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[Andres]

that's k

[Reelya]

can anyone explain japan's creepy fetish for wierd bullshit? I'm starting to get rather tired of the WOW DID YOU NO GIRLS HAVE BOOBS ACCCCK PANTIES HEE HEE HEE CREEP

hence why i'm watching the driest of tom clancy wank material, Legend of Galactic Heroes

It's also because America only likes the violent or smutty stuff. The top 10 nytimes manga is full of violence and boobs. The top 50 best-selling Japanese mangas are definitely not like that. Sure, there's some crossover with mainstream shonen series that are popular in both America and Japan, but everything else in the top sellers is completely different.

You can spot the difference most weeks. Here are sales charts for the current week:

Japan's top 50 bestselling manga vs nytimes top 10 bestselling manga

Note, ecchi/harem manga Rosario to Vampire is #3, and Akame Ga Kill is #4 on nytimes, and I've seen weeks where 50% of the nytimes top 10 manga were harems. Yet there are no harem manga series at all in the top 50 in Japan. Not even a single harem manga made the top 50 in Japan this week, and only two out of the 50 have appreciable amounts of ecchi (Nanatsu no Taizai and Shougeki no Souma).

Much of the manga that is mainstream in Japan (sports and shoujo romance series), is considered really niche in America, and vice versa. So, you can see that hardly any of the extreme fetish stuff even makes a blip on the sales charts in Japan. That stuff is a tiny market niche over there.

[IronyOwl]

I don't like anime.

If you'd like to start, tell us what you do like.

[Andres]

I don't like anime.

If you'd like to start, tell us what you do like.

He was just answering the question. No need for him to justify his not liking anime or whatever.

[Neonivek]

I don't like anime.

If you'd like to start, tell us what you do like.

He was just answering the question. No need for him to justify his not liking anime or whatever.

Besides it isn't like there aren't a long list of legitimate reasons not to like anime...

Such as
1) The overwhelming sexism
2) The exaggerated overacting
3) The reliance on Mary Sue-type characters

Not that these can't be ignored... but if someone absolutely cannot stand those... It would be hard to recommend more then a handful of animes that lack any of those.

[Frumple]

... it would be hard to recommend more than a handful of anything that lacked all three of those. Bad writing is universal, S-man's Revelation, etc., etc.

[inteuniso]

Like i was saying, the harem genre often has blatant yuri overtones that also don't go anywhere: they're more like set-piece comedy (e.g. the infamous girl-on-girl boob groping) than actual plot-points. They just have the lesbian-boob-grope scene in there, and it's not elaborated on, nor is it expected to be elaborated on, because that is the nature of the genre. So there might be such a thing as a "genre derail" in just about any genre: if they actually followed up on the typical scenes in an extremely logical way, the entire genre of the series itself would be derailed into a deconstruction of the tropes.

So you're telling me you haven't seen one of your friends grope another one of your friend's boobs randomly?

[Reelya]

In anime it usually happens in the bath. So we can just assume that real girls are always getting up to that when they go to the bathroom in pairs

What I said doesn't really say whether those scenes are realistic or not, just that those scenes don't usually add up to anything in terms of the overall storyline of the show. It's no different to e.g. if the characters were cooking dinner in the show. Dinner is just a scene, it's not the plot.

[Neonivek]

... it would be hard to recommend more than a handful of anything that lacked all three of those. Bad writing is universal, S-man's Revelation, etc., etc.

I can certainly think of a lot of western cartoons and movies that lacked those three.

[AlleeCat]

It's taboo, which automatically appeals to some slices of the population. Moreover, it creates a situation in which the two characters can be living together with no further explanation required, making a great many standard scenes trivial to justify (walking in during shower, etc.) as well as an instant "But that's forbidden love!" theme. Basically, if you work really hard to ignore the squick, it's an effective way to conceal the degree to which you're a hack writer, although as the schtick proliferates it stops doing that. This is often "justified" by a reveal that they are step-siblings or one or both are adopted, or some other mechanism of ensuring that they're no more closely biologically related than is culturally acceptable. Although that actually makes it a bit creepier to me, not because of anything to do with the narrative per se, but because it suggests that inbreeding is the only thing the author sees wrong with incest.

Or they could go the SAO route by saying they're cousins, which is really no better than them being siblings.
Although, Chuunibyou got around the whole living together thing by making it just random happenstance and they just happened to move in together.

(Chuunibyou is really cute also. Anybody who likes cute romantic comedies would probably like it~)

[Spehss _]

Although, Chuunibyou got around the whole living together thing by making it just random happenstance and they just happened to move in together.

(Chuunibyou is really cute also. Anybody who likes cute romantic comedies would probably like it~)

Small world. I tried watching that last night after finding an amv using it. Looked cute, yes.

Unfortunately due to the plot being what it is I just couldn't make it through the first episode from all the cringing. It's focused on cringe moments. Like Watamote but not.

[i2amroy]

I can certainly think of a lot of western cartoons and movies that lacked those three.

That's because you've been exposed to a lot more western cartoons and movies then anime. I'd be willing to bet that the overall percentages between the two groups isn't that different (okay, the sexism issue is probably stronger in Japan due to their culture, but we probably have a higher portion of overacting due to our "bigger is better AMURCIA" thing). It's like if you lived in a household that raised dogs, and all your relatives had dogs, and then visited your friends who had specialized in rehabilitating shelter cats (the equivalent of America liking the violent/smutty stuff). To this you then replied, "Boy, all cats are crazy compared to dogs", when in truth the major part of what you are seeing is just sample bias.

I mean a quick google of "sexism in cartoons" or "sexism in movies" will pull up scads of examples, and that's the thing America is better than Japan at not doing (as opposed to just equal).

[Neonivek]

Actually it is more because the way Anime is set up they can't ignore their sexism as well as the fact that they are based on continuity.

Rather then Japan being more sexist (ignoring that they actually objectively are)

[IronyOwl]

I don't like anime.

If you'd like to start, tell us what you do like.

He was just answering the question. No need for him to justify his not liking anime or whatever.

No, but if he'd like to get around it that's doable.

Such as
1) The overwhelming sexism
2) The exaggerated overacting
3) The reliance on Mary Sue-type characters

Not that these can't be ignored... but if someone absolutely cannot stand those... It would be hard to recommend more then a handful of animes that lack any of those.

It's hard to recommend more than a handful of anything to anyone unless the category happens to be their fetish.


Speaking of which, can we have a talk about your negativity? It's still grating on me. I know you're not exactly the patron saint of optimism and good things, but lately it seems like you've been fairly adamant about complaining about the same things over and over again, and it's kind of irritating.

[Frumple]

... maybe take that last bit to PM, IO?