JulieYBM wrote: ↑Sun Aug 28, 2022 1:03 pmWell, yeah, that's why I said that that is a
them problem, not a
Pokemon problem. If you're going to go into any thing you have no prior experience with an assume it's all like one thing I'm not sure what else to say other than "If you think all cartoons from a single nation are all the same you're an idiot."
A lot of that nonsense
is based in prior xenophobia and racism and that is a flaw of the individual human, not one cartoon.
You're kind of revealing once more a
massive blind spot of not just yourself, but this site and community in general.
Most regular, average adults (albeit less so in the past ten years or so, but this still largely holds true even now) aren't primarily interested in children's media. Rightfully so. And the reason I say this is because, certainly at least in the U.S., the anime market and anime fandom had long-since grown MASSIVELY more fixated and focused on highlighting largely if not solely anime aimed at children rather than adults. That wasn't always the case, but it certainly became the case at the turn of the millennium, and has largely remained so up through to this day since.
And Pokemon (and Dragon Ball along with it) was without a doubt Patient Zero in marking this shift.
You're also neglecting another basic truism: first impressions actually DO matter a
lot. Especially for most average people and especially when someone isn't already in the know about something. A first impression of something that they beforehand had little to no experience with is going to stick for some time to come, unless its quickly and/or decisively dispelled in some way.
You take a normal, average adult (man or woman) who has almost zero experience with Japanese anime, and you sit them down in front of a TV screen and tell them "here's what anime is"... and what you're largely showing them is just Pokemon, Yu Gi Oh, One Piece, Naruto, HxH, MHA, and yes even Dragon Ball/DBZ... then unless this person is already someone who is predisposed to be super into children's media as an adult, here's what's going to happen:
They're going to smile, nod politely, say "Wow, that's really interesting, thanks for showing me... but I'm not interested". And then they're going to walk away and in their heads are likely going to think that the person showing them this stuff is... kind of "off" in some way. And IF they have kids, they might think that maybe SOME of the stuff they showed them might be nice to leave on for their kids to see.
In other words, they're going to think that anime is primarily stuff for small children, and that grown people who are into it are in some vague, nebulous way maybe developmentally stunted. And guess what?
They'd be completely reasonable for thinking that.
If you think the reason that a normal person would react this way towards being shown Pokemon, Yu Gi Oh, Naruto, One Piece, DB, etc. and being told by most people "this is what anime is" is because they're "racist" or because they're "stupid/ignorant"... then once again, you're revealing that you have a huge, HUGE set of blinders on in regards to how most average people view and separate things that are made for children from... basically everything else. And more importantly what it is that MAKES things aimed squarely at children so different and distinct from things aimed at adults.
They aren't being racist or stupid: they're having a VERY normal reaction to a bunch of hyper-zealous dorks and manchildren waving nothing but Japanese childrens' schlock in their face and telling them "this is what anime is" and "this is the height of artistic expression". They're going to - again VERY rightly, correctly, and justifiably - write this stuff off as being nonsense for small kids, and the people who are super into it as adults as being "not right in the head" in some manner. If anything, this sort of reaction would be a sign
of intelligence on that hypothetical average person's end rather than a lack of.
That DOESN'T mean that this stuff defines what anime is: I personally know for a fact that it doesn't. But I also had the fortune and luxury of having gotten into anime well long before stuff like Pokemon, Yu Gi Oh, DB, etc. took over most American's/Westerner's perceptions of what anime is and came to define it for the next 20+ years after.
Anyone who isn't exposed to actual adult oriented anime and is instead being shown nothing but children's toy anime and having anime fans insist to them "This is Capital A Art!"... I have NOTHING but the purest understanding towards them for backing away slowly and thinking this stuff is the height of asinine stupidity and the people who are into it being mildly deranged weirdos.
And if your go-to reasoning for that reaction is "They must just be racist or stupid"... then I don't have a nicer way of telling you that you are approaching this ENTIRE topic from a
monumentally skewed angle.
DBZAOTA482 wrote: ↑Sun Aug 28, 2022 1:43 pm*Lots of asinine, counter-factual, easily disprovable nonsense throughout this thread*
Kunzait_83 wrote: ↑Sat Aug 27, 2022 3:48 pmEven from just my own more limited experiences with you on here, you seem to go out of your way lots of times to completely miss people's points left and right, totally (seemingly even willfully) ignore blatant and heavily cited facts that people point you directly towards, and just generally contribute points to discussions that are laughably counterfactual and misinformed and that are easily and continuously debunked. Which doesn't seem to deter you much from going on to continue pushing them as if they're fact regardless.
You seem to care less about actual history or accuracy to reality and more about reaffirming made-up narratives that you have some weird, inexplicable kind of emotional investment in. And you seem very adverse to doing any kind of reading or research on anything and seem to be content to just continuously shoot from the hip and say whatever "feel" in your gut is correct to you personally (and often times, it isn't), rather than actually bother to take a few moments to go look it up and confirm it.
DBZAOTA482 wrote: ↑Sun Aug 28, 2022 1:36 pmI'm only 3 years younger than you. I was around when both DBZ and Pokemon were everywhere. Pokemon was that highly addictive financial juggernaut and DBZ was that badass anime that had everyone and their uncle copying Kamehameha or Super Saiyan. I remember people playing the Pokemon cards extensively and CN used to air episodes back-to-back.
I'm older than both of you then. So as someone with living, fully cognizant memories of the 1990s (and I mean ALL of the 1990s from front to back, not just 1997 through 1999 like so many "90s kids" hyper-focus on) and of the broader popular culture in America at that time, take my utmost word for it:
you (DBZAOTA) simply don't know what the fuck you're talking about.
What you're doing here is this incredibly frustrating thing that not just you, but that a LOT of people in this community (a significant majority even I would say, at least a significant majority of it at one time or other in this community's very recent history) have often done: you're taking your
incredibly limited and narrow... dare I even say, sheltered?... view of the world around you when you were a small child and misapplying it to the rest of society more broadly outside of it.
I'll simplify what I mean by that even further. Your thought process seems to be going something like this:
"This is what I see around me in my gradeschool schoolyard, in my small little hometown or neighborhood, in just my small little slice of the world that I inhabit, and primarily just among other small kids like myself: ergo, without checking or looking too far outside of this, I'm going to just blanket assume that this is what the whole rest of the world also thinks and knows is true. I'm going to base my entire perception of what the world thinks based on what just me and my handful of child-aged friends and schoolmates, and my/their parents perhaps, all happen to see and think is true, and just blanket apply that onto the rest of the planet/country as if its iron-clad fact.
And NO evidence anyone shows me to the contrary can EVER disprove or supersede that, because I was never there to see it myself firsthand. Only what I see and experience firsthand is valid and fact, anything I wasn't around for and didn't see or experience for myself is not valid and not factual."
What you're basically telling us throughout this entire asinine convo is: YOU (and your friends at school) didn't know other kids who used the internet. YOU (and your friends at school) didn't know what anime was before Pokemon and DBZ in the late 90s/early 2000s. YOU (and your friends at school) thought that Pokemon and DBZ were the most original things ever because YOU never experienced anything else like it beforehand.
But here's the part you're not getting here: what YOU (and your school friends) know and experience DOES NOT encompass
what the rest of the world (and the rest of history before you guys came along) has known and experienced for long many years before you got there.
The world and history go on and HAVE gone on spinning long before you first arrived and became cognizant, and will continue to long after you're not here anymore.
What you're doing (like SO frustratingly many other people on this site and in this community have done for SO long now) is basically act like "anything that I didn't see or experience as a kid was never there and never happened because I didn't see and experience it". Its failing to understand the basic concept of "
object permanence", but on a mass cultural level basically.
You're not remotely close to the only person on this site/in this community to fall victim to this mental blindspot... but you are being ESPECIALLY obstinate right now in refusing to understand this when people are literally going out of their way to spoonfeed it to you.