Forum - View topicWhy Are Anime Fans Obsessed with Steven Universe?
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Beatdigga
 Posts: 4552 Location: New York |
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The inmates are already running the asylum with Steven. It's why that show is a total wash. In Arrow's case, the problem was appealing to this Mary Sue OC due to demand from tumblrinas, and making all the characters from the original look bad and even killing them off to promote the awful original characters. (The show runner went as far as to say there's no show without the Mary Sue OC's and he's never getting rid of them, ensuring the show remains garbage.)
That's what I'm worried is going to happen to Voltron. That all the stupid headcanons with yaoi ships and the girl being transgender for no good goddamn reason are shoehorned in and ruin the show because tumblr fans, most of them imported from SU, are insane. At that point it might as well not even have a giant robot since nearly all the tumblrinas think the show would be better without it. The thing the show is named after. |
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leafy sea dragon
 Posts: 7163 Location: Another Kingdom |
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That soon? |
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Lord Oink
Posts: 876 |
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I only paid attention to the fandom back at the beginning/peak so season 1ish. Actually haven't heard much brony cringe in awhile. All these new fandoms overshadowed it.
I dunno what you mean. Neither of those seem similar to SU's designs. One Piece has some weird character designs sometimes, but they're usually creative looking and not realistic to begin with so I doubt Oda is trying to make some kind of statement about fat acceptance Last edited by Lord Oink on Sun Aug 28, 2016 2:14 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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enurtsol
 Posts: 14876 |
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Yeah that's understandable, though I always find it a little ironic when anime fans tell people to expand their horizons and try something new; yet it's western fans who tend to be more open to different types of art styles.
Heheheh, Ruby and Sapphire are outright stated and shown flirting with each other. There's no getting around that, censors be damned! 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OQ5sZuRZHK4 (Also, all alien Gems are girls, so they have no concept of gender, no husband/wife, no boyfriend/girlfriend difference.) |
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Lord Oink
Posts: 876 |
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I think you're confusing "having standards" with "being close minded". If you're an anime fan it's totally understandable you would be put off by those art styles if you're used to shows with lots of detail and effort put into them. Anime has plenty of different art styles but they still manage to be appealing and well-crafted. |
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enurtsol
Posts: 14876 |
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Anime actually is a minimalism art style - one of Japan's classic mantra is "less is more." That's why some details like noses and muscle lines tend to disappear. Western animation tends to put more detail because that's how people got used to it in their comics. The renowned Scott McCloud pyramid: 
Effort though, yeah anime does put more effort per dollar spent, especially on the backgrounds and costumes. But when there's a lot of money involved like with movies, western animation do put a lot of effort especially on movement (animation) and facial expressions. Now we get back to that word "appealing." As I mentioned before, that's a matter of opinion. What's appealing to your eye may not be appealing to somebody else's, and what's appealing to somebody else's eye may not be appealing to you. Heck, for instance, take a look at classic Marvel animation art style - lots of detail and movement, but to some it's appealing, to some it's not: 
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Surrender Artist
 Posts: 3264 Location: Pennsylvania, USA |
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I liked Steven Universe quite a lot. I really enjoyed a lot of the characterization and how effectively it was at telling tight, intimate emotional stories. It really hit my aesthetic sweet spot sometimes. I only put that in the past tense because when I dispensed with cable service or equivalents, I could no longer readily continue watching it. I hope to see the episodes produced since I stopped, which I think was at the end of season two, some day. I was unaware of any complaints about the fanbase, but that's because I know better than to subject myself to Tumblr. Whoops? (This thread is also reminding me of part of why it's sometimes a bad idea to expose myself to ANN)
What would you consider a, "good goddamn reason," for a character to be transgender and why is one necessary? Look, Tumblr is bad; it makes good ideas bad, mediocre ideas terrible and bad ideas unfathomable ancient evils from the abyss. By now everybody knows this. That seems like reason to be really skeptical about the claims of their influence, because that also makes it a very easy scapegoat and contrivance for dismissing an audience that isn't you when its preferences are catered to instead of yours. When criticism consists mostly of ranting against 'those people' changing something, it makes the honesty of the criticism at least mildly suspect.
"Having standards," is sort of meaningless to anybody else in a conversation unless those standards, and the values that they assume, are defined and defended. I'm not sure how feasible that is, which makes this all more frustrating that it already was. I have standards, at least in the sense that I have a set of preferences, too and I think that Steven Universe is pretty neat looking. What you're working from here seem more like prejudices. This paragraph is pretty much all assertion and no actual argument. And look, buddy, if detail is your criterion for quality, let me tell you about Rob Liefeld. Dude put lines everywhere! Ultimately, I suspect that the problem is this: What can anybody reply to claim like that with? "Na-ah?" "Your standards are bad and you should feel bad?" Dear God, not *shudder* THAT'S YOUR OPINION?" It's pretty hopeless. There's a set of anime fans who appear deeply invested in the all-consuming superiority of Japanese cartoons and nearly everything else Japanese as well, by contrast, in the inferiority of anything American. They make very strong claims derived from a very constrained conceptions of what's good, but don't often really substantiate or argue them thoroughly and persuasively, much less explore ideas, explain phenomena or provide good information in a way concordant with the strength of their claims. It's almost as though they've translated the habits and psychology of ethnic nationalism to liking Japanese cartoons, although I would wager that they're not Japanese. (Not that this would make it better, just more explicable) Perversely enough, they remind me a little of affluent white kids from the suburbs who indulge in performative radicalicam and almost compete to be the loudest, most radical social justice warriors. Last edited by Surrender Artist on Sun Aug 28, 2016 3:42 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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Revolutionary
 Posts: 607 Location: New England |
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Then there's that more recent episode where Pearl sings about how she loved Rose Quartz and how she lost her to Greg. They don't ever use the words 'lesbian', 'gay' or whatever, but at the same time it most certainly isn't very subtle, especially not in this episode. Instead of saying 'subtle', I'd say it's 'natural', and that's exactly what LGBT characters SHOULD be in media. Not "Here, look at me!" (which usually ends up just stereotyping/making fun of LGBT people). |
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nobahn
 Subscriber Posts: 5140 |
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Personally, I think that that it's the Talkback forum where the most/biggest problems are found. Please don't hesitate to click on the report icon for problematic posts. |
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Redbeard 101
Oscar the Grouch
Forums Superstar  Posts: 16961 |
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I suggest you watch the rude insults Beatdigga. You're more than entitled to not like SU but blatantly and rudely insulting fans and then suggesting they're going to also ruin Voltron is not going to be tolerated. If you can't present your opinions without insulting others or putting them down then don't post.
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Beatdigga
Posts: 4552 Location: New York |
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Sure. In this case, it would ruin the moral of the reason for that character being a girl. Namely, the revelation of such, and nearly everyone's almost casual, flippant dismissal of it (as in, "we figured it out already, it's not a big deal") was meant to show the idea of having a token female in an action cartoon was a dead notion, and it didn't matter if they were male or female. What making the character transgender would do not only dilutes that moral, but also has the rather insulting context that a woman who isn't overly feminine must be male or transgender. That's why I hate the idea. It destroys a pretty good and necessary, considering some shows, moral, and becomes very squicky in the process. As for the gay thing, few shows write characters who just happen to be gay, as if it's just a part of their existence. Usually, with a straight character, sexual orientation or need can be anywhere from first to tenth on a bucket list of things which affect their actions and motivations. With a gay character, it feels like more often than not, with a few notable exceptions, the character being gay is first, foremost, and oftentimes their only character trait, and that's just bad writing. Finally, I saw how the influence of these fans killed Arrow by pushing the fandom Mary Sue, and I don't want it to happen to other shows. |
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Chagen46
 Posts: 4377 |
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Steven Universe looks like an interesting show but damn do I have zero interest in watching something with lesbians or lesbian subtext in it.
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Stuart Smith
 Posts: 1298 |
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If they're genderless how can they be girls? It seems a bit like cheating to me since the red one looks like a boy, and using a genderless species isn't the same as human characters. Like how shows get around racism or death censorship by using monsters, robots or aliens. It's generally not seen as a problem as long as human characters don't deal with it. Couldn't you apply all this to Transformers as well since they're genderless aliens as well? -Stuart Smith |
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Beatdigga
Posts: 4552 Location: New York |
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Funny thing about that was that the Transformers had a few comics about making a genderless species female, one that's essentially a big lampooning of feminist complaints, and the other a much more serious look into it, showing giving a genderless creature gender would cause serious psychological problems. Of course, the more recent IDW comics, essentially called bullcrap on that (one female writer outright called the notion insulting) and now there's both male and female Transformers, for better or worse. |
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leafy sea dragon
Posts: 7163 Location: Another Kingdom |
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A race without gender can still have gender identification, and if they identify as female and request others refer to them as female pronouns, then as far as the story is concerned, they are female. Kind of like how in Staw Wars, everyone refers to R2-D2 as male, using pronouns like "he" and "him" and never "it," even though R2-D2 does not lookor sound like a male or female anything. |
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