Forum - View topicThe definition of "anime" has become more blurred, and confusing.
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mdo7
 Posts: 6916 Location: Katy, Texas, USA |
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I'm not worried about the rabid toxic fans out there or even on ANN forum (although it's a different matter on MAL/Myanimelist forum). I'm worried about the effect of toxic rabid fans is doing to the fandom image, I mean as I said, I don't like it'll make the fandom look racist/xenophobic when it comes to reaction toward anime being outsourced to foreign studio outside of Japan. Just yesterday, I learned that Pop Team Epic had some animation done by a French animation studio for one segment. If anime is being outsource to Europe, USA/Canada, and even Latin/South America. Then it could bring out some of the worse racist fans in the fandom, it may turn off any potential new fans that might want to be part of the fandom, even though ANN is a well-controlled moderated forum, that doesn't always translate to other anime forum, and Reddit (assuming the anime sub-reddit has a good mods on there). And don't forget social media like X/Twitter, that's where the backlash usually begin. I worried about the normal reasonable fans in the fandom may not be able to communicate or have a safe environment to talk to other anime fans online when you have racist and xenophobic fans attacking anime studios for outsourcing their animation to foreign studios including animation studio in the US/Canada, and Europe that might be providing animation for anime, and also going as far as to attack other anime fans for welcoming or liking anime that had their animation outsourced to animation studio in US/Canada and Europe. That's what I also worried about as a longtime fan. The one thing that I've seen in anime fandom when it comes to rabid fans is when they started adopting or co-opting far-right views to attack things in anime like for example you know those attack and backlash toward DEI? I'm seeing anime fans with far-right view using the DEI thing to attack stuff in anime. I saw one fan attacking Netflix's Castlevania and the studio that did the animation calling it a "DEI anime". If more Japanese anime started to outsource animation to foreign studio including US/Canada, Latin/South America, and Europe. Those will face attack from fans and I can see the accusation of Japanese companies promoting DEI by outsourcing Japanese animation to western animation studio can become a thing. That's why I get scared of a backlash like that from the rabid racist/xenophobic fans because they can co-opt the DEI thing to Japanese anime studio outsourcing animation to western studio, and they can throw in the "woke" accusation to Japanese animation companies that outsourced their animation to animation studios in US/Canada, and Europe. As FishLion said; "There is no amount of pandering we could do that will prevent them having backlash about benign topics." So that's what I fear when anime studio outsource their animation to western studio in US/Canada and Europe, those rabid racist/xenophobic fans, the accusation of the companies and studios being called pro-DEI, and stuff like that and throw in accusation of "woke" on the Japanese companies. That would make the fandom overall look xenophobic/racist and it makes normal reasonable fans like you and me have harder time to have conversation not only on ANN, but elsewhere like Reddit and other anime forum or places where normal anime fans can have conversations about anime or have in-depth debates and discussions on there. Yes, ANN has a strong well-moderated staff to prevent toxic fanbases, but I hate the idea of racist/xenophobic fans that traffic far-right views to hijack the fandom to push their anti-DEI and using the DEI thing to accuse anime companies and studios when they outsource it to western animation studio in the US/Canada and Europe, that's what worries me as a long-time anime fan.
As I said, not all animation are made equal, and I'll also say that children animation are not made for all children of age. The DCAU animation wouldn't work with current 6-7 year old demographic today because of the mature stuff found in there despite being a kid animation (however, it can work well with a very mature minded 8+ kids of that age range and older). But yeah, I'm impressed that children's animation today has become more diverse and also more evolved. Also thank you for mentioning Bluey, that animation is well very-well structured for a kid animation from Australia and does a good job with that. |
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FishLion
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Bluey is so healing to me, it is such a beautiful story and it works on every level.
Ah, that is what you meant, I guess the corollary to what I said it that they will complain no matter what we do. I also hope there isn't a dumb backlash but they literally manufacture dumb backlashes when there are none to be had. This specifically
is extremely stupid on their part. I don't know if you noticed, but these types of people swing from one vague word to another. Politcally correct, liberal, woke, DEI, these people keep making up catch all terms that mean one thing, regressive. They think things should be like the good old days, they want 4k anime tailor made for them and their opinions that were normal twenty plus years ago. Anything they complain about is essentially purity culture, that anything too different from the way they want it to be will be singled out while whine and moan until they change it back. It really isn't any different from other nerdy fandoms like Star Wars questioning diversity and crying foul on a creative choices. I point out Star Wars because they are the pinnacle of "wanting every entry to be exactly as good as the original while also getting mad when bold creative choices are made," as if the original Star Wars wasn't the product of bold creative choices. They would rather get mad the thing they liked for a long time isn't exactly the same than move onto a new franchise that suits their tastes. People mad about "DEI" and stuff in anime would be much better suited to finding a new type of animation that represents their interests better, like when they first found anime and were thrilled because US animation didn't represent their interests. The issue is they are so entrenched in anime fandom and the loss of the way things used to be that they are looking for an animation that doesn't exist anymore (in the same form). It doesn't help that social media is often set up in a way to farm negative engagement and twitter literally has a system where if you pay you get to be seen. This is a recipe for a terrible impression, but people are also learning twitter isn't representative of most people. A lot of communities I follow are complaining that right wingers, lies, and witch hunts have come to dominate twitter so much that it is unusable. Since people know this and are starting to distrust twitter, I hope people will also realize that the worst element of twitter anime fandom aren't representative of us. I also think we kind of need to have those fights? If toxic fandom elements are going to start witch hunts on twitter that move off of social media to harass anime dubbers, producers, and game producers, then we should do all we can to show they aren't welcome. I think Twitter is going to fall more and more from influence as it becomes more of a cesspit, possibly even go the route of 4chan and become a primarily toxic space that has a reputation and people know to treat with suspicion. That won't stop their toxic behavior from spilling over to other places and harassment campaign like 4chan has done before, but if we create a united front to tell them this isn't what we want out of fandom we can at least keep our own spaces clean. I know they won't fight fair and will keep making disingenuous arguments, but it really sticks in my craw to let every smarmy commenter with a nasty opinion like "banning LGBT books is fine, maybe they'll stop letting gay people change my books, hey wait we just like different things no need to be mean, I just have a different opinion  " which is why I tend to attempt a rational conversation with people I know are speaking in bad faith.
I would rather lurkers or those people who might find the threads on reddit see visible resistance to the ideas themselves and not just removing comments that are extra nasty. If this is a record people could refer to, and I have referred to really old forum posts to find information in the past, I like to set the record straight in the context of the thread specifically. Otherwise, we get the MAL forums, which as you pointed out is kind of a cesspit, everyone just shouts about the thing they want while acting like nihilistic jerks towards anyone that thinks differently. I browsed those for one day without posting anything and haven't been back since. They are meaner there, but the opinions of the concern trolls on this forum are just as regressive, they just know how to sound like concerned fans while pretending their animus isn't hating anything different from the good ol' days. Anyway, sorry for the rant, I just don't believe fans should tolerate that stuff where we do have control. Twitter and toxic subreddits may be beyond my pay grade, but I can sure write out why people overreacting to minor changes regarding diversity is either extremely petty or a purposeful part of a regressive backlash that makes things worse for everyone. I honestly do it more because it is cathartic and I would have like to see those counterarguments when I was growing up then because I expect to change any minds, but I do think it is an argument worth having regardless. |
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mdo7
Posts: 6916 Location: Katy, Texas, USA |
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You know I was just randomly looking around on the web, and I didn't know about this controversy that pre-dated the anime argument debate. And I can't believe I missed this when ANN first talked about this AMV back in 2016 (I was busy doing something else and was not active on ANN at the time). I was reading this 2017 blog on the complicated answer to "what is anime?" by an anime fan named Matthew Magnus Lundeen (I don't know who he is, can somebody tell me?).
So this part of the blog got my attention, and I didn't know of this controversy over this particular AMV (which by the way I watched back in Nov 2023):
So yes, this is the first time I've heard of this controversy about the Shelter music video because anime fans were questioning if that AMV should be considered as anime, and it caused a bit of a flame war that I didn't even know had existed back in 2016: Porter Robinson's 2016 tweet on this controversy SubredditDrama thread on Shelter anime or not anime drama and controversy Kotaku article on Shelter AMV controversy in the fandom So yeah, this pre-dated the MAL's refusal of putting Scott Pilgrim Takes Off anime on their database and even before I created this thread. So yeah, I find that hard to believe that anime fans would argue or start a drama/controversy over a AMV even animated in Japan, and voiced in Japanese and debate if it's anime or not, how could this debate and argument got out of control to the point where anime reddit mod remove the music video on there when it's clearly animated in Japan!!! And yes, MAL, Anilist, & AniDB has classified this as anime, so it's anime!!! So learning about this, you can have anime fans deciding which AMV even that was animated in Japan get a anime classification, and which doesn't. And to make it worse, a anime Reddit decide that it's not anime when it was clearly animated in Japan by a Japanese studio. I can't believe I missed this controversy/drama in 2016. |
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nobahn
 Subscriber Posts: 5190 |
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mdo7‒
Some people clearly have too much time on their hands..... |
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mdo7
Posts: 6916 Location: Katy, Texas, USA |
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Yeah, when I first heard this story (I missed that whole drama/controversy in 2016), I couldn't believe it. I mean a AMV which was clearly animated and done by a Japanese studio somehow leads to a debate on "is this anime?", and this leads to a r/anime sub-Reddit mod to remove the AMV that was featured on there because the mod thought it didn't fit the definition of anime even though it was clearly animated in Japan, and it has Japanese voices in there somehow doesn't registered as anime to that Reddit mod who are supposed to know and how to identify as anime. This reminds me of an argument I had on MAL forum talking about removing certain anime from the database like one person called for Afro Samurai from MAL database because it was voiced in English and not in Japanese, although one person somehow think it's OK for Cipher to be on the database despite no Japanese was spoken on there. Another MAL user called for Armitage III: Dual Matrix remove from MAL in that same conversation too. So fans are also determining what Japanese animation are "anime" too. This debate on "is this anime?" or "what is anime?" is never going to end as long as you have fans throwing ridiculous blanket statements about certain anime titles, and you have sites like MAL and Reddit even determining what Japanese animation is or are "anime" despite being animated in Japan. I mean having Japanese studios and companies outsourcing their animation to foreign studio not only outside of Japan, but also outside of Asia too. So that's going to cause more and more confusion and this is not making it any better for that debate or discussion amongst the fandom. Just today on ANN, I saw the news report about LINE Manga to produce 20 new animated adaptations of webtoons/manhwas this year. So if you have elitist fans and anime database websites like MAL now moving the goalpost on how to determine and define "anime" because I can see some certain anime fans can say this is not anime because it was based on a webtoons, and that can lead to more dumb logic like saying is Dracula: Sovereign of the Damned/Tomb of Dracula anime no longer an anime because it's based on an American comic book. 
This is why this whole debate and some minor outrage over this debate is never going to end nobahn. This is going to still continue as long as you and I are still alive and continuing to talk about it on this forum. |
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