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[IronyOwl]

There are many many many other anthropomorphic media from the 80s-90s out there.  Disney doesn't have the exclusive and it ain't any 'one' show of theirs either.

... Why are we talking about this anyways?

Yeah, but that reduces the idea to an unimpeachable assumption.

We're talking about it because of uncertainty regarding the intents and purposes of facial features and expressions in a certain anime. Or, you know, that tangenting off into the nature of fetishes in general.

I'm not 100% on it either, but I do feel that it can't be pure genetics.  I get that genes are complicated and interact with each other and the environment, but.  There's no way the human genome is detailed enough to code for "balloons being inflated" or "the cars from Cars" (actual fetish, I'm so sorry I know and I'm so sorry I told you).

I doubt it's 100% genetic either, but there's a lot of gap between "children see surprise sexuality" and "it was always their destiny."

The best defense I would offer of the theory is that its all about having your first moment of "what is this feeling?" at a strange time.  There are a few common threads among fetishes, like things getting put into things.  Example, one poor sap wrote to Dan Savages' sex advice column about the fact that he had a scuba gear fetish and no one else on the internet seemed to, and the reply he got was "that sucks, you probably saw someone attractive putting on scuba gear".  Also why feet could be such a common fetish, since people take their feet in and out of shoes/socks so often even in public.  Other treads: power exchange (hence most of BDSM), and cartoon characters that are clearly in a different category from humans, but human enough.  To paraphrase the creator of Gravity Falls: "when you're going through all the unexpected changes of puberty, anything with confidence can be attractive.  Even a triangle."

This all has the same elements of "if I were to attempt to construct a rational explanation, it would be this" that makes me super dubious. It's like a bunch of European explorers standing outside a circle of dancing natives speculating on why they're doing that. They might get it right, but I wouldn't put money on it.

Edit: I mean, we're talking about anime.  Considering the current state of the market, its not an entirely irrelevant conversation.  Still a derail, but its like the train was derailed onto another, paralleled track.

Man, I hope being granted superpowers and plopped into a harem doesn't imprint easily, that'd be a terrible fetish to have.

[EnigmaticHat]

Well I mean that wouldn't be a fetish.  Variety has always been a thing for straight guys, its part of what makes the porn industry tick.  And I don't mean that in a "men are sex maniacs" way, what I mean is looking at images or video of multiple different women actually is more arousing for most men than just like, I don't know, a longer video of the single most attractive lady.

When I said the fetish discussion is relevant to anime, what I meant is that due to market saturation, for any given fetish there's probably an anime/manga that is just about that fetish and doesn't have much else to recommend it.  Most of them won't be discussed here because, well, they aren't worth discussing.  But they're out there, and they maintain an outward appearance of not being pornographic which is odd.

In a lot of ways the difference between anime now and anime in the 80s/90s is the specificity.  In old anime you got things like gratuitous nudity, rape threats/backstory, questionable clothing, harems, the works.  Depending on the anime it could still be a fucking embarrassment, but they were aimed at general male audiences and those are things that might appeal to general male audiences.  What's so strange about anime now is that even in mainstream, NOT hentai works, you get things like 12 year old fanservice characters, or casual inclusion of fetishes to a degree where its no longer a light implication.  Its caused anime's reputation in Japan to go down over time, in contrast to say western animation or video games which have gained mainstream acceptance over time (or at least stayed the same).

Edit: I was responding to a later post about "fetishes don't have to make sense."  The face... I don't have an opinion on the face.  If was being generous I'd say its an exaggerated perspective thing?  But the extreme emphasis on the teeth, well... whatever the reason, I wouldn't call that good art.

[Reelya]

I doubt the "face" is marketing to a specific fetish. for that to be correct, they'd need to identify the existence of that market and do focus-group testing and the like.

We can always take a step back however, by working out where the media originated. It's a manga, so it's almost certain that the images in question are from the manga, and were picked because they're different to other series. Also, it's the manga artist's debut work. Almost certainly, he drew those that way because that's how he draws and he was encouraged to do so because it's just different to everyone else's artwork, rather than some idea of tapping into the "big teeth" fetish market.

If you want to talk about "pandering" btw then look at shows which don't stand out in any way. Those are the most likely to be pandering to their audiences. Not to be cynical but when most people say a show is "pandering" they actually mean "it has elements meant to appeal to a person who's not me". Every show is "pandering" 100% of the time. That's what fiction is for.

Not everything weird is a "fetish". If we're going to go that far let's talk about how Slenderman is a fetish. It's marketing to the fetish of tall thin men in suits with no face.

Or how the cannons on Space Battleship Yamato - totally penises, that's the only reason people like the show. Sick Yamato fans who get off on a flying penis with 7 other penises growing out of it. Sick shit!

Sometimes interpreting everything on Earth as a sexual fetish is in fact bullshit.

[Sirus]

I'm not sure I buy that particular explanation, because the mechanism seems suspiciously loose. Not everyone who sees Foxin Hood becomes a furry, and not every furry saw Foxin Hood as a kid. Even if there's a correlation, there seems to be a lot of interference from elsewhere.

It's also the same story as... well, pretty much everything else. Genre preferences, favorite characters, that one thing that horrified you as a kid. Everyone's got stuff they can point to and say "that was the first time I noticed X, so maybe that's what caused it," but it's all different stuff, even from people who've seen the same things.

You say "Foxin Hood" (great nickname, by the way), I say "Great Mouse Detective". I challenge anyone to find another animated film aimed at a young audience that featured a mouse performing a freakin' burlesque striptease.

[Paxiecrunchle]

I just wanted to talk about ergo proxy but everyone's driven off to Fetish Towntm so I'll be back later.

[Cruxador]

I just wanted to talk about ergo proxy but everyone's driven off to Fetish Towntm so I'll be back later.

Welcome to the anime thread. It's only not dead when we're not talking about anime.

[scriver]

I like Ergo Proxy! It's one of the few animus I have seen.

[Max™]

I'm not sure I buy that particular explanation, because the mechanism seems suspiciously loose. Not everyone who sees Foxin Hood becomes a furry, and not every furry saw Foxin Hood as a kid. Even if there's a correlation, there seems to be a lot of interference from elsewhere.

It's also the same story as... well, pretty much everything else. Genre preferences, favorite characters, that one thing that horrified you as a kid. Everyone's got stuff they can point to and say "that was the first time I noticed X, so maybe that's what caused it," but it's all different stuff, even from people who've seen the same things.

You say "Foxin Hood" (great nickname, by the way), I say "Great Mouse Detective". I challenge anyone to find another animated film aimed at a young audience that featured a mouse performing a freakin' burlesque striptease.

Hah!

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

[Paxiecrunchle]

I like Ergo Proxy! It's one of the few animus I have seen.

Somehow it felt too long and yet too short at the same time, perhaps if I rewatched it i would feel better?

[Max™]

Oh fuck I just figured out dude was talking about watching "an-ee-moos" rather than "an-ih-muss" which just seemed strange.

[Reelya]

I don't like watching e-ne-mas, no matter what the rest of you do.

[scriver]

I like Ergo Proxy! It's one of the few animus I have seen.

Somehow it felt too long and yet too short at the same time, perhaps if I rewatched it i would feel better?

Maybe? I never felt that way about jt myself. My main issue with it was how pretentious it gets at times (especially thinking of the library/beatnik episode - I can't even remember if there was any point to that at all except for philosophical waxing) but the cool parts made up for it.

[Paxiecrunchle]

I like Ergo Proxy! It's one of the few animus I have seen.

Somehow it felt too long and yet too short at the same time, perhaps if I rewatched it i would feel better?

Maybe? I never felt that way about jt myself. My main issue with it was how pretentious it gets at times (especially thinking of the library/beatnik episode - I can't even remember if there was any point to that at all except for philosophical waxing) but the cool parts made up for it.

 Yeah, I recall that one or two episodes felt completely pointless, like the one where our characters in the mirror versions of themselves… Or something, it's still confuses me to this day, and the one with pink in amusement park seemed pointless to me, it could just be me misremembering.

[JoshuaFH]

I doubt the "face" is marketing to a specific fetish. for that to be correct, they'd need to identify the existence of that market and do focus-group testing and the like.

We can always take a step back however, by working out where the media originated. It's a manga, so it's almost certain that the images in question are from the manga, and were picked because they're different to other series. Also, it's the manga artist's debut work. Almost certainly, he drew those that way because that's how he draws and he was encouraged to do so because it's just different to everyone else's artwork, rather than some idea of tapping into the "big teeth" fetish market.

If you want to talk about "pandering" btw then look at shows which don't stand out in any way. Those are the most likely to be pandering to their audiences. Not to be cynical but when most people say a show is "pandering" they actually mean "it has elements meant to appeal to a person who's not me". Every show is "pandering" 100% of the time. That's what fiction is for.

Not everything weird is a "fetish". If we're going to go that far let's talk about how Slenderman is a fetish. It's marketing to the fetish of tall thin men in suits with no face.

Or how the cannons on Space Battleship Yamato - totally penises, that's the only reason people like the show. Sick Yamato fans who get off on a flying penis with 7 other penises growing out of it. Sick shit!

Sometimes interpreting everything on Earth as a sexual fetish is in fact bullshit.

I actually feel really stupid Reelya, cause you're right and my odd accusation against the show was just me being outrageously stupid for seemingly no reason.

[Cruxador]

Oh fuck I just figured out dude was talking about watching "an-ee-moos" rather than "an-ih-muss" which just seemed strange.

Those are both strange. The word is spelled phonetically, it's just "anime". And it's a non-count noun. The oni weird things I've heard are  changing the a to a æ (or a as in apple) or pronouncing the i weakly as in integer. That's a really common American / anglophone accent thing though.