| Anime isn't dying. It's community, however... As I commented many times here: I rarely see people talking about most seasonals, and it's not because they're watching older anime either. There are no big anitube channels anymore, nor the blogsphere. From what other people say here, MAL isn't in it's heyday either. What should we do? |
| The decline is irreversible. Japanese pop culture is falling off. J-Pop lost to K-Pop. Visual novels died to shorter light novels and much more lucrative gacha games. Light novels are borderline dead and only read by 30 and 40+ year old salarymen now with no new blood coming in. The anime industry is collapsing as they went from pushing out OVAs to 48 episode shows to 24 episode shows and now struggle to put out 12 episodes on time and they look like shit. There has not been an anime with the mainstream cultural power that Naruto and SAO had since AoT. You can tout Frerien all you want but that is unknown to normies. You walk into an anime con and it's merch of akatsuki cloaks, statues of Gen 1 Pokemon, figurines of Asuka, or posters of Genshin characters, and everyone there is 30 years old. JRPGs already went through one mass extinction event (few survived the transition to console 3D HD, others tried to sidestep it by going to handheld or mobile) and are undergoing another as they can't keep up with the Korean and the Chinese gachas and the Japanese spend their limited money on those games instead. That's where the youths are being funneled into. Also the Japanese government signed their nation's death warrant and will be importing foreigners to fill in Japan's inverted population pyramid so expect the Western competency crisis to hit Japan soon enough. Anime won't stop being produced but the golden age is long since over and it will never reach the same level of cultural prominence that it did in the late 2000s/early 2010s. "What should we do"? Stop being a fanboy. Stop constructing your identity around things. |
| We go back to the glory days of the 1990s and 2000s when communities were formed around certain shows and were more niche. Good riddance to anitubers, I never liked them. |
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| I know you said in another thread that you detest r/anime, but I implore you to give it another consideration. I believe that your dislike of r/anime is in major part a consequence of the fact that r/anime is not very beginner friendly, that it must be accessed on oldreddit, and that you gotta look at threads like the rewatch threads and CDF instead of just sorting by new and seeing all of the low-effort and boring anime suggestion solicitation posts. If you were to give more of a closer look to the rewatch threads, you would see that genuine passion is being poured every day by a select and elite group of anime fans who care enough about the medium to give each episode a good, 700 word+ analysis. Valyrian1124 said: The decline is irreversible. Japanese pop culture is falling off. J-Pop lost to K-Pop. Visual novels died to shorter light novels and much more lucrative gacha games. Light novels are borderline dead and only read by 30 and 40+ year old salarymen now with no new blood coming in. The anime industry is collapsing as they went from pushing out OVAs to 48 episode shows to 24 episode shows and now struggle to put out 12 episodes on time and they look like shit. There has not been an anime with the mainstream cultural power that Naruto and SAO had since AoT. You can tout Frerien all you want but that is unknown to normies. You walk into an anime con and it's merch of akatsuki cloaks, statues of Gen 1 Pokemon, figurines of Asuka, or posters of Genshin characters, and everyone there is 30 years old. JRPGs already went through one mass extinction event (few survived the transition to console 3D HD, others tried to sidestep it by going to handheld or mobile) and are undergoing another as they can't keep up with the Korean and the Chinese gachas and the Japanese spend their limited money on those games instead. That's where the youths are being funneled into. Also the Japanese government signed their nation's death warrant and will be importing foreigners to fill in Japan's inverted population pyramid so expect the Western competency crisis to hit Japan soon enough. Anime won't stop being produced but the golden age is long since over and it will never reach the same level of cultural prominence that it did in the late 2000s/early 2010s. "What should we do"? Stop being a fanboy. Stop constructing your identity around things. This is literally all wrong except the last bit about the golden age being over. thewiru said: There are no big anitube channels anymore, nor the blogsphere. Check out the Anime Men. They are probably the biggest anitube channel right now. Also, check out the Infinite Zenith blog. It's a great blog about anime. Also, let me remind you that long form youtube videos aren't as popular right now, so that's why there's less anitubers than in the past. Instead, there's now anime Tiktokers like Winduplirish, who pioneered a category of Tiktoks known as mediatok. |
ExoTrillionicSep 4, 7:43 PM
| @intiharr AI is too busy making weird cat content, making sad lonely people fall in love with it, and making videos of Danny DeVito as the Little Mermaid. That last thing is real, and it's the best use of AI so far. |
| The generic battle shounen with good animation killed anime |
| If you're a fanboy, please don't waste my time. Watch more movies, please. Perhaps, this is hell. |
| dying as in getting too fragmented, the single collective identity of being an anime fan is gone? Too much tourists and average day people watch anime? sure but also could mean Bro doesn't have many friends, speak only one language, live in his mother's basement, can only seek validation with his trash taste and hot takes online. |
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Reply to Phosphophyllita
The generic battle shounen with good animation killed anime
| @Phosphophyllita So if it were generic battle shounen with janky old ass animation, anime would be fine? |
| We are every one of us dying little by little, and all your piety will not delay the appointed time of death a single minute. All flesh is as grass, which is why it is so important to go out and touch some. |
 |
Reply to ExoTrillionic
I know you said in another thread that you detest r/anime, but I implore you to give it another consideration. I believe that your dislike of r/anime is in major part a consequence of the fact that r/anime is not very beginner friendly, that it must be accessed on oldreddit, and that you gotta look at threads like the rewatch threads and CDF instead of just sorting by new and seeing all of the low-effort and boring anime suggestion solicitation posts. If you were to give more of a closer look to the rewatch threads, you would see that genuine passion is being poured every day by a select and elite group of anime fans who care enough about the medium to give each episode a good, 700 word+ analysis.
This is literally all wrong except the last bit about the golden age being over.
Check out the Anime Men. They are probably the biggest anitube channel right now. Also, check out the Infinite Zenith blog. It's a great blog about anime. Also, let me remind you that long form youtube videos aren't as popular right now, so that's why there's less anitubers than in the past. Instead, there's now anime Tiktokers like Winduplirish, who pioneered a category of Tiktoks known as mediatok.
Valyrian1124 said:
The decline is irreversible. Japanese pop culture is falling off. J-Pop lost to K-Pop. Visual novels died to shorter light novels and much more lucrative gacha games. Light novels are borderline dead and only read by 30 and 40+ year old salarymen now with no new blood coming in. The anime industry is collapsing as they went from pushing out OVAs to 48 episode shows to 24 episode shows and now struggle to put out 12 episodes on time and they look like shit. There has not been an anime with the mainstream cultural power that Naruto and SAO had since AoT. You can tout Frerien all you want but that is unknown to normies. You walk into an anime con and it's merch of akatsuki cloaks, statues of Gen 1 Pokemon, figurines of Asuka, or posters of Genshin characters, and everyone there is 30 years old. JRPGs already went through one mass extinction event (few survived the transition to console 3D HD, others tried to sidestep it by going to handheld or mobile) and are undergoing another as they can't keep up with the Korean and the Chinese gachas and the Japanese spend their limited money on those games instead. That's where the youths are being funneled into. Also the Japanese government signed their nation's death warrant and will be importing foreigners to fill in Japan's inverted population pyramid so expect the Western competency crisis to hit Japan soon enough. Anime won't stop being produced but the golden age is long since over and it will never reach the same level of cultural prominence that it did in the late 2000s/early 2010s.
"What should we do"? Stop being a fanboy. Stop constructing your identity around things.
The decline is irreversible. Japanese pop culture is falling off. J-Pop lost to K-Pop. Visual novels died to shorter light novels and much more lucrative gacha games. Light novels are borderline dead and only read by 30 and 40+ year old salarymen now with no new blood coming in. The anime industry is collapsing as they went from pushing out OVAs to 48 episode shows to 24 episode shows and now struggle to put out 12 episodes on time and they look like shit. There has not been an anime with the mainstream cultural power that Naruto and SAO had since AoT. You can tout Frerien all you want but that is unknown to normies. You walk into an anime con and it's merch of akatsuki cloaks, statues of Gen 1 Pokemon, figurines of Asuka, or posters of Genshin characters, and everyone there is 30 years old. JRPGs already went through one mass extinction event (few survived the transition to console 3D HD, others tried to sidestep it by going to handheld or mobile) and are undergoing another as they can't keep up with the Korean and the Chinese gachas and the Japanese spend their limited money on those games instead. That's where the youths are being funneled into. Also the Japanese government signed their nation's death warrant and will be importing foreigners to fill in Japan's inverted population pyramid so expect the Western competency crisis to hit Japan soon enough. Anime won't stop being produced but the golden age is long since over and it will never reach the same level of cultural prominence that it did in the late 2000s/early 2010s.
"What should we do"? Stop being a fanboy. Stop constructing your identity around things.
This is literally all wrong except the last bit about the golden age being over.
thewiru said:
There are no big anitube channels anymore, nor the blogsphere.
There are no big anitube channels anymore, nor the blogsphere.
Check out the Anime Men. They are probably the biggest anitube channel right now. Also, check out the Infinite Zenith blog. It's a great blog about anime. Also, let me remind you that long form youtube videos aren't as popular right now, so that's why there's less anitubers than in the past. Instead, there's now anime Tiktokers like Winduplirish, who pioneered a category of Tiktoks known as mediatok.
| @ExoTrillionic Well, when you ask me like that, I'll have to give reddit a try. |
ExoTrillionic said: I know you said in another thread that you detest r/anime They're so friendly over there, too! At least from what I've seen, there's a lovely community. I think Reddit just has a reputation, and you're right that the immediate less Reddit-y content on r/anime is a bit buried. A little off topic but I appreciate your post in general; it's very refreshing to see this kind of take. |
 |
| Yes, it's dying. Ppl aren't as open anymore to trying new stuff, they are always busing watching the same stuff as others make it a life priority to dictate what u must watch. |
 "Hard work is worthless for those that don’t believe in themselves" - Naruto Uzumaki |
Reply to CC
ExoTrillionic said:
I know you said in another thread that you detest r/anime
I know you said in another thread that you detest r/anime
They're so friendly over there, too! At least from what I've seen, there's a lovely community. I think Reddit just has a reputation, and you're right that the immediate less Reddit-y content on r/anime is a bit buried.
A little off topic but I appreciate your post in general; it's very refreshing to see this kind of take.
| @CC Honestly, it's been so long that I've forgotten why I even disliked r/anime to begin with. Maybe I was always a more /a/ type of guy, so it feels strange. And I don't mean just personality-wise: /a/ is about short comments and back-and-fourths, you're expected to post more than once, threads feel like places for conversation. Taking a quick glance at r/anime now, most threads don't really feel like they could result in a conversation. For seasonal episode threads, many comments are either just compliments (Which are fine on their own, but there's not much you can respond to them) or people writing mini-reviews. There is some logic recommending episode threads to me, though: Just like my threads are me infodumping a subject and asking people to talk about it so I could join the conversation, an episode thread is one where the subject is the episode at hand. A few days ago on Discord I had a very nice talk with people around the subject of "Is paying attention to/understanding/caring about lyrics necessary for you to have a song that changed your life?". It's this kind of "discussion structure" I'm always looking for. Basically: I love META discussion around anime, I love using anime as to discuss ideas, etc |
| Anime as a medium has always had it's ups and downs, really. Like the 1999-2005 era was really strong but then after that it went downhill because of several things. Anime had another boom post covid too and we're seeing the aftereffects of that |
| My waifu is the most wonderful waifu. Mai Valentine. We're freaking out that we're running out of time, but to do what? Should i stop and think of that? Is there something i could do to slow it down? Live in a day for once, instead of watch it sprinting by |
| "Is the anime community dying?" No, it's just changing and all the negative global social tendencies are influencing it. For example many think that what they watch must be some sort of a political statement. Other groups want to convert you into their favorite franchise and act like cults... "How to reverse the course?" How to change the human world? How to achieve global peace? Tough questions, bro! "I rarely see people talking about most seasonals" That's the superficiality of your average internet dweller (including me) - they don't want to get involved into lengthy discussions and analysis. They just share their opinion and hop onto the next thing. "There are no big anitube channels anymore" There are many contributing factors, but mostly you can't make money from platforms like YouTube the same way as 10-15 years ago. Not with long from content anyway (apparently people adore short form brainrot). Most of the YouTubers I randomly follow exist mainly on Patreon donations and random corporate sponsorships. Also there are copyright trikes...also there are targeted troll copyright trikes. "MAL isn't in it's heyday either." It works as fine anime tracking tool tho. |
| Dear wiru, please keep creating original topics, instead of this... |
thewiru said: Anime isn't dying. It's community, however... As I commented many times here: I rarely see people talking about most seasonals, and it's not because they're watching older anime either. There are no big anitube channels anymore, nor the blogsphere. From what other people say here, MAL isn't in it's heyday either. What should we do? Anime isn’t dying... it’s just that the ‘community’ doesn’t all hang out in the same fucking places anymore. The old hubs (AniTube, blogs, MAL) feel dead because everyone scattered to Discords, subreddits, TikTok, or some other shit. But even then, if you can even call them 'communities', since most people only exist virtually now instead of actually meeting in person or even actually really getting to know each other in the 1st palce. It’s more like thousands of little chat bubbles than one big gathering and most "Users" simply just post their brainfarts, shitposts, and shitty takes than some conscious collective gathering. You ask what you can do about it? Not a damn fucking thing... In my opinion, shit that exist virtually isn't really a true community to begin with because every User is wrapped in ambiguity and anonymity. I don't even usually talk about the specific Anime I have been currently consuming unless I am actually having a conversation face to face with someone or are already really good friends with them in Real life. With the exception of relatives where I will sometimes have conversations with them over the phone and occasionally bring up Anime, because most of my relatives actually live in Japan. |
 |
| So strict copyright mostly nuked the idea of becoming an anime youtuber. Mal forums have shrunk because increase of rules banned those for wrongthink. You are not allowed to be antiwoke, comment on news, noticing patterns, or even cover basic aspects of anime culture like loli and traps anymore. The fandom is still growing despite all that though. A lot of anime yt channels have shifted to globalization/slopification vs Japan content which is understandable given the changing state of anime. |
rohan121Sep 5, 8:48 AM
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| I never really understood how much "community" you need to supplement a hobby that involves a lot of media-watching and is very time-consuming. Along with actually watching anime, even a couple of daily checks on the MAL forums and a few scrolls through Reddit really take up about as much free time as I have on-hand. |
| Maybe the anime community prefer watching more anime than talking about it. |
| It doesn't matter if you like LoGH,Monster etc.If you are a jobless or college/school dropout living in your mom basement, you are still an unintelligent loser. Taste in anime does not make you a better person. |
| the online community maybe, but i know more than two dozen people i talk about anime regularly with IRL so not really. |
| The anime community is larger than it probably has been in history. Most "average" people have seen at least one thing they consider an anime, which isn't just Totoro. Forum culture is less popular than it used to be, so you just see fewer folks on dedicated boards discussing the subject. However, Discord communities and other social media platforms still have pretty large followings. Now, granted, forums are still the only places I'm likely to encounter folks nearly as degenerate as myself, which is why I like them as a medium for interaction. |
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| nah it's just mal forums that's dying, which is a good thing anyway. it's very active outside of here. |
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