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I enjoyed anime — in the late ’90s and early ’00s.
Toonami was in full swing and Adult Swim was just starting out. To this day, Sailor Moon and Cowboy Bebop are among my favourite things to ever air.
I really don’t want this rant to come off as a cranky old-timer griping about how much better things were “back in my day…” but come on….
Japan’s animation industry was different back then, at least seen through the eyes of Americans. Before then, in America in the ’80s and the early ’90s, anime was mostly known as that creepy foreign cartoon in the back shelves at the video rental shops, with a reputation for being excessively violent. Back then, Akira was a benchmark, giving the impression that anime was really not appropriate for kids.
I’m sure a lot of boomers found anime nauseating. They grew up with Hanna Barbera stuff, so they’d associate all animation with cheap kids entertainment. Anime that had high production values and mature subject matter just contrasted too much with their expectations. (It doesn’t help that anime art looks so wildly different — characters with enormous eyes and mouths that just flap open and shut when talking. Too weird for them.)
… Jump forward to the days of Toonami in the late ’90s — Japanese animation studios and Cartoon Network took a chance to really break into the American market.
The time was ripe. Generation Y would have a vastly different experience from past generations. We grew up watching more experimental animation from Nickelodeon. We were really young when Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and the Simpsons were at their peak. We grew up with very quirky Nintendo games. Something like Dragonball Z or Sailor Moon would not phase us so much.
They were just the right shows and for just the right demographic. Toonami was popular with kids and teens just getting home from school. There was also Pokémon, which exploded in popularity.
These were shows meant for such an adolescent audience.
In Japan, anime genres are different from what we in the west are used to. When we hear “genre,” we think of things like comedy, drama, action, romance, sci-fi, etc.…. But in Japan, anime is classified into whichever the target demographic is. There is anime for young kids. There is anime for boys (shounen). There is anime for girls (shoujo). There is anime for men. Anime for women. Even anime for elders….
Dragonball Z and Sailor Moon were among the very best shounen and shoujo anime shows in the industry. They made for fantastic first impressions for us impressionable youths. I doubt any anime designed for other demographics would have succeeded.
Naturally, those of my generation wanted to see more anime. If Japan produced something as captivating as the second story arc of Sailor Moon R, what else is there?
Cartoon Network gradually rolled out Tenchi Muyo, Outlaw Star, Runoni Kenshin, etc. There grew a demand for anime that was more mature, and so when Adult Swim premiered, it presented us with Cowboy Bebop.
So far, these were all great anime shows to introduce to us, and it looked as though Japan would keep producing hit after hit after hit.
And Cartoon Network was only scratching the surface. Around the early ’00s, anime was easily distributed in America on DVD. (I have a whole lot of stuff from ADV and Pioneer/Geneon in my personal collection.)
But — it really wasn’t to last.
Sure, there is some really good Japanese animation out there. However, during that anime craze, the Asian Invasion, anime studios had already exported their best stuff. By the mid ’00s, it seemed like anime was getting mediocre.
We had gotten the cream of the crop, but then we started getting some rather junky stuff. Anime had been around long enough that we could identify recurring tropes. A character running late for school while grasping a slice of bread in their mouth. We’d see character types like “tsundere,” “kundere,” etc.… These tropes made anime feel very stale.
This sense that anime was stale would give people on the internet a bizarre sense of humor: memes.
My god… I’ve got to be honest; I’ve never liked memes. They just seem like the most lifeless, soulless, stale excuses for jokes. I don’t get why they became such a phenomenon.
Carrying on — Naruto is where I drew the line. When Naruto exploded in popularity in the mid ’00s, that’s when I realized anime was dead to me.
To me, Naruto was something like jumping the shark. Its fanbase grew when anime in general began feeling stale. Its fanbase grew at a time when internet culture was rapidly developing “memes.”
I couldn’t take anime fan communities anymore. At this point, anime fandoms started embracing the word “otaku.” I didn’t get it. “Otaku” is not something to be proud of. It’s a Japanese word that’s rather derogatory, a shut-in who has an unhealthy obsession with some pop-culture s**t like a particular anime character.
“Weeaboo” is a word coined to describe an American who’s excessively into anime to the point where nothing else matters, and often speaks very broken Japanese…. Words like “waifu” or “husbando” came about….
It all just made me sick.
All of this lingo, this terminology developed by anime fans and the people who hate them just made me want to gag.
I just miss the days when something like Sailor Moon was a novelty on American television. I love Sailor Moon because it showed just how sophisticated character-driven stories and well-detailed artwork can be in animation. It came from a country with a very different worldview from what we’re used to in America. It was revolutionary.
By the time Naruto came around, anime didn’t feel revolutionary at all anymore. It felt normalized.
…
Jumping forward to something more up-to-date, I sometimes browse the eShop on my Nintendo Switch.
I often find a lot of trashy anime-style s**t in there.
Ugh… I once saw three different anime-style games with “panties” in the title. (WTF?)
I also see stuff like “Sakura Succubus,” which I guess falls under the “harem” sub-genre, or “Nin Nin Days” which is a visual novel about some guy who has a voluptuous young lady fall into his life, and it’s described as funny.
Oh my god… … just. … oh my god. So this is the kind of s**t that passes for “comedy” in Japan?
Well, I was a fan of Tenchi Muyo back when it was on Toonami, back before I had any idea it may have been a parody of any sort.
Sure, Tenchi Muyo has its harem elements, but it’s so over the top and science fictional that I could still enjoy it.
But all these years later, I look at something like Sakura Succubus and I groan. It doesn’t look like anything I could enjoy. I look at it and I don’t see comedy. All I see is something trashy that really wants to teeter on the edge of softcore porn.
It’s this kind of s**t that makes me wonder what the deal with Japan is. What kind of country would make this kind of stuff? It only makes me think that Japan is a country full of sexually frustrated males who can only draw out their fantasies in the form of harem manga/anime/dating sims/graphic novels…. To me, it doesn’t come off as “comedy.” It comes off as sleaze.
I’m having trouble enjoying anime now. I don’t look at anime in awe anymore. I look at it in pity.
