w - weeb

As an outsider, this was an interesting post for me.

>>4616
Needy manchildren gonna manchild. Of course they are stupid

I've got very similar thoughtsto OP, there's nothing left to say. Maybe except reminding the fact that moe is a piece of soykaf

But what caused this shift? Is it the increased marketing and popularity of the medium (much like how the popularization of 4chan possibly caused the detriment of its quality)? It is not so much that the fandom is overrun with weebs so much as what caused the fandom to make such a dramatic shift to an almost polar opposite of what it once was.

>>4621
>popularity of the medium
when talking about a community I think this is usually always the primary factor. The 4chan parallel is spot on.

>>4622
Miya is always wise on this, but his definition of otaku is different from others'.

>>4624
>his definition of otaku is different from others'.
How so?

>>4621
It stopped being a medium for art and turned into another generic market aimed at children and manchildren

>>4625
The idea of being a fan of something to a point of obsession. But whether or not this incorporates asocial/antisocial tendencies is debatable. It seems his point is that anime is becoming worse because people("animators") aren't watching people, they only know themselves--referring to the "Otaku" with asocial/antisocial (whatever you want to call it) tendencies entering the industry. I think he stresses the importance of this act of watching people because it is applicable to both character creation and animation itself: the actual fluidity and motion of a character.

Anime fans have soykaf taste and anything good fails miserably

>mfw

Don't act like somehow older anime is any better than the stuff coming out right now; Once you take of the nostalgia glasses you'll realize that there was just as much soykaf in the pre-2000's as there is now, if not more.

There's nothing wrong with younger anime fans just because they weren't in "da sekrit club!"; it sounds like you just need to grow up and accept that watching anime isn't a private circle jerk for wannabe internet dilettantes anymore.

>>4630
eh, there was a shitload less anime in general coming out than there is now so technically less bad was coming out. And even if you look at the ratio I agree it is most likely pretty similar throughout but there are naturally going to be peaks and troughs, I would say we are on the way out of a trough right now.

I do completely agree with you about the secret club soykaf though

On the other side, I see more and more people post anime pics and claim to like anime to seem "lol so random and nerdy".

>4630
Sorry if you got the impression that I was implying that the quality of the medium was at fault. It wasn't so much the medium at issue as the shift in the culture and attitudes of the fanbase itself. There are good and bad anime/manga from any era and there are some decent younger/newer fans. Note that I am not trying to portray that my generation was somehow better or that 'in the good old days' shows were better. The remark about moe was more about the subculture surrounding it than the genre itself for that matter. I am also not suggesting the elitist mentality of liking it before it was cool or less accessible, etc. The scarcity of the medium outside the major cities and the need to get info via mailing lists and web 1.0 was more or less just hypothesizing that the certain types of people who were attracted to the medium tended to need to make an effort which weeded out the Least Common Denominators that exist to a larger extent today. Now that it is well marketed and easily accessible, we have a weeb influx. Compare social networking to imageboard culture for example. We come to the imageboards because they have a certain culture that is starkly different from your typical social networking site. Imageboards still exist because of the type of communities they engender. When imageboards like 4chan became more well known and an influx of people who tend to disregard both the written and unwritten rules of imageboard culture, there was an exodus to other boards such as this one. This is primarily what I'm getting at. In the 80s/90s computers/anime+manga/etc were more accessible certainly than in the 60s/70s but much less so than they were today and it required a certain type of person with the ability to learn and understand what they were doing for the most part as opposed to now. The increased exposure to once uncool things like STEM, computing and anime is flattering in its own way, but much of the attention is unwanted as it isn't out of general interest so much as "right now its cool to look like you are interested in these types of things without trying to learn much about it." Again, not trying to come off elitist or turn this into a generational thing. It is more of seeing the fan culture devolve into an absurdity and wondering why.

>>4630
Older anime has way less moeblobs.

>>4622
heard those gifs were fake. No I don't have a source
>>4621
>>4623
I don't think it has anything to do with popularity - from my experience the worst anime fans are the really elitist ones who go on /a/ and not outside. I think that the culture on imageboards kind of sets these people up for failure, by building them up with elitism and seclusion, hatred of "normies" etc and then using them for laughs.

my worst experience with weeaboos was this one incredibly toxic person who convinced me and my friends that we couldn't talk to anyone outside of our own sphere because they didn't understand us or anime (as mainstream as anime is, we couldn't talk about or enjoy "popular" shows without being made fun of). Coming out of it felt like I had joined a cult or something.

>>4632
Anime is going the same route as video games in that a lot of normal people (by which I mean the type of people who have 800 facebook friends and go partying every night) have gotten into it to seem cool and quirky. Once that starts it doesn't stop.

>>4630
Older anime actually hand drawn. One of the most important factors in deciding whether I will watch a show is if it took effort.

Showa anime >>>> Heisei anime.

>>4641
the medium of an anime has no effect on the effort put in.

>>4641
Even modern anime is mostly hand drawn on paper. The only difference is that the pages are scanned into computer instead of inked on cel.

>>4630
The 90's worship is one of my least favorite things about the internet right now. It discourages new ideas and fresh content because "everything was better in the 90's before the normies invaded". I can't wait until it's over.

OP here.
Sorry that this turned into a 90s vs now debate as that was not the intent of the post. I could have said 00s vs 2010s or last year vs this year. I think >>4639 said it best about the aggressive "cult like" attitudes of some fans which is what I was trying to stress. Ironically, it is not the normies I take issue with, it is the obsessive delusional types that treat a form of entertainment like a cult. It seems like there have been more of these types coming every passing year and more of the regular fans distancing themselves from the craziness.

>>4616
It's weird. I feel the same way you do, but I'm also happy to see it so popular. I won't say I'm hesitant to admit I like it, but I'm also the kind of person who goes to conventions.
Buuuut like >>4630 said, there was soykaf anime in the 90s. It was just less available.

There's a lot of shitty parts of the community, but I think anyone that devotes themselves entirely to a single medium of entertainment is eventually gonna become shitty and delusional.

2000's anime was mixed, some was meh, some was alright. 90's had a lot of good stuff, and so did the 80's, but they also had a lot of shitty animes and manga that no one remembers. Neon Genesis Evangelion is one of the worst things to happen to anime in it's entire history. manga was good up until the point that US shonen jump came out, when that hit, manga just seems to really tank. such manga as one piece, yu-gi-oh, naruto, xxxholic, and whatever else really fuarrrked manga up and made it a business first, then a art form. the leaders who lead these magazines that publish manga are the real culprits, as they constantly cater to whatever the fan demands. the artist/writer lose control and eventually are forced to put out low quality crap that isn't worth the paper its printed on. nowadays, the only good manga seem to be the stuff that is underground or has been running for several, several years (berserk, yotsuba, jojo). I blame otaku mostly though. fans can slowly kill things, like doctor who for example. that show is alright, but I can't talk about it socially without having some autist tell me what I think about the show is completely wrong.

>>4650
You're retarded. Nostalgia for things that happened 20 years ago has always existed, and always will exist. If you don't remember 80s nostalgia, you must be 16 or something.

>>4660
I do, but it's not as prevalent anymore, which will happen to the 90's nostalgia eventually.

>>4650
I dare to disagree with you, it may be is mostly a nostalgia, but 90s, first half of 2000, (and 80s, when i wasn't even born yet) seemed much more interesting in almost all cultural terms

>>4669
It made waifu soykaf come into existance

>>4671
There's nothing wrong with waifus, besides why blame this particular anime for that?

>>4671
waifu soykaf would have come into existence with or without neon genesis evangelion. anime fans ruined anime
>>4676
there is everything wrong with waifus

>Neon Genesis Evangelion is one of the worst things to happen to anime in it's entire history.

Forgot to address this. If I do not, it will bug me for eternity.

The worst thing to happen to anime for me was having three long shonen series running for years at the same time, Naruto, Bleach, and One Piece.

I tried giving them a chance. They were BORING. It's no wonder people did not get into anime like they did before if everything was over-saturated by shonen.

Even if Evangelion was as terrible as people say it is now, it did not even get fully aired on US television, and it's only 25 episodes. At least stuff happens in those 25 episodes.

I tuned into Adult Swim one night and watched Bleach. Literally nothing happened the entire episode.

Worst thing ever? I urge you to reconsider.

>>4684
I will say this: I read the manga for both of them for the first 15 or so issues, and they were pretty good. I think Bleach would've been pretty good if the soul society never happened and it stayed about some dude fighting dead humans going crazy. Same with Naruto. It would've been good if they had travelled with Kakashi doing small jobs, and never getting insanely powerful.

>>4684
I'd have to agree with this particularly naruto, the worst people I have met for shamelessly spouting on about anime were naruto fans.

>>4669
Eva is probably one of my favorite animes
But I hate what its become and all the people that claim unironicly that its so deep.

>>4691
It's more popular to criticize it now. For every one person who likes Evangelion, I encounter 10 who despise it, often without ever having seen it.

It seemed to start with just a handful of people who did not believe the hype or were not prepared in the late 90s/early 2000s like Rodney Caston. Then the hate-base really exploded in the 2000s to encompass a huge chunk of anime-watchers.

I feel like /a/ hive-minded people out of a memorable experience.

>>4692
>It's more popular to criticize it now
Its actually feels that way now, most of what I see its just usually people that hate Shinji and in turn hate the show because they hate Shinji, I get that he is not supposed to be likable and you're supposed to resent him a bit, but thats also what I like about him and that hes not like most MC that came from the 90s but at the sametime hes not a huge beta like you see most male leads in some more modern anime.

>>4693
I will say it. I like Shinji. I never had a problem with Shinji.

I watched the show first when I was 13 years old and found him easy to identify with. In the military, years after I had last seen any of the show, I often felt like Shinji, a weakly constituted person thrown into situations he did not know how to handle. He is like Amuro taken to the next level.

Maybe one of the reasons people hate him so much is because he does not provide them with the escapism of a strong male lead as per usual in fiction. Perhaps he reminds people too much of themselves under pressure, that pathetic sense of self-doubt people feel in bad situations.

Or maybe I just felt the show on a level no one was ever intended to feel, which is pretty pathetic, not unlike Shinji.

>>4697
I understand your feelings all to well

>>4698
Oh and I just remembered this. Remember that scene where Misato says to him, "Stop feeling sorry for yourself"?

I think it was after some hike in School of Infantry when I had performed poorly and another trainee told me, "Stop feeling sorry for yourself."

My immediate thought was "Oh fuarrrk, I'm Shinji."

>>4697
had the same sort of thing with misato. this scene in particular expresses it perfectly: being lost and unwanted, trying your best to push past abuse, repressing so hard you dissociate, hating yourself and wanting to disappear, and turning to reckless sexing with guys as an attempt to hurt yourself, while secretly hoping they'll "save you" or whatever and then hating yourself more for being that needy and useless. it's a sort of feedback loop.

>>4700
getting angry at others for trying to help because they're doing the same useless things as everybody else, and hating yourself for being frustrated with them because it's ridiculous to expect more when they have their own problems to deal with. and you slowly sort of turn into a useless child who just wants her father, but do your best to hide it and keep moving, so things split even more

>>4621
New fans of anime like modern anime. Why watch all those "old and ugly looking" classics, when you can stream all the currently airing soykaf you want? In the 2000s people focused on 2000s anime, in the 2010s people focus on 2010s anime.

Go look around at what series people like and almost all of them will be made within the last decade besides maybe something like DBZ.

This is why it's so hard to find discussion of old anime, because not as many people have watched it. Sure some say they're over discussed, but how is that any different from the countless copy and paste shows that air every year and the copy and paste discussions that come with them? I like interesting characters, but I couldn't care less about who is the "best girl" or other similar nonsense that passes for discussion these days.

>>4684
I've noticed a trend that anime has been getting shorter over the years. We started out with a few long running TV titles, then more long running TV titles, then the OVA boom (while now OVAs are mostly reduced to bonus episodes of TV series), then most shows being 26 episodes, then the popularity of 12/13 episodes, and now outright short anime where episodes can be under 10 minutes. While some series can benefit from being shorter like comedy, it's gotten to the point where series end too quickly for you to get attached or get a sense of what's going on.

Series that would be 26 episodes in the past are now split into 2 cours separated by a seasonal break with the 2nd now being called a 2nd season.

I watched seasonal airing anime for about 10 years and at this point I'm sick of it. Trends come and go, and thus I'd rather discuss a classic than some show that'll only trend in the west for a year or two before the next one comes out (Attack on Titan, Kill la Kill, One Punch Man, etc.). However most anime communities pander to these new people that only follow trends.

>>4671
4chan and 2chan were the ones that brought waifuism into existence

>>4616
>moe
Well the defining trait of the modern westarn fandom IMHO is that they insider tradeon soykaf shows like Bleach, Naruto, Fairy tail and especially One piece.

Moe >>>>>>>>>> Naruto, One piece, Bleach, Fairy tail.

Call me a weeb, but the whole situation makes me almost consider the Japanese fandom superior to the western fandom.

>>4736
your problem is with people's choices in shows. why does it matter what anime someone likes? like I don't like bleach, moe or whatever either but the elitist attitude is what turned me away. I couldn't talk about anything I liked without some /a/ kid trying to establish his superiority because he watched cute girls. Who cares?

>>4704
I don't think OPM is trending that well in the west I'm sure it has it audience, but I don't think its trending like AoT was/is.

>>4639
>heard those gifs were fake. No I don't have a source

Second gif is definitely fake, video source is that recent documentary Kingdom of Dreams and Madness.

I think part of the problem is the breakdown of irony.

Suppose a group of people supports a certain anime series ironically. If that group becomes popular and more people join, a certain fraction of the newcomers will fail to understand the irony and actually commit themselves to this anime. If the group becomes large enough, there will be enough people who unironically watch the anime to start a religion, while those who never took it seriously will distance themselves from the others and leave the group.

I really don't see anything wrong with liking cute/moe/happy anime. It's pleasing to the senses and nice to chill with. And if you like certain characters don't see anything wrong with buying figurines/posters or whatever. The only problem I have is with idiots like the person in OP's picture pulling their otaku dicks out on youtube because they want to be part of some trend. It' s because of this soykaf that floods of people who know next to nothing about anime or even Japan become "otakus." I wonder how many people that call themselves otaku know that the third year of high school in Japan is actually really horrible because of societal pressure.

I think the real problem is with the industry catering to fans rather than artists, as >>4655 said. I haven't read enough manga to make a statement about its quality, but for anime, I think it's fair to say that Akira and Ghost in the Shell are of higher quality than just about anything that was released in the past few years. But that doesn't ruin recent anime for me.

Try to look at anime objectively. It's art and entertainment, not a religion. If it's bad art but good entertainment, I don't see anything wrong with enjoying it.

I personally think even calling yourself a "otaku" is pretty cringeworthy.

I think people should consider Anime as just a casual hobby, even if you're super into Anime like I am.

>>4753
I have always thought the same thing since /b/ helped crush my Wapanese delusion over ten years ago.

My brother recently visited from Hawaii and tried to tell me there was nothing wrong with calling oneself an otaku. My response was something like "Bro, did you FORGET? Did you forget all those years of our /b/ conditioning? Did you forget that annoying girl at the mall who kept trying to speak broken Japanese to you back in 2004?"

I might watch a lot of anime now that I got back into it, but i will never be Fred Gallagher level of Wapanese again and definitely never call myself an otaku. I am an American, and in America we have a word for that phenomenon: NERD.

https://youtu.be/d2FGgYp6mdk

Video related, what the Japanese really think of Westerners who call themselves otaku.

>>4755
No matter how many times I see that video, it never gets old.

I dunno, I'd consider myself pretty fuarrrking weeb, but anime isn't really what I am all that interested in.

>>4755
I felt totally detached and immune until the song started playing... I recognized the song instantly. how fuarrrked am I?