Anime and degeneracy - one more catalyst

Trance- said:


You've peered into the darkest pits of my mind, sir. As a reward, you get to see my weird sexual fantasies about steering wheels.

Trance- said:
Further on, we all are aware of how superheroes in anime are the most gluttonous, sometimes womanizers, and also, at times, the least courteous. What message does this send? you are bound to object: ''Those are for kids!''. Yes, that's exactly my point: Kids learn everything from anything. See the correlation of gluttony and superpowers - what is a kid to derive from that?

Trance- said:

No positivism please. Some things are based on observation alone. You cannot make statistics of 'how anime has influenced people negatively'. The strength of my observation lies in the fact that no one other than you has disagreed with me on this that anime are having a bad influence.



But are those censorships reversed? No.



The education of the ancient Greeks didn't eliminate lechery or drinking from their society. It went on just fine. It just didn't become commonplace.

Positive realizations never actually go far enough to make an absolute impact. They lessen the evil but don't proliferate the good.



PG, at best, has a placebo effect. A parent cannot, and should not, supervise his kid 24/7. And just because of this placebo effect, it's worth having being. That's all about it.

TheBrainintheJar said:

I'm not talking about anime influencing people. We're clearly discussing the ideas in those anime. The thing is, you claim they're all/most of what's produced these days.

So I need evidence for it.

If you want to only analyze those anime without claiming how common they are, say so.

RiceLover said:
OP, thanks for saying what I've always felt deep down but never had the ability to type and organize in such a eloquent manner. I wish I was as good with words as you :c (I'm also aware this could be one big ironic joke, but I'll take you seriously and go along with it)

FlatEight said:
(Why am I even getting into this?)

I originally had a long response to this, but I deleted all of it because I know that whatever anyone says won't actually change your mind on the subject.

What other form of entertainment do you propose?

Zalis said:
That's where you're mistaken -- a lot of these "degenerate" shows are aimed at 18-35+ otaku who can afford expensive 2-episode Japanese Blu-Rays, not kids. They're aired in the middle of the night and are extremely lucky to sell 10,000 copies on disc. Overseas streaming/downloads/TV/discs expand that audience to some extent, but not to kids en masse. Stuff like Precure that's actually primarily aimed at kids and airs in accessible timeslots is chock-full of prosocial morals, and is sensitive enough to censorious pressure that it'll cover up girls' midriffs if enough parental associations complain.

Holybaptiser said:
I'm sure I'd be a neurosurgeon if it weren't for anime corrupting and crippling my capabilities. At least I think that's how things work in the real world and not in the delusions of some teenager.

RiceLover said:
OP, thanks for saying what I've always felt deep down but never had the ability to type and organize in such a eloquent manner. I wish I was as good with words as you :c (I'm also aware this could be one big ironic joke, but I'll take you seriously and go along with it)

povsuduvolosy said:
golden age mythology as it is, part of any rightwinged crap

Trance- said:


That's some interesting information. But cross the womanizing part, and you have shonen made for <18 audience.

So you think the world is degrading you?
If so the Solution seems simple, DON'T LOSE YOUR WAY! Hold onto those things you think you should and want to have faith in, if you stay true to yourself, if you don't forget about what you value, then you heart is made fullmetal, unwavering, and nothing should be able to break you.
I suppose this is what it means to be a strong individual.

Trance- said:


I didn't claim 'all' and as for most they were always in the most. Their ratio has only increased and again the strength of this observation lies in the fact that no one has disagreed with me on it hitherto. If you still have doubts, go do a genre-wise search and be dazzled.



You are a part of my elite force from now on.



I'm not targeting the medium.



That's some interesting information. But cross the womanizing part, and you have shonen made for <18 audience.

dizzyur said:
well aren't you a big party pooper sir

TheBrainintheJar said:

I'm not going to search to prove your points. You made the claim. You prove it.

Trance- said:


Who wants it to be proved?

Yes, you. No one else demanded me. Get the majority on your side and then I'll deem your demand legitimate.

asaspades said:
I don't know what your points are, but if you had any confidence in them then you should be thankful for the opportunity to prove them right. The masses aren't evidence of anything other than what most people think, which can be entirely devoid of anything approaching fact.

Trance- said:


Are you guys seriously imploring me to mathematically or otherwise prove it to you that most anime aren't the legendary, undisputed, clean anime like LotGH?

Still, do a genre-wise search here and see the number of anime produced for the *ahem* bad genres as compared to the more educational genres (such as historical): https://www.animenewsnetwork.com/encyclopedia/search/genre

I'm not a stochastic student. Neither do I have any authority to draw legitimate statistics. Even this genre-wise search doesn't come close to proving what you want proved.

asaspades said:
I wasn't asking for mathematical proof or anything, I was just saying that refusing to provide proof doesn't make your point look strong and the masses aren't proof.

Having looked at your point, it would be pretty simple to count everything tagged with ecchi/harem that was produced in a given year and divide it by the number of things produced that year. If the number goes up every year then it'll show you were right, the proportion of ecchi/harem is increasing.

Trance- said:
The problem is with people not realizing how important a role fiction plays in our reality.

Fiction is a part of reality. Whatever we see, becomes a part of us.

jal90 said:
Well, at least this time the OP has some ability to use fancy and well-picked words to represent his bullshit. I guess the effort is worth the praise.

It's nice to be a moralist, it's not so nice to pretend that your moralism matters in the big picture. Try again.


Too bad this is never the black or white thing your delusion wants to defend.

Trance- said:
In matters such as these, only the question of plausibility is asked. And plausibility, in this case, is proved by the fact that majority has agreed with me i.e the majority has observed the same phenomena. An actual proof is impossible to produce. A scientific inquiry in context such as this is as inane as it sounds.

Trance- said:
Let's say the reality is more complicated and my analysis of it simplistic. But if my simple pattern reaches the same conclusion as the intricate machine of reality, am I in the wrong then?

flannan said:

WHAT??!
You sound like an enemy of science now. Enemy of everything that is right and true.
You make accusations not based on serious research, but on pure nostalgia filter?
That's horrible.

Trance- said:


You might be unaware of this but many equations in physics are only plausible; they aren't provable nor are they justifiable. Their best justification lies in that they 'work'. Chemistry relies almost entirely upon symbolism; it assigns patterns to phenomena, patterns that work in majority cases. That's how, my son, science works.

Trance- said:


Calling my point bullshit doesn't invalidate it. And I'm sure you're well aware of that.

Let's say the reality is more complicated and my analysis of it simplistic. But if my simple pattern reaches the same conclusion as the intricate machine of reality, am I in the wrong then?

jal90 said:

If your simple pattern reaches the same conclusion it would be the same. I call your point bullshit because it's brought out of thin air, no matter if your conclusion is right or wrong, you are not giving any effort to contrast your line of thought, and seem to be against any attempt to prove it.

If I say that pink elephants exist and refuse to give any proof or substantiated reason, only to discover that pink elephants do exist a few years later, that doesn't make me less of a fraud. You are assuming that a coincidence with reality is going to make up for your lack of argumentative background.

flannan said:

I'm very much aware how science works, I've taken courses on knowing how science works.
Physical equations are proven. In the physical sense of "proof". They are proposed based on the existing data, they make predictions, and these predictions are tested. The equations and laws you study in school are just the ones which passed the test - many failed.
Also, you're ~30 years too young to call me "son", kiddo.

Trance- said:


Refusing to provide proof simply means that it's not a matter where a 'proof' can exist. If I tell you that the number of emos has increased exponentially in our society in the last few decades, you will agree - but would you have any proof for your agreement?

Obviously not. You can count the number of youtube channels headed by emos, focusing only on emos or you can do a rough analysis of number of people with emo hairstyle on facebook. None of that will be the proof of the hypothesis.

In matters such as these, only the question of plausibility is asked. And plausibility, in this case, is proved by the fact that majority has agreed with me i.e the majority has observed the same phenomena. An actual proof is impossible to produce. A scientific inquiry in context such as this is as inane as it sounds.

asaspades said:
But I wouldn't agree with you because you've provided no evidence of that fact. Observations made on intuition and appeal to the masses are subject to many psychological biases that make them essentially useless.

I decided to scrape the data from the ANN encyclopaedia, to see how the numbers actually work out (all numbers rounded to 0 decimal places)

• 2011 was actually the peak of ecchi/harem series with a whole 42 series produced that have either of those tags, and also the highest proportion of shows at 11%
  
• The numbers from 2009, 2010, 2011 and 2012 are all 10%
  
• 2013-2015 are all less than that, at 9% for 2013, 8% for 2014 and 7% for 2015
  
• For the years 2003 - 2008 inclusive ecchi/harem anime make up 7% of all anime produced
  
• From 1991 - 2002 the percentage fluctuates between 1 and 3%
  
• In 1990, 1989, 1986 it's around 0.5%
  
• In 1973 there was 1 ecchi anime, comprising 3% of all 32 anime produced that year.
  
• In every other year (expect 2016, incomplete data) no shows were produced that had an either an ecchi or harem tag

Hentai was excluded. So your intuition is wrong, both the total number of ecchi/harem anime and the proportion of all anime they comprise has been falling for the last 4 years.

Trance- said:


So about the equation of kinetic model of gasses.........??

Trance- said:
But do not be mistaken that an invalid reasoning cannot lead to a sound conclusion. It's not a logical impossibility. Considering that, it's your disagreement that doesn't make sense; if you accept my premises as true and my conclusion as sound, then even if you have a problem with my reasoning, you cannot reject the conclusion.

Trance- said:
My premises are true, my conclusions sound.

Trance- said:
In the past, education was a means to subdue the carnal nature of man;

flannan said:

Education wasn't like that until Christianity got its filthy hands on the world, and started pushing their divide between material world and mind and soul.
Ancient Greek education contained balanced development of both body and mind. And from the very beginning, education was about giving man proper knowledge and ways of thinking, so that he could make the world better.
I can go on and try to destroy every part of your speech sentence by sentence, but I don't have the time for that.
I'll just tell you that Ancient Greeks also knew both about tragedies and the cathartic feeling they gave, and about wild parties and sexuality. And they considered both necessary for a proper life.

Trance- said:


My premises are true, my conclusions sound. The only thing you have a problem with is the validity of my argument. Ok, I grant you that. But do not be mistaken that an invalid reasoning cannot lead to a sound conclusion. It's not a logical impossibility. Considering that, it's your disagreement that doesn't make sense; if you accept my premises as true and my conclusion as sound, then even if you have a problem with my reasoning, you cannot reject the conclusion.

Trance- said:
Also, I explained above how it cannot be proved. Many things cannot be proved. Try proving the past. When you have, come back and demand proof for my assertion.

jal90 said:

Except I don't accept your premises as true (or false, for the matter). Why should I? What evidence have you brought for either?

The problem of your reasoning is that it is assumption after assumption after assumption with no aim to prove them because for some unknown reason you believe in truth but not in the burden of proof. Okay.

Sure, many things cannot be proved. But if they can't be proved, what basis do you use to give them the category of "truth"?

Trance- said:


I have said this before, and I'll say it again, that my argument doesn't concern a specific genre. Which is why I said that even collecting statistics from a genre-wise search won't prove my point. Hell, the OP mentions only the shounen and your average 'romance' anime. The fantasy pandering is only natural to ecchi/harem. What about the bullshit in cleaner genres? How do you measure that?

Regardless, that isn't how rise and fall is measured. Draw a cumulative frequency graph, then differentiate it to find the gradient and see whether it's positive and if so, to what magnitude? But that of course is too much work and even more so considering that it still won't come close to proving the main point.

Trance- said:


Have you read ''The Republic'' by Plato? If not, please do so. You're severely mistaken here.

You pinpointed the part which wasn't even my 'premise'. It was only a precept.

The equation for kinetic model of gases () is unproved. It's only plausible. To begin with, it's based on 'assumptions'.

But I do know that people who try to do things without proper understanding only make things worse. So even if your conclusion is somehow right (which it isn't), doing things your way is a recipe for disaster.

If I recall correctly, your problem was that I simplified reality; not that I didn't understand it at all. And simplification is the first thing you do in deductive reasoning.

hoopla123 said:
Who the fuck cares?

It's fiction, if you feel triggered by anime, stop watching it and hop on tumblr.

Trance- said:


For an instance, try watching KonoSuba. You might already be familiar with Fairy Tail - and please don't pull the age argument, age doesn't even come here apart from the cases of One Piece or Naruto. Both are PG 13. One Piece is actually 11+. And both have those gluttonous, wrathful, main characters.

The validity of my argument lies in anime. You either don't watch much or are simply feigning ignorance.

Trance- said:
Have you read ''The Republic'' by Plato? If not, please do so. You're severely mistaken here.

Trance- said:
You pinpointed the part which wasn't even my 'premise'. It was only a precept.

Trance- said:
The equation for kinetic model of gases () is unproved. It's only plausible. To begin with, it's based on 'assumptions'.

Trance- said:


If I recall correctly, your problem was that I simplified reality; not that I didn't understand it at all. And simplification is the first thing you do in deductive reasoning.

In the past, education was a means to subdue the carnal nature of man; to make thought the sovereign ruler of mind's domain and rationality the primary tool of success and fulfillment in life. Yes, I'm talking about the Ancient Greeks and those who followed up till the Enlightenment.

Then came the modern era. TV advertisements, fashion industry, music industry and most of entertainment as a whole, works towards destroying education's purpose.

And education itself, today, is in deplorable state; it's primary purpose now is to create the best cog for the many familiar systems working out there in the society. In this scenario, anime seems to be the most shameless opponent of sovereignty of thought and rationality.

We're all aware of how sexualized female or male characters are in anime. But things don't stop there. Recently, there was a thread complaining why romantic relations never reach their end (i.e marriage, elopement etc) and the only possible explanation to that was this: "The purpose is not to tell a story but to appease the fantasies''.

Ever wondered why an anime schoolgirl, with her XX rack, crawls up to a guy's crotch, brings on her most erotic expression, touches the guy in all the wrong places, and then retreats right before the guy gives in? Well, as I said, the answer is: She's meant to appease your, the viewer's, fantasies.

Further on, we all are aware of how superheroes in anime are the most gluttonous, sometimes womanizers, and also, at times, the least courteous. What message does this send?

you are bound to object: ''Those are for kids!''. Yes, that's exactly my point: Kids learn everything from anything. See the correlation of gluttony and superpowers - what is a kid to derive from that?

And wrath. How is that flaunted in anime! the angrier the main character, the stronger he actually will be.

I'm not even targeting how unrealistic anime are. My target is simply the effects anime is having on us - especially kids.

The recent trend of an otaku suddenly acquiring superpowers or sexy ladies is another proponent of this cumulative degeneracy.

An otaku, with his dysfunctional mental faculties, will not derive mere entertainment (which may or may not be the purpose of the anime) from it but rather a consolation of his own sorry state. Hence giving him another reason to carry on with his ugly life.