Been wondering if there's some "degeneracy dichotomy" in media

[Just A Butt]

am i really the only one who thinks japan shit is overly violent too, in addition to being the most degenerate shit on the planet?

i guess so

 

[pollution jim]

am i really the only one who thinks japan shit is overly violent too, in addition to being the most degenerate shit on the planet?

i guess so

I was being facetious, I think that you can't ever get rid of any reference to violence or sex in media, the topic will always come up somewhere, and Hollywood is probably more morally bankrupt. But what I think is different from our media and Japanese media is the different ways of using the themes. I don't think anyone not weird likes sex scenes in movies, but sexual themes in western media is used differently than in sexual themes in anime because the former solidifies the power fantasy or characterization or narrative, while the latter is pure wish fulfillment. When a male anime harrasses a female anime and gets called a baka, you can't help but think of the average person who would enjoy this kind of thing and the loners that create it, it's much more uncomfortable. If Japan solved their loneliness problem in society they probably would have a better output

 

[skykiii]

I was being facetious, I think that you can't ever get rid of any reference to violence or sex in media, the topic will always come up somewhere, and Hollywood is probably more morally bankrupt. But what I think is different from our media and Japanese media is the different ways of using the themes. I don't think anyone not weird likes sex scenes in movies, but sexual themes in western media is used differently than in sexual themes in anime because the former solidifies the power fantasy or characterization or narrative, while the latter is pure wish fulfillment. When a male anime harrasses a female anime and gets called a baka, you can't help but think of the average person who would enjoy this kind of thing and the loners that create it, it's much more uncomfortable. If Japan solved their loneliness problem in society they probably would have a better output

I was actually having a thought like this recently when revisiting Quantum Leap and realizing the character Al would be written very differently if he were an anime character. When you see a character who is "interested in women" (shall we say) in anime, they're almost exclusively defined by their perversion, whereas Al is still a voice of reason and wisdom who just happens to be a bit of a womanizer, who will get distracted if one is nearby but won't actively go hunting for them.

This does seem to be an essential difference. Anime is often written by repressed people so the whole idea is they want to release all the thoughts and feelings in their head, meaning everything is over the top. Western people get to have more refinement and things like Mortal Kombat levels of violence are an intentional choice, as are characters like Al... which give us a unique chance to say "well, let's not go TOO far."

 

[NoBueno]

Actually kinda covered this in another reply.

But yeah Japan is weird. While they do make hyper-violent stuff apparently a lot of that was more popular in America than in Japan (so I've been told). But there's also a fuckton of cases of either them censoring violent media for their version (Mortal Kombat's original two arcade games having the blood turned green for example) or even a case where a thing originating in Japan is only uncut in the west (lots of PS2-era games).

More recently they have sometimes toned down sexual stuff but I think that's more to appeal to westerners and make stuff marketable.

I found that interesting when I was younger. I could go to a blockbuster and watch a guy get riddled with bullets and get his limbs blown off in the US. But when I watched mainstream anime how the girls would get naked for a shower scene or an anime 12 year old would get naked to do a magical girl transformation. I was like uh why is she naked now? And the gore or violence was very minimal. I think Dragonball Z at the time was the goriest and yet it had nothing on America mainstream stuff.

 

[Twat in a Hat]

Of course, we know Democrats are okay with all sorts of sexual shit.

As opposed to good family folks like Donald Trump, Matt Gaetz, Roy Moore and Linda McMahon? Given your obvious political bias I'm assuming by degeneracy you mean what exactly, acknowledging the existence of gay people?

 

[skykiii]

As opposed to good family folks like Donald Trump, Matt Gaetz, Roy Moore and Linda McMahon? Given your obvious political bias I'm assuming by degeneracy you mean what exactly, acknowledging the existence of gay people?

Do we have redditors here now?

No, by "degeneracy" I mean "lots of anime that are supposedly meant for children will have way-too-long scenes that are close-up shots of a little girl's underwear, and even outside of that their media gives the impression that most of the population actively can't stop thinking about sex." (whether that impression is fair or not is another discussion).

 

[Twat in a Hat]

Do we have redditors here now?

No, by "degeneracy" I mean "lots of anime that are supposedly meant for children will have way-too-long scenes that are close-up shots of a little girl's underwear, and even outside of that their media gives the impression that most of the population actively can't stop thinking about sex." (whether that impression is fair or not is another discussion).

Can't really comment on this because I have never watched anime and I'm not going to start.

 

[skykiii]

Can't really comment on this because I have never watched anime and I'm not going to start.

Honestly... this has been discussed in other topics but this is one of those statements I'm always mixed about.

On one hand, its a little like someone saying "I'm never going to read a book."

On the other hand, my own despair over anime makes me "get it." You can find a few individual good shows but as a medium it sucks.

 

[SSj_Ness (Yiffed)]

At most you can argue the old "If I show a nipple it's 18+, but beheading a guy is 13+", but it's not like America doesn't have tons of sexual content.

Maybe that's how it is now, but I remember seeing tits in PG-13 stuff back in the day. My mom covered my eyes when the Titanic chick's tits showed up when we were in the theater lmao. I think hyperviolent content always got an R rating, like Robocop.

I think they're a great example. Most anime related media has uncomfortable sexual shit thrown in, including loli shit, yet they complain American media is too mindlessly violent and stupid. If you ask me our culture is automatically better for leaning towards FPS games and not loli gacha JRPG garbage

am i really the only one who thinks japan shit is overly violent too, in addition to being the most degenerate shit on the planet?

i guess so

They don't even show blood in Dragon Ball anymore, which used to be a very violent show. Japan is definitely trending away from violence and has been a while. They're even moving away from sex but they were so massively degenerate that even toned down it's a hardly noticeable dent in it, and even then it's only the big woke companies. Silver lining to Wokeism, I guess.

 

[Just A Butt]

Silver lining to Wokeism, I guess

wait, so let me get this right:
what you're saying is woke people are less degenerate?

 

[SSj_Ness (Yiffed)]

wait, so let me get this right:
what you're saying is woke people are less degenerate?

Not, they troon kids, parade around nude, etc. It's just that one of the tenants of Wokeism is that sexualizing women in media is bad because it caters to the "male gaze", and so we get less sexualized female characters nowadays, which I think in and if itself is a good thing (even if I disagree with the why of it; we should have less sexualized characters because it's immoral, not because "men bad").

Unfortunately, women simply being conventionally attractive is also male gaze-y now, so though we get the benefit of less sexualized characters, we also get them designed as ugly, masculine eyesores, which isn't actually a good trade.