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Join us in the [Anime] thread to end all [Anime] threads
Posts
Maybe MC is weeping into his pillow nightly about missing his mom's basement but that matters absolutely 0 to me so I'm glad it's never brought up.
A few series, like Mushoku Tensei, do have the MC reflect about having left family behind and having things they want to say. On the other hand the entire point of that story is basically just character growth so it's at least relevant.
But also if I suddenly woke up in a world with gods damn dragons and such where I could make enough money to live by picking herbs for a few hours and turn into a super human by stabbing some slimes I'd be all in. Earth kinda sucks shit.
The theory I've seen that makes the most sense to me is that they're an outgrowth of the chuunibyou fad combined with the explosion of pulp LNs/mobile games and the total crash of the VN industry, cannibalizing that whole audience. Publishers do all these "Be a writer!" contests to pick up new authors, and since it's just about first impression, they dump out the gimmick right away, or even in the title. But that's a horrible way to find/train actually good writers instead of just chasing whatever is popular at the moment (and there are nightmare stories from editors who get handed these people and told to turn them into a respectable product). It also doesn't give the space for anything else to get picked up, so everybody HAS to start doing that, because that's the only thing getting published. Tyranny of the majority, or plurality at least. Which is driving out the smaller trends too (eg edgelord magical girls, Squid Game-likes, etc) as they all get subsumed. Covid has likely also had a major effect on cementing it and making publishers even more risk averse.
Also, if you want to be pedantic, "narou-kei" is the Japanese term for the specific reincarnation cheat power portal fantasies (and what's banned by a bunch of those contests at this point, because they're tired of 99% of the entries being that). SUPPOSEDLY, the popularity has started declining in late 2021, but they're still top of the heap. I think it was women's romance stories that showed the most growth lately, but still dwarfed by this yuck.
https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/なろう系
It's really no different than all the stories after LotR using a lot of the stuff it popularized. Orcs are the western fantasy version of a status screen.
They rarely focus on the Isekai aspect unless it's central, which it is in a lot of them, because the concept is pretty codified at this point and it's more beating a dead horse than the wall of stats people here have complained about. Which exist because it's explaining the parts that aren't just standardized.
And let's be real, most people like the numbers going up. That's why every game since the early aughts decided everything needed rpg mechanics.
It's that a vast number of them are shit. Not because of "insert stats/harem/whatever" but because they are just overal shit stories.
If it's done well the genre really doesn't really matter.
If they are popular then it isn't shit. Simple as that. Popularity is a large enough group of people agreeing something is good enough to support.
The shit stuff you never hear about. The roughly 2000 murim and historical romance stories I've gone through that have not a redeeming quality and which quietly die a couple dozen chapters in because no one likes them.
Isekai is easy, because the foundation of the stories are easily relatable and use a language the audience instantly understands. But I'll say overall they are better stories than you'll find in the majority...of say... Shoujo romance. Which you'll never even hear about without digging real deep.
Here to report that Cardcaptor Sakura still fucking rips in 2023. Holy shit, the animation is way better than I remembered or expected.
Oh, and apparently the lady who sings the ED did this and then no anime ever again until reappearing for Venus Line from Birdie Wing.
And she did Get Down too, which I haven't thought of in fucking years.
I'd argue that the sieve of time disproves your argument of popularity as a measure of quality. The graveyard of history is filled with works that were popular at their creation, and yet were so weak that some of them we only know of because of their echoes in more durable mediums.
I wish Konosuba didn't have so much uncomfortable shit in it because a lot of the show was genuinely great.
https://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561197970666737/
Yet for all those there is roughly 90% you never even hear of because no one likes it enough for it to endure past the 5 chapter survival game.
The bar of quality rises over time. Some people used to think Saber Marionette J was peak anime. It's on dozens of magazine covers, had concerts and merch, spinoffs and prequels, etc. Most people don't even remember it anymore and a rewatch is... Pretty rough! That doesn't mean it wasn't good in the 90s.
Be that as it may, I'm not an idiot and at no point would I say it wasn't a good thing when it was happening. Judging things by only current standards is absolutely silly and pretty much everything pre-1901 is dogwater and should just be torn down. The build quality of ancient ruins are absolutely atrocious compared to modern architecture!
The same holds for media where most of it is pretty bad and held up by nostalgia both for the content itself and the techniques used. Vampire Hunter D for example is incredibly poorly written. The camera work and scene composition is messy and full of poor angles. The art itself is good but full of flaws in line work and off model often. From a purely technical standpoint it's just not very good by modern standards. But it's quite excellent because some people enjoy the flaws and ignore the less than stellar parts because it's old. Honestly it wouldn't even get greenlit today.
And boy do they actually have a budget, some of the scenes' shading have money flying off the screen.
Ukyo's fashion game still on point, too.
I'm now just a little under a quarter through One Piece and these last three episodes have been a goddamn flashback about Franky.
Bring back get down
Not that, I was referring to:
I think you missed my point, which is that popularity is a poor definition of what will actually endure. In one of his videos, music theory YouTuber 12tone talked about how the early 90s was important with the rise of hip-hop and grunge changing the landscape of popular music - but you'd never see that looking at the awards and charts of the time, being dominated by 80s style rock and such. It's only in hindsight that we can actually see the fundamental shifts. It's not about measuring with modern standards, but that popularity is never a good measuring stick.
Also, your choice of Vampire Hunter D made me chuckle, as a well regarded sequel did get get greenlit in the 90s - a lot of the original's flaws can be attributed to the industry during the bubble and how less care was taken then because the consumer appetite was there.
Sadly, it is also 10,000 years too early
It's crazier than I expected, as I realized it's basically set in a modern day equivalent to Naruto in terms of the bloodline powers and everything.
I've made it through the first two arcs so far (Phantom Thief Shark Girl and Party Tricks Megumin--also she was totally supposed to shout "Explosion!" at one point but the translator didn't translate it that way for some reason).
Sadly it's less than a year old, so I'll be all caught up soon.
So far my favorite joke was probably the "You know what? I'm going to take over that dry cleaning business" bit in the second chapter.
So my blind spot was probably 2002 to 2020?
I say all of this because it was wild to me (and still is) that Outlaw Star hasn't had the same cultural penetration as something like Cowboy Bebop.
Because everyone I knew growing up who watched anime absolutely loved Outlaw Star.
Like 60-70% of Outlaw Star is great, and the rest is not so great.
I've never heard of the former
I'm aware of Lost Universe but never seen it.
What are your thoughts/feelings on magic spells being shot from a gun?
Edit: And I don't know when I thought it was going to be either, as it likely would have been in either Captain Tylor or Escaflowne's spot but I knew both of those were in it.
Anime adapting light novels, light novels are by the Slayers author and they’re paired universes (where the gods of the Slayers universe are incarnated as powerful spacecraft that have existed since forever)
But regrettably for Outlaw Star, I have suggested another show even more, a show that will finally get it's time in the sun in Season 7 of AniMenagerie!!
Ah, right, Paranoia Agent.