Anime Fandom Has Changed

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DJ_Izumi
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Anime Fandom Has Changed

Post by DJ_Izumi » Fri Jun 15, 2018 12:44 pm

To start, I don't totally mean this as a complaint. In a lot of ways we now have the anime fandom that I'd have wished for when I got into it in 2001. The barrier to entry to consuming anime is more or less non-existent. My Samsung Smart TV has Netflix, Amazon Prime, and Funimation Go all built in. Just need my PS4 to access Crunchryroll. You can access anime faster than fansubbers could do it once and dubs for many shows even come out 3 weeks later. Amazon will being me $50 or so 13 episode BluRays when a series drops on physical media. And I can buy all kinds of nerdy garbage from sites that bring it straight fro Japan. Where once there was a barrier to access any anime beyond what was broadcast on television, now you can access Funi and Crunchy with ads and if some teen's parents pay for Netflix then they can access a tonne of anime through just that. Not to mention amazing high def re-releases of classic anime that have had their original 16mm film stock scanned. (I may own some $400+ in Patlabor BluRays) That is all pretty freakin' amazing.

Anime is now effectively mainstream, or as mainstream as you can get in a modern world where people's media interests are so much more diverse due to the sheer number of options available to them.

But honestly, it's kinda a lot less fun. Anime being so much more mainstream it also kinda stopped being 'special'. You stopped being part of the 'anime club' in whatever circles you were in because it's just so very common now. And, I get that that is some garbage fandom gatekeeping, but it was still a 'thing' undeniably.

I think the biggest downside though is that a lot of the communities died. There is for sure the whole 'AniTwitter' thing and you even have full blown anime YouTubers who's posts spawn massive threads of comments but a lot of the conversation is shallow. Forums and mailing lists were the places where a conversation could go on for weeks or even days. Even Megatokyo's forums were home to pages and pages of discussions on titles. I feel like it's a lot harder to get a deep conversation online about how mind blowing I thought a title was. And with my friends in the real world, we keep winding up watching different titles we can't go on about a show we all saw nearly as easily. (Or maybe I just need new, BETTER friends, who properly appreciate ReCREATORS. :O)

There's also a loss of new 'big flagship titles'. I remember a time when you were getting into anime and you could more or less come up with a 'list' of must see anime, with your mega titles like Evangelion, Cowboy Bebop, X, subtitled Sailor Moon, Card Captor Sakura, and so on. The list wasn't all that 'long' to 'cover your bases'. Now it's an unstoppable firehose of anime with dozens of new shows ready to be consumed every 3 months. Nothing stands out cause the next wave crashes right on top of it. For a local convention group, someone once posted asking if Yuri On Ice was 'still popular' for them to Cosplay... It was 2 weeks before the Bluray was even set to ship. =X

The level of access is amazing. The ability to consume even older series is better than ever. The ability to buy Japanese merch is better, I mean, I once bought a 1/2 scale Bandai Capsule Station gashapon machine cause I was BORED. (It REALLY dispenses 50mm capsulse, OMG! :3) Even while I was writing this post the FedEx guy showed up at work righ t RightStuff package, with Genshiken 2nd Season, Card Captor Sakura blurays and other stuff for me. :O But honestly, I feel like a certain 'magic' is gone. :/

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DaRk_KnIgHt
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Re: Anime Fandom Has Changed

Post by DaRk_KnIgHt » Sat Jun 16, 2018 7:39 am

I got into anime from TV broadcasts. Being in Malaysia, we didn't have many options and as a kid, buying stuff online was definitely not accessible. So dodgy bootleg VCDs or DVDs and when internet got better - fansubs alongside any TV broadcasts was the way to get into the hobby.

I try not to let other fans get in my way of enjoying stuff I like. I like to visit reddit communities - it's the closest thing to internet forums nowadays which are largely dead. And a lot of newer fans of stuff I like do in fact piss me off. If I let that bother me, I'd never be able to enjoy anything.

Communities dying is definitely sad. I never thought the forum here will become as dead as it has. I kinda thought I'd be able to just lurk and post well into the future. But this ain't restricted to just anime. The rise of social media platforms has largely set many smaller forums and online communities on a slow decline. Old members move on, any potential newer members would flock to tumblr, reddit and such. I pretty much just get my jollies from the chaos that are 4chan threads, which have remain relatively unchanged through the ages. I rather die than be caught watching youtubers talk about anime.

I for one don't really mind the 'loss' of 'big flagship titles'. I always thought fans of some of the 90s big hits got a bit insufferable when going on about how things used to be better and slamming any new practices. Be it the cel to digital transition, the rise of the iyashikei genre and so on. Like every entertainment medium, it continues to grow, change and in many respects - get better. And the passing of time will determine what is truly great. And you can't really keep being a fan of something if nothing new ever happens. How long can someone realistically keep on dwelling on Bebop being the best anime ever? Though I say this as someone who didn't like many of some of the well liked stuff. Didn't like Evangelion, Ghost in the Shell, Trigun or Lain. Outlaw Star was only merely alright. I could go on.

I do find some fun if every now and then, some of my real life friends ask me for anime recommendations. Something that didn't use to happen before, but can now since they are more exposed. I always get my jollies in recommending something a bit macabre like Made in Abyss since some of them have a really stereotypical view on what anime should be like.

I do understand the loss in some of the magic when you felt like you were in a sorta more special club. Heck, I was balls deep in Type-Moon fandom back in the day. Now with Fate Grand Order, it's exploded to a stupid extent and I find all the new fans to be a bunch of insufferable prats.

Though amidst everything changing, I find my own tastes have changed too. The me who enjoyed Samurai X would have have expected to have watched and enjoyed something like Yuri on Ice. Or going out of my way to watch slightly more bizarre stuff like Natsuyuki Rendezvous. Nowadays I kinda actively avoid any sort of battle/action type anime, categorizing them all as largely derivative and trite. But stuff within that genre would have been my go to stuff when starting out.

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Re: Anime Fandom Has Changed

Post by DJ_Izumi » Sat Jun 16, 2018 11:21 am

DaRk_KnIgHt wrote:
Sat Jun 16, 2018 7:39 am
I for one don't really mind the 'loss' of 'big flagship titles'. I always thought fans of some of the 90s big hits got a bit insufferable when going on about how things used to be better and slamming any new practices. Be it the cel to digital transition, the rise of the iyashikei genre and so on. Like every entertainment medium, it continues to grow, change and in many respects - get better. And the passing of time will determine what is truly great. And you can't really keep being a fan of something if nothing new ever happens. How long can someone realistically keep on dwelling on Bebop being the best anime ever? Though I say this as someone who didn't like many of some of the well liked stuff. Didn't like Evangelion, Ghost in the Shell, Trigun or Lain. Outlaw Star was only merely alright. I could go on.
To be clear, I more meant NEW series claiming 'Flagship' status. I think a lot of the 'Classic' series keep that status in the fandom, though probably more with older demographics, but for sure people can still go 'Oh guys... EVANGELION. :O'. But I feel like there's no space for NEW series to be very, very, very significant and be popular for years and years because there's always the next show. We've def seen some 'very popular' new series like Attack On Titan or My Hero Academia, but even AOT lost a lot of it's fandom in the 3 years between S1 and S2. MHA does a bit better cause they try to do one season ever year so it keeps fairly fresh. However I don't see any new series gaining same status that something like Cowboy Bebop did back in the day.
DaRk_KnIgHt wrote:
Sat Jun 16, 2018 7:39 am
I do find some fun if every now and then, some of my real life friends ask me for anime recommendations. Something that didn't use to happen before, but can now since they are more exposed. I always get my jollies in recommending something a bit macabre like Made in Abyss since some of them have a really stereotypical view on what anime should be like.
Yeah, this is DEF a cool new thing. A lot more people 'like anime' or at least 'like an anime. I've literally had the co-worker, who is not an 'anime fan', ask me if I had Attack On Titan Season 2 so he could catch up before Season 3 drops this July. Casual enjoyment of anime is just so much more common these days. Though to be fair, I work in the visual effects industry, so it IS a pretty nerdy industry overall. :)

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Re: Anime Fandom Has Changed

Post by DaRk_KnIgHt » Sun Jun 17, 2018 7:48 am

DJ_Izumi wrote:
Sat Jun 16, 2018 11:21 am
To be clear, I more meant NEW series claiming 'Flagship' status. I think a lot of the 'Classic' series keep that status in the fandom, though probably more with older demographics, but for sure people can still go 'Oh guys... EVANGELION. :O'. But I feel like there's no space for NEW series to be very, very, very significant and be popular for years and years because there's always the next show. We've def seen some 'very popular' new series like Attack On Titan or My Hero Academia, but even AOT lost a lot of it's fandom in the 3 years between S1 and S2. MHA does a bit better cause they try to do one season ever year so it keeps fairly fresh. However I don't see any new series gaining same status that something like Cowboy Bebop did back in the day.
I see your point. Even when ignoring the fandom, I personally don't remember many shows I have watched due to the sheer volume and passage of time. While I can't speak for others, it makes the shows that I do remember that much more special. Most recently, Yuru Camp has carved out a spot in my heart for it. The years will tell if it remains there, but I haven't gone back and rewatched episodes of a show while it was still airing for the longest time. And it definitely blows any iyashikei type shows in the past 5 years out of the water.

Quality not withstanding, certain shows do cause a bit of a bang. Madoka was something I never thought would explode the way it did, though the craze around it has largely subsided by now. When I picked it up, I did so cause it was an anime original and by SHAFT - also designs by Ume Aoki and writing by Gen Urobuchi sounded like a hilarious combination. I was still in uni at the time and none of my other anime fan friends even took notice of it. And I ended up having to do a fair bit of convincing to get them to even try it. And they were hooked. Then before I knew it, it became a bit of a phenomenon. I reckon if they got off their arses and pumped out a sequel, it might still remain relevant. But well, with the Fate franchise printing all the money for Aniplex - I can see that maybe SHAFT's hands are tied regarding the matter.

I think a big part of the lack of newer 'classics' is due to just the sheer amount of adaptations there are nowadays. Don't know if it's just me, but I feel there's been more and more of these 1 cour shows that exist simply to advertise some light novel or manga and are hardly ever taken to their conclusion. Not to say adaptations are incapable of going anywhere - Haruhi made a huge splash back in the day and I think it really opened up the flood gates to light novel anime adaptations. Even if the follow through didn't quite happen and now it's become largely irrelevant.

AOT is something I'm glad I don't see people talk much about anymore. Though I think they really dropped the ball with the anime adaptation - taking way too long to churn out a season 2 and having it only be 1 cour. If they had approached the anime adaptation the way MHA is doing, it might be more relevant. But well, I think it's a rather cheap story with nothing but constant cliffhangers, hooks and shock to reel you in. It definitely feels gripping while you're on the ride, but it definitely feels rather shallow when you're done and have a think about it.

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Re: Anime Fandom Has Changed

Post by omoikane » Mon Jun 18, 2018 1:02 pm

DJ_Izumi wrote:
Fri Jun 15, 2018 12:44 pm
But honestly, it's kinda a lot less fun. Anime being so much more mainstream it also kinda stopped being 'special'. You stopped being part of the 'anime club' in whatever circles you were in because it's just so very common now. And, I get that that is some garbage fandom gatekeeping, but it was still a 'thing' undeniably.

I think the biggest downside though is that a lot of the communities died. There is for sure the whole 'AniTwitter' thing and you even have full blown anime YouTubers who's posts spawn massive threads of comments but a lot of the conversation is shallow. Forums and mailing lists were the places where a conversation could go on for weeks or even days. Even Megatokyo's forums were home to pages and pages of discussions on titles. I feel like it's a lot harder to get a deep conversation online about how mind blowing I thought a title was. And with my friends in the real world, we keep winding up watching different titles we can't go on about a show we all saw nearly as easily. (Or maybe I just need new, BETTER friends, who properly appreciate ReCREATORS. :O)

There's also a loss of new 'big flagship titles'. I remember a time when you were getting into anime and you could more or less come up with a 'list' of must see anime, with your mega titles like Evangelion, Cowboy Bebop, X, subtitled Sailor Moon, Card Captor Sakura, and so on. The list wasn't all that 'long' to 'cover your bases'. Now it's an unstoppable firehose of anime with dozens of new shows ready to be consumed every 3 months. Nothing stands out cause the next wave crashes right on top of it. For a local convention group, someone once posted asking if Yuri On Ice was 'still popular' for them to Cosplay... It was 2 weeks before the Bluray was even set to ship. =X

The level of access is amazing. The ability to consume even older series is better than ever. The ability to buy Japanese merch is better, I mean, I once bought a 1/2 scale Bandai Capsule Station gashapon machine cause I was BORED. (It REALLY dispenses 50mm capsulse, OMG! :3) Even while I was writing this post the FedEx guy showed up at work righ t RightStuff package, with Genshiken 2nd Season, Card Captor Sakura blurays and other stuff for me. :O But honestly, I feel like a certain 'magic' is gone. :/
bravo for writing this up. I see more or less the same thing, but I think the underlying current isn't just access, but structural as well--fandom now evolves around social media primarily, with things hanging off of it like Reddit or more exclusive circles in private forums, chats and the like. It really isn't that different but it has become more "owned" and less "organized."

One thing that has changed is media literacy, in that kids these day do approach anime differently than before. I still remember Kon Satoshi's statement about savoring his favorite childhood TV shows since you only get 1 dose per week and so you had a whole week to think about it. Nowadays the marketing to these things are so different thanks to social media and easy publishing options direct-to-consumer, we are driven to think about the next episode more than the one that just aired. There are countless options for our free time and what grasp our attention. It's kind of like how old people think kids today don't read or have short attention span, but it really is the opposite--young people read more than ever and have to make more decisions on this kind of junk more so than ever and more frequently than before.

The fact that anime is easy access also means fandom has also gotten younger, which was already pretty low to begin with but now it's super easy to get deep. And one of the friction points in fandom verticals like this is how you have kids watching anime but lack the prereq shows or the common history content that would frame their point of view versus an older fan's. The backlog of great anime a 20-yo today has to deal with is tremendous. All the MTF anime we loved are old junk that will probably never really get the light of day in 2018. How far down the backlog of that fictional 20yo would Haibane Renmei be?

The shallowness was never unique. I never really had a good hat to hang on anime blogging because like, 80% of the blog posts out there, by pure count, is pointless stuff that doesn't go beyond offering what would be captured in a tweet. Partly why twitter killed anime blogging is right here, folks. Original thought and analysis was rare but the noise was low enough that you can find it. Now it's impossible.

Don't even get me started on youtube. It's basically a money-driven version of what makes twitter terrible. And worst of all you get mobs of randos cussing you out if you disagree lol. It is a rough landscape.

The only thing left to do is not abandon the new kids, it's really just about trying to engage them honestly and as equals. In the recent years I've kind of pivoted to the eventing side of things but I still watch a lot of anime and unfortunately it is hard to find good, long form discourse on this. Feels like youtube and maybe reddit are it, but the quality of discourse on those are pretty terribad.

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Re: Anime Fandom Has Changed

Post by DJ_Izumi » Mon Jun 18, 2018 6:50 pm

omoikane wrote:
Mon Jun 18, 2018 1:02 pm
bravo for writing this up. I see more or less the same thing, but I think the underlying current isn't just access, but structural as well--fandom now evolves around social media primarily, with things hanging off of it like Reddit or more exclusive circles in private forums, chats and the like. It really isn't that different but it has become more "owned" and less "organized."

One thing that has changed is media literacy, in that kids these day do approach anime differently than before. I still remember Kon Satoshi's statement about savoring his favorite childhood TV shows since you only get 1 dose per week and so you had a whole week to think about it. Nowadays the marketing to these things are so different thanks to social media and easy publishing options direct-to-consumer, we are driven to think about the next episode more than the one that just aired. There are countless options for our free time and what grasp our attention. It's kind of like how old people think kids today don't read or have short attention span, but it really is the opposite--young people read more than ever and have to make more decisions on this kind of junk more so than ever and more frequently than before.

The fact that anime is easy access also means fandom has also gotten younger, which was already pretty low to begin with but now it's super easy to get deep. And one of the friction points in fandom verticals like this is how you have kids watching anime but lack the prereq shows or the common history content that would frame their point of view versus an older fan's. The backlog of great anime a 20-yo today has to deal with is tremendous. All the MTF anime we loved are old junk that will probably never really get the light of day in 2018. How far down the backlog of that fictional 20yo would Haibane Renmei be?

The shallowness was never unique. I never really had a good hat to hang on anime blogging because like, 80% of the blog posts out there, by pure count, is pointless stuff that doesn't go beyond offering what would be captured in a tweet. Partly why twitter killed anime blogging is right here, folks. Original thought and analysis was rare but the noise was low enough that you can find it. Now it's impossible.

Don't even get me started on youtube. It's basically a money-driven version of what makes twitter terrible. And worst of all you get mobs of randos cussing you out if you disagree lol. It is a rough landscape.

The only thing left to do is not abandon the new kids, it's really just about trying to engage them honestly and as equals. In the recent years I've kind of pivoted to the eventing side of things but I still watch a lot of anime and unfortunately it is hard to find good, long form discourse on this. Feels like youtube and maybe reddit are it, but the quality of discourse on those are pretty terribad.
It's been a topic that's been on my mind for the last year or so with a few thing's happening. The anime club i staffed a con with had it's 10 year 'reunion' after folding in 2007. I also hit a big burnout on anime myself around 2010 but got back into it a lot more after moving to Toronto and putting a lot of overtime hours on a lot of movies. As that moved on, I got to thinking 'There's things I drifted away from, I should go look them up again!'

Anime IRC Channels: Dead
Megatokyo Forums, the comic is still going, it must be jumping: Shell of it's former self.
Other anime forums: Dead.
AnimeMusicVideos.Org?: LOL, YouTube all but killed it.
Cosplay.com! ...Everyone has an Instagram and a Patreon instead now.

There's of course Twitter, which I do, but it's kinda 'shallow' a convo just doesn't go as long or deep there. There's Discord but that's a lot more 'gated communities' and you have to KNOW something exists to even get into it.

But in short, I realized that some amazing things have come to the anime fandom but others died in the process and I kinda want both. :/

I do agree with you, a lot of what we'd consider 'classic anime' we'll see less and less new people coming back to. Even if I'm doing that now, going to find what 'classic anime' I just never got around to seeing the first time or only saw a few eps of. It was fun at first cause I was hitting up OVAs and shorter series, like Gunbuster, Giant Robo, Key, Ah My Goddess, Tenchi Muyo OVA 1&2, El Hazard, Rayearth and finishing Patlabor after only a half completing it when I had VHS tapes in 2002. Yeah I'd never seen any of those at the time, and it helps me better appreciate the tastes of the fandom when I only 'new about' those shows and stuck to my own stuff. But those are fairly short, easier to digest. I recently have running or just started stuff that I think few new fans would ever find the time. You're Under Arrest is 101 eps, I'm half done, Yu Yu Hakusho is 120 or so eps. Ranma is a 160 eps and I just started that. I also started Urusei Yatsura which is just short of 200 eps. That show runs some 84 HOURS if you marathoner it. I'll be taking a year. (That show also takes up 1.25TB on my media server. >_> ) Ranma and Urusei will likely take a YEAR or so to finish.

I've found SOME YouTube Anime people interesting, but more when they're recapping 'underated' shows or the like, stuff that helps me find things I missed especially when I was burnt out on anime some years ago. On the other hand, when someone does a 10min video on why one anime is great, it's very one sided (Obviously). It's not a conversation, someone is just TELLING you it's good, so it's really only food for discovery.

And geez, I never did realize how young the anime fandom was until I realized that when I go to conventions, I keep getting older while the attendees remain the same age, around high school to college for the largest chunk of them. It can be pretty weird to be standing in line for a panel and there's literal kids, who have spent every dime they have getting to the con and are eating peanut butter and jelly sandwiches they brought from home, meanwhile I have a debit card, credit card and $700 in cash stuffed in my messenger bag to feed my weekend of Otaku Consumerism.

Though I did set out to 'give back' a bit'. This April at Anime North I did a panel 'Anime Fandom Through The Decades' a sorta crash course of the history of the western fandom. Much less the history of the anime series we watched but the major events and trends of the fandom from the 1970's till the end of the 2010's. Even got David Merril of 'Anime Hell' fame to cover the earlier years. Had a surprisingly better turnout than I expected for a 'history/informative' panel. Though I'm sure Love Live panel had about 8x more people. :P

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Re: Anime Fandom Has Changed

Post by omoikane » Tue Jun 26, 2018 3:29 pm

Toronto actually has enough critical mass for "idol" stuff, although in North America a lot of it is fueled by cartoon idols (ie., fake, not-idol things). Heard the one maid cafe there is legit. I went to Anime North from 2014-2017 and met a bunch of Canadians who are into IDOLM@STER which is my main fandom now...

That's better shape than most of US. Maybe LA can compare due to its critical mass of Asians and presence of JP cultural assets, but even in NYC this is rough.

As to the backlog of old stuff, yeah, it's daunting. I only just recently (last year) finished the main LOGH OVA series, and that was on my backlog for ages. On that note, some of the reboots do help newer fans get some idea what these things were like, but it's impossible to relive the impact, so to speak, of things like Yamato or Star Wars in terms of their impact on otaku culture and the general scene. But yeah, maybe some of the remakes are worth it.

Ranma I think you can just cut your losses after the first 2 seasons and move to the OVAs and movies... lol. You're Under Arrest maybe similarly.

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Re: Anime Fandom Has Changed

Post by DJ_Izumi » Tue Jun 26, 2018 9:19 pm

omoikane wrote:
Tue Jun 26, 2018 3:29 pm
Toronto actually has enough critical mass for "idol" stuff, although in North America a lot of it is fueled by cartoon idols (ie., fake, not-idol things). Heard the one maid cafe there is legit. I went to Anime North from 2014-2017 and met a bunch of Canadians who are into IDOLM@STER which is my main fandom now...
The Angel Cafe? Under the Uncle Tetsu's brand? I know of it but I've never gone or done their con stuff. Closest I came was being in the front before AN 2017 while we retrieved one of our friends from there and another friend got all yelly and scared the hell out of the girls. o____0

Ha ha, we've been a the same con for a few years now. I moved to Toronto at in early 2013 so I've been a regular at AN from 2013 onward. :) Not that it was my first year, but that involved travel from Ottawa to Toronto and such, now it's an Uber away. That said for the last few years it's been more me aggressively shopping and moving between groups of weeb friends who I only see there. Though this year a friend from my high school geek clique came up and we did the con together.
omoikane wrote:
Tue Jun 26, 2018 3:29 pm
As to the backlog of old stuff, yeah, it's daunting. I only just recently (last year) finished the main LOGH OVA series, and that was on my backlog for ages. On that note, some of the reboots do help newer fans get some idea what these things were like, but it's impossible to relive the impact, so to speak, of things like Yamato or Star Wars in terms of their impact on otaku culture and the general scene. But yeah, maybe some of the remakes are worth it.

Ranma I think you can just cut your losses after the first 2 seasons and move to the OVAs and movies... lol. You're Under Arrest maybe similarly.
Well, I tend to binge a lot on weekday nights and I use an addon in Kodi to make random playlists of 'next to watch' episodes, so it looks at my unwatched content and is kinda like my 'perfect TV channel'. So I just run through series that way. So yeah I'm now 8 eps in to both Urusei Yatsura and Ranma but it'll take me a year-ish to finish them, but it'll trickle through. More than halfway through all of YUA and YYH though.

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Re: Anime Fandom Has Changed

Post by omoikane » Wed Jun 27, 2018 4:57 pm

I guess I'll post on the forums if I ever swing by Toronto again. I also have a blog in case people don't know. I'm slated to swing by Otakuthon in August...

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Re: Anime Fandom Has Changed

Post by DJ_Izumi » Wed Jun 27, 2018 6:03 pm

omoikane wrote:
Wed Jun 27, 2018 4:57 pm
I guess I'll post on the forums if I ever swing by Toronto again. I also have a blog in case people don't know. I'm slated to swing by Otakuthon in August...
It seems most of my Ottawa friends are doing Otakuthon and I should check it out someday but I'm instead doing ConBravo with some friends. Granted it's more a 'nerd con' and less an 'anime con'.

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Re: Anime Fandom Has Changed

Post by Genshie » Thu Jun 28, 2018 5:32 am

Well finally figured out why I couldn't get on this old account of mine. It has been so long I forgot that I created the account under my parents' email when I was still in high school. I really missed this place.

Anyway, I wouldn't say the fandom has changed but rather has expanded to the point where it is no longer a niche thing. I use to be able to watch all the must watches and now there is just so much I can only handle/stand a few series. I miss the days where I could and would devour any series I could get access to and enjoy them all despite their quality of being great or not. (An example for me being that I can't stand most romance and romance comedy series anymore since for me it is all the same thing over and over to the worst degree)

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Re: Anime Fandom Has Changed

Post by DJ_Izumi » Thu Jun 28, 2018 11:30 am

Genshie wrote:
Thu Jun 28, 2018 5:32 am
Anyway, I wouldn't say the fandom has changed but rather has expanded to the point where it is no longer a niche thing. I use to be able to watch all the must watches and now there is just so much I can only handle/stand a few series. I miss the days where I could and would devour any series I could get access to and enjoy them all despite their quality of being great or not. (An example for me being that I can't stand most romance and romance comedy series anymore since for me it is all the same thing over and over to the worst degree)
If that's not 'change' I dunno what it is. :P

But I pretty fondly remember when between 'anime being new and fresh' and access being fairly curated, the early time when I thought 'All Anime Is Good' and gobbled it all up. My first DigiSub series was Vandread and with the 'slick' CG animation and all I thought it was a big deal but in retrospect it was pretty trash. I watched a few eps of Love Hina back then but I guess I only got 4-5 eps in, I did a rewatch with the bluray release this year and my sentiments were more like 'THIS IS JUST MAISON IKKOKU FOR HORNY IDIOTS! D:' So yeah my tastes have evolved and hopefully for the better? Though there's def anime I can enjoy just cause it's bad. Where I can shut my brain off and go 'Ha ha, fuuuun'. I think there's really three catagories of anime watching I do. The stuff that make same 'OH BOY ANIME! :3' which is now only a bit of stuff when that was almost everything once. The 'This'll kill time on weekday evenings' which is most anime. And 'GUYS. I got booze, cake, and Neo Yokio. Cringe Watch at my place! :3' which is fun in it's own right.

I also found that some anime I watched early on is better with more experience. Otako No Video made a lot more sense to me in 2018 than it did in 2003. And Nadesico doesn't work so well when your total 'robot anime' experience is only Evangelion and Gundam Wing. I really need to do a rewatch of Nadesico, I'm sure I'll get a LOT more out of it.

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