Anime/Manga - Discuss Japanese cartoons and comics here; NO CULTURE WAR DOOMPOSTING!

I'm religiously reading Baki Rahen and I just can't handle the kino. Jackbros, we are so fucking back and we have never been so fucking back.
This is the most peak Baki has been in a while, and I love what's happening in Jack's story and the sheer Itagaki-philosophical insanity of Gou-dou and of Jack's fights. Jack has evolved bro, it's glorious.
jack fags, i swear to god
I hate localizers so fucking much, they shoved in a bunch of random French into Red Ranger Isekai for no fucking reason, stop ruining the only modern isekai I like.
日本語が習う
 
The one thing I don't like about Dandadan is how it always takes the girl's side in every relationship issue, even when she's wrong. Something like getting mad at another girl coming onto the male MC when it's clearly not his fault, but laughing at him for getting jealous of a guy coming onto her. "Realizing her mistakes and apologizing" seems like a copout when the story's still presenting her as justified 99% of the time. Still love the story, but don't love how much of a catty bitch Momo can be. At least pink girl can actually say what she wants.

In general, it just seems like it's wish-fulfillment for girls who want a cute timid boyfriend who will put them on a pedestal. I've noticed a lot of female wish-fulfillment masquerading as male-oriented manga lately- stuff like Sono Bisque Doll being the most obvious example. Even some harems have an idealized shoujo boyfriend as the lead now, just so girls can drool over him.
 
I discovered an Artmic project I've never heard of before: Junk Force, which is a manga/novel series by Artmic's head writer Hideki Kakinuma and is described as a modern remake of Mospeada. Miraculously, it even got a partial English localization! I am very happy right now and I hope it becomes easier to read online soon. Kakinuma's other novels that aren't Artmic OVA novelizations (yes, this surprisingly happened and I'd love to read them for the extra worldbuilding) are War Generation: After School Defense Force (who knows what this is, probably a Battle Skipper prototype), Exceeder Yoko (which at first I thought looked like Iczer until I realized Kakinuma also wrote DT Eightron -- a very good show by the way), Glory Senki (some sort of fantasy novel), Time Divider Govisor (which has zero information available even in Japanese), Front Sight of Alice (which had its first 4 chapters translated but is pretty disappointing), and Tokyo Little Gunners (which seems like a Gunslinger Girl knockoff).
 
In general, it just seems like it's wish-fulfillment for girls who want a cute timid boyfriend who will put them on a pedestal. I've noticed a lot of female wish-fulfillment masquerading as male-oriented manga lately- stuff like Sono Bisque Doll being the most obvious example. Even some harems have an idealized shoujo boyfriend as the lead now, just so girls can drool over him.
That's because anime's global popularity has resulted in just as many (or probably more) women getting into anime than men due to the stereotype of cutesiness. While I'm not opposed to anime being female wish-fulfillment -- lots of great anime like Gundam Wing and Chouja Raideen are female wish fulfillment -- I WILL use this as a jumping-off point to talk about how anime's globalization is shoving anime into an even smaller box of nonstop moe/romance, shonen adaptations, fanservice, and violence, and how this will kill anime. Stuff like Chainsaw Man and Dandadan are so popular among normies because they're many of the stereotypes of anime rolled into one, and saying that good/popular anime must subscribe to these degenerate and limiting standards will do nothing but hurt it in the long run. People get mad at this, but the shonen format isn't conducive to thoughtful, well-structured writing and worldbuilding, and most shonen manga that become classics do so through constant exposure, nostalgia, and marketing rather than quality. Anime feels so disposable and cheap nowadays because of this, and this is why we're getting so many formulaic shows per season. Combine this with global audiences heavily leaning towards all anime formats meant for temporary thrills (porn, shocking gore, and poorly-outlined shonen) rather than longlasting enjoyment to the extent that Chainsaw Man is mainly kept afloat by Westerners, and you're in for an anime bubble burst when normies smarten up and realize the nonsense of their preferred anime genres. Normies are already realizing this, which is why IRL weebs tend to lean more heavily towards gacha and Vtubers than actual anime, so in about 15 years the anime industry will probably be very small and do nothing but shonen adaptations and a rare romance OVA (bye-bye sci-fi :() while stories that would have become anime are turned into gacha games and Vtuber kayfabe.
 
The one thing I don't like about Dandadan is how it always takes the girl's side in every relationship issue, even when she's wrong. Something like getting mad at another girl coming onto the male MC when it's clearly not his fault, but laughing at him for getting jealous of a guy coming onto her. "Realizing her mistakes and apologizing" seems like a copout when the story's still presenting her as justified 99% of the time. Still love the story, but don't love how much of a catty bitch Momo can be. At least pink girl can actually say what she wants.

In general, it just seems like it's wish-fulfillment for girls who want a cute timid boyfriend who will put them on a pedestal. I've noticed a lot of female wish-fulfillment masquerading as male-oriented manga lately- stuff like Sono Bisque Doll being the most obvious example. Even some harems have an idealized shoujo boyfriend as the lead now, just so girls can drool over him.
I didn't feel like the girl's side was favored heavily. In fact, it seems way more like a male wish fulfillment thing. A difficult, antisocial weirdo randomly gets a cool hot girl to take interest in him, and he's constantly throwing monkey wrenches into his own relationship that she forgives or overlooks.
 
In general, it just seems like it's wish-fulfillment for girls who want a cute timid boyfriend who will put them on a pedestal. I've noticed a lot of female wish-fulfillment masquerading as male-oriented manga lately- stuff like Sono Bisque Doll being the most obvious example. Even some harems have an idealized shoujo boyfriend as the lead now, just so girls can drool over him.
Maybe,
Jinshi Mao Mao.png Peak mas.png

but for actually shoujo or josei anime, you get the male lead assertiveness trait. As usual, be considerate and protective (appearing right on time and even jealousy if you will it) as part of their personality and not so much pushy.

That's because anime's global popularity has resulted in just as many (or probably more) women getting into anime than men due to the stereotype of cutesiness. While I'm not opposed to anime being female wish-fulfillment -- lots of great anime like Gundam Wing and Chouja Raideen are female wish fulfillment -- I WILL use this as a jumping-off point to talk about how anime's globalization is shoving anime into an even smaller box of nonstop moe/romance, shonen adaptations, fanservice, and violence, and how this will kill anime.
That is a lot of words for your typical usual "Mecha - scifi anime best, other anime me dont watch is shit", and also "old good, new bad". Nothing new beside what you've said multiple times before.
Apparently these things "shoujo/josei" plus romance never ever been a thing ever for past decades. Also, it's like there is no such thing as fujoshi shipping in mainstream anime ever. Don't even get me for whatever reasons, 5-min episode porn anime type in late 2010s.
Do you know how many anime are those categories in last year? Hint: there are usually roughly 1-3 anime out of 20ish anime per seasons last year can fit into "wish-fulfilment".
Winter 2024
Yubisaki renren - deaf female lead and male lead being proficient in multiple languages and learning sign language later on. Typical (guy) childhood friend loses,
Gekai Elise - reincarnated female lead, skillful modern surgical doctor back to her previous "fantasy place" life. Focusing more on doctor stuff than romance, which some people complain being boring. Unfortunately, it's Korean not Japan, even less popular.
Spring 2024
Hananoi-kun - male lead is small bit of yandere.
Vampire dormitory - pure trash (yet intriguing to me) because male lead is retarded not recognizing female lead is crossdressing entire time. Love triangle between vampire, human girl and dhampir.
Summer 2024
Kimi no todoke 3rd season.
Maarui Kanojo - fat female lead, has been post here before, low budget anime - more like motion comic. But it's a light heart type, not too serious.
Fall 2024
Nina the starry bride - Love triangle between two princes and a fake princess. Seth, one of the princes, boasts the female lead is his due to him being the on stabbing her the chest and her scar is proof of that. Literally, unbutton her shirt in front of everyone. He's the a-hole type but gets mellow more over the time. Turn volume down.

Oh, it also gets censored btw for "shock value" screen btw.
Nina c8.png
Nina4a.png Nina4b.png

Back to this being bullshit.
Combine this with global audiences heavily leaning towards all anime formats meant for temporary thrills (porn, shocking gore, and poorly-outlined shonen)
Ubel-blatt censorship (screenrant archive). There are more censorship to current day anime for TV-regulation than you say otherwise.
Ubel Blatt.png

This season
Second season of My Happy Marriage, rare highly budget anime not big name shonen. A Cinderella type first season (2023), second season goes into more in supernatural aspect. Some people feel supernatural aspect not great. Debatable depending on people tolerance on female lead being weak willed and constantly apologizing.
Lemon Honey Soda - oh no, bullied female lead being cared by a delinquent looking male lead.
Kisaki nigetai - carefree female lead doesn't want to marry the prince, yet. Many people complain about this one because "nobody cares about the female lead consent". Stockholm syndrome and "kidnapping" as other criticism.

Go back a couple of years more, may even get few villainess or reincarnated type may fit "wish-fulfilment".

Instead of blaming on because of certain people. Why don't you ask big brand companies or anime committee willing to take risk for the Original anime that is carefully thought out, not lazily written basing on "requirement" checklists and not typical anime adaptation from something else? Surely, these companies just happen to get free money from somewhere else and decide to only make trashes.
Lots of "anime experts" have said anime industry will implode soon, as I've heard. I'm really anticipated for that day to come.
rmanga.png
 
That's because anime's global popularity has resulted in just as many (or probably more) women getting into anime than men due to the stereotype of cutesiness. While I'm not opposed to anime being female wish-fulfillment -- lots of great anime like Gundam Wing and Chouja Raideen are female wish fulfillment -- I WILL use this as a jumping-off point to talk about how anime's globalization is shoving anime into an even smaller box of nonstop moe/romance, shonen adaptations, fanservice, and violence, and how this will kill anime. Stuff like Chainsaw Man and Dandadan are so popular among normies because they're many of the stereotypes of anime rolled into one, and saying that good/popular anime must subscribe to these degenerate and limiting standards will do nothing but hurt it in the long run. People get mad at this, but the shonen format isn't conducive to thoughtful, well-structured writing and worldbuilding, and most shonen manga that become classics do so through constant exposure, nostalgia, and marketing rather than quality. Anime feels so disposable and cheap nowadays because of this, and this is why we're getting so many formulaic shows per season. Combine this with global audiences heavily leaning towards all anime formats meant for temporary thrills (porn, shocking gore, and poorly-outlined shonen) rather than longlasting enjoyment to the extent that Chainsaw Man is mainly kept afloat by Westerners, and you're in for an anime bubble burst when normies smarten up and realize the nonsense of their preferred anime genres. Normies are already realizing this, which is why IRL weebs tend to lean more heavily towards gacha and Vtubers than actual anime, so in about 15 years the anime industry will probably be very small and do nothing but shonen adaptations and a rare romance OVA (bye-bye sci-fi :() while stories that would have become anime are turned into gacha games and Vtuber kayfabe.
People have been predicting (really, hoping for) the collapse of anime for a couple of decades. It hasn't happened, nor will it happen. Most of that talk just comes from petty leftists bitter at Japan for one reason or another, or from people who unwittingly internalized that bitterness.
 
The one thing I don't like about Dandadan is how it always takes the girl's side in every relationship issue, even when she's wrong. Something like getting mad at another girl coming onto the male MC when it's clearly not his fault, but laughing at him for getting jealous of a guy coming onto her. "Realizing her mistakes and apologizing" seems like a copout when the story's still presenting her as justified 99% of the time. Still love the story, but don't love how much of a catty bitch Momo can be. At least pink girl can actually say what she wants.
Momo is the protagonist with Ken being a very close deuteragonist. It's largely her story: We know her grandma, her ex, her childhood crush, her house, her powers, her problems, and not much of his. We even tend to call Ken, "Okarun" because she does despite every other character calling him Ken. LOL The story even starts with her with no establishing shot/panel.

That being said, while I understand your sentiments, I think Yukinobu Tatsu has done a good job keeping it relatively fair between the two even if the story leans in her favor. I think the latest chapter would've ended much differently if it was truly female wish fulfilment. She IS showing some signs of growth/character development, so hopefully you'll be able to enjoy the story more.
 
Momo is the protagonist with Ken being a very close deuteragonist. It's largely her story: We know her grandma, her ex, her childhood crush, her house, her powers, her problems, and not much of his. We even tend to call Ken, "Okarun" because she does despite every other character calling him Ken. LOL The story even starts with her with no establishing shot/panel.

That being said, while I understand your sentiments, I think Yukinobu Tatsu has done a good job keeping it relatively fair between the two even if the story leans in her favor. I think the latest chapter would've ended much differently if it was truly female wish fulfilment. She IS showing some signs of growth/character development, so hopefully you'll be able to enjoy the story more.
I never understood saying I understand you hate x character but keep reading/watching not everyone is going to like the same things. Momo very much is the most important and central character and if you just don't like her just don't read/watch it.
Personally I thought I would love the series, but I ended up only liking the art and stopped reading a long time ago.
 
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I never understood saying I understand you hate x character but keep reading/watching not everyone is going to like the same things.

Except, A.P Hill says that they still love the story, they just don't like how the story appears takes the side of a catty MC. I addressed the whys of that point of contention, and that the contentious element isn't as prominent later in the story which could help A.P Hill further enjoy a story that they already love.
I agree with you because if it wasn't just one element and they hated the whole story, I would've just disliked their post and not have replied. I never encourage people to consume media they don't like. That's not the case in this instance though.
 
Nina the starry bride - Love triangle between two princes and a fake princess. Seth, one of the princes, boasts the female lead is his due to him being the on stabbing her the chest and her scar is proof of that. Literally, unbutton her shirt in front of everyone. He's the a-hole type but gets mellow more over the time. Turn volume down.
I can't stand Seth; he's really annoying. He reminds me a bit of the male assassin from Love of Kill, but I know this is common in some shoujo/josei stories, but it doesn't appeal to me at all.
but for actually shoujo or josei anime, you get the male lead assertiveness trait. As usual, be considerate and protective (appearing right on time and even jealousy if you will it) as part of their personality and not so much pushy.
Same applies to Apothecary Diaries. I like Mao Mao, but I don't care about the prince or his "tragic" backstory.
Ubel-blatt censorship (screenrant archive). There are more censorship to current day anime for TV-regulation than you say otherwise.
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Such a frustrating show. Is this an Amazon exclusive? If so, they ruined this anime adaptation. Jashin-chan/Dropkick on my Devil had more violence in it, albeit in a humorous way.
Second season of My Happy Marriage, rare highly budget anime not big name shonen. A Cinderella type first season (2023), second season goes into more in supernatural aspect. Some people feel supernatural aspect not great. Debatable depending on people tolerance on female lead being weak willed and constantly apologizing.
The supernatural element is intriguing, but the presence of the wicked mother-in-law really gives it a Cinderella-like feel yet again.

A lot of anime gets optioned due to the manga selling a certain number of copies or they take a chance on a series. For every series that is copying the template of something like Haikara-San, we get the rare original projects. Then again, it's a risk and there's no return on investment by having the blu-rays sell well over there. It's quite frustrating.
 
Nice info but I just wanted to respond to this:
Ubel-blatt censorship (screenrant archive). There are more censorship to current day anime for TV-regulation than you say otherwise.
That screenshot looks really low budget. I wonder what's going on at Satelight. They seem to have really gotten hit hard by losing their pachinko partnership because this and the Red Ranger isekai screenshots I've seen look REALLY cheaply-made. Aquarion also screams cost-saving production: the music is electronically-cooked, the style (which I actually think looks decent) was probably chosen to save money, the action and launch scenes are very lacklustre and toned-down, and for some reason everything is dated 2023, so it was probably in production hell.
For the positives, it's really nice to hear the original Aquarion music again, and it seems the theory about this being the Turn A of Aquarion is coming true. The Aquarion machines were found as-is in ancient ruins; they weren't replicas of an ancient beast. Alternate universes are also a major plot point. They say right up that separate universes are so big it's pointless to view them as separate and that multiple universes' realities can be incorporated together seamlessly. However, a universe that collides with a bigger universe will get wiped out, and Aquarion is trying to stop a collision between this universe and the universe of the Mythic Beasts (which interestingly get called Shadow Angels once). The Mythic Beasts are real nasty creatures; they enter the universe by jumping through rifts (facilitated by the miniscule distances between universes), they're responsible for almost all the psychological turmoil humans have (and thereby all war), and they're responsible for the Bermuda Triangle and Area 51 by linking those areas to their universe at the quantum level. Also DEAVA is a biological computer here for some reason, the Aquarion machines launch from bays aligned along the x, y, and z axes, there's a Macross Zero homage, and there's a conspiracy schizo who looks suspiciously like Gen Fudo and people refer to as a god for his precognition. This is actually pretty interesting; skip the Steven Universe parts and just watch the action scenes and cool paranormal/physics explanations.
 
People have been predicting the collapse of anime for a couple of decades. It hasn't happened, nor will it happen.
Gonna have to speak for yourself on that one. It's been happening, and has happened already, and will get worse.
Berserk 1997.png
Berserk 2017.webp

The recent juxtopositional treatment of one of the most legendary mangas ever is a perfect exemplar of that. Do you think that would have even been possible for a franchise like Berserk back in the 1990s?

Think about your "average" anime and how things used to be. 24 episode shows became 2 or 1 season affairs of 13 episodes or less usually. The kinetic and colorful anime boom post-CG switch in the early 2000s ended long ago. And detailed painting-like backgrounds are a thing of the past or extremely expensive and relagated to only movies and the highest quality seasonal affairs. The expertise is dwindling along with Japan's economy. More Toriyama's are dying than being born so to speak. Frieren's city backgrounds not having any CGI characters in them was actually really advanced compared to where most anime are now. Even legends like Steins;Gate 14 years ago had CGI abominations in every outdoor shot... The collapse in anime quality is a running thing. Who actually ""wants"" the industry to collapse? No one does. Did you think people meant "the anime industry" would somehow magically collapse and anime wouldn't exist anymore? No, the degradation of artistic quality over years is what people don't like...
 
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