Debate anime degeneracy with UnidentifiedFlyingLotus and Gregis

People talk about how Lucky Star and K-On ruined anime forevermore, but that was just another nail in the coffin. What killed anime was the triple punch of Urusei Yatsura, Macross, and Minky Momo back in the early 80s because this is when anime begins to transition from respectable, mature character designs and funny character designs to stereotypical moe art. Urusei Yatsura made ecchi and harems mainstream and no longer some niche genre, Macross bled harems and moe into sci-fi, and Minky Momo fans were the original Bronies. I also can't help but wonder how much blame Gundam holds for the fixation on teenage characters. In the 70s and early 80s, there was a gambit of really interesting anime with adult characters -- stuff like Daikengo, God Sigma, Braiger, and Daimos -- yet at the same time, Sunrise made shows with young characters that were far more popular (though many weren't degenerate, like Ideon, Gundam, Galient, and Dougram, it's still something to consider). I haven't seen them yet, but I think SPT Layzner and Dragonar had adult main characters and weren't degenerate, so that's good. Ecchi has been a thing since the 70s, but I think Western comics and animation would have gone down a similar path if not for the Comics Code -- before the Comics Code, the most popular comics were romance and ultraviolence, which is similar to the anime/manga that's popular nowadays. A Japanese version of the Comics Code would have really been good for anime's global popularity since weird vehicles and historical fiction are far more appealing than superheroes.
The other thing that's interesting is that whenever there's a path for anime to become something great and respectable, that is always prevented. Real robot anime could have really blossomed throughout the late 80s and into the 90s if OVAs didn't take over and force moe art into otherwise respectable shows. In the early 90s, there were lots of cool toyetic shows like Victory Gundam and Macross 7 that could have very well expanded Japanese sci-fi with their creativity, but those died out after Evangelion (Gundam X's cancellation). In the 2000s, the trend was consolidation and going really over-the-top to things like slicing Jupiter's moons in half with SRW OG and Gundam SEED, but that was disrupted by Code Geass and Eureka 7 forcing mecha further into the background for ecchi and battle shonen.
The Soviet block had a different outlook on animation, since they didn't have the monetary incentive as the main priority. It was seen as a tool made for the people, so that after watching it they would walk away having gained something new. They even had a whole committee to control the quality of the media and it's writing, like the USA did at one point.
Animation should be a tool to inspire kids. Every interesting innovation in anime, like cool vehicle designs and real robots, came from having to appeal to kids, and when that went away, anime stopped being good. It's no accident that the best anime of the 2010s onward (not counting legacy projects like G-Reco from old directors who are actually competent) are the Takara mecha shows. Whenever I say this, I get called a commie, but kids aren't the ones obsessed with isekai and cute girls doing cute things, are they?
 
Last edited:
What killed anime was the triple punch of Urusei Yatsura, Macross, and Minky Momo back in the early 80s because this is when anime begins to transition from respectable, mature character designs and funny character designs to stereotypical moe art. Urusei Yatsura made ecchi and harems mainstream and no longer some niche genre, Macross bled harems and moe into sci-fi, and Minky Momo fans were the original Bronies.
The other thing that's interesting is that whenever there's a path for anime to become something great and respectable, that is always prevented. Real robot anime could have really blossomed throughout the late 80s and into the 90s if OVAs didn't take over and force moe art into otherwise respectable shows. In the early 90s, there were lots of cool toyetic shows like Victory Gundam and Macross 7 that could have very well expanded Japanese sci-fi with their creativity, but those died out after Evangelion (Gundam X's cancellation). In the 2000s, the trend was consolidation and going really over-the-top to things like slicing Jupiter's moons in half with SRW OG and Gundam SEED, but that was disrupted by Code Geass and Eureka 7 forcing mecha further into the background for ecchi and battle shonen.
All that reminds me of an opinion that I hold to this day, maybe I'm wrong because I don't consume anime/manga that much but... Hokuto no Ken and its "imitators" problably are peak anime/manga, much of what the medium was developing can be found on it, but the trend lasted until I don't know, early 1990s?
 
Bumping this thread again to post something interesting:
UPhLyKE_d.webp
3apornhub.png
y5m5toqm6fsrxgjmrvn6.jpg-134802371.webp

1-pornhub-insights-2017-year-review-most-searched-terms-world.png
sub-buzz-24273-1544541848-1.webp
content-1576885319-1-pornhub-insights-2019-year-review-most-searched-terms.jpg

87065237.png
pornhub-insights-2022-year-in-review-most-searched-terms-united-states.png
pornhub-insights-2023-year-in-review-most-searched-for-terms.jpg
pornhub-insights-2024-year-in-review-the-most-searched-for-terms-worldwide.295bc430.webp

Hentai, Asian, and cartoon porn have always made it onto these lists, but out of nowhere, around 2017 hentai/Japanese porn consistently became the top porn searches. In 2015, Mindgeek started a hentai game website called Nutaku -- but according to Wikipedia (I know it's a bad source but I don't want to click on weird sites), before the site was started it partnered with a Japanese company called Digital Media Mart (DMM) to be the sole Western distributor of its hentai and hentai games. DMM does all sorts of things now (including e-commerce, ESL instruction, and solar panel installation) and markets to general audiences, but they started as a porn company in 1990 before diversifying to a general purpose corporation in 1999. To this day, the main page of DMM is filled with anime and even has a link to its porn site (FANZA). DMM has appeared on several anime production committees as early as January 2015, which is coincidentally when Nutaku was launched.
MindGeek established a direct link to the anime industry in 2015 via DMM, which is around when DMM began funding mainstream TV anime. DMM started as a porn company and had great success going mainstream while still making porn, which is one of MindGeek's biggest goals. MindGeek wants people talking about porn like it's normal so that they can generate lots of ad revenue. An effective way to do this is by pushing hentai so that the coomers start watching anime, which has ties to the Japanese porn industry, which itself probably has additional connections to Mindgeek. Blurring the lines between hentai and mainstream anime had been going on for years beforehand. Type-Moon started their most popular franchises, Tsukihime and Fate, as porn games, and though they may not have hardcore sex scenes nowadays, they still pander to the porn user audience with things like Fate Grand/Order (which has recently been promoted to young people as a way to study history). Key, another visual novel producer, started with porn games (many of which had anime adaptations) and eventually dropped the porn with Clannad, though Key stories are infamous for female misery glorification. An industry where the lines between porn and mainstream media are blurred would have been a very attractive way for Mindgeek to normalize porn, and ever since 2015, Mindgeek has been doing that. Mindgeek also wants a child audience, having blocked their sites in states that require age verification to use porn sites. Since anime, by its nature, is most popular among children and teenagers, it's reasonable to assume this is another reason Mindgeek has been pushing hentai (including an SFW version of Nutaku) as a vector for popularizing anime and normalizing porn.
 
@Gregis, sorry for the long reply. I don't think I'm in a position to continue the discussion, since I don't have enough time to write detailed shitposts anymore. You could say that your autism has surpassed mine, well done!
so under your model, it would seem at least possible that female sexuality now can exert its own pressure on the market, so if it does not this would tell us something about either the market or the sexuality.
I guess the question here is whether female sexuality is or will be affecting the anime market, yes? Well, going back to my previous statement, I'll admit to oversimplifying the situation. Anime does cater to female sexuality in the market (albeit much less than it does to male otaku crowd), but in a certain way that I find barely being for women anymore.

That being yaoi or just shows that gay-bait to give fujoshi artists "food" for drawing doujinshi porn.

Free! stands out among Kyoto's lineup for the exact gender inversion of their most typical formula; it follows a set of male protagonists who participate in their high school's swim club.

Free! is the perfect example, it's the closest analogue to the typical "cute girls do cute things" for hentai-addicted otaku. Anime for women that have obvious male objectification in them do exist in smaller numbers, but what makes them stand out in a funny way, is that it is mostly if not always done through male pov. You barely stumble upon an female version of, say, High School DxD with constant shots on guy's ass or abs. But it's always present in shows like Yuri on Ice. These faggot creations bring money from unfortunate women, which is why there's so much degenerate faggot shit in anime in general now. You can watch some shonen show, and, suprise! authors added some gross gay ship scene with rape/sex allegories in the middle "for women in the audience" (ex. Fullmetal Panic, Evangelion, Deadman Wonderland, Future Diary, High Card).

I've sperged out about it another thread, so I'll quote myself, since my observations were based mostly on manga and anime fandoms of 2000s and 10s

while the female gazey male character designs exist, they are hardly on the same level of sexualisation as female ones. Even when comparing, say, male- and female-targeted smut, males are often depicted as more modest, sometimes the only fanservice-like thing about them is just that their faces look sort of handsome. Not to mention that standarts for what makes a man attractive to women is different in the eyes of male and female creators. BL with its explicit porn isn't even much of an exception here, since it also targets gay men and is male-centric. Ironic how the only time a woman allows herself to sexualise a male character like a female one would be is in the gay scenario, in other words, from a male point of view. While a female character is either a piece of meat for a blank male consumer or gay/fugly goblin/non-existent to make unfortunate female geeks less insecure, no alternatives.

I sort of have an idea why things are the way they are in Japan, but I still find it hard to put it into words. But the main trick is that the male consumer is still the most important one in the eyes of the anime industry. The higher-ups know that otaku get insecure when they see their waifus in relationships with attractive men, and using the appeal of het romance to attract female audiences would clash with the mindless titty-loli harem for men. So they chose a middle ground - all the female characters are sexualised and fall for the self-insert guy, while the other attractive male characters only interact with each other and are basically gay for the MC or each other. Male otaku don't feel threatened, they still get the fanservice stuff from both men and women. Japanese fujoshi are too sexually repressed as women, and are quite content with inserting themselves into male characters instead. They don't care how severe the female objectification gets, as long as they get their gay fanservice. There are many fujoshi artists who draw the most vile porn for men, where women are treated like shit, because they are completely alienated from the female sex. Anime women are made to be objectified by men - so they think - so it's better to accept it, separate yourself and focus on sexualising men, but only in a way that's "acceptable" by the male otaku-pandering industry standards. They literally grow up to start thinking like male otaku.

Again, it's hard to explain, but imo this weird divide where both men and women are more often sexualised from a male pov is because women are adopting the same mindset from former men through things like internet culture and excessive consumerism.
 
I remember a PR person for MindGeek had an odd interaction on Reddit. Here it is:
Mindgeek antisemitic.png
I don't really think this shows that the porn industry is run by Jews. MindGeek is crying wolf to portray their opposition as political extremists with unreasonable agendas. I always thought the incest porn push was because it's the cheapest kind of taboo fetish porn to produce, but someone on here pointed out that it mirrors the obsession with incest in anime, so I wonder if MindGeek's incest porn push came at DMM's suggestion. Is incest a common thing in Japanese porn? By the way, according to Wikipedia DMM (under Hokuto Corporation) bought out almost the entire Japanese porn industry, so DMM is very similar to MindGeek and succeeded where MindGeek failed (going mainstream). MindGeek could be pushing Japanese/Asian porn in conjunction with hentai to leech off DMM's empire and get their fingers into infrastructure and services normal people use. Heck, this could be the source of the Asian tradwife /pol/ meme; that could have been forced by MindGeek bots (MindGeek is aware of 4chan since they had Brazzers ads on there at one point) to promote their pornography and get more powerful.
Are there any additional connections between anime/hentai producers and the photographic, live-action porn industry? DMM has lots of deals with Kadokawa, which is pretty much the centre of anime production. Also notice how the 2020s anime boom didn't come from kids' anime getting really popular like in the 80s and 2000s, but from internet culture, which is often porn-adjacent. Anime merchandise in toy aisles and whatnot nowadays is mostly aimed at teens/adults, which is another sign of how strange and unnatural this all is. At one point MindGeek wanted to buy Tumblr, probably in no small part because it's filled with anime. Basically, ever since 2015 (maybe even earlier), anime and anime fans have been a MindGeek/DMM asset to normalize porn usage around the world and in young people and adults, so if you got into anime since then or continued to engage with it meaningfully, regardless of the kind, you were working for free to help bring traffic to porn sites. Most weebs are more than happy to do that since, for some reason, they're incapable of talking about anything but anime, so it's a great business strategy for MindGeek. Anime's current popularity is a forced meme (in the sociological sense, not the internet humour sense) pushed by MindGeek; if not for MindGeek anime would probably be remembered as an old 2000s trend and have gotten super, super niche after the 2008/2009 collapse.
The higher-ups know that otaku get insecure when they see their waifus in relationships with attractive men
Is this what's behind moe/CGDCT anime? Some Vtuber that was discussed here said that she wouldn't allow porn of her with attractive men to be drawn, but that she was okay with severed penises and fat ugly men, so it makes sense.
 
@Space Police I wouldn't think all of anime is funded by these porn companies, and I still don't understand the connection with all modern anime and pornography besides them being both on the internet. Is every mangaka funded by Mindgeek? Is watching Dragon Ball eventually going to make you a gooner? There actually is a trend of being anti-porn in the 2020s, unlike 2000s imageboards
 
Reply button is fucked, but
@Space Police You seem to be viewing this from an American or Anglosphere perspective, where weebs were seen for long as barely above furries due to copious amounts of retardation. In many other countries there wasn't an stigma against Anime in general because they did not associate it with coomers and the stupidity of weeaboos and in specific third world shitholes have major cultural impact (DBZ for example) and even then in some other "Western" nations it's not viewed as controversially.
The culture warriors are stupid in many ways, but the current popularity of animu comes in large part from the Steven Universe effect and western cartoons and media being so cancerous even a shit harem isekai is more tolerable.
@YWNBAM
You do not know much about Josei/TL manga, right? from what I saw it's has a strange effect where the female MC is more sexualized than the male. Many of the character designs do not look out of place from some harem or moe garbage, while the males are more "subdued" and in many they do not show as much skin. It's not like the trashy romance novels in the West where the cover already shows a big beefy man.
 
  • Thunk-Provoking
Reactions: YWNBAM
Reply button is fucked, but
@Space Police You seem to be viewing this from an American or Anglosphere perspective, where weebs were seen for long as barely above furries due to copious amounts of retardation. In many other countries there wasn't an stigma against Anime in general because they did not associate it with coomers and the stupidity of weeaboos and in specific third world shitholes have major cultural impact (DBZ for example) and even then in some other "Western" nations it's not viewed as controversially.
The culture warriors are stupid in many ways, but the current popularity of animu comes in large part from the Steven Universe effect and western cartoons and media being so cancerous even a shit harem isekai is more tolerable.
@YWNBAM
You do not know much about Josei/TL manga, right? from what I saw it's has a strange effect where the female MC is more sexualized than the male. Many of the character designs do not look out of place from some harem or moe garbage, while the males are more "subdued" and in many they do not show as much skin.
FWIW it's not that the reply button is fucked, you can't quote whole posts above a certain character limit.
If you have specific passages in really long posts you want to respond to, you can highlight the relevant text and options to add that to your multi-quote or reply to it will appear.

On-topic, the phenomenon you're describing isn't limited to the American/Anglosphere market, it's just more common because the scene of fans around to translate the non-official, otaku-targeted stuff that tended to be more degenerate into English was established earlier. Latin America is starting to have weeb stereotypes as translations into Spanish/Portuguese are becoming more commonplace, and the French have been dealing with it almost as long as Anglophones because the Japanese tend to obsess a bit over France. The reverse is true too - there are tons of millennials/gen Z in Anglophone countries who don't follow anime at all that still grew up watching Sailor Moon/DBZ/Pokemon/Power Rangers.
 
  • Informative
Reactions: Space Police
Latin America is starting to have weeb stereotypes as translations into Spanish/Portuguese are becoming more commonplace
They always existed. Even without official translations the countries always had a notable weeb subculture before the late 2010's due to widespread piracy and some big names like Naruto and Death note already having dubs. Making fun of weebs still happened in the internet, but they were not seen with the same level of contempt people have in the Anglosphere.
 
I wouldn't think all of anime is funded by these porn companies,
No, but anime in the West is being forced as a trend (probably via bots) by these porn companies long after it naturally died in the mid-late 2000s outside things like Pokemon. They want porn everywhere and everyone watching porn all the time, all because it makes tons of money and the rich are never content with the vast money they have. One of the founders of MindGeek (Stephane Manos) is part of the Manos royal family in Greece, so it's not like he got into internet porn because he was a starving tech bro and it was the only job he could find.
I still don't understand the connection with all modern anime and pornography besides them being both on the internet
The connection is that mainstream modern anime is being funded by porn companies like DMM while anime exploded in the 2020s in the West right after hentai consistently became a top search term on Pornhub, which has a deal with DMM via Nutaku (hentai game website).
Is every mangaka funded by Mindgeek?
No, but tons of mangaka and anime character designers got started drawing hentai, and I wouldn't be surprised if the hentai industry has connections to Japanese porn and therefore DMM.
Is watching Dragon Ball eventually going to make you a gooner?
Not necessarily, but it does have sexual/ecchi content (relatively less than usual, and for what it's worth the fanbase doesn't seem to care about it). Having to tolerate or ignore stuff like that is exactly what MindGeek wants. They want guys to talk about porn like it's a TV show and have everyone else either turn a blind eye or join in; they've said as much themselves. Maybe it wasn't always like this, but it is now and you have to be conscientious of the role you're playing in this operation if you're a weeb nowadays. Personally this discovery tainted anime entirely for me, though I've been losing interest in it more and more.
You seem to be viewing this from an American or Anglosphere perspective, where weebs were seen for long as barely above furries due to copious amounts of retardation.
And that's correct.
In many other countries there wasn't an stigma against Anime in general because they did not associate it with coomers
Frogs watching censored versions of things like Grendizer and Harlock isn't the same as people recommending My Hero Academia and Gurren Lagann to kids. Many of these countries have their own stigmas against stereotypical weeaboos for the same reasons we do, including Japan. You'd be out of your mind to think regular French people are okay with stuff like Mushoku Tensei and Lucky Star because they saw Grendizer as a kid.
but the current popularity of animu comes in large part from the Steven Universe effect and western cartoons and media being so cancerous even a shit harem isekai is more tolerable.
Please, please stop putting down Western media whenever you try to defend anime. There's far more good Western (and Japanese) media out there than shallow pop culture junk.
 
Last edited:
  • Like
Reactions: YWNBAM
It seems you're very avoidant of any kind of remote reference to sex at all in any form of media. What would be the limit for you in terms of character design, etc that you would tolerate? And what makes Mecha so different from Shonen?
 
It seems you're very avoidant of any kind of remote reference to sex at all in any form of media.
Because it's unnecessary.
What would be the limit for you in terms of character design, etc that you would tolerate?
As I said, everything anime-related has been tainted for me now because of what I discovered. I don't want to help MindGeek (and the porn industry in general) achieve their goals. There's lots of other junk media and fandom and hobby stuff I like, so it's not like there's a massive void in my life that must be filled by anime.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Wright and YWNBAM
Please, please stop putting down Western media whenever you try to defend anime. There's far more good Western (and Japanese) media out there than shallow pop culture junk.
@Space Police
I'm not putting down western media in general or even saying the harem garbage I mentioned is good. What I meant to say is media appealing to teens/young people (that tend to search for new things.) What modern writers are doing is so bad even such trash is tolerable in comparison.
Frogs watching censored versions of things like Grendizer and Harlock isn't the same as people recommending My Hero Academia and Gurren Lagann to kids. Many of these countries have their own stigmas against stereotypical weeaboos for the same reasons we do, including Japan. You'd be out of your mind to think regular French people are okay with stuff like Mushoku Tensei and Lucky Star because they saw Grendizer as a kid.
The specific stigmas against weeaboos you mention are different too. In the Anglosphere the mere mention of anime, no matter how minor, could be seen with disdain, even if the person was a casual watcher of "normal stuff" unlike in other countries were only the most annoying weebs were seen badly and anime is seen as what it is: Japanese cartoons. Even today the stigma is not completely over in the Anglophone nations.
Also, I would really not say anime died in the 2000's when the fan groups were still going strong, and later around the early 2010's it started exploding in popularity back then, specially in the shithole nations where kids got smartphones, and even first world countries were having new people introduced to it as the internet turned into a bigger part of daily life. 2020 was not a turning point for anime outside Japan, it was just an effect of the covid restrictions and the binge watching from streaming services.
The perception that animation is always for kids also dying out explains the merchandise and much of it appealing to teenagers and young adults : to a lesser extent western adult animation also increased in popularity too.
 
Last edited:
Is watching Dragon Ball eventually going to make you a gooner?
Yes but instead of whacking it to images of Bulma and Chi-Chi, you'll be standing the middle of a walmart aisle screaming at the top of your lungs trying to go Super Saiyan.
 
  • Informative
Reactions: pollution jim
Guys, I've got something revolutionary to say!

Anime...

bad

1742411606525.png
 
  • Agree
Reactions: YWNBAM
Back