's a damn shame, but the article speaks truths. Heck my coworkers are all a bunch of geeks as well, enjoying comics, video games, etc., but some of them think one guy we work with in particular is weirder because he likes anime. Admittedly the guy is a tad weird sometimes, but his anime Fandom has nothing to do with that.
I myself enjoy some anime, I love Gundam and One Piece for example, though I hardly watch it compared to when I was younger. I also reluctantly talk about anime offline, for similar reasons to this article. Of course my belief is people should enjoy their Fandoms regardless of what others think.
And that's why I say it is a damn shame. Geek culture has changed in a way that encourages bullying of fans of other geek genre that people dislike, as seen here on GAF even. I'll never understand why we just can't accept that others may like comics, anime, role-play, whatever, even if we might not, and not ostracize people for their interests.
I myself enjoy some anime, I love Gundam and One Piece for example, though I hardly watch it compared to when I was younger. I also reluctantly talk about anime offline, for similar reasons to this article. Of course my belief is people should enjoy their Fandoms regardless of what others think.
And that's why I say it is a damn shame. Geek culture has changed in a way that encourages bullying of fans of other geek genre that people dislike, as seen here on GAF even. I'll never understand why we just can't accept that others may like comics, anime, role-play, whatever, even if we might not, and not ostracize people for their interests.
Snkfanatic
Banned
You avatar is pretty cool. Let me just do a quick google sear-
daviyoung, apologise to the nice man for insulting his tasteful anime avatar.
What in the world does this even mean?
So you found a creepy wiki page detailing a character I liked from a show? I guess since I liked the show you just assume I sexualize the character too?
Go on, I am waiting for another bullshit response from you.
Funny, that's just what a robot who doesn't need an avatar would say.
Saucycarpdog
Member
I really wish more anime would change up its art styles on the regular. The majority of anime seems to piggyback off each other's art styles to the point that some females in shows seem to be copy-pasted across shows. Yeah, Ping-pong, yokai-watch and some indie stuff change it up but those, at least imo, are the exceptions and don't show up very often on top anime lists and crunchyroll.
Okay so I've been lurking this whole topic and this is the only thing I've seen that doesn't really make sense to me. How does the former mindset just "let," stuff happen? It's still criticizing the weird fanservice stuff, and if the creators of KLK listen to criticism then they still might fix it. It's still suggesting that a correction needs to be made. The difference I see between the two mindsets is that the former is a person who enjoyed KLK despite the weird fan service stuff, and the latter is someone who didn't enjoy it as much because of the weird fan service stuff, both of which are completely valid viewpoints but I mean, you shouldn't really feel bad for liking something just because it has fan service, IMO.
Agreed.
It's also weird because nothing is perfect. Everything has something wrong with it. If the suggestion is that liking KLK despite its flaws is wrong, then it's gonna be damn hard to find anything without flaws, so good luck enjoying stuff coming from the entertainment industry.
Stormhammer
Member
I think what those flaws are matters though
Obviously, but my point is as long as you are aware of what those flaws are, recognize why they're problematic, and publicly call them out... are you really doing anything wrong? There are elements of KLK that are extremely enjoyable. It's up to the individual to decide if they're able to get over the shitty aspects to enjoy the good aspects.
The anime I'm willing to watch is very limited. I will not watch anything where they have weird colored hair or too big eyes (unless it's stylized in a unique way or the story is exceptionally well told by non anime fan standards).
I'm not an anime fan so I immediately notice the stuff for fans (I don't think there is a problem with that; catering to the people who like what you do is important.) But I do understand why it's not well received outside of the fandom. And admit I'm willing to write off the medium and its fandom for the most part.
There are exceptions e.g. I'll watch anything by Makoto Shinkai.
I'm not an anime fan so I immediately notice the stuff for fans (I don't think there is a problem with that; catering to the people who like what you do is important.) But I do understand why it's not well received outside of the fandom. And admit I'm willing to write off the medium and its fandom for the most part.
There are exceptions e.g. I'll watch anything by Makoto Shinkai.
Because of the amount of time that has passed, you also now have a whole generation of older people -- some of whom are the producers behind Hollywood movies now, who have a reverence and respect for the source material. Whole families can watch these movies now because both the parents and the kids recognize the main characters. The only anime-related case where this has applied is Speed Racer. Maybe in another decade or so we might get a Macross movie.
Absolutely. Once the power dynamic shifts and the generations change pop culture will be singing a different tune. Always has been and always will be.
NaDannMaGoGo
Member
The nice thing is, if you were to hop into the AnimeGAF OT and ask if there's anime that fits your criteria you're likely to get a few recommendations that you'd really end up enjoying. For how much otaku or even just Japanese culture-centric anime there is, there's still a whole slew of great stuff that isn't like that. They may just be a small percentage of anime, however, in absolute numbers it's still a lot. It's actually ridiculously how many anime series there are. Just taking a look at MAL I've just randomly picked a very low rated show and it's ranked as low as (place) #7038.
Anime also simply does allow for a certain kind of shows that just wouldn't work in life action because you need the abstraction and stylization that animation provides you in order for e.g. strange creatures or supernatural effects to look just fine instead of completely out of place. This is actually very much so the case for most really good anime, they simply couldn't be done nearly as well in life action because they take advantage of their medium.
This. People are more than willing to help you look for what you want.
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