Forum - View topicAnswerman - Why Are Some Anime Fans So Cynical?
|
Goto page Previous Next Note: this is the discussion thread for this article |
| Author | Message | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Jose Cruz
 Posts: 1796 Location: South America |
|
|||||||
|
It's true that Western anime fans are a very self hating bunch of people. This self hate makes anime fans think they are "defective people" for enjoying animation and so they claim everything is "garbage" while still watching and enjoying animation. Being cynical is a way of communicating to the world that they are not "defective people" for enjoying anime since they officially claim to not enjoy it.
The reason for that self hate is that fictional narratives communicated through the visual language of manga are still not a respected artform in the Western world, specially in the US. Hence, this lack of respect by mainstream Western society regarding the visual language of manga leads to the self hate of the subset of the Western population that is able to appreciate it despite the social stigma. I think this is fundamentally due to ethnocentrism: western culture considers itself as the superior culture and so westerners who are able to appreciate foreign cultures (and I mean really appreciate it like anime fans do and not pretend to like "exotic foreign stuff" like some pretentious movie fans claim to like Mizoguchi's films) feel bad for being "defective" in not agreeing with their own culture's evaluation of foreign culture. By the way, Japan suffers from this phenomena too even though they are not western because their civilization has been thoroughly colonized by Western culture to the degree that now Japan's mainstream culture is not really Japanese culture but Western culture. By the way, I think that Sevakis didn't understand the person's question.
I think it's true that OVAs were more manly action oriented stuff in the 80's and 90's and that today things have gotten cuter and more feminine on average. I guess anime is becoming more and more influenced by shoujo manga aesthetics, this influence was nonexistent in let's say M.D. Geist from 1986 or Legend of Galactic Heroes. Last edited by Jose Cruz on Mon Dec 04, 2017 2:32 pm; edited 2 times in total |
||||||||
|
||||||||
EricJ2
 Posts: 4016 |
|
|||||||
This pretty much nails it in one sentence. Furthermore, the old-school Exhausted fans, who grew up from the 90's days of purple VHS tapes, raw "Care-package" tapes, and the Sub/Dub Wars--and saw the effects of real, tangible bad decisions by big companies that paid the price--are cynical about the Lazy fans, hence the name: "Lazy" fans tend to come from either the convention circuit, or the fandom for free mass-broadcast Toonami shows, where they don't have the feeling of being abandoned in the wilderness and having to work together, like we old club and Suncoast-era fans did--They see themselves as more of a "united" fandom, and that the Big Bad Rich Industry is against them, to ruin their fun, shake them down for money, fill every fight serial with Stupid Filler Episodes, and laugh greedily as they sell every dub to 4Kids. And anime fans shouldn't feel singled out, we also see it from mass united blocks of Star Wars fans, comic fans, gamers, and anyone else on the low-spending fringes of a widely mass-available fandom with too much for sale, and maybe an age when picked-on feelings ride high, and group anger is more thrilling. How much money is "too much" for the Bad Greedy Companies to charge the poor loyal fans?...Almost any amount, it seems. Yes, it's the old folks complaining about the new kids' "entitlement", but when it comes down to getting basic history wrong, like not being aware of old classic 80's/90's series, it creates the resentment that some of the loudest cynicism has no right to be cynical in the first place. Those who complain that Amazon is charging them for a stream should have tried watching companies drop like flies during the 00's Disk Bubble, never mind the 90's.
I came from the 80's where anime was mainstream, and designed to sell toys on the most watched broadcast channel at the widest demographic airtime. Dirty Pair was NOT a fanservice show. The pervy niche stuff was all going to OVA at the time, where even anime companies thought it belonged. An anime-history discussion between the Old Exhausted and the Young Lazy can often start to resemble the recent arguments over why Millennials refuse to watch old classic movies--Where a "Who watches a bunch of crappy 80's-anime robots and gun-girls anyway?" argument can start to resemble "Who wants to watch Gone With the Wind anyway, it's a racist slave movie!" |
||||||||
|
||||||||
|
Animegomaniac
Posts: 4151 |
|
|||||||
I wish... but most of it seems to be actionish shows based on Light Novels, WSJ battle shonen or mobile games. There'll always be harem series/moe series these days as it's the easiest way to get as many female voice actresses/idol potentials as possible into a single IP and sometimes they're not even subtle about it. I'm a cynic by nature and I do come by it honestly as I've watched a lot of anime over 30 plus years. I've reached the conclusion that while there's only a few ways you can make one person punching another one interesting, *love* is a many splintered thing... splendid? where's the drama in that?... and since animation will always need a certain number of drawings, the more uniforms or constant costumes the cast uses, the easier the whole process is. Which means a lot of military action dramas or high school comedies/romances. And which one takes the least amount of work again? Maybe I'm just pragmatic.... Is there a difference to the wide eyed idealistic fan? |
||||||||
|
||||||||
|
Chrono1000
|
|
|||||||
|
I think part of the issue with cynicism in anime is that there are some anime fans who believe that all anime should be made for them. They don't like fanservice so they complain about fanservice shows, they don't like harem so they complain about harem shows, and they don't like isekai so they complain about isekai shows. This type of cynicism is less about being tired about a genre as hating the very existence of that genre.
|
||||||||
Izanagi009
 Posts: 465 Location: Pittsburgh, PA, USA |
|
|||||||
|
If i'm allowed to post my feeling on the matter
I'm cynical about anime because i used to be an optimist about it as a viewer. In high school, I remember being ecstatic about anime since it was fresh and new with ideas, concepts and themes that are different from the american cartoons. But now, as I learned critical analysis techniques and stuff about film theory, themes, metanarratives and the like, I started to realize that anime is very focused on it's own tropes and meta without a consideration of the grander narratives or metanarratives it makes. It felt forced and overly consumerist instead of artistic. Today, that cynicism is still there but now I realize that the meta isn't always a bad thing like with Garo Vanishing Line: meta in the sense that it falls into specific tropes but still very good Honestly, writing this, I sound like an old and possibly elitist film critic |
||||||||
|
||||||||
mbanu
 Posts: 160 |
|
|||||||
|
One of the reasons I think Flip Flappers is such a good symbolic representation of the anime industry is that it captures perfectly the idea that it is a collection of older creeps, weirdos and crazies mixed with kids and their younger counterparts, who under normal circumstances probably would hate one another, who shouldn't really even be associating with one another, but who have all been united towards one massive project, building a portal to the world of Pure Illusion (i.e. anime).
When you are young, you only see the goal, not the imperfect people who are striving towards it; that leads to unwarranted optimism. But of course eventually that optimism goes away, and if it was strong enough, the backlash cynicism can be really strong itself... A lot of people do leave; that's why the average shelf life of an anime fan is so brief. The ones that don't are the ones that find themselves wanting to return to that magical anime place, even knowing how much nonsense is involved on every level from production to consumption, they want to keep going there, and that means they have to keep trying. |
||||||||
|
||||||||
MarshalBanana
 Posts: 5486 |
|
|||||||
What would really be good, is if they mixed with other fans, and I suppose the same for new fans who life only in the simulcast group. Because that way information can spread, rather than everyone living in their own echo chamber.
Last edited by MarshalBanana on Mon Dec 04, 2017 3:16 pm; edited 1 time in total |
||||||||
|
||||||||
Hobbie
 Posts: 30 |
|
|||||||
Yes, there was fanservice back in the day but I don't remember jiggling boobs ans ultra close-ups on butts/panties being the norm. The line between sexiness and vulgarity is thin but I think most of the old-school shows did a good job not crossing it. |
||||||||
|
||||||||
|
EricJ2
Posts: 4016 |
|
|||||||
Well, you'll hear fans mention Minky Momo--or, if they remember the Carl Macek days, "Magical Princess Gigi"--only because it was one of the better ones worth remembering. And then, only the Exhausted fans who remember fansub tapes and maybe digisubs. (And more fans remember Magical Project S than Pretty Sammy.) Shojou TV anime in the 80's/90's sold manga and merchandise to girls, which means, apart from the odd romantic title, it sold to little girls, like the first season of Sailor Moon. 90's-wilderness disk companies knew that wasn't their demographic, unless it had proven core fan cultural value, like something with a Tenchi hook, or Sailor Moon. Why much from the 80's/90's wasn't brought stateside was more a matter of licensing-- Most companies were still garage companies in the early days, and couldn't afford to license anything EXCEPT short one-off OVA series and features. And again, the OVA's back then weren't what you'd show on TV. It wasn't until anime's popularity at the end of the 90's and into the early 00's that licensors on both sides started taking more of an interest in what "essential" shows were airing on TV...And that unfortunately mutated into the Licensing Bubble, when companies didn't know what the next "classic" would be, and took whatever pig they could license in a poke. Nowadays, we have the Crunchyroll Era, where everything gets licensed, and the fans sort it out--We dodged a lot of bad anime back when disk companies couldn't afford it, now we get to see it all and decide. And of course, the Lazy fans see bad anime and think it's a Conspiracy. 
|
||||||||
|
||||||||
|
Catseyetiger
Posts: 779 |
|
|||||||
|
Nothing like good old megalomaniac self ideology from folks who call themselves fans!
Man it nice to skip one most of the article and two most of the comments! Opinions are just that! They do NOT represent anything but a self belief much like a choice of well anything these days! Either you like and enjoy something or you do NOT! Just that simple and while you may like something others may not! To me a story gets told either with good characters interesting music and good or great art! The opposite can be said for every anime as well! But it will boil down to opinion of the viewer and the mindset it was viewed in at the time! |
||||||||
|
||||||||
|
MarshalBanana
Posts: 5486 |
|
|||||||
|
||||||||
|
||||||||
Ashen Phoenix
 Posts: 2936 |
|
|||||||
Well said. In some ways I feel the former from time to time, usually when season premieres roll out and I sigh at the shows that are retreads of retreads, devoid of a single iota of originality or even effort put into them. In part it's because of this that I've been "burned out" on certain tropes and genres and watch far fewer anime than I used to. That said, what I do devote my time to tends toward the handful of series that are widely talked about and recommended, so I've been much happier in recent years with the quality-over-quantity, crowd-sourcing approach. |
||||||||
|
||||||||
BodaciousSpacePirate
 Subscriber Posts: 3018 |
|
|||||||
Gundam (NSFW) Cowboy Bebop (NSFW) [ANY SCREENSHOT OF NAGA FROM SLAYERS] Dragon Ball (NSFW) Anime has always kind of sucked. |
||||||||
|
||||||||
|
Lemonchest
Posts: 1771 |
|
|||||||
|
Not watching simulcasts has helped me shed some of my cynicism, at least when it comes to seasonal anime. There's still plenty of crud, but it's easier to wade through when it takes 4 hours to watch a show rather than three months. Not feeling obliged to follow the "conversations" around the shows is an added bonus.
|
||||||||
|
||||||||
Blood-
 Bargain Hunter Posts: 24101 |
|
|||||||
|
I'm glad I'm not a cynical fan. For years now, season in and season out, the anime industry has provided me with a steady stream of titles I have really enjoyed. Some are great and some are merely empty, but enjoyable, entertainment calories, but I love it. LONG LIVE ANIMU!!!
|
||||||||
|
||||||||
 |
All times are GMT - 5 Hours |
|
|
|
Powered by phpBB © 2001, 2005 phpBB Group