There’s one more piece I want to mention - and that’s how the western anime fandom gatekeeps/ hazes newcomers. Don’t get me wrong, they’re right to do so, and if they don’t, the medium will go the way of video games, but they have some nasty tactics that will immediately turn a tourist like me against them.
Aside from the social stigma of being a weeaboo, a lot of people under 40 who grew up watching the Pokémon’s, DBZs and Sailor Moons of the world but are otherwise tourists, will go into an anime/manga forum and ask about what they should read/watch, and they’ll get recommendations for shit like Metamorphasis and other cursed numbers or be sent to watch something like Bible Black. The first time I got interested in watching anime in the mid 00s, when all the bootleg sites didn’t provide tags or content warnings, it was super easy to trick tourists into watching/ reading shit that goes from zero to completely fucked up degeneracy in 30 seconds, and this left me with a really bad impression. I got hit with the Bible black hazing maneuver, and it made me think anime fans were depraved perverts for a good 15 years. Once my brother got into it and was able to recommend much more normal material like fullmetal, cowboy bebop, gundam, and space battleship Yamato, I’ve had a better time with the medium. Also as a warning to my fellow tourists, if a weeb recommends you a manga that is identified with 6 numbers, it’s almost guaranteed to be hentai. Especially if it’s 177013, run, don’t walk, away.