What is your take on the dark, edgy trend?

If you're talking about stories like Re:Monster, Overlord, Tanya the Evil, Eminence in Shadow where the protagonist is just aimless and does dark shit because "its their role" then I dont even know why they exist outside of power fantasy self inserting to feel hate for the world.

that Japan has caught up to where the Western Hemisphere's popular frame of thinking was back in the 1990's/2000's. Oh Joy.

Not really my thing. If we're talking about tired trends, then I'm going with the new "beauty and the beast"; where the introverted, socially awkward outcast gets together with a flashy, popular, socially respectable woman.

The "edgy" stuff they are trying to push these days is nothing compared to what was being produced even a decade ago. Even looking back to the 80s and 90s anything produced these days in comparison is like the difference between night and day where basically any modern studio couldn't get away with trying to produce stuff like "Mad★Bull 34", "Violence Jack", or even Movies like "Wicked City". Modern Anime doesn't even tolerate graphic nudity where it's simply just showcasing brief detailed female nipples without it being slapped with an Ecchi stamp on it.

I personally think the reason why some studios are trying to switch things up is because it was initially the dark fantasy, crime, and "edgy" elements of Anime that made it so popular to begin with in the West during the 80s and 90s because back then it was something people have never seen done before. I guess it's in hopes to garnish a new generation of viewers who have never experienced the ultraviolent wave of Anime that originally made it so popular decades ago.

I could only imagine the attention this medium would get if something along the lines of a "Violence Jack" type Anime was ever produced these days but made more graphic, violent, and contain almost twice as much sexually explicit content and being even more graphic and detailed with it than what was produced back then without it being censored and how it would be received with a modern type audience.

The remake/reboot they did with Bastard!! I see they tried to keep the spirit of the original "Bastard!!" but it's obvious they produced it just enough to make it appeal to a modern audience with typical sometimes out of place humor and tropes commonly almost expected with modern Anime no matter how serious the theme is.

You would think this Industry would learn from the mistakes made with something like "The Island of Giant Insects Movie" where the Gore/Survival elements got over shadowed by just how cheesy the entire Anime came off with excessive use of foul language and profanity to just the graphic sexual scenes produced could be taking out of context and be easily mistaken for something taken directly from a modern Hentai title.

If this industry is shifting back towards an "edgy" trend it's likely not going to garnish the same amount of popularity it once had unless they truly try to go over the top and try to out do what was actually done in the 80s and 90s.

If this industry really wanted to do something revolutionary they might want to see how an Anime would be received if they went back to producing a completely original Ultraviolent Anime completely using traditional methods of hand-drawning and use of Cels without any CGI or modern production methods regardless of how much time and money it might take. I would bet it would go down in history as a testament of time alone.

I’m more so tired of people calling things edgy without understanding what it means

Thatanimesnob truly ruined the media literacy of weebs

We need even more to offset the Isekai and ecchi mediocrity

Like many others in this thread, I'm not seeing this supposed growing trend either. The most popular series right of the past year or so, like JJK, Oshi no Ko; Kaguya, Bocchi, aren't really edgy imo. JJK hits a bit of it, a sort of middle-ground, but even then it's not in close darkness-proximity to Berserk.

I just don't really see it as a growing trend, when stuff like Re:Zero, Overlord, and Madoka were released years ago. None of it's new or trendy, and a lot of them are dark and edgy. Chainsaw Man is edgy, but Bocchi outperformed it in Japan iirc. If anything, it might be a Mappa trend. Mappa isn't the end all be all though, they're just the current McDonald's of anime studios and have their own plans as such.

@certainmiracle This is a classic pushing back of the goalposts. Berserk is definitely edgy, but like you said, it's not the only anime and an anime doesn't have to reach Berserk's level of edgyness to be edgy. It's like saying that shows that don't reach the level of battle animation of Kimetsu no Yaiba can't be called battle shonen. I understand that people are trying to turn this show into a benchmark because of their love for it and bias towards modern edgy anime, but this is wishful thinking. Not to mention that two of the three shows you mentioned are already less edgy than Berserk. Likewise, the edgy trend does not imply that other anime should not be popular. The 80s was the era of glam metal, but you also had a huge rise in synthpop. These are just different audiences and genres.

@RobertBobert I still don't see it, since again there's a massive library of edgy anime already, like the ones I and others have mentioned. There's too much pre-existing edgy and dark anime in the 2000's and 2010's to call the 2020's edgy stuff a trend. It's not just a 90's thing, so you can't just ignore the 2000's and 2010's edgy and dark anime.

@certainmiracle Um, why did you decide that this trend should be compared to literally the entire history of anime rather than recent trends? If I tell you, “I’ve been having nightmares more often lately,” you won’t say that I’m wrong, because I obviously had them more often as a child, right? To call a trend new, it does not have to be literally new in the entire history of observation.

@RobertBobert Because the 2010's was not that long ago, and there's already been edgy anime within the beginnings of the 2020's. It's not like there's a huge gap in-between 2019, 2020; 2021, 2022, and 2023 for edgy anime. And there's not a huge gap for the years preceding those either, so I don't think it can be called a trend. If there was only a small amount of edgy anime in the 2000's and 2010's, it would be fair to call it a trend, since it would imply there's a huge distance of time between the last major influx of edgy anime and the latest. But that's not what's happening, there's been a steady flow and stream, with no gaps or time distances.

Can someone explain me what edgy means?

@certainmiracle You do understand that you keep coming up with conditions, right? Or are you completely serious about saying that the trend for edgy anime suggests that there weren’t any before? Edgy is a fairly common pattern in culture, you will always get some amount of it even without any trend. With the same logic, I can “refute” the modern yuri trend by saying that yuri has not disappeared anywhere in the last 5-10 years, which means the release of yuri anime is not something new or noticeable. At the same time, the number of yuri anime is growing noticeably and this year for the first time we get more than 3-4 yuri shows in one season, let alone a year.

@RobertBobert I'm serious, because I'm not seeing any "boom" or trend, as you say. There's not a substantial amount of more edgy anime releasing today, than there was five years ago. The growth pattern has remained the same as it has in the past, with only minor fluctuations.

@Yuu_Kanzaki This trend is more common in shoujo than in shonen or seinen.

If you're talking about stories like Re:Monster, Overlord, Tanya the Evil, Eminence in Shadow where the protagonist is just aimless and does dark shit because "its their role" then I dont even know why they exist outside of power fantasy self inserting to feel hate for the world.