LisaVanette
9d ago
A good point! I remember reading of a specific community in which the specific alpha/alpha form had completely taken over, but can no longer find the source, so it may well have been a fever dream.
LisaVanette
9d ago
I have never seen it, but am aware of its reputation as a sort of post-Geass cash-in / proto-Valrave / trash to treasure attempt.
LisaVanette
9d ago
An extreme example of this comes from omegaverse fiction, which in itself is just "what if men and women were both men so that we could write gay fanfic that was straight"... but over time, alpha/alpha pairings apparently came to predominate in many places, because that's "what if men and women were both men, and we took the men (men) and wrote gay (still straight) fanfic about them".
LisaVanette
9d ago
That's absolutely the case. If you point this out the people advancing the argument will just cover their eyes and ears, though. It's the same for everything they claim about anime. (If I wasn't clear above, I long ago escaped from the Feminism Nexus). The training you receive through social osmosis while in feminist spaces doesn't allow for anything else. You evaluate everything for sexism while you read or watch, and the smallest things trigger the alarm.
LisaVanette
10d ago
There’s got to be some shoujo out there which fits the bill.
Dear Brother, which was, interestingly, a significant influence on Evangelion.
LisaVanette
10d ago
I said something similar last thread, but here goes again: Eva is in part a parody / deconstruction / reconstruction / modification / discussion of such cliches. The protagonist is an ordinary 14 year old who is suddenly asked to pilot a giant robot, and it's entirely unpleasant and terrifying. He's constantly around this extremely submissive girl who dresses in skintight latex, and then she walks out of the shower and he grabs her boob by accident like he's in a harem show, except it's awkward and disgusting and nothing comes of it, and then the girl dies and is replaced by her clone, which is part of a system of flesh puppets that a madman is using to melt the entire planet into a hive mind. Then a sexy assertive foreign girl shows up and constantly comes on to the main character, except he's too scared to respond and she's actually quite unpleasant to him and just acting out due to her psychological problems. There's also a hot irresponsible older lady who is a chronic alcoholic who hates herself and doesn't know how to interact with other people except through sex. And a hot scientist who is sleeping with the same man her dead mother used to in order to feel any kind of connection to another human being.
If you wanted an example of fanservice for its own sake, it would be hard to find a worse one than Evangelion. I could probably advance the argument that every single piece of fanservice in the show is both diagetic and serves some greater narrative purpose. Even if that's just "hey, remember what it was like to be a teenager?"
LisaVanette
10d ago
From inside the Feminist Nexus - and I speak here from personal experience - even worse than the unironic femininity of anime girls is that they enjoy it, and the shows around them clearly state that this is the norm. It's not just that one of the girls is more sensitive and gentle and people-oriented and physically weak than her male counterparts, but all of them! Even the warrior girls have their feminine sides, where they go "[protagonist name]!" and cling to the guy. And everyone around them expects this! That's what the author, the medium, the whole culture surrounding the medium, believes about women, how they believe women should be. Anime is a form of art that is not only bigoted, but pushes its opinions through the mouths of the groups it's bigoted against.
Once the detector trips, everything else confirms it. The short skirts and large breasts, the useless female characters, the perverted old masters, the Class S stories, the relative popularity of shonen and shoujo manga, the relative popularity of M/M and M/F ships on Archive Of Our Own. So you retreat to a Certified Feminist anime, or you fight over the ones that were feminist enough that you got invested before they betrayed you. This is why Revolutionary Girl Utena and Madoka Magica have a certain valance now, and why all internet discussion of Oniisama e... is about how the story is gross for not going the way the watcher needed it to go so she could uncritically enjoy it.
Many, many years ago, I watched Macross: Do You Remember Love? And it took my brain apart and put it back together, because I had been raised to basically be a male chauvinist by way of feminism. You mean I'm supposed to enjoy and celebrate that there are differences between men and women? You mean a woman crying for a reason she can't explain can be a symbol of maturity? You mean I'm supposed to treat women differently than men not just because I'm romantically interested in them but also simply because of their sex? What's next, all the men are fighter pilots and all the girls love a song titled "My Boyfriend Is A Pilot"? "Feminine" was not something a man was allowed to like about women, in a way that actually implied anything about them.
LisaVanette
14d ago
See parts of the world that believe in beating, for example Eastern Europe. Under tsars, communists and democracy, brutality was and is the rule at home, in schools, army and prisons, and the result is hundreds of millions of well adjusted and highly accomplished people who make their countries the shining light of the world.
Just FYI, Elon Musk is going to be sending you a bill in the next few days for the damage caused to his Starlink satellites by the unauthorized launching of my sides into orbit.
but retvrn to great wars ending in glorious victories, accomplishments so shining that every young man with motivation and drive would want to wear uniform and be part of winning team.
Here are some videos I have seen from the current war in Ukraine:
- A Ukranian squad marches for several hours to a contested location. They get pinned for an hour inside a barn by what turns out to be friendly fire, spending most of the time on their stomachs behind hay bales. They fire their weapons towards other buildings occasionally, accomplishing nothing or worse. Most of the footage is just dust floating around, accompanied by the sound of bullets impacting wood.
- During a trench raid, the pointman mis-communicates with his squad about the location of a machine gun ("To the left?" "Right!") and gets killed instantly as a result. Nobody attempts to retrieve his body because it's stuck in the gun's line of sight.
- A BMP notices movement in a nearby treeline, and rakes the entire area with its autocannon. For good measure, it also blows up a nearby shed with a high explosive shell. Then it drives away.
- A conscript moving down his trench with his weapon drawn is shot point blank in the head by a soldier hiding in a small depression in the wall.
- A small group of Russians attempt to carry a soldier in a stretcher to a safer location. They keep close together, which allows a drone to drop a grenade on the entire group. A few of them survive, with horrific injuries. They feebly attempt to move but can't do anything except lie on the ground and spasmodically kick their legs or paw at their body armor. The video ends.
- A soldier stuck in a shell hole during an artillery bombardment frantically crosses himself. (I don't remember if he survived, but I do remember that people jeered at him on Twitter because he was probably a Russian and therefore they were allowed to do so).
The assistant general of the army resides on the left. The supreme general of the army resides on the right. This was known thousands of years ago, and it is more known than ever today. In the period of time between The Iliad and GoPro drone footage, those who would wage war have constantly attempted to deceive their slaves, soldiers, and citizens about what fighting actually entails, or to pressure them into accepting it, or in rarer and typically more successful cases, to compensate them for it. (During the high points of the Roman Empire, for example, a soldier really did eat well, and could expect a good deal of material wealth and career advancement upon retirement). Anyone who tells you that it is sweet and noble to die for your country is lying to you or very stupid.
LisaVanette
22d ago
You know the kind of Mystery Box show where what's in the box is super obvious? Or the kind where they finally open the box and the contents are just another box, with no payoff? Or the kind where what's in the box is boring? Or the kind where the writers refuse to open the box for season after season after season...? Or the kind where the box is never opened, period? Or the kind where the contents of the final box are that everything was a dream? Or the kind where the box-opening procedure is so stupid and long-winded that you just give up and read a summary? Or the kind where it's obvious that the writer only had an idea about what's in the box, and no ideas about characters, a plot, or a setting?
Attack on Titan's first half avoids all of those problems. There are like 100 boxes and all of them get opened in way that makes sense, and what's inside is both satisfying and ever more mysterious. The pacing is good. The characters are fun. The animation is flashy. It's very chuuni but you don't really care, because it's still cool. It also feels just real enough. For example, this scene,
Two other members of the Survey Corps, Reiner Braun and Bertholt Hoover, reveal themselves as the Armored and Colossal Titan respectively
Takes place on the spur of the moment after Reiner loses it. It's like a spy movie but with the additional tension that if the spy is found out he gives you extraordinary news.
LisaVanette
22d ago
Sex was so central to otakuism in the late 1990s that Tamaki Sato could write Beautiful Fighting Girl, a book which proposed that the essence of anime obsession was sexual attraction to fictional characters. This was very controversial, of course, but the guy certainly had a wealth of material with which to make his point. There must be a couple hundred Martian Successor Nadesico doujins out there. Now, a lot of those were funny as well as sexy, and they were basically all made by people who were interested in the anime first and the sex second. This seems similar to the Twitch problem - titty streamers are not interested in video games, the median fan of a given anime is not interested in anime.
I have seen the cycle of which you speak consume various anime communities (along with other processes running in tandem), but this has always occurred after an invasion of more normal people who have no interest in the medium weakens the structure of the whole group. (Or after the well of discussion has truly run dry - Evangelion has been so thoroughly dissected, for example, that the only thing left to talk about is Red vs. Blue). Weirdos will post lolis and "official art" all day, then turn around and explain the entire history of Group TAC or Fujihiko Hosono. There's nobody to discuss the latter items with when everyone in a given sector of the internet consumes anime in 10-second bursts or has seen Patlabor 2 but not Patlabor On TV.
LisaVanette
23d ago
Go Nagai published the first ecchi manga in 1968 (set in a high school, because Japan). Miyazaki is a lolicon who once discussed Nausicca's breasts in an interview. Rumiko Takahashi is a total pervert who likes to look at the "naughty bits" of nude sculptures and "feels like a teenager" when she draws. I don't even know where to start with Takeuchi, or Ikuhara for that matter. Just explaining CLAMP's fetishes would get me to the word limit. YAS likes his girls (and boys too?) in tight white leggings. Tomino is typically trolling in interviews, but the "volume" quote nonetheless lives in infamy.
Since anime and manga creators have always been like this and have produced great works of art anyway, I think what you are seeing is the lower end of the over-saturated, increasingly volume-based market. There are more anime viewers than ever, so there are more anime than ever, so there are more explicitly fetishistic or sexual anime than ever. And there are a lot more fans who only watch those kinds of shows. (Only watches TikTok clips, possibly one or two well-known modern battle shonen, is even more common).
Some manga that aren't fetish porn that I recognize from the same year as Goblin Slayer (2016): the second 3x3 Eyes sequel (fantasy), ACCA 13 (detective story), Blue Giant (music), Cardcaptor Sakura: Clear Card (children's fantasy), City (comedy), Fire Punch (action), Keep Your Hands Off Eizouken! (slice-of-life), Kiznaiver (science fiction)...
But the look she gives me in Evangelion when Shinji gets tangled up in a fresh out of the shower Rei and "accidentally" gropes her, it's hard to defend why that's in there
In a straightforward mecha anime, like the ones Evangelion is working off of - Combattler V for instance - there would be a shower scene and we would see the girl in the shower. Or maybe the guy would walk in and it would be awkward (ex. Mobile Suit Gundam). And in a low effort harem show he might even grope the girl by accident (ex. so many shows). In Eva, all these things happen and they are off-putting and bizarre. The girl, who lives in a cold, filthy apartment by herself, does not even respond to his hand on her breast. Earlier, she slaps the guy for talking badly of his father, so it's not that she isn't down for slapping someone who offends her. So what is it?
LisaVanette
3mo ago
Lucky Star in particular sits squarely in between "everyone watches this" and "only committed fans watch this". It's a show that used to be popular, and thus still retains a cult following. There are lots of Lucky Star memes. It's easy to find and comfy to view, but slightly too weird and reference-heavy to appeal to people who are not into anime. Few would accuse you of having bad taste for liking it, but it's not indicative of much about one's taste either. Entry-level CGDCT.
"Obsessed with anime", "obsessed with anime", and "obsessed with anime" are different things, I think. There's the hikinomori, who has a serious illness. The standard otaku, who might be normal outside of their intense interests, and whose brain problems typically stop at depression or autism. The normal person who simply watches anime rather than movies some of the time. The Discord teenager who posts about anime they have never seen while "watching" Demon Slayer in the background and is therefore obsessed. And then there's the social media filter. Do you talk about Gundam on 4chan, Twitter (left or right wing?), Reddit, or spacebattles.net? Or are you too busy reading doujins to discuss anything?
"The young bloods of the South: sons of planters, lawyers about towns, good billiard-players and sportsmen, men who never did work and never will. War suits them, and the rascals are brave, fine riders, bold to rashness, and dangerous subjects in every sense. They care not a sou for niggers, land, or any thing. They hate Yankees per se, and don't bother their brains about the past, present, or future. As long as they have good horses, plenty of forage, and an open country, they are happy. This is a larger class than most men suppose, and they are the most dangerous set of men that this war has turned loose upon the world. They are splendid riders, first-rate shots, and utterly reckless. Stewart, John Morgan, Forrest, and Jackson, are the types and leaders of this class. These men must all be killed or employed by us before we can hope for peace. They have no property or future, and therefore cannot be influenced by any thing, except personal considerations."
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