i can count on two hands the number of times i’ve had to explain the mythology irl
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if we can’t use anime to mean “cartoons for perverts” what word can we use?????????
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You’re welcome
i missed out on so much cool anime when i was younger (and being friends with folks who were into it) because of internalizing that awful attitude that it’s intrinsically embarrassing or bad. kind of bummed about the people itt pushing the same edgy take as like, somethingawful’s front page in its heydey
also nina matsumoto rules
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I like anime but I’d never want someone to categorize me as an anime fan
Same deal with video games. I like 'em, but lord no I’m not a “gamer”
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i’m mostly just weirded out by all the pedo and misogyny stuff in anime
but that’s not really unique to anime so whatever (see: america obsession with teen girls). and there’s plenty that isn’t poisoned by panty shots or harem wish fulfillment (like aforementioned satoshi kon)
there’s also some really interesting discussion to be had around anime like New Game, which aren’t sexual or whatever, but have this really voyeuristic, parasocial lens the characters are viewed through, which encourages you to develop a “favorite” and obsessively identify with them
again, not unique - look at superheroes in america - but the particular details of it are fascinating
seems like a weird dynamic of being something that is still not culturally “”“mainstream”"" to a western audience but has a ton of latitude within its own boundaries
I don’t know much about anime but being a fan of it always reminded me of like, being really into metal in the way that there are a lot of subgenres that all have their own aesthetic affordances and stylistic markers that fall under a broader category
but because it hasn’t saturated culturally it’s still treated as its own distinct thing without any depth and so the only real examples of it in the mainstream are the ones that the public deems an “appropriate” example according to whatever cultural forces are present, allowing and disallowing various parts of the broader genre
unfortunately with anime that dynamic pre-toonami mostly serves to externalize and codify racist ideologies around what them japanese value in their media
honestly toonami might be one of the most helpful things with regards to moving the conversation away from those ideologies and even though it did its own codification of what “anime” is in terms of like, shonen stuff mostly, it at least managed to not do the “lol japan” thing
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americans are supposed to hate and devalue everything non american
and on top of that youre still pressured to devalue and mock those who pursue interests that have nothing to do with getting laid or making money
so at least in the states anime is a combination of those two things, making it prime Mocking Material
when people ask me if i like anime i just say ‘yeah, some’ which is my answer for basically all media
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theyre supposed to do this while also actively consuming it and leeching off of it at the same time!
also this thread reminds me that SB is home to the smartest ppl on the internet good read y’all
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A lot of modern japanese cartoons have capitalism accentuated industry problems. Animators are all severely underpaid and overworked, very few new animators enter the industry, and studios often decide to cater to the creepiest slice of their audience because thats where the money is.
Western companies licensing these works seem to want to cater to the pro-creep market by focusing on the sleazier works and painting them as both representative and a much larger slice of whats out there then it actually is. Nazi boat-girls anime is like a single not particularly popular work that we only know about because western companies decided ‘this is how we should represent this medium’.
Like, would anyone say that Troma represents a particularly large slice of American Filmmaking? Because thats what Nazi-boat-girl anime is the equivalent of; low budget problematic schlock played after midnight for sad people.
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the numbers I’ve heard are about $25k for a job in dowtown Tokyo
after 5 years of 9-8 work you might have made it to $35k
I remember looking at the reported budgets of Ghibli movies, the highest-grossing and most prestigious Japanese animation studio. Animation pay might be lousy but surely if you make it to Ghibli you get compensated, right? Apparently not --Wikipedia lists The Wind Rises as a $30 million production, a comparative American animated movie budget would be $100m+. Even if that number is wildly off, I think it’s still really low and low because people are drastically underpaid as a whole.
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yeah its frankly offensive how badly they’re paid
Especially a studio like Ghibli, where so many of the founders had their roots in socialist student protests in the 60s and leftist messaging in their anime from the 70s to the present.
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I think that example was mostly offered up as comically extreme though
taking aside the issues around exoticism and Americans specifically, which is not a context in which I’ve thought about anime since toonami and thus don’t really feel qualified to comment on since I consume plenty of other Japanese media and don’t feel strongly about it either way,
the Nazi boat girl thing is still representative insofar as I only have time to engage with so many artistic subcultures, and I’d like to have a more than surface understanding of the ones I do, and maybe a social circle around them and everything, and with anime if you’re even overall broadly positive and nondescriminating the sheer quantity of disastrously unhealthy approaches to sexuality you have to overlook, and the red flags constantly being broadcast by most fans which you have to painstakingly distance yourself from are like, well beyond what my aesthetic curiosity can tolerate.
I like porco rosso and dragon ball z but I like a lot of things made for boys in 1992. I wish brusque criticism did not cause people to feel insecure about their hobbies because sometimes brusque criticism is appropriate!
speaking of nina matsumoto being the best, i’m going to post these sick prints i picked up from vancaf this year
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aren’t you a fan of modern litfic?
not in the ways that you and shrug constantly seem to try to construe it
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wait till you hear about american tv and cinema and music
yeah kinda tbh
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Game of Thrones was one of the most popular tv shows in america and it had child rape in the first episode and only got more problematic from there.
Acting like Japanese animation is exceptionally bad and sleazy when living in a country where presidential candidates sing the praises of a show like that is just… absurd
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im not even sure why anyone here is feeling compelled to defend knee jerk “lol anime” shit, and it’s almost impressive how hollow and cynical every single justification for it offered up itt is
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