Dragon Ball was big in the VHS Fansub era? (A question for the old guard)

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Dragon Ball was big in the VHS Fansub era? (A question for the old guard)

Post by Cure Dragon 255 » Sun Jan 07, 2018 7:19 am

If Dragon Ball was big on the VHS fansub era, which other anime shared this status? Sailor Moon? Candy Candy? What anime was successful in this era and which wasnt?

Can you please tell me Kunzait?
Marz wrote: Wed Jul 21, 2021 11:27 pm "Well, the chapter was good, the story was good and so were the fights. But a new transformation, in Dragon Ball? And one that's ugly? This is where we draw the line!!! Jump the Shark moment!!"

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90sDBZ wrote: Mon Jul 01, 2019 2:44 pm19 years ago I was rushing home from school to watch DBZ on Cartoon Network, and today I've rushed home from work to watch DBS on Pop. I guess it's true the more things change the more they stay the same. :lol:

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Re: Dragon Ball was big in the VHS Fansub era? (A question for the old guard)

Post by VegettoEX » Sun Jan 07, 2018 8:18 am

I mean... like... literally every show ever!

Dragon Ball wasn't something particularly special in this regard. Every type of show had fans, and broadly speaking, people were fans of more things back then and were interested in sampling a wider variety of things.

So yes, Dragon Ball was big in fansub circles. Sailor Moon was big in fansub circles. Macross was big in fansub circles. Legend of the Galactic Heroes was big in fansub circles. Kimagure Orange Road was big in fansub circles. Marmalade Boy was big in fansub circles. Rurouni Kenshin was big in fansub circles. Utena was big in fansub circles.

I'm just listing off pretty much any 80s/90s show that anyone cares about, because it all got attention.

Lots of little stuff got attention too, transitioning and crossing over into the digisub era. No-one knows or remembers Kiki-chan's Smile, but that got fansubbed on VHS.

Anime fansub trading grew out of larger fan circles and practices like sci-fi clubs and kung-fu film fandom. People wanted to learn about a wide range of things and expand their knowledge, and tape trading was a natural extension of this and easy way to achieve it.

For Dragon Ball, it mostly began with its movies because those had Laserdisc releases that subbers could use as a high quality source. DBZ movies would be plopped in the extra tape space after another shorter film or OVA (cuz remember, they're mostly under an hour). This gave it a pretty big level of exposure to people checking out other franchises.
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Re: Dragon Ball was big in the VHS Fansub era? (A question for the old guard)

Post by Kunzait_83 » Mon Jan 08, 2018 7:04 am

VegettoEX is 1000% dead on the money.

Its funny, because for long, long, LONG many years now I'd intended to do a great big mega-post comparing and contrasting ye olden days of VHS/fansub-era anime fandom (1980s and 90s) vs that of the Cartoon Network and digital era of 2000s and 2010s, and my own thoughts and views on what had changed and why.

Its almost as big a topic as the Wuxia thing was, and in many ways it has the potential to be WAY more volatile and push a lot of sensitive buttons among people here, because there are a GREAT deal of totally inaccurate and incorrect assumptions and preconceived notions about the very nature of what U.S. anime fandom from before the Cartoon Network bubble was like that are held onto, VERY adamantly in fact, by a vast overwhelming majority of modern fans (and by "modern" I mean anyone who was first introduced to anime via Toonami and onward). And most of the time people often tend to get... incredibly hostile and emotional whenever you attempt to correct and educate them on any of it or burst any of those preconceptions. Which is a major reason why I'd never ended up tackling it and allowed it to fall by the wayside and fester for way too many years now.

EX did actually touch on a few notable points regarding this whole matter just now though, and I'd like to further add to them a bit.

Most fans from all throughout the last 18/19 years now (post-Toonami boom) are VERY insistent about how instrumental Cartoon Network was in bringing anime to a mainstream U.S. audience and thus "broadening" the scope of the fanbase. While its certainly true that more wider numbers of people were made aware of anime thanks to the Cartoon Network boom at the turn of the millennium, it also ended up having a paradoxical effect of ultimately narrowing and limiting the scope of genres and styles of anime that people were interested in and would become popularly embraced by fandom. By a pretty great deal.

The sensibilities and tastes of most Gen X pre-Cartoon Network anime fans were WILDLY different than that of Millennial post-CN anime fans; indeed, they're almost diametrically opposed to one another, and a LOT of it ties into what kinds of people ultimately make up both eras of fandom, and moreover WHAT they wanted out of anime and WHY they first got interested in it in the first place (the reasons for both which are HUGELY different between generations, again to the point of being completely inverse and diametrically opposite of one another). This is a MASSIVE topic (and indeed the very heart of what makes it so touchy and sensitive to talk about) that's worthy of a tremendous deal of examination and dissection all by itself.

But for purposes of this thread and EX's above post, it CANNOT be highlighted enough how MASSIVELY intertwined late 80s and early/mid 90s anime fansubbing was with that of Hong Kong action and Kung Fu/Wuxia film bootlegging and fansubbing. There was a COLOSSAL degree of overlap between the two subbing scenes and their respective audiences and fanbases: odds were VERY high circa 1991 that if you were big into Jackie Chan and Jet Li's native Hong Kong movies (from a time well before either actor had broken out in mainstream Hollywood movies and became U.S. household names across Middle America) you were also probably into anime to one degree or another as well, and vice versa.

The crossover between fans of anime and HK films is something that is as important to understanding many now-foreign aspects of the fanbase of the late 80s and early 90s as it is something that was wholly and utterly lost and eradicated from the equation entirely in the transition from the pre-CN VHS fansub generation of fans to the post-Cartoon Network/Toonami generation.

This is MASSIVELY important when discussing the nature of exactly why Dragon Ball had caught on and hit it off with so much of the fansubbing scene of the early 90s, and why it had the appeal it did with anime fans in the West back then, as you'll generally be hard pressed to find very many other popular titles in common across both eras (there are certainly some, but its a relatively short list).

Like VegettoEX said, while the 80s and 90s pre-CN generation was overall smaller in numbers than the post-CN kids, the diversity of styles and genres of anime that fans were interested in was overall a LOT broader in scope back then. Fans of that era were generally speaking a GREAT DEAL more open-minded and prone to experimenting wildly with all kinds of weird, unusual oddities in the anime (and manga) realm, and it resulted in a great deal of titles becoming landmark popular and iconic back then that would NEVER have a snowball's chance in hell of catching on with or even generally being noticed by the much larger hordes of Toonami kids of the 2000s and the digisub/streaming folks of the 2010s (both of whom have proven time and time and time again over the last couple decades that they're by comparison FAR more particular and specific in what it is exactly that they want out of the vast majority of the anime that they largely consume; to say nothing of EXCEEDINGLY more artistically conservative in general).

The core nature of the fan culture was just that much RADICALLY different back then, on a fundamental and irreconcilable level, across the WHOLE spectrum of "geek culture" of the time and people who got into niche, underground, cult media back then compared to the bulk of the 2000s through today.

Dragon Ball managed to be a commonly popular and beloved title among both these otherwise disparate and fundamentally opposed eras of anime fans for TOTALLY different reasons. For the "old guard" of the VHS-era, Dragon Ball managed to hit a nerve in no small part due to its nature as an animated Wuxia/fantasy martial arts epic of a whimsically bent and off-kilter sort: VERY much in line with the genre-blending, post-modernist style of fantasy kung fu films that were likewise massively popular in the interconnected Hong Kong film circles. This was similarly why Yu Yu Hakusho was also a massive hit back then, as well as Fist of the North Star (the latter also for other similarly connected reasons of its own).

Beyond shows like Dragon Ball, YYH, and other familiar Shonen/Shojo stalwarts like Sailor Moon, Ranma 1/2, Kenshin, Seiya, JoJo, etc. (and the VERY rare and odd non-Shonen/Shojo like Lupin III) the popular fansubs of the time ALSO consisted of a TON of other wildly differing types of anime (Seinen, Gekiga, etc) that are nowhere even vaguely within the same GALAXY as mainstream Shonen of the past 20 years and would be completely and utterly foreign and baffling (even downright off-putting) in the extreme to most modern anime fans of the last 19 some-odd years who are VERY much accustomed and trained to hone in on a VERY limited and specific type of Shonen action and Ecchi comedy series.

Indeed, I'm not sure to what degree stuff like Kanashimi no Belladonna, Cleopatra, Take the X Train, Manie Manie Labyrinth Tales, Dragon's Heaven, California Crisis, The Sensualist, Angel's Egg, Midori, and a gigantic avalanche of other noteworthy late 80s/early 90s VHS fansub-era cornerstones would even be immediately RECOGNIZABLE visually or tonally as "anime" in any sense of the word to most folks of the last couple decades who's primary diet has largely been the Shonen Jump oeuvre of the late 90s through today.

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You might notice some... subtle visual and artistic differences.

I mean... there's ultimately a WAY bigger list of titles that were massively iconic and indispensable to the 80s and 90s VHS/fansub era of U.S. fans that likely mean little to nothing to a great deal of millennial fans (Bubblegum Crisis, Dirty Pair, Robot Carnival, Crying Freeman, Golgo 13, Area 88, Urusei Yatsura, Mermaid Saga, 3x3 Eyes, Barefoot Gen, Dagger of Kamui, Grave of the Fireflies, Roujin Z, Nadia, City Hunter, Kimagure Orange Road, Cat's Eye, Silent Mobius, Projet A-Ko, Genma Taissen, Windaria, Riding Bean, Cobra, Patlabor, Irresponsible Captain Tylor, Devil Hunter Yohko, Iria, Armitage III, Genocyber, Venus Wars, Wings of Honneamise, Demon City Shinjuku, Dominion Tank Police, Black Magic M66, Madox-01, and on and on and on...) than there is stuff that'd be recognizable.

Some of them have only only retroactively become better known now due to later or recent revivals, like JoJo, Parasyte, Casshern, Appleseed, Devilman, etc. Or are only just now getting a LONG since ridiculously belated live action Hollywood adaptation (originally intended to have come out DURING the olden days of 90s pre-CN VHS fansubs: probably when the majority of you were still babies or not even born yet), as is the case right now with Battle Angel Alita/Gunnm. The fact that Akira has managed to still cling onto widespread awareness and notoriety for as long, firmly, and consistently across such disparate generations as it has, without ANY new revivals, continuations, reboots, or ANYTHING that is really of very much appeal to the usual millennial anime fan rundown of "hooks" and sensibilities, strikes me as almost nothing short of downright miraculous.

But overall, some notable exceptions aside, the anime landscape of that time period would generally be a TOTALLY alien and unrecognizable world to what most of you have been groomed to becoming used to since the tail-most end of the 90s/early-most 2000s and onward.

Put it this way: if I were to take almost any one of you in here (or any random Joe or Jane Schmoe millennial anime fan from any other random online site or community) and stick you in a DeLorean set for 1992 and turn you loose into the U.S. anime scene of the time... guaranteed almost virtually ALL of you would be utterly and thoroughly lost and completely without a firm foothold of familiarity to cling onto in terms of grasping the fandom zeitgeist of the time, apart from very, very obvious Shonen/CN-friendly signifiers like Ranma, DBZ, YYH, Sailor Moon, Lupin, etc.

In short? The 80s and 90s fansub era as a collective whole was a MASSIVE clusterfuck of a clashingly unique and insanely diverse range of Japanese animation of an almost dizzying variety; an almost buffet table of Wild West experimentation without any remote semblance of a creative filter and a punk rock "fuck it all, lets just wing it off the cuff" sense of freestyle jazz improv-esque outsider artistry. Whereas post-2000, things had generally gotten FAR more corporately safe and carefully sterilized and tailored, fitting within a much, MUCH more rigidly narrow and conservative range of genre tropes, visual conventions, and stylistic ticks that the much larger millennial audiences have been carefully trained over the years to accept as "proper" anime.

The concert hall has gotten bigger, yes, but the overton window, the "box" if you will, of what is deemed "acceptable artistic concepts and ideas" for what plays to the audience has shrunken to a considerably tiny size in comparison to where it was 25 to 35 years ago. Dragon Ball and its similar Shonen ilk have successfully crossed over between these eras: a VERY great deal else from its era wasn't nearly as lucky.
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Re: Dragon Ball was big in the VHS Fansub era? (A question for the old guard)

Post by KBABZ » Mon Jan 08, 2018 8:39 am

I'm probably gonna get torn apart and corrected again (please be kind! And brief!), but it sounds like when a music genre goes from being indie and relatively unknown but adored in small circles, to being mainstream where they start being more derivative of the work that got the genre into the mainstream to begin with, because the expanded and recently exposed audience wants what they're familiar with. Probably no big surprise that a lot of the examples in the second set of pictures look like they would air on Toonami, compared to the first set which would not. It sounds like the VHS era was driven by folks who were more willing to experiment since new content wasn't delivered to their TVs every afternoon.

The first set of pictures also touches on something that I've felt for a long while but I'm certainly in the minority for, which is that for me anime are cartoons. Not in the American Tom & Jerry or Adventure Time meaning, but in the sense that both use hand-made still images strung together to form the content, and thus have a common ground. The picture of the girl with the cat looks like something that might come from the West or especially Eastern European regions, probably because it comes from an era where it was less risky to use a completely divergent art style. Anyways, for me growing up in New Zealand on after school and Saturday/Sunday morning shows, stuff like Dragon Ball Z, Shinzo, Digimon and Yu-Gi-Oh! would air adjacent to stuff like Cow and Chicken, Dexter's Laboratory and Powerpuff Girls; aside from general art style and the undeniable story and tone differences that are inherent in products made in different countries with different cultures (which I didn't know at the time), there wasn't much difference between the two. Pokémon and Dexter's Lab to me were of the same ilk, and particularly now after learning how both are made, they are made using identical techniques, both in the traditional and digital realms. It's kinda like how there are "Films" and then there are "Foreign Films"; the latter seems odd to me to single out.

That aside, having listened to many of the Podcast episodes over the course of last year, I've no doubt that Dragon Ball was big in those days, even though I wasn't around for it or in certain years even born to begin with. This era in particular I think was key to several fansites, including Kanzentai, Daizenshuu EX (now merged into this very site) and others having the mentality of focusing on the original source of the content in Japan, rather than dubs which by their very nature run up and down an interpretation spectrum from pretty faithful to practically making up their own show. And for that I'm very thankful, I feel like I have a much better grasp on the characters, story, themes, pun and cultural influences than I ever would have if I had just clung to the Blue Bricks and shunned all else.

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Re: Dragon Ball was big in the VHS Fansub era? (A question for the old guard)

Post by ABED » Mon Jan 08, 2018 1:12 pm

Are you claiming the long tail effect was longer in the VHS fansub era?
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Re: Dragon Ball was big in the VHS Fansub era? (A question for the old guard)

Post by Chuquita » Mon Jan 08, 2018 1:39 pm

This is fascinating stuff. I remember the world before we had a computer/the internet in my house, but I was far too young to know any of this that you're talking about. The most I could say was I remember reading the from Japan part of Nintendo Power magazines and thought seeing merchandise from far away countries was cool and mysterious because I was a kid and looking up information like that was a lot more difficult than pulling out a hand held computer that connects to the internet that I can enter text into by sliding my finger across the screen. Surreal.
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Re: Dragon Ball was big in the VHS Fansub era? (A question for the old guard)

Post by ABED » Mon Jan 08, 2018 2:47 pm

I realize my last post sounds accusational. I'm not calling anyone out. I'm legitimately interested.
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Re: Dragon Ball was big in the VHS Fansub era? (A question for the old guard)

Post by Hellspawn28 » Mon Jan 08, 2018 5:00 pm

I join the VHS fansub era during the very end of it before Internet fan subs became a bigger thing. Before I was a fan of Dragon Ball, I like anime outside of Pokemon and Digimon. I remember local comic book shops did had fan sub tapes and Japanese collector shops use to be way more common before Amazon and Ebay killed most of them off in the 2000's. I remember Dragon Ball was the series that you can always find in bootleg form. It was a very popular series and a lot of people wanted to watch it. So it was not surprising that you could find it almost anywhere.

As long if there is demand for it, more people will make more copies of it. The VHS fansub era probably die out sometime in the early 2000's like after 2001 or maybe 2002. By 2002, you can easily download fan subs on the web and watch them via movie maker. I remember Naruto, One Piece and .Hack//Sign was some of the oldest Internet fan subs to exist in the early 2000's.
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Re: Dragon Ball was big in the VHS Fansub era? (A question for the old guard)

Post by Kuwabara » Tue Jan 09, 2018 9:27 pm

Kunzait_83, I've never had the gall to state as much now, but your penchant for hyperbole never ceases to entertain... :lol:

Don't get me wrong, the sheer gumption of your writing is much appreciated, but I have to stand up for myself and other like minded fans.

I'm 24 years old. I was indeed brought up in the time when Toonami was at its peak. I could never have engaged in the tape trading and fansubbing of your day, I was much too young in those days. That said, if I had been born just a few years earlier, I'm confident I would have been right along with the fans you describe. In spite of my age, my tastes are way more in line with them, and I have a hard time believing I'm an exception here. Plenty of today's anime fans seek out older material. Anyone who cares enough about a medium they enjoy will. One title you mentioned, Angel's Egg, is commonly recommended today for its stellar art direction and atmosphere.

I went out of my way to see series like Hokuto no Ken and Saint Seiya because their art styles more resembled Dragon Ball and Yu Yu Hakusho to me. Much of ADV's output during and shortly after Toonami's peak was much more contemporary, and looked cheap to me somehow (I later learned it was because I like the look of film as opposed to video). One exception to this was Aura Battler Dunbine, an older pickup of ADV's which was interesting to me because of Tomino's involvement. I liked Mobile Suit Gundam and various other Gundam series I had seen on Toonami, so why not? I could not have been prepared for how much I would end up loving Dunbine; its premise and world reminded me of films I had seen as a young child like The NeverEnding Story, The Dark Crystal, and Legend. The show's anachronistic mix of fantasy and mecha elements, however, set itself apart. A perfect example of why I loved anime and the dreamscapes it rendered.

Another series I enjoyed, because of Cartoon Network, was Robotech. I adored the sprawling nature of its huge, overarching story. It was like one new series after another... Lo and behold, that's exactly what it was! Imagine my surprise when I later learned that Robotech was actually made up of three separate series: Super Dimension Fortress Macross, Super Dimension Cavalry Southern Cross, and Genesis Climber Mospeada. Macross in particular stole my heart, it blew my mind how much different it was from Robotech. The concepts of bowdlerization and adaptation have fascinated me ever since.

That interest lead me to watch Star Blazers and Space Battleship Yamato, which also resembled the bits and pieces of Interstella 5555 I had seen, and loved, on TV at various points. Looking into Yamato also rekindled my interest in another character... Captain Harlock. I remember seeing his character design somewhere as a child, maybe in a comic book ad? Now, he's one of my absolute favorite anime characters; his design and very particular sense of justice struck a chord in me like few since. From there, I watched other related series and movies based on Leiji Matsumoto's work, like Arcadia of My Youth, Harlock Saga, Space Pirate Captain Herlock: The Endless Odyssey, Queen Emeraldas, Maetel Legend, Cosmo Warrior Zero, Gun Frontier, The Cockpit etc. He is, without question, a legend of anime and manga. Granted, a lot of these aforementioned anime series/OVAs/films weren't released in the 80s or early 90s, but a great many of them were adapted from stories Matsumoto penned in the 70s. Truly great, compelling tales are timeless.

This sentiment extends to Akira. I don't think there's anything "miraculous" about it standing the test of time in the way that it has. The manga, and its film adaptation, have endured for as long as they have because they are just that damn good. Period. The same could be said of Ghost in the Shell.

So, I guess what I'm getting at is... Toonami laid everything out there for people to learn more about the classics. I appreciate your built-in knowledge of them as well, but I'm frankly a little insulted to know that there are people like yourself that seem to presume people in my age group only like High School of the Dead, Guilty Crown, and Black Clover, when that's far from the case. You mentioned postmodernism in your post, so just take a look at the plethora of anime pages on Facebook with titles rendered in [T E X T L I K E T H I S]. You'll find copious amounts of vaporwave AMVs of Kimagure Orange Road or Video Girl Ai mixed with cloud rap or dream pop. Sure, many of these people are outsiders looking in, kids caught in a fad... But they're certainly familiar with this stuff. To imply that younger generations of anime fans don't have the capacity to appreciate anime, or even art in general, from just a decade or two before their time is pretty baffling when there's plenty of evidence to the contrary. Postmodernism and ironic self-awareness have reached a fever pitch in pop culture, deafening even. The fact that anime is more popular now than ever in the west, then, must just be a coincidence...

In spite of this, there are also sincere anime fans out there, born after you, that have uncovered relics and obscurities like Night on the Galactic Railroad, Twilight of the Cockroaches, and The Rose of Versailles. Even if we're far removed from such works in time, we still indulge in them with an earnestness not unlike your own. For the modern fans out there that don't share such a sensibility, I'd argue that they're simply more casual in their consumption. If it wasn't anime, they would just be pretending to be obsessed with something else.
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Re: Dragon Ball was big in the VHS Fansub era? (A question for the old guard)

Post by Apollo Fungus » Wed Jan 10, 2018 4:32 pm

Kunzait_83 wrote:
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This probably does help to prove your point, but would you mind telling me what are the shows/movies/OVAs you just showcased? I recognize the last one as being Bobby's Girl (an OVA that, despite some really interesting visuals, I've heard to be pretty dire), but the rest completely elude me. I would like to know more about anime in general, and knowing about those (and indeed any other 80's/90's anime that have otherwise been forgotten by most folks) would be a good place for me to start. Thank you.

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Re: Dragon Ball was big in the VHS Fansub era? (A question for the old guard)

Post by Kuwabara » Wed Jan 10, 2018 6:39 pm

Apollo Fungus wrote:This probably does help to prove your point, but would you mind telling me what are the shows/movies/OVAs you just showcased?
From top to bottom, they are Midori, Neo Tokyo, Belladonna of Sadness, California Crisis: Gun Salvo, and Crying Freeman.

And this actually brings up another thing I found funny about his post. You're right about him using the titles he did to prove his point, and he sure lays it on thick... One would be led to believe that the only anime that comes out these days is shonen and that the medium has been bereft of creativity since 1990. While the industry has certainly become more commodified over time, subversive styles of anime still come out every year without fail. JulieYBM and Ajay could definitely speak to this well.
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Re: Dragon Ball was big in the VHS Fansub era? (A question for the old guard)

Post by Kunzait_83 » Wed Jan 10, 2018 11:30 pm

Kuwabara wrote:I'm 24 years old. I was indeed brought up in the time when Toonami was at its peak. I could never have engaged in the tape trading and fansubbing of your day, I was much too young in those days. That said, if I had been born just a few years earlier, I'm confident I would have been right along with the fans you describe. In spite of my age, my tastes are way more in line with them, and I have a hard time believing I'm an exception here. Plenty of today's anime fans seek out older material.
Oh don't misunderstand me: I've met my share of 20-something Toonami-era fans here and there over the years who indeed fall within this spectrum. Its always wonderful and a treat to find them. :)

But I'm sorry to say this, whether you believe it or not, the sad reality of the U.S. anime landscape of the past 15 years is that yourself and those relatively few others that are out there like you are indeed the exception to all this. A niche within a niche if you will. The OVERWHELMING majority of anime fans from this particular era are QUITE far on the opposite end of the spectrum from what you're describing.

And trust me, I'm not saying any of this as any kind of judgmental assumption on my end: I'm speaking from nearly 15 solid years of experience within the broader community on this. I didn't enter into the post-Toonami era even REMOTELY suspecting that this kind of EXTREME transformation of the landscape was something that would ever have occurred. This is the unfortunate reality of what the fandom since then has been like that I've been confronted with time after time after time, year after year after year since the mid-2000s, and it blindsided the living hell out of me back then. In all honesty I'm STILL not 100% used to it even to this day, and I've been banging my head against this problem for a LONG time now trying to get fans who've been VERY deep into this stuff since the very early 2000s to understand just the simple fact that anime encompasses a MUCH bigger, and broader canvas of art than just Shonen Action schlock, empty-headed slice of life sticoms, or varying flavors of fetish porn.

Some people, like yourself, are VERY receptive and gain a brand new insight into a whole other layer of the medium they never imagined existed, and want to dig further. But those tend to be VERY rare, rare cases. 90% of the time though, overwhelmingly, it... isn't something that typically goes over very well with most younger fans. Its not even just that most fans don't know what else is out there beyond what they grew up on: a lot of them don't even WANT to know. Not unless its something that hits a VERY specific set of nostalgia chords for them. Otherwise 8 times out of 10, they'll just either tune it out completely or just as often recoil away from it in horror.

And that's NOT hyperbole by any stretch: the number of times I've had or otherwise been privy to younger, Toonami-era fans react to a non-Shonen/Moe/Ecchi anime, generally something on the Seinen/Gekiga spectrum, with abject palpable disgust, distaste, and outbursts of genuine hostility over the years is literally countless. And in many cases such reactions to this stuff will often even come from people who are, without naming any specific names, heavyweight and much respected figures within fan and critical circles in terms of their views and overall "expertise". For more than a decade+ solid I've continually seen time and again some of the biggest critical names in online anime fan discussions continually push the (staggeringly false) narrative that anime fandom in America didn't ever truly "begin" until Toonami, and that either there isn't ANYTHING AT ALL made outside the confines Shonen, Shojo, and Moe/Ecchi, or that if there is then its all repellent and dismissable garbage that isn't worth anyone's time to ever bother looking into.

Its certainly POSSIBLE that there are somewhat more people like you out there than is readily or immediately visible: I mean there probably HAS to be, because it certainly can't just be old fucks like me who are singlehandedly keeping companies like Discotek afloat. :P But if there are indeed a larger number of younger fans like you, unfortunately the vast majority of you are largely remaining silent and invisible, both online and at things like conventions and whatnot. Younger fans of your persuasion (i.e. those who are open and receptive to almost ANY other forms, genres, or styles of anime apart from mainstream Shonen action or Moe/Ecchi/slice of life) certainly almost NEVER speak up, certainly not in discussion forums like this one and certainly not in any significant numbers enough to really matter or impact the general discourse, nor do most of you generally make your presence known almost anywhere but a small handful of relatively obscure blogs and podcasts floating around on the outer margins of fandom (oh and on tumblr of course).

Unfortunately, as much as I'm certainly glad that there are indeed younger folks out there who are like yourself, you're most often drowned out by the overall much larger (or at the very least much LOUDER) throngs of fans who simply want little else but either A) endless rehashes and repackaging of shows that strongly resemble the old Toonami lineup as much as possible year in and year out so that they can mentally and emotionally relive being 8 years old forever and ever, or B) Moe/Ecchi material, which is... a WHOLE other can of worms in and of itself.

Its almost a kind of self-censorship on a weirdly mass scale, and its truly bizarre and is a LARGE part of a LOT of the problems within modern anime fandom of the entirety of the 2000s to now and a BIG part of the reason for why its become more insular now than ever before. In order to be accepted, it typically has to be Naruto/One Piece-esque, Pokemon/Yu Gi Oh-esque, Yotsuba-esque, K-On-esque, or something-that-would-likely-get-you-arrested-for-trafficking-in-child-porn-if-it-weren't-animated-esque. Basically, it has to center and revolve itself around abrasively obnoxious elementary school boys, collecting distinctively toyetic objects or creatures, or jail bait schoolgirls in Sailor Fuku who act like sexual squeaky toys. Otherwise, almost no one wants to know or hear about it save for a relative niche of people like yourself and folks who run a few noteworthy blogs and podcasts out there. Generally speaking though, something like Attack on Titan is about as left of the dial as your typical millennial U.S. anime fan is generally ever willing to get.

I think its AWESOME that there exist ANY younger fans of your generation that are like you and how you're describing yourself. But the sad reality is that the OVERWHELMINGLY majority of fans from the Toonami-era and onward don't even know AT ALL that there even so much as EXISTS very much of anything else in anime outside the Shonen/Shojo and Ecchi/slice of life comedy-sphere. And any attempt to show or educate them, no matter how gently, friendly, delicate, or harmless the approach, will often only be met with indifference, hostility, abject fear, or some combination thereof.

Again, the why's and the how's of this is a HUGE and dense topic in itself, one that's certainly plenty worthy of its own thread all by itself: and something I've refrained from digging into for a LONG time on here. I think its a conversation that's not only worth having, but probably NEEDS to happen at SOME point: I'm just highly doubtful that I'm the right person to start it. The very core nature of that conversation is a loaded as all fuck minefield that would tear just about any anime forum in half (this one certainly no exception) from the sheer number of raw, sensitive nerves it would trigger. But again, I think its something that's LONG the hell overdue from some kind of a sobering and direct confrontation.
Kuwabara wrote:I went out of my way to see series like Hokuto no Ken and Saint Seiya because their art styles more resembled Dragon Ball and Yu Yu Hakusho to me. Much of ADV's output during and shortly after Toonami's peak was much more contemporary, and looked cheap to me somehow (I later learned it was because I like the look of film as opposed to video). One exception to this was Aura Battler Dunbine, an older pickup of ADV's which was interesting to me because of Tomino's involvement. I liked Mobile Suit Gundam and various other Gundam series I had seen on Toonami, so why not? I could not have been prepared for how much I would end up loving Dunbine; its premise and world reminded me of films I had seen as a young child like The NeverEnding Story, The Dark Crystal, and Legend. The show's anachronistic mix of fantasy and mecha elements, however, set itself apart. A perfect example of why I loved anime and the dreamscapes it rendered.

Another series I enjoyed, because of Cartoon Network, was Robotech. I adored the sprawling nature of its huge, overarching story. It was like one new series after another... Lo and behold, that's exactly what it was! Imagine my surprise when I later learned that Robotech was actually made up of three separate series: Super Dimension Fortress Macross, Super Dimension Cavalry Southern Cross, and Genesis Climber Mospeada. Macross in particular stole my heart, it blew my mind how much different it was from Robotech. The concepts of bowdlerization and adaptation have fascinated me ever since.

That interest lead me to watch Star Blazers and Space Battleship Yamato, which also resembled the bits and pieces of Interstella 5555 I had seen, and loved, on TV at various points. Looking into Yamato also rekindled my interest in another character... Captain Harlock. I remember seeing his character design somewhere as a child, maybe in a comic book ad? Now, he's one of my absolute favorite anime characters; his design and very particular sense of justice struck a chord in me like few since. From there, I watched other related series and movies based on Leiji Matsumoto's work, like Arcadia of My Youth, Harlock Saga, Space Pirate Captain Herlock: The Endless Odyssey, Queen Emeraldas, Maetel Legend, Cosmo Warrior Zero, Gun Frontier, The Cockpit etc. He is, without question, a legend of anime and manga. Granted, a lot of these aforementioned anime series/OVAs/films weren't released in the 80s or early 90s, but a great many of them were adapted from stories Matsumoto penned in the 70s. Truly great, compelling tales are timeless.
First of all: ADV's early/mid 2000s output, while not without its shining gems (they put out literally the ENTIRETY of City Hunter during this time, so perspective here), was indeed overall fucking atrocious. And yes, most of their then-new titles certainly looked cheap and chintzy as all get out: not only because of the film vs video issue, but also due to the animation budgets on most of those shows often looking as if they were roughly a buck fifty apiece. Truly awful and certainly contributing its part to the overall general decline of the U.S. anime industry following the original Cartoon Network bubble.

Course since ADV went under, FUNimation has certainly more than picked up the slack in their stead in being the go-to licensing company for unloading torrents upon avalanches worth of crappy, bargain basement, Otaku-baiting shelf-filler, but that's neither here nor there.

Anyways, to the substance: look, almost damn near ALL of the titles you just mentioned are indeed timeless classics and are beyond fantastic. Macross defined an entire generation, Gundam is an institution (for both good and ill), Arcadia of My Youth is a touchstone, The Cockpit is an unsung work of art, and Galaxy Express 999 might go down as one of the most singularly beloved and cherished anime of the entire "golden era", and rightly so (many people, including myself, have long held that it is indeed the Japanese anime equivalent to The Wizard of Oz in terms of how timelessly masterful and emotionally impacting of a simple children's fable it is, along with its powerful iconography). Leiji Matsumoto in general is easily in the top 5 greatest anime/manga creators who've ever lived, and almost any lover of the medium would be more than hard pressed to argue otherwise.

But I think I need to also stress that this isn't just strictly an "old vs new" thing (though old vs new certainly DOES factor into this generational divide a fairly great deal of course). The bigger issue to me, and the side of it that doesn't really get examined near enough, is less that of the age of various anime titles (how long ago vs how recent it was made) than it is that of their demographics (what age of an audience are these works being aimed at).

Obviously there is a significant bias against older anime as well as a tremendous favoritism towards newer anime. Most people know and acknowledge this as a significant issue across large swaths of fandom of the last decade now, and I'm certainly not dismissing how crucial it is. But to me, for a long time now, another equally as massive component of this is a great, GREAT deal of over-focus and over-fixation on anime (and manga) aimed at CHILDREN (that's what Shonen and Shojo ultimately are: titles aimed at little boys and little girls) along with a COMPLETE and stunning level of ignorance and disinterest (and sometimes indeed hostility) towards anime/manga aimed at ADULT audiences (which is what Seinen and Josei are: titles who's audience is fully grown men and women).

And as excellent as virtually ALL of the above classic anime titles you just listed are indeed... I do also find it telling that nearly ALL of them, across the board, are also more or less strictly children's anime, without so much as a single mention of anything with a more adult-focus.

That's not at all a knock on you personally Kuwabara: but I also cannot help but note that mostly ALL of those titles that you gravitated to (since and indeed as you noted in part BECAUSE of your Toonami exposure), regardless of their amazing qualities, are STILL firmly and unequivocally in the children's realm. You definitely present yourself as someone who indeed cares a great deal about exploration of the broader medium, so I wouldn't doubt that you're also a fan of plenty of adult-skewing material as well: but a BIG issue that I've found over the years within that overall generation of anime fandom is a (significant and impossible to miss once you continue to see it crop up over and over and over and over again constantly for so many years now) correlation between fans from that particular era and a general lack of exposure to or interest in anime who's style and subject matter skew towards a more mature age bracket.

Again, this is a VERY touchy subject to even TRY to broach here. I've tried many times in many other venues, and it tends to breed a LOT of over-defensiveness right up front without anything the least bit hostile or accusatory being said on my end. But, and again this is worthy of a WHOLE separate thread of its own, there almost without a doubt seems to be a VERY strong connection between the fact that Toonami was a television block aimed squarely at small children, catering exclusively TO small children with anime titles that are unquestionably and firmly of the Shonen/Shojo demographic, and a general narrow fixation on almost solely small child-aimed anime and manga from there going forward from the VAST overwhelming majority of that era of audience.

And yes, this stuff DOES indeed matter a GREAT deal. One of the most common defensive dodges is the idea that "it doesn't matter what age something is meant for, as long as its good". While it should be obvious that I'm someone who indeed doesn't mind still seeking out quality among various forms of children's anime, I DEFINITELY believe 1000% that this attitude is and long HAS been taken to way, way, way, WAY too far of an extreme by fandom of the last 15 years. Its one thing to have an open enough mind to look to children's media as an adult and still find significant gems of interesting material to take away from it: its a WHOLE other matter completely to be well neck deep into adulthood and continually display a complete and utter (almost pathological) refusal to even so much as ENTERTAIN the idea of even GLANCING at an overwhelming majority of works and titles aimed at adults in favor of an over-focus almost exclusively on children's works, to the exclusion of nearly all else.

I'm of course not saying that that description applies to you Kuwabara: I don't know you personally, and for all I know you're also a massive Seinen/Josei fan as well (in fact I wouldn't doubt it based on your knowledge displayed thus far), and someone who loves a great deal of adult-skewing works of media in general (you mentioned a familiarity with Angel's Egg, which is hardly a children's title itself). But all I have to go on right now is what you've just told me and the titles you listed. And yes, while those are indeed EXCELLENT children's anime that I myself and very, very fond of (again, Leiji Matsumoto is an absolute treasure of an artist)... at the end of the day, nearly ALL of them are still ultimately children's anime. And there is a LOT of INCREDIBLE worth out there in the realm of anime and manga (as there is with most any other medium) that is NOT AT ALL REMOTELY within the children's realm. As I'm sure you well know.

This is something that is of GREAT importance to fans of my era, because adult animation was THE principal, motivating drive for us getting into anime in the first place way back when. Something which is TOTALLY at odds with where most of the Toonami audience was ever coming from into all of this from day 1: small kids who were typically shielded from most forms of adult media in general by their families and who got into anime purely as an extension of their own interest in other kids' cartoons, and in most cases still carry that mindset with them well into their adult fandom.

To wit:
KBABZ wrote:The first set of pictures also touches on something that I've felt for a long while but I'm certainly in the minority for, which is that for me anime are cartoons. Not in the American Tom & Jerry or Adventure Time meaning, but in the sense that both use hand-made still images strung together to form the content, and thus have a common ground. The picture of the girl with the cat looks like something that might come from the West or especially Eastern European regions, probably because it comes from an era where it was less risky to use a completely divergent art style. Anyways, for me growing up in New Zealand on after school and Saturday/Sunday morning shows, stuff like Dragon Ball Z, Shinzo, Digimon and Yu-Gi-Oh! would air adjacent to stuff like Cow and Chicken, Dexter's Laboratory and Powerpuff Girls; aside from general art style and the undeniable story and tone differences that are inherent in products made in different countries with different cultures (which I didn't know at the time), there wasn't much difference between the two. Pokémon and Dexter's Lab to me were of the same ilk, and particularly now after learning how both are made, they are made using identical techniques, both in the traditional and digital realms.
While most fans obviously make an outward distinction between "Western cartoons" and "Japanese anime" (something that KBABZ doesn't seem to agree with), what KBABZ (and no, once again, this ISN'T an attack on the guy, I'm just using his post to illustrate a point I'm making here) is talking about here IS actually a perspective that, contrary to how he might feel, is what a LARGE majority of Toonami-era anime fans feel about anime: that anime is more often than not an "exotically flavored extension" of the kinds of Western kids' cartoons that they grew up on and still love to this day, rather than something that is a stark counterpoint AGAINST such shows.

By stark contrast, most fans of my era A) got into anime through MUCH more adult-skewing titles to start with (like Akira for instance) and B) the whole CORE APPEAL of the entire thing was seeking out animation that was as FAR the polar, diametric opposite of mainstream children's animation as you could get (since kids' animation was and mostly still is largely all there is in American animation). Not that some elements of Shonen/children's animation wasn't welcomed: but there generally had to be SOME significant and inherent "hook" or unique "twist" or "wrinkle" in them that made them stand out and well apart from your average kids' show (something along the lines of which Matsumoto's work would obviously qualify for very readily apparent reasons). Otherwise though, adult-skewed animation was almost the WHOLE entire point. The core appeal and hook for anime for most of the Toonami-era of fans runs almost DIRECTLY COUNTER against that of the generations prior to them.

And yes, once you open this can of worms in a place like this with an audience like this one, then a LOT of the discussion ultimately turns into a debate about "Why demographics do or don't matter, and why it is or isn't ultimately important what age of an audience a given work is aimed or written at." And the general consensus of where most Toonami-era anime fans fall within that debate is something I have consistently found over the years to be... deeply depressing and almost intellectually disturbing at times. But again, that's ENTIRELY something that could more than easily fill its own thread.

If NONE of this in any which way applies to you Kuwabara: then no, of COURSE I'm not talking about fans like yourself. But again, if none of this stuff applies to you, then you are unfortunately in a relative minority among this particular era of fandom. If that isn't your perspective because you've largely been primarily exposed to fans who are more like yourself and less like what I'm describing... well then you're experiences within fandom have indeed been exceedingly blessed. :P
Kuwabara wrote:This sentiment extends to Akira. I don't think there's anything "miraculous" about it standing the test of time in the way that it has. The manga, and its film adaptation, have endured for as long as they have because they are just that damn good. Period. The same could be said of Ghost in the Shell.
Again, while I'd LOVE to agree with that and in an ideal world this would certainly be the case.... unfortunately this is NOT the nature of fandom that I've come to be acquainted with for the last 15 years. Ghost in the Shell I would say has largely endured across the generations in no small part to Adult Swim's airing of Stand Alone Complex. Without SAC, I find it VERY dubious at best that GitS as a whole would be anywhere NEAR as well known among younger, Cartoon Network-era fans as it is today.

Again, I'd rather that were NOT the case and that GitS endured purely on the overwhelming strength of its (indeed, incredible) merits: but time and again, I've found that the degree to which something often tends to be known among post-Toonami audiences is most often HIGHLY predicated upon whether or not it aired on Cartoon Network, how closely it resembles something that MIGHT'VE aired on CN, or for later streaming-era fans, its prominence on sites like Crunchyroll, how much of a push it gets from FUNimation, and other such factors.

Quality unfortunately is NOT the main barometer that dictates what takes off and becomes well known and well loved in broader U.S. anime fandom since the early 2000s: what channel or what website its shown on and how much it conforms to certain formulas and stylistic tics and tropes that have been hammered into a majority of fans since the Toonami days often tend to be, generally speaking, some of the most crucial deciding factors. There are indeed exceptions to this (Akira is blissfully one of them, somehow): but again, they're rare exceptions and not indicative of the usual norm.

Akira is a masterpiece to be sure (one that holds every ounce of its original power to this day), but its hardly anywhere close to the ONLY anime of its level of craft, and a LOT of similarly great anime of its persuasion that were once massively well loved in their day have been more often than not totally lost to time and/or ignored and passed over by a majority fanbase who are more often than not simply chasing the dragon of what they felt like emotionally as small kids watching Pokemon and DBZ on Cartoon Network back in the day. Indeed, most of Akira's qualities (its art style and visuals, its subject matter, its tone, virtually EVERYTHING about it on a fundamental level) are attributes that most modern fans otherwise will often RECOIL away from VIOLENTLY in a vast majority of other instances. Time and time and time again.

Ultimately I don't think I fully comprehend what it is that makes Akira such a glaring exception to this (and to be sure, there are indeed still PLENTY of modern fans who treat even Akira in a similarly red-headed stepchild manner as other Seinen titles: but its certainly open to more of a better reception than most other anime of its type and at the very least most fans, whether they like it or not, at least KNOW and ACKNOWLEDGE that it EXISTS in the first place): a more cynical part of me sometimes wonders if its simply the sheer inertia of the weight of its reputation (richly deserved as it is) that has kept it going for so long. But that's all ultimately debatable either way.

Again, it SHOULD be simply Akira's level quality, no more and no less, that has kept it continually relevant across so much time: a level of quality which indeed more than speaks for itself to anyone who sees it. But again, as I've been saying here, time and time and time again what the 2000s and 2010s Western fandom has demonstrated to me is that actual quality is often the LEAST of the factors that dictate what is or isn't well known, well loved, and most heavily discussed. Nostalgia, means of delivery (channel, website, licensing company, etc), nostalgia, general "herd mentality", and nostalgia tend to most often be at the forefront of what factors drive most of the biggest titles in anime to prominence for the last 15 years.
Kuwabara wrote:So, I guess what I'm getting at is... Toonami laid everything out there for people to learn more about the classics. I appreciate your built-in knowledge of them as well, but I'm frankly a little insulted to know that there are people like yourself that seem to presume people in my age group only like High School of the Dead, Guilty Crown, and Black Clover, when that's far from the case.
Again, it ISN'T a "presumption" on my end: its pure, raw EXPERIENCE across fifteen solid years traipsing my way through 21st century anime fandom. 15 years of near CONSTANT interaction with younger fans of your era. Again, I didn't walk into this brave new world that Cartoon Network helped create with ANY of these ideas in my head as preconceptions: they jumped at me out of nowhere time after time after time after time after time across community after community after community, until it has been thoroughly hammered home that this state of affairs was indeed "the new normal".

I've tried my best throughout most of that time to act as a "goodwill ambassador" of sorts and share with younger fans not only some of the great classics from before their time that they were too young to know about, but also share the VAST diversity in artistic styles and unique creative voices that have long been out there within the medium that no one would know about from purely absorbing CN-anointed titles. And to be sure, I have indeed kept more than an open mind myself and have done a significant amount of time on a lot of the more popular titles that have come about in the last 15 years.

Once every so often, in relatively small clusters, I've come across people like you who have an open mind and a thirst for exploration and room for a vast assortment of different artistic visions and ideas: overwhelmingly more often than not though, the response has much more commonly been akin to that of a toddler in a high chair violently spitting out their vegetables in their parent's face and wailing and screaming to have their chocolate bar back. Its not just simply that most younger fans show no interest: a disturbingly LARGE number of modern fans seem to OPENLY RESENT being shown something that doesn't STRICTLY conform to what they know and love from venues like Cartoon Network, Weekly Shonen Jump, KyoAni, FUNimation, and suchlike. The emotional response ranges anywhere from immense boredom to almost being deeply upset and almost downright afraid of what they're looking at.

The level of over-the-top violently negative emotional histrionics I've seen, again COUNTLESS times across a great many years now, from people like this as a reaction to unfamiliar styles of anime has left me both taken MASSIVELY aback as well as just plain mentally numb at this point. It is what it is, and unfortunately its only seemed to have gotten perhaps SLIGHTLY better overall within maybe the past few years (again, I think that various tumblr communities dedicated to more avant garde styles of anime have done WONDERS for opening more people up to what else is out there).
Kuwabara wrote:You mentioned postmodernism in your post, so just take a look at the plethora of anime pages on Facebook with titles rendered in [T E X T L I K E T H I S]. You'll find copious amounts of vaporwave AMVs of Kimagure Orange Road or Video Girl Ai mixed with cloud rap or dream pop. Sure, many of these people are outsiders looking in, kids caught in a fad... But they're certainly familiar with this stuff. To imply that younger generations of anime fans don't have the capacity to appreciate anime, or even art in general, from just a decade or two before their time is pretty baffling when there's plenty of evidence to the contrary. Postmodernism and ironic self-awareness have reached a fever pitch in pop culture, deafening even. The fact that anime is more popular now than ever in the west, then, must just be a coincidence...

In spite of this, there are also sincere anime fans out there, born after you, that have uncovered relics and obscurities like Night on the Galactic Railroad, Twilight of the Cockroaches, and The Rose of Versailles. Even if we're far removed from such works in time, we still indulge in them with an earnestness not unlike your own. For the modern fans out there that don't share such a sensibility, I'd argue that they're simply more casual in their consumption. If it wasn't anime, they would just be pretending to be obsessed with something else.
Again: I'm not unfamiliar with the fact there there are indeed a small niche of younger fans out there who explore more deeply and come away with a broader appreciation for the true depth and breadth of what anime actually encompass beyond the rigid confines of the Shonen Jump, FUNimation, Cartoon Network, and KyoAni oeuvres. And yes, I'm more than familiar with vaporwave AMVs. But again: neither they, nor yourself, represent even CLOSE to a sizable majority of the wider fanbase of the past 15 years.

And no, at NO point did I say (nor intend to say) that younger fans are INCAPABLE or somehow don't possess the CAPACITY to venture outside the familiar confines of what they're used to and explore the medium more thoroughly. That's a preposterous notion and a GROSS overreach in what I've said. Again, OBVIOUSLY there are exceptions, like with ANYTHING else.

What I'm talking about is an overall bigger, and broader MACRO picture of the general trends and overarching "overton window" of broader anime discussion in fandom across a MASSIVE length of time. Yes, OF COURSE there are smaller pockets of younger fans with a more nuanced eye, a broader breadth of knowledge, and a greater degree of intellectual curiosity and critical insight. But again, unfortunately, they're just that: smaller pockets, that DON'T represent the larger crowds unfortunately. And they're small enough that they're EASILY drowned out en masse by the majority, and are thus GREATLY difficult to find without a TON of effort (and trust me, I've been LOOKING for all these years: I've indeed found them dotting the landscape, but they're hardly readily visible).

Again, I have not gone at any point in here into the WHY'S and HOW'S of why this generational disparity exists: that's a MASSIVE topic unto itself that is by NO means containing any simplistic answers. And no I DON'T think its something that's somehow "innate" into the age group. I think there are a TON of factors, many of them external and cultural (to say nothing of business and economics-related) than simply some bullshit narrative that "young people suck and are dumb". To read that into what I've been talking about here is SUPREMELY disingenuous and again smacks of over-defensiveness and perhaps even LOOKING to be offended by the nature of the topic itself (like I said, this is some TOUCHY shit).

Again: I'd rather not fight with someone like you over this Kuwabara. We seem to be more or less on the same page regarding anime in general, and I'm in NO way throwing people like yourself under the bus nor am I disavowing your existence. But by the same token, if you think that yourself and those like you are somehow a sizable majority that is representative of the overall "face" of modern anime fandom the past 15 years: then I'm sorry to say that I think that that's VERY much wrong and its not at all hard to see that it is from just a cursory look at the broader mainstream of fandom for the last decade+.

For what its worth though? I think that people like yourself and the kinds of fans you're sticking up for here (needlessly mind you: I'm on "your side" in all this after all) are exactly the kinds of people who wouldn't have NEEDED something like Toonami to introduce you to anime in the first place. Had you been a bit older or had Cartoon Network not gotten into the anime business, I've little doubt that yourself and other similar-such fans would've found your way to the medium all on your own steam just fine, same as everyone from my era and earlier did.
Kuwabara wrote:And this actually brings up another thing I found funny about his post. You're right about him using the titles he did to prove his point, and he sure lays it on thick... One would be led to believe that the only anime that comes out these days is shonen and that the medium has been bereft of creativity since 1990. While the industry has certainly become more commodified over time, subversive styles of anime still come out every year without fail. JulieYBM and Ajay could definitely speak to this well.
Now you're just putting words in my mouth. At NO point did I say, nor even REMOTELY imply that "anime has been bereft of creativity since 1990". Older stuff has been my focus here simply because the focus of the thread is "the old VHS fansub era of the 80s and early 90s". Don't in ANY way mistake that for me discounting the great big mountains of EXCELLENT stuff that's come out since then.

First of all, a TRUCKLOAD of my favorite titles have been well post-1990. I myself got into anime in 1989 for Christ's sake: a LOT had come out well long since then throughout my ENTIRE fandom that I have absolutely and unequivocally ADORED and cherish greatly. Again, this now comes across like you're LOOKING to paint me as some kind of crusty old antagonist towards anything that is the least bit "new". Like I said: I'm not interested in a combative argument with someone like you, who I get the sense we largely agree on most things anime-related (apart from apparently the nature of what 21st century fandom has been like on a broader scale).

And yes, subversive styles of anime DO still come out. That's not in dispute. Thing is though: how much are they FOCUSED ON throughout broader fandom? Yes, titles like Redline, Mind Game, Dead Leaves, Genius Party, Hells, Sword of the Stranger, Kemonozume, Tatami Galaxy, etc. are indeed proof that the anime industry is still home to some measure of more individualistic and iconoclastic creative voices (albeit yes, definitely to a significantly lesser extent than in previous eras: much of that is sadly due to awful economic realities as it is anything else): but generally speaking, these titles are NOT ANY kind of real fixture across Western fandom. I'm sorry, I love them dearly, but they're just NOT things that most fans prioritize or pay significant attention to or spotlight.

Overwhelmingly, the VAST majority of modern anime fandom zeroes in on and focuses on Shonen action, toy/merch-shilling 'Mon-like material, and endless Ecchi/fanservice muck than it does the "actual art". Makoto Shinkai is probably the only real exception and closest example of of a "mature, auteuristic" anime creator who DOESN'T deal in the above conventions that most fans know, care, and talk about. Beyond Shinkai though, Masaaki Yuasa's been around putting out incredible work for quite awhile now, but only VERY recently is he gaining any kind of fixture in mass discussion thanks to Devilman: Crybaby (which is GREAT and I welcome that immensely).

People like YOURSELF have certainly been well familiar and acquainted with him for years now: but until Devilman (which again, is MAINLY getting the amount of exposure and attention its getting due to it being on Netflix: that its also apparently excellent is almost incidental), he's been unfortunately relegated to the "arthouse" niche. Stuff like Tatami Galaxy, wonderful as it is, has HARDLY made its way to the forefront of anime discourse past whatever the fuck Sword Arts Online is doing this week.

Now you might say to that "well of course, Tatami was a small little art series, that never even got an official home release in the U.S., and something like SAO is a MASSIVE Shonen action extravaganza: obviously the latter's gonna generate more interest and buzz than the former".

Thing is, that's a HUGE difference from the U.S. fanbase as it existed prior to the 2000s, where "small, niche art house" work shared the spotlight and mass focus MUCH MORE evenly alongside the Big Dumb Action titles. Not only that, but a majority of the Big Dumb Action titles that were big back then often WEREN'T EVEN SHONEN remotely: there's something to be said where the Japanese equivalent of Saturday Morning Kiddie "Pew Pew!" cartoons went from a "relatively smaller slice of the broader and much more diverse fandom pie" in earlier eras to "MASSIVE swath of what the broader spectrum largely focuses on" after the entire larger paradigm here was completely reset... by an American kids' action cartoon block. That's NOT AT ALL in the LEAST BIT a coincidence: but again, that's a MUCH bigger topic in itself.

Again, this is about the macro picture of what the overall Western fanbase has largely morphed into across a VAST spectrum and across a very, very substantial length of time, with Cartoon Network at the dawn of the 2000s acting as a clear and obvious line in the sand that clearly marks where one zeitgeist ends and a whole new one begins. What you're describing Kuwabara, the cool podcasts and blogs and small tumblr communities dedicated to digging up old classics (many of not most of which are only obscure in TODAY'S world but WEREN'T back in their original day) to be appreciated and loved by likeminded fans like yourself, the awesome vaporwave AMVs set to titles like Neo-Tokyo and the like... those are all WONDERFUL that they exist at all and I wish to god that they WERE representative of the overall macro picture of the greater face of 21st century anime fandom. But unfortunately they're not: they're slivers of pockets of cool in a MUCH larger ocean of endless childhood nostalgia pandering and unchallenging escapist wankery.

There's a LOT I have to say and could write about the why's and how's of how things had changed in this manner: but again, that's for another massive, massive post.

And finally - and I'm sure I'm gonna get in MASSIVE trouble for saying this - but as far as guys like JulieYBM and Ajay being arbiters for "subversive anime".... I mean look, they're both very nice people and I have NOTHING AT ALL personally against either one of them... but I'm plenty familiar with their Twitter feeds. Calling the anime that they largely focus on "subversive" is just... well lets say that's a MASSIVELY incorrect definition of what "subversive" means, at least in my eyes.

Again, both of them are VERY smart guys who know a LOT about the stuff that they know about (and probably could take a schlep like me to school on things like current animation studios and their more recent techniques)... but in terms of the kinds of anime that they devote the overwhelming majority of their time and passion to, they generally play things VERY safely and squarely within the usual Shonen/Shojo/Ecchi/Moe comfort zones 95% if not 99% of the time. I know from my share of experience with their writings (and with the fairly limited amount of contact I've had with both of them) that the overwhelming majority of the more "avant garde" and adult-skewing titles that I'm talking about in this thread are WILDLY outside of their areas of interest, expertise, and even general firsthand experience.

And what VERY few that I've seen them show awareness of and talk about, they tend to often show, well... not a whole lot of enthusiasm and appreciation for them (to put it mildly), certainly compared to stuff like the newest Pokemon series or My Hero Academia and so forth. Jacob, last I checked with him a ways back, even kinda really dislikes Akira, if that's any indication of where a guy like him is coming at this kind of stuff from. Lets not even get into his oft-stated views on live action film, which while it may seem irrelevant, I find to be a HUGE indicator of the GIGANTIC gulf of difference in how people like him (who certainly represents the general sensibilities of a MUCH larger segment of the contemporary fanbase than I would argue someone like yourself does) approach this medium from compared to the overall majority of earlier eras of Western fans.

But yeah: I don't want to open up a petty mudslinging fight with other specific members here (who I have no interest whatsoever in starting a "beef" with), nor do I want to (at least not yet as of right now) delve further deeper down this particular rabbit hole of the MANY differences in how the broader generations of fans approach and look at anime. So lets just say I find those two particular individuals to be (with all due respect in the world to them) VERY poor examples to name in referencing younger fans who are deeply mired more in the "subversive" nature of a lot of more recent anime, and leave it at that.
Last edited by Kunzait_83 on Thu Jan 11, 2018 12:08 am, edited 4 times in total.
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Come to naught at last he surely will!
Zephyr wrote:And that's to say nothing of how pretty much impossible it is to capture what made the original run of the series so great. I'm in the generation of fans that started with Toonami, so I totally empathize with the feeling of having "missed the party", experiencing disappointment, and wanting to experience it myself. But I can't, that's how life is. Time is a bitch. The party is over. Kageyama, Kikuchi, and Maeda are off the sauce now; Yanami almost OD'd; Yamamoto got arrested; Toriyama's not going to light trash cans on fire and hang from the chandelier anymore. We can't get the band back together, and even if we could, everyone's either old, in poor health, or calmed way the fuck down. Best we're going to get, and are getting, is a party that's almost entirely devoid of the magic that made the original one so awesome that we even want more.
Kamiccolo9 wrote:It grinds my gears that people get "outraged" over any of this stuff. It's a fucking cartoon. If you are that determined to be angry about something, get off the internet and make a stand for something that actually matters.
Rocketman wrote:"Shonen" basically means "stupid sentimental shit" anyway, so it's ok to be anti-shonen.

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Re: Dragon Ball was big in the VHS Fansub era? (A question for the old guard)

Post by Cure Dragon 255 » Wed Jan 10, 2018 11:43 pm

That HAS to be a new record for Kunzait! Such a long and awesome post. I made the thread juuuuuuuuuuuust for it!
Marz wrote: Wed Jul 21, 2021 11:27 pm "Well, the chapter was good, the story was good and so were the fights. But a new transformation, in Dragon Ball? And one that's ugly? This is where we draw the line!!! Jump the Shark moment!!"

This forum is so over-dramatic that it's not even funny.
90sDBZ wrote: Mon Jul 01, 2019 2:44 pm19 years ago I was rushing home from school to watch DBZ on Cartoon Network, and today I've rushed home from work to watch DBS on Pop. I guess it's true the more things change the more they stay the same. :lol:

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Re: Dragon Ball was big in the VHS Fansub era? (A question for the old guard)

Post by KBABZ » Wed Jan 10, 2018 11:56 pm

Cure Dragon 255 wrote:That HAS to be a new record for Kunzait! Such a long and awesome post. I made the thread juuuuuuuuuuuust for it!
I am excited to have been given a lengthy preview of his next novel, how exciting!

Don't worry Kunzait, I interpreted your reply correctly, and agree with it as well. While I do consider anime and western cartoons to be of the same ilk (mainly through how they are made more than anything else), the fact that they tell stories and have tones unlike anything else on TV is precisely what makes them appealing to anime fans wanting to explore stories outside of CatDog and The Simpsons and whatnot. I mean, you're not exactly gonna see them cover things like Parasyte in the way that Parasyte does.

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Re: Dragon Ball was big in the VHS Fansub era? (A question for the old guard)

Post by floofychan333 » Wed Jan 17, 2018 11:53 pm

Man, anime fandom in the VHS fansub era sounds complex and fascinating. I'm glad we have forum users here to give us their accounts of what it was like.

Anyway, I feel like a fish out of water at times in my love for anime. I'm a product of the anime fans of my generation who got into anime through friends who knew about it and found a select group of people who found it "cool," though my taste in anime contrasts that of my generation's in many ways. I tend to gravitate to older anime and manga which my friends, who all say they're huge otakus, haven't even heard of. I've brought up Osamu Tezuka (arguably Japan's Disney and Eisner, as well as being the godfather of manga and a pioneer in Japanese animation) to my friends, and pretty much nobody my age knows who he is because most of his work available in English is dense manga that seems to repulse my generation. They've heard of Astro Boy but know of it through the computer animated movie rather than the long-running manga series. In all, it's a shame that a man whose role was so crucial to the development of anime and manga which my generation holds dear is forgotten due to everyone else pouncing on Sword Art Online or Yuri On Ice or whatever rather than looking at anime as having a complex history. What makes my generation's ignorance of Tezuka even more bizarre is that his works are regularly in stock in libraries, a stone's throw away from the manga my friends would read.

Besides Tezuka, I've also been drawn to stuff like Rumiko Takahashi's works, Neon Genesis Evangelion, Rurouni Kenshin, and other stuff that was being made before my generation became old enough to appreciate it. At times I feel like this taste is shaped by Kanzenshuu members: I've seen these works talked about frequently on the forum and they come to my mind as a way to connect with users. In general, if I'm going to watch an anime, older series strongly figure into my consideration. I'm not going to say I was born in the wrong generation or anything, but in all, I seem to be somewhat of an anomaly in my tastes stacked up against people my age.

What I'm basically trying to say here is that I'm fascinated that anime fandom has been around so long and I'm interested in seeing how my experience stacks up with the VHS fansub era experience. Presumably they are wildly different, but I'm sure there are parallels between generations.
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Re: Dragon Ball was big in the VHS Fansub era? (A question for the old guard)

Post by Cure Dragon 255 » Tue Jan 23, 2018 9:50 pm

I sure love the stories and data!
Marz wrote: Wed Jul 21, 2021 11:27 pm "Well, the chapter was good, the story was good and so were the fights. But a new transformation, in Dragon Ball? And one that's ugly? This is where we draw the line!!! Jump the Shark moment!!"

This forum is so over-dramatic that it's not even funny.
90sDBZ wrote: Mon Jul 01, 2019 2:44 pm19 years ago I was rushing home from school to watch DBZ on Cartoon Network, and today I've rushed home from work to watch DBS on Pop. I guess it's true the more things change the more they stay the same. :lol:

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Re: Dragon Ball was big in the VHS Fansub era? (A question for the old guard)

Post by Oniman » Tue Sep 18, 2018 11:43 am

Yes, it was with so many tapes that you can choose from. DBZ was at any fee market and comic book shop that you can find.
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You might notice some... subtle visual and artistic differences.
Wow, just wow. How biased and nostalgia blinded are you? First of all, they had typical Shonen anime back in the day too and even several of them where popular. How you feel if I did this?

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We still get abstract and experimental anime today and more than you think. They are not promoted as much, but they do exist.
Kunzait_83 wrote:Again, it ISN'T a "presumption" on my end: its pure, raw EXPERIENCE across fifteen solid years traipsing my way through 21st century anime fandom. 15 years of near CONSTANT interaction with younger fans of your era. Again, I didn't walk into this brave new world that Cartoon Network helped create with ANY of these ideas in my head as preconceptions: they jumped at me out of nowhere time after time after time after time after time across community after community after community, until it has been thoroughly hammered home that this state of affairs was indeed "the new normal".

I've tried my best throughout most of that time to act as a "goodwill ambassador" of sorts and share with younger fans not only some of the great classics from before their time that they were too young to know about, but also share the VAST diversity in artistic styles and unique creative voices that have long been out there within the medium that no one would know about from purely absorbing CN-anointed titles. And to be sure, I have indeed kept more than an open mind myself and have done a significant amount of time on a lot of the more popular titles that have come about in the last 15 years.
It sounds like you are very out of touch with the anime and manga fandom. First of all, not everyone is into Shonen, Shojo and toy driven shows like you mention. Not all Anime & Manga come out are Shonen and there is many late night anime shows. Also there is many Anime & Manga fans today that love Seinen and get talked about a lot. Titles like Berserk, Legend of Galactic Heroes, Monster, Ghost in the Shell, Cowboy Bebop, Akira, Serial Experiments Lain, Vagabond, Texhnolyze, 20th Century Boys, Pluto, Kaiji, Bakemonogatari, Kaiba, Oyasumi Punpun, Vinland Saga, Mushishi, Beck, Steins;Gate, Real, Kemonozume, The Tatami Galaxy, Mind Game, Ergo Proxy, anime from Staoshi Kon, manga from Junji Ito and several other serious Seinen titles get a lot of love and are brought up a lot when it comes to top tier material.

You sound like someone who is a old fart that is too attached to the past and I'm like two years younger than you. There's a lot of great stuff out there and you seem to judge things by their cover than anything else.
Again: I'm not unfamiliar with the fact there there are indeed a small niche of younger fans out there who explore more deeply and come away with a broader appreciation for the true depth and breadth of what anime actually encompass beyond the rigid confines of the Shonen Jump, FUNimation, Cartoon Network, and KyoAni oeuvres. And yes, I'm more than familiar with vaporwave AMVs. But again: neither they, nor yourself, represent even CLOSE to a sizable majority of the wider fanbase of the past 15 years.
Again, it's not as niche as you think it is.
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Re: Dragon Ball was big in the VHS Fansub era? (A question for the old guard)

Post by Kunzait_83 » Sun Sep 23, 2018 9:42 am

Oniman wrote:Wow, just wow. How biased and nostalgia blinded are you? First of all, they had typical Shonen anime back in the day too and even several of them where popular. How you feel if I did this?

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I never said at any point that "typical" Shonen didn't EXIST back in the day (80s and 90s). What I said was that they weren't especially popular or that much of a draw for western (repeat WESTERN) anime fans of the time (specifically Western fans on the more VHS/Seinen-centric end of the spectrum): as the entire point of my (months old now) post was regarding Western anime fandom of the 80s and 90s (particularly the latter half of the 80s and earlier half of the 90s). This isn't nostalgia: this is the reality of how VASTLY the U.S. fandom of the time differed in its focus and emphasis from the 2000s and beyond: where titles like Akira and Bubblegum Crisis, rather than Pokemon and DBZ, set the overall tone and general zeitgeist of the broader fanbase's focal points going forward.

Obviously there existed in anime and manga stuff way back then like Kishin Doji Zenki (which I didn't see pictured above) and Ninku (one of my more oft go-to punching bags in terms of early 90s Shonen schlock), which were as commercial little boy's "Pew! Pew!" merch-driven anime of the early/mid-90s as any you'd find in the post-Pokemon and Yu Gi Oh world. The difference isn't a question of what kinds of titles the Japanese anime industry at the time was PRODUCING: it was a question of what kinds of titles were ultimately the bigger and more prevalent draw - particularly for WESTERN anime fans of the time - and which ones were shaping the overall framework of broader discourse on anime. Yes, stuff like Ranma 1/2, Urusei Yatsura, Sailor Moon, Saint Seiya, and Dragon Ball (among others) were still popular, iconic, and influential even back then and even among older fans of the time: but they were hardly representative of what the overall larger central hub of popular titles were like for older Western fans of the time. They were exceptions (noteworthy ones even), but not the norm in terms of what was moving the bigger overton window of anime discourse.

From roughly 1985/1986 to 1997/98-ish (arguably all the way up to 2000/2001 even) the kinds of kiddie-pandering Shonen/Shojo action titles in question simply WERE NOT what most (older-skewing) Western anime fans were generally interested in or what was causing them to gravitate towards anime overall. To wit, lets look at most of the older 90s Shonen/Shojo titles you just posted in those images up top: by and large, the overwhelming majority of those examples were absolutely and in NO WAY popular or well known titles to virtually ANY Western anime fans of the late 80s and early 90s. Hell, more than half of those titles are from the tail-end of the 90s (at the beginning of what was a sudden surge in more commercial and "safe" Shonen anime that would continue well into the 2000s and the present) anyways.

The closest examples you've shown there to anime that were AT ALL more well known to the Western fanbase of the day are Maya the Bee and kinda, sorta Saber Marionette J and Battle Athletes. And Maya the Bee was mainly if not solely a thing among small toddler-age kids who watched the show dubbed and localized on Nickelodeon (and were thus mainly the type of audience that was totally unaware that Maya the Bee was a dub of a Japanese anime, and were likely also unaware that Japanese anime was even a thing that existed: basically the same type of audience that other edited-for-syndicated-TV anime dubs like Voltron and Ronin Warriors and whatnot were also aimed at).

Maya the Bee generally only ever came up in conversation among actual older anime fans of the time as one of several notable examples of what kinds of more children's-focused anime were often brought to mainstream U.S. kids' TV and how they were generally (and overly) localized. It was a talking point about the then-realities about mainstream network TV dubbing/localizing practices WAY more than it ever was anything that was in any way genuinely popular or in any remote way something that a typical 19 to 20 or 30 something fan of 1993 would sincerely give two shits about. Most said-20/30 something fans at the time would (justifiably) look at you like you were nuts were you to insist otherwise. The only people anywhere who were watching it "seriously" (as in with actual interest and enjoyment) were... actual American toddlers of the time. Who didn't know or give a shit what it originally was or where it was from. As you'd expect.

And Saber Marionette J was BARELY a fleeting blip on the popular radar, and predominantly known mostly for how shitty and awful it was. Hardly a beloved title among anyone at the time in any way. Battle Athletes was also an example of a "barely pseudo-well known" title that was never a particular fan favorite of anyone's at any point in time. But at a bare minimum there were at least SOME folks out there who'd at least HEARD of them during their day: which is a LOT more than can be said of all these other examples you have here which indeed fit the description of "Literally Who?".

Literally ALL of the rest of those anime titles you've listed there (apart from Maya and the other two) are absolute and utter rock bottom, sub-Z grade obscurities, some of which even I don't or barely even recognize: and I'd spent my entire lifetime of anime fandom trafficking in some ridiculously deep layers of obscurity (you won't talk to very many folks even of/within the older era of fandom who've seen Scoopers and Roots Search multiple times, much less can recite whole scenes from them verbatim: and no, I'm in no way proud that I can and have). Who in the atomic powered fucking hell (back then OR now) has even heard of (much less remembers) Hyper Police? Or Flint the Time Detective (despite it apparently having once had a brief stint on Fox Kids)?

Virtually none of these are even remotely anywhere within light years of "marquee name" properties of their era. Hell, most fansubbers of the time didn't even bother with many of these titles: and fansubbers of the early 90s covered a TON of ground among even some of the most insanely obscure oddities. When the same fansubbing scene that made cult hits out of everything from Dragon's Heaven, to Dream Hunter Rem, to Cosmo Police Justy didn't even bother to notice a title enough to give it the time of day, its almost undoubtedly because virtually no one anywhere gave the slightest iota of a shit about it.

The actual, proper, adult-aimed, based-on-the-actual-literary-classic Tale of Genji anime adaptation (which was itself somewhat relatively obscure at the time, and still is) was OVERWHELMINGLY better known at the time (enough to have had both fansubs AND a proper licensed VHS release) than whatever the fucking shit Genji Tsuushin Agedama is supposed to be.

The 80s and early 90s Western anime market (the older skewing one within the VHS end of things I mean, not what was on syndicated kids TV at the time: I already spent my earlier posts in here outlining the hugely distinct differences between the two, so I won't repeat myself) had more than its share of iconic titles that were well loved fan favorites: and almost virtually NONE of them were the sorts of toyetic kids' anime that's listed above (again, nearly ALL of which are completely unknown mega-obscurities, even among fansubbers of the time).

What I was trying to say in those months-ago posts you're quoting from here was this: as titles like Pokemon, Yu Gi Oh, Digimon, DBZ, Naruto, Bleach, One Piece, Innuyasha, Fullmetal Alchemist, Code Geass, Gurren Lagann, and their like are outright iconic, indispensable, generation-defining, and taste-making titles to older millennial Western anime fans fans, titles like Akira, Bubblegum Crisis, Vampire Hunter D, Ninja Scroll, Ghost in the Shell, Robot Carnival, Guyver, Devilman, Golgo 13, and Crying Freeman were likewise to older Gen X-era Western anime fans of even further prior eras. There was (and remains) a MARKED and easily visible and stark difference in what kinds of anime are bigger, more noteworthy draws and cultural/fandom touchstones to different generations of fans.

This isn't about getting pedantic over nitpicking individual examples (though I'm gonna be doing exactly that myself in a minute): this is about looking at MUCH broader, overarching trends and shifts in the cultural direction of Western anime fandom, at what kinds of stuff are driving and pushing the popular consciousness and discussions from one generation to the next.
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Oniman wrote:We still get abstract and experimental anime today and more than you think. They are not promoted as much, but they do exist.
I know we still “get” those kinds of anime. Hell, a decent portion of the ones you've shown up top there are among my personal favorite anime titles of the 2000s. Again, this isn't about what actually gets MADE in Japan or even just released over here in the West: its about what gets not just popular, but also flat out iconic and fandom defining heavyweights. About what kind of stuff is driving and motivating the culture and popular zeitgeist of fandom in the Western world (seeing as how I live in it and all), and how those trends have changed and substantially differ from one era of fandom to the next (and they simply undoubtedly do).

And look, I for one positively adore the living hell out of recent (or at least post-2000) anime titles like Dead Leaves, Tatami Galaxy, Mononoke, etc. Dead Leaves in particular I've probably re-watched WAY too many times over the past 13/14 years. Not to mention TONS more titles that you didn't even note there like Mind Game, Kemonozume, Trava: Fist Planet, Sword of the Stranger, Redline, etc.

Of course I know full well that they exist: I watch the shit out of them, I own them (in one form or another), I sing their praises and pimp them to people every chance I get, including right now here in this very post (seriously, if anyone reading this doesn't know Masaaki Yuasa's work, by all means fix that... like right now this very second).

That these titles still get made isn't the issue here: its how much of a draw they are for Western audiences. Both general audiences and even actual Western anime fans. And its further about how much they shape the fanbase's overall sensibilities and the overall climate. And I would argue that many if not most of these titles have... not made a whole lot much of a dent in the broader sphere of fandom. Certainly nowhere NEAR as much as I'd like to see them make anyway.

And the on the ground reality is, while there are a nicher than niche few like myself (and apparently yourself as well Oniman) and some other folks out there on the internet (who run blogs and websites and twitter accounts and so on) who know and are well aware that stuff like Mononoke and Tatami Galaxy and whatnot are out there and kick copious amounts of ass, those of us who love this sort of thing are just NOT much of a blip on the overall fandom radar.

Paprika made a bit of a splash due to it being from (and what sadly ended up being one of the last works of) Satoshi Kon, who had built up a great, great deal of momentum and interest/enthusiasm among older fans from his previous work going back to Perfect Blue (and among some younger fans through stuff like Paranoia Agent).

And The Tale of Princess Kaguya of course is a Ghibli film, and Ghibli is and always has been a tremendous artistic and marketing force (which also has a bit of Disney muscle behind it in the U.S.) no matter the differences in time or era. I'm very glad for any good, more artistically experimental anime work that makes ANY kind of an impact among the Western world: but sadly those examples, such as Kon and Ghibli, and a VERY rare few in the overall grand scheme of things. FLCL is another notable example that I'm surprised you didn't cite: that's probably as close to an "art house" anime as the average Toonami Faithful have generally ever gotten.

Contrary to what you claim over here:
Oniman wrote:It sounds like you are very out of touch with the anime and manga fandom.
I'm more than well aware of what is currently popular within the fanbase of today: and its mainly and overwhelmingly stuff like One Punch Man, Kill La Kill, Sword Arts Online, My Hero Academia, Hunter X Hunter, Fairy Tale, Ouran High School Host Club, Attack on Titan, etc. And weirdly enough, JoJo's Bizarre Adventure (not that I'm complaining on that one mind :P ). Berserk is also very much still a noteworthy entity (even while its more recent anime output has been... less than stellar).

I mean I get it, it ain't ALL 100% pure fluff across the board within more mainstream anime circles in more recent years (like it was in most of the 2000s, particularly the mid to late 00s which were utterly dire for the most part): we've gotten some unusually cool stuff making its way into the mainstream (or at least CLOSE-ish to the mainstream) in the last several years like Parasyte (from one of my most beloved favorite manga of all time by the way) and Devilman: Crybaby and a few others, and they're all GREATLY welcome reprieves from the usual grind of syrupy Shonen drivel.

But as great as those are, they haven't yet really been NEAR enough of a force overall to push back a great deal TOO much against what is still the substantial amount of pop cultural and fandom real estate that's still overwhelmingly occupied predominantly by conventional Shonen schlock. That's just the reality of the way it is still, and I'm certainly hoping to see more change to that and more actual mature titles make their way into the broader public consciousness.
Oniman wrote:First of all, not everyone is into Shonen, Shojo and toy driven shows like you mention.
Not 100% every single solitary individual across the entire board no: but the OVERWHELMING majority of the Western fanbase of the last 15+ years, pound for pound, has certainly and unarguably been. I'm sorry, but as much as I do dearly love the great work being put out by colossal talents like Yuasa and the sudden and welcome revival of some beloved classics like Devilman and Parasyte, those aren't NEARLY as prevalent within the broader fanbase overall as is the same old Shonen Jump or Shonen Jump-esque nonsense of the moment (Academia, HxH, Fairy Tale, OPM, etc).

Again, this isn't about what EXISTS out there, so much as what's making real waves among the fan culture and community and what's truly impacting the fandom zeitgeist. And while stuff like Parasyte and Crybaby are much welcome mid-level hits, they still are VERY few and limited in number and ultimately still PALE in comparison to the seismic monolith of awareness and visibility that conventional, mainstream Shonen still represents in massive droves. Again, this isn't about what people in ultra-hardcore fansub communities and some of the more fringier corners of Chan imageboards are buzzing about: this is about the broader Western geek cultural awareness at large. And unfortunately as far as the Joe and Jane Average of nerd culture are concerned, we're still effectively more or less working within the general taste-defining framework for popular anime set by Cartoon Network in the early-most 2000s (with only SOME mild reprieve from that here or there on occasion): and that largely entails Toonami-friendly Shonen (or Shonen-esque) action.

Unless you want to make the argument to me that somehow The Tatami Galaxy (which isn't even seen as worth being given a proper physical release in the U.S.: hell, Mind Game came out in goddamn 2004 and has only as if this past late August this year been given its first ever physical U.S. release) is a bigger and more well known and beloved hit among most U.S. fans than is something like Sword Arts Online. Or Mononoke and Redline being bigger recent touchstone titles for broader Western anime fandom than is My Hero Academia or One Punch Man. Good luck making THAT case.

Again, the main thing I'm pointing out is that in Western/U.S. anime circles, this paradigm we've been in since around the early 2000s used to be the reverse: where the more mature, un-commercial, avant garde fare was largely the driving, taste-making, fandom defining heavyweight titles, and the Shonen/children's fluff more of a niche and a secondary focus at best (with stuff like Ranma, Urusei, Seiya, and DB/Z being notable anomalies in that regard).

Its not for nothing that I noted in an older thread awhile back that were my younger self from the early 90s given a glimpse into the distant future at which of the major, marquee anime titles of the late 80s and early 90s would still be relevant cultural forces, Dragon Ball would be one of the LAST titles I'd guess would make the cut; certainly WELL far below a whole, whole ton of other titles of a much more adult-focus that were exceedingly important at the time. And I'd hardly be anywhere close to alone in that assumption as far as most other fans at the time go.

If we did the timewarp back to 1992 and polled older, VHS-era anime fans on the question of what prominent titles from then would still be culturally significant 20/30 years on, I find it HIGHLY unlikely that Dragon Ball (which was still PLENTY big among Western fans and fansubbers back then) would be most people's first choice above the likes of stuff like Megazone 23, Bubblegum Crisis, Macross, Akira, Patlabor, any given Masamune Shirow title, etc. Much less any of the "What the fuck is this again?" nobodies that you posited forth above. Hell, Rumiko Takahashi's output would probably be among the first Shonen/child-oriented works most fans back then would go to before Dragon Ball.
Oniman wrote:Not all Anime & Manga come out are Shonen and there is many late night anime shows.
Again, this isn't about what EXISTS and is out there in the wilds waiting to be discovered: this is about what's massively notable and what gets the fandom excited and talking and what shifts the winds of the overall broader conversation on anime. This is about what makes a mark and what your average person who follows anime to an even moderate extent is aware of. Specifically within the context of WESTERN fandom rather than Japanese.

And there is a MASSIVE distinction to be had there between what overall types of anime make the grade between these disparate eras of Western fandom. The phenomenon that I was pointing out and detailing throughout this thread is how the roles in fandom popularity and awareness once occupied by titles like Ninja Scroll (a "hard" seinen/gekiga title that managed to be iconic and synonymous with anime in the U.S.) and Zenki (a toy-shilling schlock Shonen series for Japanese 3rd graders that virtually no one knew or cared about at the tme) in the late 80s and early 90s effectively became flipped in the 2000s and onward...

Pokemon, THE staple toyetic, merch-shilling kiddie slop anime that now defines them all, occupies a similar level of iconic awareness and beloved attachment in modern fandom that something like Akira once-possessed in an earlier time, whereas something like Mind Game or Dead Leaves (both much more experimental, un-commercial work which had they come out in the 80s or early 90s, likely would've been a MASSIVELY bigger and better known success among Western anime fans along the lines of stuff like Manie Manie Labyrinth Tales/Neo-Tokyo and Robot Carnival) becomes the obscurity that barely anyone's heard of.

And while the 2010s have now given us a FEW more notable (and again, much welcome) aversions and exceptions to this, this overall paradigm still remains largely unchanged for the most part and still stuck where its been since Toonami and its fanbase helped RADICALLY shift and alter the general taste/sensibilities and direction of Western fandom (generally and overall for the negative I have long argued). And as I've said to at least one other poster here now, if you're someone who is of that generation and has NOT fallen into the “manchild nostalgia trap” of endless Shonen, Shojo, and Moe fluff but has grown up into a broad and diverse swath of different, unique, and challenging titles, then congratulations: you're an aversion/exception/aberration to this and are NOT whom any of this criticism is directed at.
Oniman wrote:Also there is many Anime & Manga fans today that love Seinen and get talked about a lot. Titles like Berserk, Legend of Galactic Heroes, Monster, Ghost in the Shell, Cowboy Bebop, Akira, Serial Experiments Lain, Vagabond, Texhnolyze, 20th Century Boys, Pluto, Kaiji, Bakemonogatari, Kaiba, Oyasumi Punpun, Vinland Saga, Mushishi, Beck, Steins;Gate, Real, Kemonozume, The Tatami Galaxy, Mind Game, Ergo Proxy, anime from Staoshi Kon, manga from Junji Ito and several other serious Seinen titles get a lot of love and are brought up a lot when it comes to top tier material.
Lets break these examples down a bit in greater detail:

Cowboy Bebop is only as known today as it is due to its airing on Cartoon Network back in the day. I have VERY little doubt the immensely high likelihood that had it not been aired on Adult Swim in the early 2000s, it'd be nowhere NEAR as well known (if known at all) and certainly not as downright iconic as it is today. Its precisely the sort of Seinen title that was a fairly big hit among fansubbers in the tail-end late 90s among older fans which likely would've faded out over time from popular memory as the generations transitioned had it not gotten the tremendous exposure among the younger set that it had gotten on CN.

Akira, as I noted in much more detail my earlier posts, is a MASSIVE fluke of an exception (among titles of its era, style, and subject matter) in many ways. By ALL rights it should be nowhere NEAR as well known and well liked among younger fans today as it is (as everything about it flies utterly in the face of what most younger fans often tend to gravitate to in anime, and to the best of my knowledge it never had a notable Cartoon Network airing during the early-2000s Toonami/Adult Swim heyday to help make it go down easier), but I'm of course immensely grateful that it is still in the cultural zeitgeist and that it somehow (mostly through the sheer, overpowering force of its historical impact on the broader culture) managed to slip through the cracks and hasn't gone the same way of forgotten apocrypha as tons and tons of other very similar and formerly popular/iconic titles of its day have since. I wish that dozens and dozens more like it were nearly as lucky. I can only assume it made its way through in at least some part on the sheer OVERWHELMING strength and weight of its cultural impact at the time of its release (which cannot in any way be overstated).

Bear in mind also though: both these titles are fairly older titles, and aren't technically examples of "2000s" anime. Bebop is tail-end late 90s, so I get that it only barely counts as a 90s anime, but Akira is solidly a late 80s title. I only point that out because both are firmly "classic/legacy" titles who's visibility has lasted and neither are examples of contemporary 2000s/2010s "millennial" anime.

Much the same criteria also applies to Ghost in the Shell, except that one's also had with it a whole BUNCH of later, newer series, a few of which have also aired prominently on Cartoon Network (the surest way to make certain that something doesn't ever get forgotten by millennial anime fans), that has kept it freshly in the public view.

Similarly, Legend of the Galactic Heroes is a VERY old series from the 80s that has been around for an eternity now and has had numerous peaks and valleys in popularity and visibility in Western fandom over the decades. Its only fairly recently seen an exceedingly MILD resurgence in popularity and notoriety among younger millennial Western fans... but its on a very low key level overall. Its gotten some cult buzz on the outermost margins of present day online fandom (it seems like its become something of a 4chan favorite within some of its corners, which is interesting), but its a low level sleeper hit among deep internet dwellers and still not that much of a well known entity in the grand scheme of things. Venture even a BIT beyond harder than hardcore depths of internet boards though and into more mainstream anime waters, and Legend of the Galactic Heroes will still net you a puzzled look and a shrug.

Berserk on the other hand... yeah, THAT one's a mainstream title. Plenty of average anime/manga fans know Berserk, plenty of average anime/manga fans have read the manga and watched the anime (in one or more of its various permutations) and generally follow the franchise, its widely talked about, its widely written about, its a thing. Yeah, anyone would grant you that one of course. Its still not Naruto or Attack on Titan-level ubiquitous, but in the grand scheme of things its close enough. Great. We got one so far that isn't just a holdover cultural phenomenon from an earlier time (its been around almost as long as Akira, but certainly was never anywhere NEAR the same level of success or popularity as something like Akira for a very, very long time) or a product of Cartoon Network's iron-fisted grip over the masses.

Monster and Lain however, while close to the mark and are certainly decently well known (Lain perhaps a bit more so), are certainly more within the realm of mid-level hits than they are marquee names. Lain has a phenomenal reputation (that's certainly much deserved), especially among older fans either of my era or of the VERY early CN/millennial era: but neither series I would say are anywhere within the same realm of notoriety as most average Shonen titles.

They're not obscure by any means at all, their names are indeed out there and people know that they're held in high regard, which is certainly a great thing: but neither of them really generates very much substantial excitement or buzz in the broader community, certainly not to the degree that a new Shonen Jump release usually generates. Hell, we can't even get the rest of Monster (past the first 15 episodes) physically released in the U.S. People usually have to illegally download or stream the rest of it if they want to watch it past its first quarter or so. Hardly indicative of a mover and shaker of a series.

Vagabond is a Manga series that I personally love a great deal dearly, and I'm beyond grateful that Viz has always kept it out there in print and readily visible on physical manga racks and store shelves everywhere: but much as I wish it were otherwise, it still ain't a series that most fans on average are all that familiar with. Certainly many fans at least KINDA vaguely know of it somewhat mainly due to its high physical visibility on most store shelves: but I've always found it over the years to be the sort of title that most fans on average tend to gloss past on their way to the Kenshin, Naruto, FMA, and/or One Piece volumes that they're actually there for. In NO way is this a title that “gets talked about a lot” as you put it in today's fandom: it often BARELY usually warrants a sub-mention in more detailed and intricate discussions centered around titles like Kenshin.

I'm sure its sold well enough (otherwise Viz wouldn't have kept it out in print for as long and as consistently as they have) but its VERY readily apparent that it simply hasn't made any sort of lasting or meaningful cultural mark within broader Western fandom. Again, I wish it had, its a manga I love to death and that I think deserves infinitely more appreciation... but it ain't even a comparison between it and most typical Shonen series in terms of notability.

Also, Real? Come on. Again, Real is a PHENOMENAL manga series, one that I'd consider an absolute all time great and a classic: in NO way though is it known to virtually ANYONE other than harder than hardcore followers of manga scanlations and low key Viz releases. You have to be either VERY neck deep into the scanlation scene or intensely familiar with the fringiest of fringe margins of Viz releases to have even heard of it. It just ISN'T a big name series, or anywhere close to it; much as I wish it were otherwise and much as I think it deserves ungodly more recognition in the West (its certainly a much more notable and celebrated series over in Japan from what I understand, and rightly so).

This isn't about what I wish or what I think “should be” though: its about what actually is in reality, and sadly Real is (unfortunately and depressingly) a little known obscurity that isn't a blip on the radar to the vast overwhelming majority of Western fandom, which has proven itself overall throughout the years to be FAR less interested in soberingly grounded adult dramas about the struggles of crippled basketball players than it is in wallowing in their inner action figure-wielding 8 year old with pirates and superheroes. Lumping Real in as a title that “gets talked about a lot” by today's fandom is a laughably GIGANTIC stretch, if not an outright blatant flasehood.

20th Century Boys is yet another fantastic Seinen series that at least has some genuine visibility and notoriety among fans: probably a bit more so than many of the titles listed here that aren't Akira/Ghost in the Shell/Cowboy Bebop-level iconic. It's out there, it has a genuinely solid reputation, and its one of the relatively rarer older-skewing series I can think of that isn't defacto mainstream in the West (ala Akira, Ghost in the Shell, and Cowboy Bebop) that mainstream Western fans will nonetheless actually give a proper chance to and actually hunker down and read it from time to time (and generally come out the other end greatly appreciating and loving it). I'd still hardly call it a mega popular success or something that is widely discussed by broader fandom, but like Monster and Lain, its certainly made much, much more of a visible footprint here than many of these other examples have.

Texhnolyze is fairly well known, largely due to how much of a substantial marketing push it had in the U.S. I'm genuinely not sure though exactly how well LIKED it actually is though and how much its marketing visibility translates into actual genuine fan enthusiasm. Ditto for Ergo Proxy.

Beck was a moderate-sized hit more than a decade ago (mainly among music nerds and emo hipster-types from back in the mid-2000s heyday of when that whole subculture was a thing), but hasn't really held up at all in the popular consciousness over time. It's long seemed to me like a fairly forgotten relic of the Guitar Hero-playing, skinny jeans and checkered vans-clad mid-2000s youth culture... though who knows, I could be wrong on that and maybe its slightly more remembered now than I realize. Scott Pilgrim though seems to have more taken up the reigns as the manga-ish comic that embodies that whole corner of the geek populace in later years.

Tatami Galaxy, Kemonozume, Kaiba, and Mind Game are all Masaaki Yuasa titles, and as with most things Yuasa, all of them are beyond spectacular and absolute cherished favorites of mine: but as I said of them earlier, absolutely fucking NO WAY are they even vaguely within the realm of mainstream or remotely well known among the majority of Western fandom (damn sure not “widely talked about”). They're cult, super niche hits, at best.

Tatami Galaxy, despite being licensed by FUNimation, isn't seen as worthy of even a barebones physical release by them (what else is new) and is only available officially for streaming services. Mind Game only as of right now in the last month seen its first ever Western physical release, despite having been out since goddamn 2004.

And both Kaiba and Kemonozume are probably two of the LEAST known and least discussed of all of Yuasa's major titles, and the latter is certainly in no real danger of seeing any kind of U.S. release anytime soon, if ever (bless Discotek once again for nabbing Kaiba at least; lets hope that they eventually do the same for Kemonozume). Again, Yuasa die-hards certainly know of them obviously; but die hard Yuasa fans are in NO way representative of the broader Western fanbase for anime, which cares MUCH more infinitely overall, broadly speaking, about formulaic Shonen action serials (that matches up closely to what kids programming blocks like Toonami would normally play) than it does being challenged by something genuinely unique and different.

Kaiji is mainly a hit among manga bloggers: its gotten a deceptively large amount of blogposts and internet articles (coming from a microscopically small few people ultimately) dedicated to analyzing and deconstructing it in detail (though mainly regarding the cultural minutia of Japanese gambling that the series touches on more so than its actual plot/characters themselves, at least in my experience anyway). Its certainly a critical darling: but out in the “real world” though, among most typical, average U.S. anime and manga fans, almost next to fucking NO ONE has even remotely heard of it or cares about it. That's just undeniable.

Pluto also isn't a thing among most average fans. Seriously, show of hands within this forum of folks here who knows exactly what either Oniman or myself are talking about when we refer to a manga series called Pluto? Anyone? Anyone? Bueller?

Vinland Saga at least is starting to blow up somewhat, albeit on a fairly small, small scale, in more recent years (even though its been around since 2005 and spent most of the ensuing years up till recently wallowing in the rock bottom depths of obscurity Stateside). Its been VERY slowly and steadily growing in popularity and visibility only within the past few years now; but its still at this point very much more of a niche title. We'll see if it continues to gain an further traction among Western fans, but I'm certainly pulling for it to continue growing its fanbase: its not a timeless masterpiece or anything, but its a perfectly solid swords & sandals series that's long deserved way more attention and recognition.

Junji Ito however... NOW we're talking finally. Ito is certainly a Seinen author of substantial critical and artistic merit who's work has managed to achieve what I would say is a fairly mainstream level of success in the U.S. His manga are known and revered not only by Western manga fans, but also by people who are normally not manga fans at all: which is PRECISELY the kind of outreaching, gap-bridging effect that Seinen/Gekiga fans like myself have been insisting for years now would occur if more mature, less juvenile and manchild-pandering works were given enough of a substantial push in the broader public eye. So along with Berserk, that's two.

Also again, I'm genuinely surprised that you never mentioned FLCL as an example: which, as with something like Bebop, I would argue is really only widely known and remembered within today's fandom due to its airings on Cartoon Network during the channel's early 2000s anime heyday. And once again, early 2000s Cartoon Network nostalgia is probably one of the single BIGGEST most overpowering forces that drives a great deal of anime tastes and trends over on our shores. As with so many of these things (except for Akira, weirdly/thankfully), if a title as otherwise weird and distinctive as FLCL didn't make it onto CN at the peak of its eyeball-pulling powers, almost next to NO ONE in U.S. fandom would know it existed, nor care about it one iota. Its the same reason why modern 2000s and 2010s fandom is in any way familiar with Lupin III, another iconic series from the older 80s/ealry 90s era of Western fandom that otherwise would likely be totally forgotten and ignored by the fanbase of post-CN era had it not been aired on CN.

Overall, while there are certainly some notable exceptions among your examples - Ito's work (which gained traction all on its own steam), Berserk (likewise), Akira (which was grandfathered in from an earlier time via the immense weight of its cultural impact), Cowboy Bebop (a direct product of CN's massive marketing influence), Ghost in the Shell (a combination of both Akira and Bebop's factors), etc. - the overwhelming majority of the titles you've posted here are simply NOT beloved, iconic titles to most of U.S. anime/manga fandom which are in any way widely discussed; much as I personally think that most of them OUGHT to be and DESERVE to be.

At best, many of them are anywhere from mid-level to niche hits, and at worst, utterly unknown and obscure apocrypha to all but the most heavily die hard dedicated anime/manga bloggers and internet denizens.
Oniman wrote:You sound like someone who is a old fart that is too attached to the past and I'm like two years younger than you. There's a lot of great stuff out there and you seem to judge things by their cover than anything else.
Yeah, I'm SO attached to the past, so blindingly loyal to earlier decades, that I'm in no way a diehard adoring fan of such decrepitly ancient pre-2000s titles like Redline (2009), Tatami Galaxy (2010), Devilman Crybaby (2018), Kemonozume (2006), Sword of the Stranger (2007), Genius Party (2008), Ayakashi (2006), Mononoke (2007), Dead Leaves (2004), Hells (2008), Homunculous (2003-2011), Shigurui (2003-2010), Me and the Devil Blues (2005-2015) etc.

Clearly also by my wordcount and by the effort I put into my analysis of whatever given subject I discuss on here, you're absolutely right, I'm also someone who's obviously just “judging things by their cover” rather than trying to look at things in a more detailed and critical light.

I'm sure I'm totally wrong in observing that the general thrust of overall enthusiasm for Western anime and manga fandom throughout most of the 2000s and 2010s has been powered largely by titles closely aligned with stuff like Pokemon and DBZ (Digimon, Yu Gi Oh, Naruto, One Piece, Hunter X Hunter, Fullmetal Alchemist, Fairy Tail, My Hero Academia, One Punch Man), that more cerebral and boundary-pushing titles have largely overall taken a backseat to them, and that most fandom today is largely dependent upon nostalgia for their childhood rather than active critical engagement, and that these factors are closely tied together (i.e. people want more of what soothed and comforted them as children rather than things that challenge and expand their adult minds).

No, deep, deep down, beneath all the Power Level debates, intricate Pokemon animation analysis, fangasming over Academia's insipid, pandering plot, blubbering over One Piece's nauseatingly maudlin “feels”, minds being blown over how “deep” and “intellectually meaningful” Sword Arts Online is, and wistful pining over late 90s/early 2000s Toonami TV ads, what REALLY drives the modern Western anime fanbase, were I to skim past the surface (because mountains upon mountains of decades and decades worth of forum and imageboard posts, blogposts, PMs, DMs, Skype/Discord/IRC chats, and personal IRL hanging out among all kinds of Cons and fan gatherings over many years is in NO way illustrative of anything and is totally just a casual and shallow surface-level reading of the culture), is actually a deeply held desire to seek out unique, groundedly relate-able, and intellectually weighty works of substantive art, and that despite all the mountains of blubbering over the latest Pokemon minutia that fills most fan's Twitter histories and personal discussions, most fans actually care GREATLY about exploring the works of artists like Shigeru Mizuki and Ryoichi Ikegami and that secretly, titles like Real, Ultra Heaven, Mononoke, and Me and the Devil Blues are what the broader fanbase are REALLY buzzing about every single day on average.

Either that... or you're simply mistaking what you've found in predominantly delving around mainly extremely hardcore internet fan circles (of the kind that would know and be greatly familiar with what titles like Kaiji, Pluto, Real, Kaiba, and Goodnight Punpun are) for what's more broadly popular and widespread on a more mainstream level, and are being WEIRDLY combative and antagonistic with me over it (biased, out of touch old fart, etc).

Seriously dude: I didn't insult you at any point in this or any other thread prior, and I have no idea who the fuck you even are... why are you even making this into a personal thing in the first place? Especially if you're only two years younger than me (and thus I would assume/hope well past the age of picking stupid internet fights with people over dumb disagreements about trivial shit)?
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Journey to the West, chapter 26 wrote:The strong man will meet someone stronger still:
Come to naught at last he surely will!
Zephyr wrote:And that's to say nothing of how pretty much impossible it is to capture what made the original run of the series so great. I'm in the generation of fans that started with Toonami, so I totally empathize with the feeling of having "missed the party", experiencing disappointment, and wanting to experience it myself. But I can't, that's how life is. Time is a bitch. The party is over. Kageyama, Kikuchi, and Maeda are off the sauce now; Yanami almost OD'd; Yamamoto got arrested; Toriyama's not going to light trash cans on fire and hang from the chandelier anymore. We can't get the band back together, and even if we could, everyone's either old, in poor health, or calmed way the fuck down. Best we're going to get, and are getting, is a party that's almost entirely devoid of the magic that made the original one so awesome that we even want more.
Kamiccolo9 wrote:It grinds my gears that people get "outraged" over any of this stuff. It's a fucking cartoon. If you are that determined to be angry about something, get off the internet and make a stand for something that actually matters.
Rocketman wrote:"Shonen" basically means "stupid sentimental shit" anyway, so it's ok to be anti-shonen.

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Re: Dragon Ball was big in the VHS Fansub era? (A question for the old guard)

Post by Apslup » Mon Sep 24, 2018 1:24 pm

floofychan333 wrote:Man, anime fandom in the VHS fansub era sounds complex and fascinating. I'm glad we have forum users here to give us their accounts of what it was like.

Anyway, I feel like a fish out of water at times in my love for anime. I'm a product of the anime fans of my generation who got into anime through friends who knew about it and found a select group of people who found it "cool," though my taste in anime contrasts that of my generation's in many ways. I tend to gravitate to older anime and manga which my friends, who all say they're huge otakus, haven't even heard of. I've brought up Osamu Tezuka (arguably Japan's Disney and Eisner, as well as being the godfather of manga and a pioneer in Japanese animation) to my friends, and pretty much nobody my age knows who he is because most of his work available in English is dense manga that seems to repulse my generation. They've heard of Astro Boy but know of it through the computer animated movie rather than the long-running manga series. In all, it's a shame that a man whose role was so crucial to the development of anime and manga which my generation holds dear is forgotten due to everyone else pouncing on Sword Art Online or Yuri On Ice or whatever rather than looking at anime as having a complex history. What makes my generation's ignorance of Tezuka even more bizarre is that his works are regularly in stock in libraries, a stone's throw away from the manga my friends would read.

Besides Tezuka, I've also been drawn to stuff like Rumiko Takahashi's works, Neon Genesis Evangelion, Rurouni Kenshin, and other stuff that was being made before my generation became old enough to appreciate it. At times I feel like this taste is shaped by Kanzenshuu members: I've seen these works talked about frequently on the forum and they come to my mind as a way to connect with users. In general, if I'm going to watch an anime, older series strongly figure into my consideration. I'm not going to say I was born in the wrong generation or anything, but in all, I seem to be somewhat of an anomaly in my tastes stacked up against people my age.

What I'm basically trying to say here is that I'm fascinated that anime fandom has been around so long and I'm interested in seeing how my experience stacks up with the VHS fansub era experience. Presumably they are wildly different, but I'm sure there are parallels between generations.
I'm exactly the same man. I only got into Anime in the early 2010's and I've had a Crunchyroll Subscription for as long as I've been a fan. The VHS Fansub days sound so cool! But it must have been so annoying to watch the show completely out of order!

I'm glad there are people still around to tell stories of the old days (some taking place before I was even born!) since I'm really fascinated by it (I listened to the VHS Fansub episode of the Podcast a few days ago coincidentally and I was thoroughly entertained by it).

If anyone else has stories from that era please let me know! I'm very Interested!

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Re: Dragon Ball was big in the VHS Fansub era? (A question for the old guard)

Post by jjgp1112 » Wed Sep 26, 2018 11:14 pm

Kunzait_83 wrote:*snip*
I don't think you're being fair to modern Shone fans at all here, and I've seen this consistently from you. And shit, i say this as somebody who spent most of the mid-late 00s trying to distance myself from that community outside of Dragon Ball's, and then much later on, One Piece - and even in OP's case, my participation in the community PALES in comparison to how much I actually watch/read it. Which kinda segues into my overall point, here. It's just...ludicrous to assume that the large swath of modern shonen fans are emotionally and intellectually stunted folks who have never evolved their taste beyond anime, and seems to be feuled more by your distaste of all of those shows more than anything. But in this, insular, microwave era, people blow through a mind boggling amount of shows to the point where you can't assume the shows they discuss the most frequently online are the only things they show interest in.

Certainly, those are probably the shows they're most passionate about discussing. It's pretty easy, especially given how fucking long One Piece, et al were and the vast amounts of extended media attached to them. They're no different from the comic book nerds of yesteryear. Speaking from my own experiences, I've written and will continue to write WAAAAYYYY more internet words about Dragon Ball and Pro Wrestling than any of the other viewing hobbies I've picked up over the last decade (mostly basketball, comedies, anti-hero shows, and Marvel stuff but still) because those are just the things I gained the most knowledge of during the years where I had the least amount of responsibility on top of the most free time on my hands, and the fact that they never fucking end. Never mind that it's been years since I've truly sat down and watched Dragon Ball or that I find wrestling's inherent stupidity to be increasingly overwhelming - I just have more words to say about em. Shit, One Piece has eclipsed my DB fandom, yet I've written maybe one post about the series that was longer than a paragraph.

Oof, I've spend more time talking about myself than anything. But my point is, I think we need to be far less quick to judge people based on whatever dumb cartoons they watch.
Last edited by jjgp1112 on Wed Sep 26, 2018 11:24 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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