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It's still so bizarre to me to see articles about anime and manga in staid American institutions like the New Yorker. It was not that long ago that "elite" publ

It's still so bizarre to me to see articles about anime and manga in staid American institutions like the New Yorker. It was not that long ago that "elite" publications like this would dismiss anime as the lowest of trash.

giraffe_lady 3y ago
Could write an entire essay about how things previously understood as niche nerd interests have now formed the core of the mainstream of entertainment culture yet still manage to maintain an inward-focused self regard as niche, marginalized, besieged and belittled.
Bran_son 3y ago
They still would dismiss them if they could. But since the internet destroyed their media gatekeeping power and anime became too popular, they're now trying to control and put their own spin on it.
ClumsyPilot 3y ago
> dismiss anime as the lowest of trash. Cultural poverty and ignorance are often dressed as elitism.
- Bran_son 3y ago
  We would be so culturally richer on a Hollywood monoculture.
  - ClumsyPilot 3y ago
    I was leveling accusation at the new yorker - I can see my reply was unclear.
jchw 3y ago
When I was younger, liking cute things as a dude felt like pedalling drugs in a Conservative household, but it's significantly more acceptable now than ever, so, net win? But I don't feel like it was a net win—even as only an infrequent pervayor of the animes, I loved the old nerd counter culture of the internet, "weebs", video game fans, and it got absolutely blown apart, decontextualized, dismantled. It's great that some mostly-shounen anime has achieved mainstream success outside of Japan, but it's such a small section of a rich medium. Even considering that most anime is pretty bad, what I love about it is how it's often eccentric and weird, pushing boundaries, stunningly shameless. The stuff I liked mostly didn't gain mainstream success at all, what really became mainstream was "shows like Dragon Ball Z." That's cool and everything, but people in that corner massively outnumber the old communities of nerd losers that I once occupied, leaving me yet again out of place. Obviously I can either accept reality or die mad, so I try not to spend too much time dwelling on it anymore. But wow, what a monkey's paw seeing some of the things I liked going more mainstream has been. Be careful what you wish for.
- cthalupa 3y ago
  >The stuff I liked mostly didn't gain mainstream success at all, what really became mainstream was "shows like Dragon Ball Z." I mean, it's stuff like DBZ and One Piece that has mainstream success in Japan, too. The weird stuff is/was relatively niche there too compared to the big names, it's just the total slice of the pie relative to the overall Japanese population was bigger. But lots of the weird stuff that is questionable by mainstream Western standards has also gotten significantly larger here, too. I've been watching anime since the early 90s, and feel like I'm more or less used to it's weirdness, but Monogatari for example still has stuff that makes me uncomfortable - but it was quite popular in the west, far bigger than similarly strange stuff was when DBZ was airing.
  - jchw 3y ago
    It's not necessarily that there's anything wrong with shounen anime, but it's actually quite common that I will see anime criticized for how much of it targets adolescent boys, which is, well, probably a misunderstanding. I think shounen is disproportionately popular outside of Japan vs other genre of anime. Contrast shounen that is wildly popular, like My Hero Academia, with something like Akira, a breakout success decidedly outside of that genre and arguably very influential in how anime managed to break into the global market to begin with. Exactly why things shifted since then is unclear, though I do think that modern media in America at least is wildly focused on being more child friendly/focusrd compared to how things were going in the 90's, for one reason or another.
    - syntheweave 3y ago
      I think it's a "perversion to the norm" taking place: everything becomes subjected to Kirk Drift[0] over time. As much as we'd like to communicate something nuanced and specific to a pop culture audience, they eventually want to be told that the good guys win and that they are the good guys. Battle shonen stories do that by assembling together an unending series of soap operatic character arcs and pro wrestling matchups. There's inherent "pulpiness" to that kind of writing, and what manga has been strong at historically is producing products adhering to the formulas of Jump and other manga magazines: stories that are unique in their subject matter, but similar in their tropes. What made Akira interesting to foreign audiences at the time wasn't exactly the thematic content - though it got critical praise - but the more adult subjects and violence. What you found in Western animation at the time was vastly weighted towards children's toy sales and Disney general-audiences content - there was nothing like the OVA boom. So Akira existed as "the anime with nukes, biker gangs and mutants", alongside Hokuto no Ken's "atomic wasteland where muscle men punch each other and their heads explode". And that was what defined imported anime throughout the 90's - if it wasn't violent, it was sexy. Or it was Ghibli. Interest in series like Evangelion took some time to catch up with that, as more of a fan culture arose and tastes became discerning. [0] http://strangehorizons.com/non-fiction/columns/freshly-rememberd-kirk-drift/ http://strangehorizons.com/non-fiction/columns/freshly-remem...

giraffe_lady 3y ago

Could write an entire essay about how things previously understood as niche nerd interests have now formed the core of the mainstream of entertainment culture yet still manage to maintain an inward-focused self regard as niche, marginalized, besieged and belittled.

Bran_son 3y ago

They still would dismiss them if they could. But since the internet destroyed their media gatekeeping power and anime became too popular, they're now trying to control and put their own spin on it.

ClumsyPilot 3y ago

> dismiss anime as the lowest of trash. Cultural poverty and ignorance are often dressed as elitism.

Bran_son 3y ago
We would be so culturally richer on a Hollywood monoculture.
- ClumsyPilot 3y ago
  I was leveling accusation at the new yorker - I can see my reply was unclear.

jchw 3y ago

When I was younger, liking cute things as a dude felt like pedalling drugs in a Conservative household, but it's significantly more acceptable now than ever, so, net win? But I don't feel like it was a net win—even as only an infrequent pervayor of the animes, I loved the old nerd counter culture of the internet, "weebs", video game fans, and it got absolutely blown apart, decontextualized, dismantled. It's great that some mostly-shounen anime has achieved mainstream success outside of Japan, but it's such a small section of a rich medium. Even considering that most anime is pretty bad, what I love about it is how it's often eccentric and weird, pushing boundaries, stunningly shameless. The stuff I liked mostly didn't gain mainstream success at all, what really became mainstream was "shows like Dragon Ball Z." That's cool and everything, but people in that corner massively outnumber the old communities of nerd losers that I once occupied, leaving me yet again out of place. Obviously I can either accept reality or die mad, so I try not to spend too much time dwelling on it anymore. But wow, what a monkey's paw seeing some of the things I liked going more mainstream has been. Be careful what you wish for.

cthalupa 3y ago
>The stuff I liked mostly didn't gain mainstream success at all, what really became mainstream was "shows like Dragon Ball Z." I mean, it's stuff like DBZ and One Piece that has mainstream success in Japan, too. The weird stuff is/was relatively niche there too compared to the big names, it's just the total slice of the pie relative to the overall Japanese population was bigger. But lots of the weird stuff that is questionable by mainstream Western standards has also gotten significantly larger here, too. I've been watching anime since the early 90s, and feel like I'm more or less used to it's weirdness, but Monogatari for example still has stuff that makes me uncomfortable - but it was quite popular in the west, far bigger than similarly strange stuff was when DBZ was airing.
- jchw 3y ago
  It's not necessarily that there's anything wrong with shounen anime, but it's actually quite common that I will see anime criticized for how much of it targets adolescent boys, which is, well, probably a misunderstanding. I think shounen is disproportionately popular outside of Japan vs other genre of anime. Contrast shounen that is wildly popular, like My Hero Academia, with something like Akira, a breakout success decidedly outside of that genre and arguably very influential in how anime managed to break into the global market to begin with. Exactly why things shifted since then is unclear, though I do think that modern media in America at least is wildly focused on being more child friendly/focusrd compared to how things were going in the 90's, for one reason or another.
  - syntheweave 3y ago
    I think it's a "perversion to the norm" taking place: everything becomes subjected to Kirk Drift[0] over time. As much as we'd like to communicate something nuanced and specific to a pop culture audience, they eventually want to be told that the good guys win and that they are the good guys. Battle shonen stories do that by assembling together an unending series of soap operatic character arcs and pro wrestling matchups. There's inherent "pulpiness" to that kind of writing, and what manga has been strong at historically is producing products adhering to the formulas of Jump and other manga magazines: stories that are unique in their subject matter, but similar in their tropes. What made Akira interesting to foreign audiences at the time wasn't exactly the thematic content - though it got critical praise - but the more adult subjects and violence. What you found in Western animation at the time was vastly weighted towards children's toy sales and Disney general-audiences content - there was nothing like the OVA boom. So Akira existed as "the anime with nukes, biker gangs and mutants", alongside Hokuto no Ken's "atomic wasteland where muscle men punch each other and their heads explode". And that was what defined imported anime throughout the 90's - if it wasn't violent, it was sexy. Or it was Ghibli. Interest in series like Evangelion took some time to catch up with that, as more of a fan culture arose and tastes became discerning. [0] http://strangehorizons.com/non-fiction/columns/freshly-rememberd-kirk-drift/ http://strangehorizons.com/non-fiction/columns/freshly-remem...