Why are the Anime Community being Sensitive about anime became a Mainstream.

[Dr.Kisaragi]

WelI, Im out of touch when it comes to social media because I don't have one, I just rely on fourms like RGT but I have a friend who had a fight about this user who in denial of anime is not mainstream is still niche my friend try to argue is not I saw her Mal forums man is a war of anime blame normies because anime is now a mainstream while others said I like when ot was mainstream because anime is now accessible.

I just don't get what the big deal all of this, as a anime since toddler it doesn't bother me the media is mainstream or not

Or maybe I don't get their fandom I don't I curious of why they are sensitive.

 

[Tonberry]

Losers upset when realizing their hobby isn't a "secret club" and hasn't been for at least 15 years.
More at 11.

 

[Stingy Perry Stingy Perry]

For me those “anime fans” had this certain fanaticism. More like an obsession of sorts.
Their obsession kinda made them think of others not worthy of the fandom that’s exclusively theirs.

 

[χKai]

I like anime, but I hate telling people that because I watch things like Trigun, Jigoku Shoujo, and Elfin Lied, but they think things like Lucky Star, Madoka Magica and Ouran High School Host Club.

 

[MasterEn]

when something becomes "mainstream", it ends up being generic, formulaic and safe.
there is no creativity, no experimenting, no edgy humor, nothing that would make it stand out against the thousands of other entries in its category.
this happened with the marvel movies. they were fun and creative at first, but then the quality slowly went down; and now everyone is bored by them. there are exceptions, but boredom and disinterest is more common among fans and moviegoers.

 

[MajesticSiN]

Anime has been mainstream for a long time now.
Anyone complaining hasn't been paying much attention.

 

[pr0xy]

Losers upset when realizing their hobby isn't a "secret club" and hasn't been for at least 15 years.
More at 11.

This pretty much sums it all up. I know this guy who hates the idea of anime being mainstream and complains about the most ridiculous stuff. For example, we once had an argument about famous people dressing up as anime characters, and he made it sound like they were stealing valor (which is abso-fucking-lutely baffling). He also invalidates people who watch anime dubbed instead of subbed—says they’re not "true fans".
Mind you, I’m not talking about a kid or a teen—he’s in his mid-to-late thirties. He’s what you’d call a gatekeeper and, as @Tonberry said, can’t stand that his (totally and absolutely not) niche hobby is being cheapened by normies who should stay in their lane and stop fucking around with things that don’t belong to them.
What’s funniest to me is the fact that they try to gatekeep stuff that’s already fully ingrained in pop culture nowadays, like Evangelion, Berserk, or the works of Junji Ito.

 

[Clumpoid]

Reminds me of all the hate DBZ gets from weebs when its clearly the best anime ever made. Deserved popularity.

 

[qw90700]

Considering anime has been popular in the world for decades, if a person says anime is not mainstream I would like to assume they mean how things are in their country because otherwise I couldn't really believe how ignorant the person is just to leave a benefit of doubt here lol. For example anime was popular in my country; Beast King GoLion, Captain Tsubasa, Candy Candy, Heidi, Girl of the Alps, Dragon Ball and Pokemon was just a cartoon we watched alongside with American cartoons like Mickey Mouse, Tom and Jerry and Looney Tunes without even caring or knowing what country produces these cartoons but anime lost its popularity here decades ago due to some kid jumping out of the window claiming they are a Pokemon or some shit in a country. I remember how it caused a great shock and it was one of the reasons for why the government took serious steps to approve safe standards for mental well-being of kids in every aspect of TV. And then the sexual BS in anime is "no-no" for our culture, yet it doesn't mean we don't have a dedicated anime community for decades that actively translates anime and preserves them despite even Japanese people doesn't care about these animes lol.

And if a person who "loves" animes and then have a problem with anime being a popular hobby then it likely means the person just cares about how rare hobby watching anime is just to feel "elite" or some shit, and then it means they really didn't like animes so this is what new generation kids call "being a gatekeeper". If you love something you would wanna spread it (that's why I always mention Nacho Cheese Doritos™©℗® in every chance I have!!! lolol), and that is why anime fans in my country try to spread it like a religion but especially parents trying to put a stop to this "madness" on our internet as it is what they believe lol. However, they ended American and Japanese cartoons on TV with great exceptions because American cartoons are too BS, violent and socially awkward in primitive alien shit so not fit for anyone to watch and Japanese cartoons are ended for being BS in different way + sexual BS so what is left is cleaning this mess from our internet and ending local resistence group who are an anime cult!!!! thinks parents in my country lolol. So for a long time all kids can watch as a cartoon here is some local ones that are actually crazy shit like people talk slow and they do stupid shit just to waste time and distract little kids. No more Jerry pulling ass of Tom, no giant robots combining to form a bigger robot, no laws of physics breaking by playing soccer, no more illegal dog fighting anime called Pokemon and whatnot shit in our TV!!! lolol

 

[D-Tyrant]

it mainly has to do with how a lot of anime would be seen as "unsafe" or "triggering" by a lot of mainstream audiences, especially by the west, and would lead to them being sanitized or outright ruined to avoid offending people. as well as mainstream media's strange obsession to not hire or have people who are fans and know the source material make them.

if you want to see the perfect example of this look at Netflix's version of Cowboy Bebop, that thing was butchered to hell and back by people, made by talentless hacks who basically hijacked it to make their own show and not what its actually based off

 

[taigaisak4]

anime becoming mainstream is one of the best things possible, because we have more access to media than ever before

I dunno if people miss watching anime in 360p quality with each episode divided into 10 parts on youtube

of course when something is mainstream, the amount of bad people is significantly bigger, but gatekeeping something you like just for the sake of being "obscure" and "particular" isn't good either

 

[Nasty]

I'm sorry, when has Anime not been 'mainstream' exactly? Every kid in the world has a favorite anime series, right? That means anime's been playing in literally every household on earth for the past 30-40 years. In that sense anime's been more mainstream than clean drinking water or oatmeal cereal for decades. Like somebody else said above, it's just a bunch of losers and/or edgy kids realizing their hobby doesn't make them as special as they thought it did hahahaha

 

[qw90700]

if you want to see the perfect example of this look at Netflix's version of Cowboy Bebop, that thing was butchered to hell and back by people, made by talentless hacks who basically hijacked it to make their own show and not what its actually based off

Well that is the way of Americans. Using something to make money by reducing the cost as much as they can by trying to fit it to their own target audience. So it's not that they love to ruin what was popular from other countries, they also ruin their own culture to befit it to current state of American Nightmare™©℗® and that's why their video game quality is so down anymore despite once they were great RPG video game developers now they have no idea RPG means "roleplaying game" so they produce A to B FPS action game with inventory management like you playing Tetris and "serious" or "sarcasm" dialogue choices, "X character will remember you decision" but it doesn't effect anything, fake choices matter games your existence actually didn't matter in the game, and whatnot shit and all roleplaying game they know is "fuck me like I'm an innocent girl and you roleplay as a burglar" as bedroom fun lolol.

Once customer was always right, Americans used Big 5 "labelling people stupidly" BS and whatnot shit and then they figured out "dude customer is always wrong" and that's why they just use BS formulas and ignore what the target audience actually wants especially because "haters gonna hate" and "social media has no idea what they talk about" and "they have money so they will buy what we sell" lol. For them quality never matters, because "it would be stupid to waste so much money and we can't even cover our costs" so what they do is "oh X is popular, produce it with less money as much as possible to be smart about keeping all the profit for ourselves". And their TV series formula turned into "dilly-dally audience with a sense of always something better around the corner but make the whole season empty but put some tiny hype thing in the finale and make them hyped for next season" BS and they keep spamming super costumed freak movies that have BS movie posters that women always pose against basic human anatomy by risking breaking their neck trying to show their ass, breasts and face simultaneously ayy lmao to satisfy their legally adult but mentally little kid audiance that makes of 99% of America fuck yeah lolol.

 

[sijaab]

they will lose there ''1000 year old'' waifu

 

[X y b e r - S k u ll]

Obviously I can't mind read or tell what REALLY goes through these peoples minds, but I think a lot of it kind of stems from the stigma a lot of anime used to have attached to it. It's very telling that a lot of the people who feel strongly about this are people in their 30's most of the time i.e. the people that grew up in that era where liking anime was quite stigmatised and thus were often bullied or teased because of it, resulting in this "secret club" kind of mentality they developed. Obviously it does suck a lot of them went through what I'm describing, and to some extent I can understand becoming a little bitter at seeing how people treat anime now compared to when they were kids, but the funniest part is that normies for the most part aren't actually to blame a lot of the time, it's their fellow anime fans who assume normies will think they're weird and have to do this bizarre posturing and look like "One of the good ones" when in reality most normies don't actually care (This is getting into a separate topic now so I'll stop this line of thinking here).

I think some of it can also be blamed on how anime was marketed in (specifically) English-speaking countries for quite awhile. While obviously there had been some anime broadcast in these places since the 60's and 70's, it paled in comparison to what was shown in parts of Europe for example, and also tried to remove any and all references that the works were Japanese, while in places like France and Italy they didn't tend to hide the fact these were Japanese works, but they also presented them alongside their own shows as if they were just regular cartoons, not these exotic, strange and mysterious relics from an eastern land like how they were seen in America for instance. Even in the 80's and 90's when English-speaking countries started getting companies like Manga Entertainment releasing more obscure and cool anime from the OVA boom of that era, it was presented as these cool, edgy, underground, DEFINITELY not for kids cartoons (Definitely evident from the titles these companies chose to release) and while they didn't hide the fact these were from Japan anymore, they still suffered from that "exotic" style marketing which I think did kind of lead to the stigmatisation I described in the first paragraph.

Apologies if this comes off as rambling in places, I just think it's an interesting topic lol.

 

[Scotty]

I have mixed feelings about it becoming mainstream. While I think it's great that so many people are getting into the medium — be it through watching big names like "Dragon Ball", "Dandadan", or "One Piece" or by people having grown tired of western television shows and instead searching for engaging stories.

At the same time though, there are too many bad apples who will bully you simply for watching the "wrong anime" (Basically, most romance anime, Slice-of-life anime and anything that isn't shounen). I hate that I get labeled as a "PDF" for saying that I enjoy cozy anime like "K-ON!" or "Kinmoza".

I don't hate shounen; I enjoy action-packed fights and in fact, I'd like to get into "Dragon Ball" at some point because my brother is a huge DBZ fan. I just prefer series that are more grounded and laid-back.
There's also the sanitization issue where those bad apples that so easily offended by certain tropes are either celebrating when those moments end up getting censored in some way or they send the mangaka death threats because they drew artwork that doesn't appeal to them. And if isn't Twitter throwing a tantrum over a relatively tame scene from a romance anime, it's people who create a bastardized version of an anime that in no way resembles the IP and is instead something that the creator (who more often than not HATES anime) wanted to insert themselves into (looking at you, Netflix).

 

[Questless Knight]

look at what happen with gaming it becomes so damn mainstream that game companies focus more on mobile games audience and the so called modern audience to the point we got so many shitty shitty stinkers of games that sold barely any copies because that modern barely exists. Or instead of releasing a proper new game we get a shitty people game. I mean look how dirty they did my boy Breath of fire no new game for years then suddenly breath of fire 6 on mobile only.

If anime becomes way to mainstream it will be the same again people think anime is shit today just you wait it becomes to mainstream as candy crush saga an anime that you think is shit today will seam like the best shit you ever seen becuse all the new anime will be so ass you rather poke your own eyes out.

Game industry has luck having indie games but you ain´t gonna see indie anime´s like you see indie games.

People say gatekeeping is bad to a certain point it´s bad yes but thank to no having gate keeping we got dragon age fail guard. Thanks to 0 gate keeping we got last of us II, Assassin shit shadows and so on.

Gatekeeping is necessary so evil hateful people don´t come in and shit and piss all over what you love.

 

[thumbsdown]

fuck em all the gatekeepers bro

 

[Zerpina]

Bad news for anyone who is gatekeeping, as it was stated or thinks anime is anything but mainstream...

It's been mainstream since fucking Toonami, and probably before that, honestly...
I can't say for sure before Toonami, but once it hit prime time slots on Cartoon Network, it being for just a "Select few true fans" well, that ship sailed. and left port

 

[Heinzu]

Well members of the anime community can be sensitive about anime becoming mainstream for several reasons, including a fear of the fandom losing its original identity, changes in the content to appeal to a wider audience and the influx of newcomers perceived as less dedicated. This resistance is a phenomenon that affects many subcultures when they enter the mainstream.

 

[Insertnamehere]

It's not about being a "secret club". If more people watch and actually like anime that's great.
The problem is the people that come in and expect anime to change/be censored to pander to them and label everything they don't like "problematic" like fanservice and loli characters.
And then call themselves anime fans (despite hating the anime parts of anime)

 

[Zerpina]

One upside is anime. For the most part, I mean the real thing, not Netflix's garbage...
<Castlevania was alright, but I digress> Anime is made in Japan, and they don't put up with the marketing BS like movie studios and such do here...

They have their own way of making shows, and I doubt that America or anywhere else for that matter, aside from Japan itself, is going to make them water down and sanitize anime.

Again, I’m not talking about the BS made here, slap an Otaku tag on it and ship it out.

<Looking at you, live action and I hate to even associate it with the legendary anime Cowboy Bebop>

 

[qw90700]

I get labeled as a "PDF" for saying that I enjoy cozy anime like "K-ON!" or "Kinmoza".

I assure you you are not a Portable Document Format file!! Don't let them tell you you are a computer file format!!! You are a human being like the rest of us!!!! (wat) lolol

 

[mistymermaid]

Lack of availability of very old shows has created a distorted image of anime. Even the most devoted fans are largely unfamiliar with the stylistic origins and early development of the format/medium.

 

[Zerpina]

Lack of availability of very old shows has created a distorted image of anime. Even the most devoted fans are largely unfamiliar with the stylistic origins and early development of the format/medium.

That's one reason I see pirate anime sites as a good thing. A lot of them have older stuff that either A. you can't get or B. would cost a fortune to get fully