Why Does Anime (and its fans) Get Such a Bad Rep?

None of which are at all as well recognized as the aforementioned 3.

I made my case though as I really don't think stuff from 60's through the 80's has generally aged well at all, with some exceptions.

That's just me.

Take a good hard look at the "typical otaku" and you get a loser. Add someone who reads harem manga and V Ns for the ULTIMATE NERD. I read Negima with the full knowledge of what it would be. Someone who isn't so prepared will not know and thus will be shocked that something like this could be allowed to be printed. What might be silly for us, is rather shocking to people unfamiliar with the typical manga and anime tropes. We (I use this lightly) might have a more rich understanding of the medium we are discussing, so we look more insular.

Some would be shocked to find out that I do not in fact own a daimakura. I have 2 small figs of Negi and Asuna. 1 poster on my wall. 28 volumes of the manga, including 5 of the neo manga. I've also got other manga, including Shaman King and Dragonball. Osamu Tezuka's Buddha, the Akira manga, and a few others I can't see from where I'm sitting. I have books on Japanese. If anyone is able to talk on this, it's probably me.

Enormous, diverse and entertaining.

And that matters... How? Wasn't Nippon Animation the company that did the WMT shows?

edited 30th Oct '14 6:30:42 PM by Aldo930

A lot of manga from that time period hasn't aged that well either. As much as I enjoy Go Nagai or Osamu Tezuka, we have much better artists working in the industry now (i'm mostly just talking about art here btw, storytelling is a different matter).

Well, Sturgeon's Law.

I personally don't agree, but then, in Western comics, I prefer reading Crumb, Barks and Kurtzman over 90% of today's stuff.

Over here in the Philippines anime is evil because all anime are hentai, apparently.

Pshaa...

I doubt the law that woman passed is gonna be enforced strictly by PNP.

Add Animation Age Ghetto into the equation. With the mindset of "cartoon = for kids", and like said, with apparently those cartoons being porn, it gives a not-so-positive impression to an average not-anime-fan.

And of course, with typical negative otaku stereotype being "fat loser guys who only talks about moe", and shows that have nothing but fanservice, not helping at all.

edited 30th Oct '14 8:35:11 PM by TrueShadow1

Regarding True Shadow 1's comment: It took me a while to respect comics and animation. I watched and enjoyed Disney films as late as junior high, but stopped paying attention to them until well into my college years. Also, I was blissfully unaware that comics could be anything other than joke-a-day newspaper series. I thought that print comics were all superhero stories with no cursing, no violence with consequences, and no conclusive endings. ...Then a friend lent me a book that defied all those expectations. Over the next few years, I actively sought out comics, and learned to appreciate them.

If you want to talk with individual people who don't currently care about anime and manga, first, be polite. Don't insist that you are right, and be wiling to listen. Then consider the following:

• Ask what sort of stories they enjoy in other forms of media. Then think about those specific shows, movies, books, or games. Is there an anime-manga series that has similar aspects and strengths?
• Point them to series and movies which might fit their interests. You can't force anyone to read or watch anything. But if the product is out of print in English, or only available through a Scanlation or a Fansub, then make sure they know exactly where/how to find it.
• Think about the series that you like. You presumably understand that it has flaws, but you enjoy the things that it does well. Who would you recommend it to? Who would not like it?
• Don't apologize for fellow fans. You can't change fans' attitudes and actions. You can't force other people to live up to your standards of maturity. At most, you can talk to individual people and encourage them to keep growing.

One more thing. Demongodofchaos 2 said, "I made my case though as I really don't think stuff from 60's through the 80's has generally aged well at all, with some exceptions." There are always exceptions. Some of the titles mentioned in the Gateway Series article were created and localized over twenty five years ago. The feature film Urusei Yatsura: Beautiful Dreamer is an '80s highlight, even though it was the second of six movies based on the UY franchise! The original Devilman manga was relatively short, but it's a fascinating action-horror series that exemplifies what was possible in the '70s.

edited 2nd Nov '14 5:41:23 PM by dorkatlarge

I admittedly always had respect for the comic as a medium due to having found the great artists of the past - Harvey Kurtzman, Winsor Mc Cay, George Herriman, Walt Kelly - early in my development.

Check out Cartoon Research's Lost Planet Anime column for good anime from the 60s through 80s.

edited 2nd Nov '14 5:45:25 PM by Aldo930

Most of the reasons for this is what's been said already. The general public tend to only see the negative of anime and its fandom being popularized (such as the creepy fans, and garbage anime like ecchi and hentai) and judge anime fans and anime in general based on that. It isn't fair, and I wish more people would see that anime isn't all bad, but that's the primary reason people have such opinions.

Devilman's a good read even now, but I feel parts of it are a bit dated. Nagai's art, in particular, is just kinda wonky nowadays.

Unfortunately, anime tends to depend too much on "prettiness" to lure in viewers.

Prettiness? Quoi?

Aka too much fanservice, not enough actual substance aka plot-story.

But ya know, most of media is like that. It's just that while most countries are trying to not sexify (children), Japan's being stubborn about that aspect...

Ya know, my family and friends think I'm into those fanservice-heavy shows, which embarrasses me to no end. Anime really has to age up its fanservice.

That isn't going to happen really and it's not just about fanservice.

On one side you have Shonen shows with fanservice aimed the same age as those in the show and on the other you have older Salarymen trapped in horrible jobs wanting to fantasize about what was supposed to be the cool period of their life which in their case was ruined by 15 hour days of studying to get that horrid job.

Age up and you end up with Work Com shows that bomb like Servant X Service but on the other side was Working which aged at least 1 character down to high school age and was a hit, both had minimal fanservice.

edited 2nd Nov '14 9:13:37 PM by Memers

Meanwhile, the titular character of Super Sonico the animation is a college student and her animate show was successful in spite of that.

It also happens to be boring as hell, so it's a bit of a tradeoff.

The anime was not actually successful really especially for an 'idol' anime. The VN was successful but the PC was the photographer who took the pictures.

And 'college student' was just implied. That is the serious flaw to college animes, college is very unstructured and just end up being not seen or just based in clubs like Genshiken.

edited 3rd Nov '14 9:33:05 AM by Memers

Fanservice or not, anime writers' work can kick the ass of the "stories" you see in Western cartoons any day (I'm talking about the comedies)!

I really hate how Japan recently makes anime deliberately aimed at otaku, instead of happening to make shows with some elements of what otaku like, because it not only shows the desperate state of the industry in these economic times, but it worsens the very American viewpoint we're discussing in this topic! Funimation recently took up an anime about sexy female wrestlers. :( If you make crap, that's all that America can choose out of!!

edited 3rd Nov '14 10:35:42 AM by kyun

This is a fallacy and you know it. Anime is just as likely to fail at being funny as a western cartoon is, just in different ways. While a lot of cartoons these days rely on things like toilet humor, OTT wackiness, and people being pricks to each other for its comedy, anime relies on more perverted stuff like "oh look he accidentally grabbed her breasts and now she's gonna punch his lights out" or "uh-oh he accidentally got a panty shot" or "lol you have small breasts". They're different type of "humor", but equally immature, and equally unfunny.

I hate the line of thinking that anime is "inherently" better than western animation because of how it's structured, because it relies on its proprietors conveniently forgetting that there's just as much crap in anime as there is in western animation. The Familiar of Zero, MM!, all those sister shows. What makes any of this better than the likes of Teen Titans GO or Clarence or Uncle Grandpa?

Also the sentences in your second paragraph don't connect like they should. I don't see what Funimation licensing a show about female wrestles has to do with anime studios deliberately making otaku bait. Funimation didn't make the anime, someone else did.

edited 3rd Nov '14 12:16:21 PM by PhysicalStamina

Pandering to the Base doesn't ever end well.

To be fair, those have been elements in Western cartoons since the 90s.

What makes it better is that it's not western animation, apparently.

edited 3rd Nov '14 12:34:45 PM by Aldo930

I think it's by and large a side effect of the more outspoken fans. Fandoms all together get judged by their Vocal Minorities; Trekkies, Bronies, Twihards ^note Honestly not sure what you call Twilight fans. I can only based this on my high school experience, but the most outspoken anime fans were the antisocial kids who acted like Japanophiles.

I knew a bunch of anime fans in high school, and only one of them seemed weeb-ish. e.g., saying "nani?" when "what?" would've sufficed, always going on about it, and other things I can't remember. She was also pretty haughty at times, so take that as you will. Though, I think she was at least interested in actually learning Japanese, but I'm unsure of her reasons and method of doing so.

"Twihards" is correct.

edited 3rd Nov '14 12:59:50 PM by PhysicalStamina

I heard the phrase once so I wasn't sure if I got it right.

But yeah, there was a whole clique of kids like that so to that non-anime fans, that was what got associated with fans. It also doesn't help that online, you originally had people referring to characters as their "waifu" unironically or displaying their lolicon status as a badge with honor.

edited 3rd Nov '14 1:15:09 PM by Lionheart0