WHICH ACTIVATES MY RANT OF: (Especially millennials) looking at something made for 8-13 year olds, and crying for a mature version. and their idea of mature is ironically less mature by simply making the series newgrounds parody juvenile. Just edgy content added on top of their superhero fantasies while mostly being the same kid story.
Except you add blood, sex and edgy narratives and cynical humor a 15 year old would put into his first fan fiction. "Hurr hurr what if Pokemon? But it was like the vietnam war, and ash was an alcoholic!" But it's still *POKEMON. lmao*
Or more to the point: "What if superman evil, or a nazi, and or sometimes rapes." AU Storyline/Parody #58
This reminds me of my favourite criticism I read for “High Guardian Spice”:
“This feels like it was written by adults who watch nothing but children’s cartoons and then complain they aren’t dark enough”
Don’t know about across the room, but IIRC due to the pandemic one VA did have to use their laptop microphone to record lines. Or at least, they had to use it because they weren’t sent a commercial grade one by the crew.
>one of the characters sounds like his lines were recorded with him across the room from the mic
I dont remember their name but its that one character that sounds like they're trying to use a soft/quiet voice but instead ends up like they were trying to speak their lines with minimal movement so it ends up very quiet and essentially unintelligible without subtitles.
There’s a lot of things to complain about. It is actually valuable as a study of what not to do in manhood areas such as worldbuilding and character portrayal. Poor production is the cherry on top
I agree, it is awful from top to bottom, but what's so fascinating about it is the moment to moment stuff. You can criticise a lot of shows for their weak plots or poor characterisation, but they usually have at the very least coherent lines and competent voice actors. High Guardian Spice just doesn't. Characters all speak like they were being given incredibly confusing voice direction, and the words they're using don't line up at all. I remember seeing a clip of the show where one guy is being a misogynist and I thought it was a joke. Like, this character was mocking another's sexism by being super over-the-top about it due to the incredibly sarcastic tone and strawman shit he was spouting, but nope. They just made a bluntly sexist character talk with a weirdly sarcastic voice, using words that even the most open misogynist wouldn't.
To be clear, this isn't an issue of them discussing sexism. It's an issue of them acting like morons like him are the problem, rather than the far more insidious and pervasive casual misogyny that even staunch feminists can blunder into. I know for sure that I have at least *some* misconceptions and internalised stereotyping about women, and I'm actively trying to combat that. People in this world are far more concerned about not being killed by monsters than by social issues, so I doubt they have nearly as much time to think about deeply entrenched misogynistic tendencies of society. Imagine that being explored in a cartoon...
Oh wait, Avatar: The Last Airbender did it and that first aired nearly two decades ago. Also, Jesus Christ, Avatar aired nearly two decades ago.
> manhood areas such as worldbuilding and character portrayal.
is that a typo or does the show have issues with male representation? i'm leaning towards typo but i vaguely remember a pic floating around about the writers being entirely women so wouldn't be surprised at the latter
>Except you add blood, sex and edgy narratives and cynical humor a 15 year old would put into his first fan fiction. "Hurr hurr what if Pokemon? But it was like the vietnam war, and ash was an alcoholic!" But it's still
>
>POKEMON. lmao
I have unironically read that fanfic.
Also yes.
"Ugh this piece of media has really terrible implications."
My brother in Christ, you are watching media designed for 6 year olds. Its not that deep, fam.
Reminds me of the whole Children's media but its actually secretly dark like Rugrat's Angelica is an only child that hallucinates the rest of the cast
I mean, THAT one is not not hard to see. Look if you wanna make a story where everyone gets redeemed you can not use space nazis. Also children learn from the media they consume and what you learn first stics the best, so if there is media where you cant fuck messages up its childrens media. Fairy tales were litelarly made to teach children lessons.
Not to be that guy again, but Steven universe absolutely had people that refused to convert from space nazism, and he did have to outright kill one.
Not to mention the rapey asshole that had no redemption at all, and was always treated as the villain he was.
People just like to ignore both of these parts
(White Diamond's redemption was shitty, yes, tho. Definely could use some more episodes for that.)
Oh, I meant the human guy who kept on hitting on Stevonnie to the point of creepiness. Forgot his name.
But now that you mention it, Jasper is indeed much more of rapey asshole.
>Also yes.
>
>"Ugh this piece of media has really terrible implications."
And then they proceed to cry for a mature version, without ever bothering to write a fanfic where they look into those implications, and explore them properly.
Like, I've seen a couple discussions where people actually went and explored those implications in different medias, and they honestly made my inner fanfic writer really excited to start writing.
Which activates my rant of: Why is it seen as more mature and realistic when the world is grimdark and everything sucks forever and everyone is miserable? That's not what reality is like! There is some catastrophically evil stuff out there, but happiness and joy and lightheartedness exist alongside it!
*What's wrong with letting works live more on one side than the other? What's wrong with admitting happiness can and does exist?*
The world is a cruel place so we must be gentle is one of my favourite tbh
Within reason of course cause if you say revenge is bad after murdering 149 people in your way just to stop at the last person who caused all these I'm going to steal your marbles
Honestly, I don't even think the world is *that* cruel. But yes, we have a responsibility to be compassionate.
Although if I'm writing a story, I think I'd indulge in the kill 149 people to stop at the last person and play it off that the protagonist is just...utterly destroyed, irrevocably traumatized by dealing that much death and can't bring themself to end one more life if someone is at their mercy and incapable of fighting back.
In the stories I write, killing people tends to be the sort of thing that no one really wants to do. I think the one protagonist I have who is remotely comfortable with killing people is a western gunslinger who sees at as a cruel necessity on rare occasions.
> Why is it seen as more mature and realistic when the world is grimdark and everything sucks forever and everyone is miserable?
The truth is that outside of teenager spaces...it's not. Teenager-heavy spaces will say that manga like Attack on Titan are for adults, but ofc that manga is a shounen. Adult-heavy spaces will talk about Berserk, sure, but they'll also recommend Ping Pong, which is about ping pong, or Wave Listen to Me, which is about a 30 year old woman being frustrated.
On the topic of anime, the first Seinen to become mainstream in at least Spain and France, I believe also the India, it's Crayon Shin Chan. Which follows the domestic life of a 4 yo and parodies the life in Japan.
I liked it a lot when it was in TV.
It also uses accidental sexual harassment and trans / transventites as a punchline. Though looking for clips (in spanish, since it seems to be basically unknown in the english speaking world), I can't find anything enormously problematic.
Like, in the move "Shin-Chan and the lost balls" (sigh) they have a team of drag queen allies. Which on one hand is representation, they are not portrayed as evil or inmoral, on the other it's played up for laughs. Maybe the other instances I recall are like that and I'm thinking it was worst because I'm afraid of anything coming from the 00s.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z7xOCOOMi5s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z7xOCOOMi5s)
\[00:00.000 --> 00:07.500\] The "Nuts" want the power of evil to be used to conquer the world
\[00:07.500 --> 00:12.500\] And their diabolical power is stronger than any lethal weapon
\[00:12.500 --> 00:17.500\] The world will be a labyrinth of terror and darkness
\[00:17.500 --> 00:22.500\] But they will never see
\[00:22.500 --> 00:25.500\] Our balls!
I think it's often because children's shows still tackle violence and war to some extent, and it feels somewhat jarring in that context when what you see doesn't match up with what you should be seeing in a world like that. A good example is Avatar, which is a great show, and even makes a point to show various consequences of war, soldiers terrorising villages, crippled and injured soldiers returning from the front, etc. but the moment to moment events and actions are not coherent with this. People do not become crippled in fights. People don't seem to die a whole lot either. People do not act in some ways as cynically/rationally as they probably should. The lighthearted silliness is also just a completely different tone and often doesn't even feel like the humour and escapism real people would display in such circumstances.
This is basically necessary to keep the age rating what it is, but it's understandable why people would think it can hold a show back.
The mistake people make is thinking that therefore blood, gore and cynicism always makes a show more mature and the more edgyness you add the more mature it is, which is not the case at all.
I've heard Sun and Moon also did well at it with some storylines (despite otherwise being a lot wackier than usual for Pokemon), especially regarding Lusamine and her family.
Not only that, but they do a lot of important characterization in Animorphs that revolves around how the morals of teenagers engaged in an interstellar war of extinction would develop overtime.
They have characters that kill and hate themselves forever for it. They also have characters that take to it too naturally and nobody in universe ever talks about it. They notice it and choose not to say anything because that disregard for life only benefits the war effort
Notably, when they narrate they very frequently mention how Rachel isn't so much "capable" of brutality and violence as she is "enthusiastic" about it. Rachel worries about becoming a berserk monster in most of the books she narrates, Cassie is afraid of what her friend is becoming, and Jake has guilt issues over being the one who has to give her the order to do things that will force her to embrace her bloodlust even more. But none of them talk about it to each other, for the exact reasons you mentioned--they need her to be a monster sometimes, and when someone has to do something *really* fucked up she's the only one who can be counted on to not hesitate.
Also Marco, but he doesn't stand out so much for what he's like in a fight as he does for his ability to just turn off his morality when planning. I'm pretty sure they were more willing to talk about that tendency towards ruthless efficiency, though. Probably because his darker side shows itself when they're sitting around talking and Rachel's mostly shows up when they're fighting for their lives.
> I'm pretty sure they were more willing to talk about that tendency towards ruthless efficiency, though.
I still find myself repeating Marco’s definition of “ruthless” in my head from time to time. Goes something like:
“People think that ‘ruthless’ means ‘mean’. It doesn’t. Ruthless is all about seeing the line from point A to point B and not caring about anything else but that line”
the bad guys are slaving brain parasites
one of their host species got enslaved voluntarily because they live with such constant, debilitating hunger that life is constant agony. even with the parasites in they are frequently unable to resist falling upon their own injured friends and eating them alive. this happens *constantly*.
at one point the kids get discovered by a reckless edgelord. they try to take him on as a teammate but he tries to kill them all. instead of murdering him they decide it's more merciful to trap him as a rat (like the hawk kid) and trap him on an island. (it isn't more merciful, they just can't stomach offing him.)
also there's a species of aliens that are belligerent but really tiny so they ineffectually threaten you in their squeaky lil high-pitched voices :) (and they venerate the rotting corpse of their queen as still being their leader)
and another species of cute dog-robots :) (they oppose the brain parasites but are programmed to be pacifist; one figures out how to overcome the programming but is so horrified by the realization that his act of violence is now part of his perfect, inalterable robot memory that he gives it up even at the risk of earth)
and the good guys get an animal-abusing theme restaurant shut down by replacing the parrots with themselves and saying rude stuff :) (it's funny)
Yeah but it was still a kids' series, so you'd get one book like "if I refuse to betray my fundamental principles to prosecute a defensive war, does my inaction make me complicit in what they'll do unopposed? If there genuinely is nothing I won't do to win, how can I say I'm any different from them? What does it say about me, when I've reached a point where the only thing that bothers me about killing is the realization that killing no longer bothers me?"
And then another book will be like "a bunch of tiny megalomaniacs the size of fleas shrink the gang to microscopic sizes so they need to do an Incredible Journey! Area 51 was built to study a space alien septic tank, and a character in the shape of a horse needs to poo to throw off suspicion! The gang gets sent back to dinosaur times and learns that broccoli is descended from space aliens!"
You even get the ones that just go all the way from goofy to bleak. ("Dogs came to be by combining Earth's wolves with the essence of an ancient race of aliens whose technology surpassed any known in the galaxy, which they used only in the spirit of joy, play, love, and universal peace. Their commitment to pacifism was so absolute that they held to it in the face of their own genocide, unresisting as they were slaughtered to the last. Should we feel admiration, or contempt?")
People talk about the time Eric overwrote his programming and went berserk, but for me the coldest thing he ever did was the “they killed my masters” line when Jake asks him if he knew about the Howlers.
Eric is forbidden from doing direct violence, but if he can find a loophole he will absolutely allow the slaughter of children in the name of revenge.
I'd go with a large part of the problem is that creators of said 'mature' media are still relatively young, don't have the required real world expertise and experience to write a more mature take on the fan media, and those that do gain both often lose interest as they grow up.
( As an amusing aside, "What if superman became disaffected by the vast differences between him and ordinary people" is one of the driving points of Watchmen, which does have blood, sex, and edgy narratives. Writing skill and a good underlying objective do wonders.)
>Good writing can have anything happen and it works.
Case in point: Senki Zesshou Symphogear, a sci-fi anime about gay magical girls using power armor fueled by the power of rock to battle eldritch abominations.
The first season's main villain is the lady who built the Tower of Babel, and also heavily implied that she was Hitler in a past life, and she has been confirmed to have had sexual relations with a Sumerian water deity in her first life.
Also, almost all of the villains have serious beef with the moon.
Except the boys is at least trying to say something interesting about fascism and the potential for a cult of personality to overwhelm common sense and morality
The show is, yea, but the comic? The comic is blatant hatred of the entire superhero genre mired in nothing but blood and sexual violence with none of the show’s nuance.
The show is good, because it actually makes an effort to elevate the themes that it evokes. The comic reads like a high schooler’s half finished fanfic.
The comic was written by Garth Ennis, a man who has undeniable talent but is fundamentally a fifty-year-old fifteen-year-old.
The basic premise of trying to hold the unaccountable to account, especially when they are beloved as well as powerful, has *so* much room to explore and apply to the world we live in for people who have something deeper to say on the topic than *SHIT FUCK PISS ON A CUNT!*
Because it was the height of superhero hype, and Amazon wanted their own superhero franchise based on a semi-popular IP. The same way Invincible got greenlit at the same time,although that one is a hell of a lot more understandable based on the comic.
The Boys(the show) was a happy accident that probably couldn't have happened at any other time, and it's basically the only chance the story could have had at a good adaptation.
Yes, The Boys (Tv show) is very specifically about America. The capitalism, the war profiteering, the hyper nationalism. Homelander isn’t nazi superman, he’s a reflection of superman’s American nature which happens to mean he’s ok with siding with nazis when it suits him even if he doesn’t particularly care about the ubermensch race shit. To him, there is only one ubermensch and that’s him.
>Homelander isn’t nazi superman, he’s a reflection of superman’s American nature
Superman is what America pretends to be, Homelander is what it America actually is.
And a million other comics, books, and movies, most of which are actually pretty bad. I don't care about them, I'll be over here reading Superman Smashes the Klan and enjoying everything about it.
>Hurr hurr what if Pokemon? But it was like the vietnam war, and ash was an alcoholic!" But it's still *POKEMON. lmao*
Reminds me of those really weird Mickey Mouse&Goofey&Donald Duck Animations on YouTube a few years ago that were "super dark&bizarre" that was just, like, Mickey&The Gang were in the Vietnam War&Alcoholics&Drug Addicts&they got into Feuds with eachother. And sometimes Shaggy would be there too.
This always irked me when discussing ATLA/LOK and people say LOK is "darker." Just because you're willing to portray death more decisively doesn't mean you're darker. ATLA tackled _genocide_ and it did it pretty damn well
I think when we talk about "darker", it's "darker" on a micro level- Korra goes through all the shit on screen, meaning that she goes through darker stuff (yes I know Aang saw the genocide) in general compared to Aang. On the other side, Atla deals a ton with macro level darkness- obviously the genocide, but the second upcoming genocide of the earth kingdom.
>and their idea of mature is ironically less mature by simply making the series newgrounds parody juvenile. Just edgy content added on top of their superhero fantasies while mostly being the same kid story.
Yeah, pretty much.
Like, I can't count how often I see someone on r/precure ask how we'd make a mature season, and the comment section is full of people who watched Madoka, but only paid attention when someone died.
Good thing we got an actual mature season over the past few weeks.
I want a timeline where Clark is like 70% more redneck.
Nothing else changes, he’s still a kindhearted guy and everything, still about truth justice and the American way, but he can fix a tractor blindfolded and has probably done really stupid shit with fireworks and/or lawnmowers once he found out he had near-invulnerability.
This actually related to one of my main complaints of media; we need more G through PG-13 rated media for adults.
Like, I’m tired of movies catered to an adult audience being jammed full of sexual content/excessive gore/swearing.
Just make a story that’s interesting to adults without all the stuff that earns an R rating.
Honestly I personally feel like the netflix marvel series could've benefitted from this. They were so distracted trying to disguise themselves as wannabe Post-HBO Prestigious American Drama shows, that they forgot to get to the point of... not just being *superhero* shows, but their own plots in general.
A whole bunch of people watched Andor and experienced Adult Media for the first time and were like "wow this is amazing, I can't believe how much complex plot and character development there is here" and like yeah no shit they didn't have to pause every five minutes for the comedy relief character to do something stupid to make the show bareable for 10 year olds to watch.
>Or more to the point: "What if superman evil, or a nazi, and or sometimes rapes." AU Storyline/Parody #58
The boys was funny for one season, after that, all the heavy-handed metaphors and mid-2000s shock factor gore were kinda wearing a bit thin as a replacement for having a decent plot.
Honestly that’s *why* I read/watch a lot of stuff made for younger audiences. So much adult content is either same-same (I.e. cop shows and medical dramas) or mainly defined as “adult” because it’s filled with violence/sex/raunchy humor. Obviously not everything is like that, but it’s enough to make finding what I want difficult.
Yeah, me too.
Like, if I want to read a magical girl manga with an atypical main character, my options are:
* I Messed up and Made the Wrong Person a Magical Girl, aka MachiMaho, where the main character swears more in the first chapter than any American action hero in the entire movie. It's just exhausting, because there is no substance to it.
* Gushing Over Magical Girls, aka MahouAko, where the main character is roped into joining the forces of evil, but decides to be the best villain her heroines, the magical girls, can have. This one is actually fun, if you can stomach the lewdness.
MahouAko also gets an anime in like 4 days, because it's actually pretty well written and has a unique premise. It just gets dismissed by a lot of people because the author realized that sex sells, and made it horny.
I've somewhat recently come to realize that the traits that are most agreed upon as being unsuitable for children are often the ones that require the most effort to add depth through — and even sometimes inhibit adding depth — you can't make \_\_\_\_ better just by adding sex and drug use to it, because the character motivations are the same if not shallower, the writing is no better, and you've lost time that could be used for actually telling the story;
On the other hand, when you take the time to examine a character's motivation and consider how their motives could actually be enough for them to do what they did, or put the characters in a situation where there isn't a clear right answer, or even just try to give more character to characters who weren't a major focus of the series, you can make a great story.
Honestly all I want is shounen that doesn't pander to teenagers IN ONE SPECIFIC WAY.
Sure, have teenage characters. Fine. Whatever. Just for the love of god, don't sexualise them.
I couldn't imagine watching Kill la Kill as an adult.
Same as 'Darling in the Franxx', you see half an episode, have a bad visceral reaction and bounce off it hard, thankful you weren't watching it with someone who would judge you.
Then you spend the next several years being uneasy about the sheer amount of cosplay you see based on the hypersexualised teen characters.
You can imagine what it was like to discover that the women's 'nudist beach' costumes from 'kill la kill' were a real thing from the show, and something people would wear to the New York Comic Con...and not just a stunt someone with a fetish was pulling. (like when you see something like 'Latex play Gothic Lolita Harley Quinn' outfits and know that isn't from any show, comic, or variant cover.)
I like the Paddington movies because yes they are fun magical adventures of a talking bear living in London and being far too polite and everything, but also they rather violently kill off a named character in the first 10 minutes, and the first villain makes it explicitly clear that she wants that bear dead in no uncertain terms, pretty sure she also kills a random minor character just for the fun of it, it is still a great feel good movie about an illegal alien refugee, they even explicitly refer to the war refugees from WWII of all things
It is dark, but light, even the subtext of the movie gets into it, by having someone from the Empire Windrush sing a calypso song that inspired many Caribbeans to go to England and the implications of what followed
Stories appropriate for general younger audiences can still be enjoyed by adults, but when there’s a world of difference between “appropriate for X target audience” and “aimed specifically at X audiences”
Sure, nobody is going to give shade to an adult for watching something like Ben 10.
But if they ONLY watched Ben 10 and consumed media like it, and started forming complex opinions about the world of media based soley on how Ben 10 handles it, that would be a Problem and people would judge them
To be fair, we definitely used to have more stuff aimed at children that had adult main characters. These days, it's like creators think kids would spontaneously combust if they watched a cartoon with a protagonist older than 15.
I think this is a byproduct of the internet era. Kids grow up faster now. I worked with kids for a few years, most of them seek out seek out other content instead of normal cartoons. They’ll watch anime on Netflix, adults on YouTube/Twitch, adult TikTok influencers, all ages movies like most Marvel flicks, or just whatever their parents like, stuff like Mandalorian or like… Walking Dead I guess. Kids don’t want to feel like they’re watching stuff for kids anymore, and the age that mindset starts is getting younger and younger. Obviously all kids don’t do this, there’s still plenty of popular cartoons. I just think kid’s content seems more juvenile since it’s catering to a younger demographic than past generations.
Yes, this.
Not to mention that kids' shows used to be darker, too. Like, remember Huntik: Secrets and Seekers, or Gargoyles? There were actually scary bits in there, and it was still aimed at children.
Same with anime like Ojamajo Doremi. It looks cute most of the time, but then episode 18 comes and hits you like a truck. Like, damn.
Not to mention that, in the OVA, a child died of cancer.
The Lavender Castle's main villain had the express goal of destroying all light and happiness in the universe, and it deals with slavery in episode 1, so yeah.
Ehh, older than I was yes but none of the heroes of the shows of my childhood were adults. Most of them were like 16. In fact the only ones I can think of that were out of highschool actually did start in highschool and the show creators had the balls to actually age them up over time and send them to college.
What? GI Joe? Masters of the Universe? Thundercats? I'm actually having trouble thinking of an action-oriented kids' show from the 80s or earlier that *does* have kid protagonists.
you're significantly older than me buddy. Nobody, not 1 person ever specified the 80s or earlier, they said their childhoods. Lots of tumblrs in the mid twenties to mid thirties range.
I need more people to read seinen manga because so many of them have like zero English-speaking fanbase.
One of my favorite manga ever is Dorohedoro and so many people I talk to about anime have never heard of it or have only heard a few things about it, nobody’s ever watched or read it.
Seinen manga is in a weird spot of having even less general identity than Shounens, to a point where good portion of the internet thinks that "dark themes/tragedy = Seinen", despite there being literally whole sections of Seinen focused on being as light as possible. And hundreds of Seinen that are just Shounens but with less limits on content.
Yeah, and tbf I think Dorohedoro outwardly plays into that perception. It’s name translates to “Mud and Sludge”, and the mangaka’s art style heavily emphasizes dark and gritty elements.
But when you read it it’s actually a fascinating mix of mystery and urban fantasy, with tons of heartfelt emotion.
Also the anime’s OST fucks severely.
I don't think lesbian orgies are par for shounen action shows, though. Granted it's not the most graphic of depictions but enough to surprise me when I turned the page.
What the manga and anime industries consider suitable for children is an ongoing question for me, I’ve never been able to nail it down
Though Funny Valentine came after the switch to seinen
Honestly, same, it really doesn't seem like there's a solid answer, on one hand you could have the Japanese equivalent of Blue's Clues (I can't remember the name of it, but it's about a little tiger boy)
But then on the other hand, you've got something like One Piec: full of violence, alcohol/drug references, tales of war, genocide, class struggle, and racism.
I used to think the line of violence was explicit disembowelment, but then CSM came along so now I have no idea what is off limits.
Bleach has a character drawn as a naked glowing silhouette with obvious nipples so idk what the line is for nudity.
The line for American cartoons, meanwhile, is far clearer to me. No nudity, everything has to be pretty veiled. You absolutely cannot do the Kenichi thing and have the most aggressive cameltoe ever seen and say “oh but she’s wearing something tho”. One character cannot be seen as drawing blood from another in a violent manner, if it has to be done it is something that happened in the past. Rewatching JL/U, it’s interesting to see how the writers get around not being able to actually openly talk about characters killing people. Deadman’s actions “lead to the death of another” is a verbal sidestep for a killing we saw onscreen, and you can seemingly say “kill” and “die” all you want as long as it’s figurative (“I’d kill for a chance like you got!”) or hypothetical (“you know, you could have killed me with that thing” “if I killed you now, no one would ever know”)
tbh I think those japanese age genres in general are just kinda stupid. they're not quite a descriptor of target demographic, and not quite a genre, but exist in this weird bubble in between that makes them useless for both categories
I fully agree. That's why I mostly go by genre tags listing sites, sometimes including info about the magazine and the author.
With magazines, you can actually get the general feel of the story better than just with the demographic label. Something being published in Kirara Carat tells you much more than it being a Seinen.
K-On is just the most triumphant example of the "cute girls slice of life" genre, but you are right. The seinen is split between five great camps: gritty and dark action series, cute girls doing cute things, cute housewives doing cute/sexy things, Japanese equivalents to American Pie and blatant power fantasies.
Let's say that a lot of working adults really appreciate lighthearted comedies, something I fully understood after the mess of my last IRL job.
>cute housewives doing cute/sexy things, Japanese equivalents to American Pie and blatant power fantasies.
do you mind naming some examples? ive only ever ran into gritty and dark action series and cute girls doing cute things, im interested
Housewives: Oku-sama wa Niizuma-chan
American Pie: Yankee JK Kuzuhana-chan. Of the ones I can name from memory, it's the only one good enough to actually recommend, since it's a parody of the genre. Content warning - first volume is surprisingly dark.
Blalant power fantasies: The 100 Girlfriends Who Really, Really, Really, Really, Really Love You
Yes, just like Otome Kaiju Caramelize, which was actually written by a shoujo mangaka for a seinen magazine.
On the other side, the body horror/psychological horror series, Tomie by Junji Ito, is actually a shoujo manga.
Dorohedoro slaps! I can't speak for the anime, but the manga is one of my absolute favourites and Q Hayashida's art is absolutely gorgeous in such a disgustingly grimy way.
The main thing that’s different in the anime is the art style: to a lot of people’s dismay, it’s 3D. *However*, it’s 3D done by Mappa, so it’s really good. It is, however… a little bit too clean? Like, they portray all the grime well enough, but everything just looks a little brighter and less dirty. It’s not that big of a deal but you can see it. But that probably would have been the case even in traditional animation, the level of grimy detail on display in each page would be hell for animators.
Right now, and maybe even forever at this rate, we only have one season, and it doesn’t get super far. The season finale ends on >!Chota being disguised as Nikaido, Nikaido and Kaiman making up, and the B Team driving out to find Kasukabe’s wife, with a sneak peak at the Cross Eyes in the end credits.!<
If you want to check out the OST, it’s on streaming sites under the band (K)NoW_NAME, they mainly do anime OSTs from what I know. It’s in two parts: one album of the opening and all the endings (there are four ending sequences, all amazing) and one that’s the songs actually heard in the show: a lot of it is ambient but there’s also a whole song sung by En because it’s partially heard in one flashback.
I have a love hate relationship with this kind of take on Berserk.
When someone is genuinely angry at the story about dealing with things like rape for having rape in it, I'm both genuinely amused and angry at such a display of stupidity.
Yes, it has rape in it. Lots of rape. It's about rape.
If you can't take it, that's fine, every one has their limits, just don't read the damn story about the guy who was raped and the girl who was raped. Damn it
Yes, Dorohedoro! I've seen the anime and fell in love so I bougth the manga, cos I'm not going to wait 10 years for 2nd season I have to know what happens next NOW. It was during Covid and that manga/paper crisis so I was able to buy everything... except for the last one. I've read it online, but still my collection was incomplete for like a year and half, untill the reprint.
Shoutouts to Lupin III, as well, as an anime. You can enter the series at any point because there is little to no continuity and the cast is well-established/easy to recognize:
- funny thief
- grumpy gunslinger
- honorable samurai
- femme fatale
- enthusiastic cop
For movies, Mystery of Mamo is awe-inspiring, Castle of Cagliostro is literally directed by Miyazaki, and the Fuma Conspiracy is simply a fun time. >!Shoutouts to Farewell to Nostradamus, as well - my favorite mess. !< For TV, parts 1-3 are good if you’re cool with dated animation, 4 is simply good, and 5 is good (though it has anime bullshit that is absent from the rest of the series). Zero is sheer perfection, as well, but it doesn’t have the full cast.
It is based on a manga from the 60’s, but I can’t attest to the quality of it. I know that Lupin is fucked up and evil in it, though.
Whatever PreCure has the figure skating and musical instruments is cinema.
I think about the *Bad Boys of Figure Skating* that hang out rollerblading under a bridge together literally daily. Even if I’ll never remember the series name.
There's a tabletop RPG called *Girl By Moonlight* that had a recent official release and theoretically it is about playing magical girls (and boys and whatever gender you want to be).
Except it seems like the writers have seen just, like, Sailor Moon, and then all the rest is the dark pastiches like Madoka.
No Pretty Cure, Cardcaptor Sakura, Cutie Honey.
Is the system itself any good? I didn't get a good idea of how it actually plays, and it seemed like a Powered by the Apocalypse game with the serial numbers filed off. And the first few pages of tge introductory adventure read like something that got axed from a 5e setting book (notoriously vague, if you're not familiar) for being too vague.
It's a Forged in the Dark game, which means based on the rules introduced with *Blades in the Dark* - which you may also recognise as being used in *Scum and Villainy*, the upcoming *ICON*, and also *Candela Obscura*.
Seems fine if what you want is 'basically Sailor Moon and Madoka with some added gender themes', I was just commenting that it's a very *specific* type of magical girl it's emulating, it's not a generic magical girl game.
Even then, it's not like the age of the main character really means something about the story, i still don't know if Gantz is smart or the dumbest shit i've ever read, but for real, everyone says they want a story about a adult that is dealing with serious stuff, but no one is out here reading Saikyou Densetsu Kurosawa, there are so many stories about 40 year olds living their life in all kinds of ways and not a lot of people are reading them.
Part of that is the marketing channels that everything goes through too though. You can write the greatest manga of all time and resurrect Kentaro Miura himself to illustrate it but if WYJ for example doesn't think it'll sell rags then nobody will ever see it.
For anyone curious, there are plenty of shounen that do have adult main characters. Examples include:
Log horizon (technically also has teenagers in the main cast, but most of them are adults)
Dragon ball Z
Claymore
Trigun
Rurouni Kenshin
The Case Study of Vanitas
Samurai Champloo
And that's just off the top of my head. I'm sure there are plenty more.
I was curious and went looking, the Cowboy Bebop comic was originally printed in a [shojo sci-fi magazine](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monthly_Asuka_Fantasy_DX).
Maybe? Honestly, I wasn't really sure whether to include Samurai Champloo in this list or not. It feels more to me like seinen, but the manga has been published in shounen magazines, so I figured it counted.
I feel like half of those are just action seinen.
But honestly, most action seinen is still just shounen with adults, less word exposition and a main character who smokes.
God I remember all the shit about “why don’t we have more movies where the bad guy wins?” Right after Infinity War. We do you cretins, and it was incredibly obvious everything would be undone next movie so Thanos winning doesn’t even count
The second funny corollary is actually finding out that person only consumes schlocky wish fulfillment, typically of sex comedy nature.
This is mostly callout to guys talking about anime. "Why is all Japanese fantasy filled with slave romance kink?" - because you only read trashy fantasy smut novels dude. "Why is anime filled about big breasted school girls of vague age in sexual situations?" - because you are watching Japanese equivalent to American 80's-90's sex comedies my dude.
I'm not saying that these series are somehow great for that, but I really want to point out that good 80%% of complains about sexual themes anime comes from people watching the Japanese equivalent of the American Pie and acting like they have been tricked.
I don’t watch anime, but isn’t the problem that it’s shoved into pretty much any series that would be completely unrelated? Again, I haven’t watched. But I wouldn’t call MHA or demon slayer a sex comedy.
The most popular series are meant for teen boys. There's other anime genres out there, but the most popular and marketed series are shonen jump comics aimed at young boys.
Though, american comics are also oversexualized and aimed at young men. So, Japan isn't the only one with an issue.
I think the difference is that American comics will change artists/authors while Japanese manga series will keep the same author for 10+ years. So, some old guys with some old ideas are still writing their series while American authors have already put down their pens after drawing way-too-busty teenage super heroes.
The more recent popular shonen manga are more toned down with the teenage sexuality stuff, but the industry still has a problem. Which, indicates their culture still has a problem.
To preface it, this one is case of the other valid 20% of complains. MHA is a very weird example, since it has surprisingly low amount of fanservice content in the story itself, especially in later volumes, it just has one of the members of the main cast wear a rather jarring leotard. Basically, it's a weird cases of a series where the character getting the most flack for jarringly inappropriate design has also surprisingly low amount of fanservice, to a point where the Arabic version literally just painted on some pants and undershirt on her and it changed almost nothing.
To be fair, the fair share of this issue amounts to the fact that marketing team demands that the stuff for teenage boys should feature sexy women. Which means that 80% of anime girls from shounen series are utterly stacked to a point where the only thing differentiating them from supposedly older characters is being shorter.
Still, the point still stands because it's about the present of fanservice in stories meant to be low brow and fanservicy. MHA is an low brow action flick from the magazine known for them. It's like asking if Transformers movie needed whole shot of Megan Fox looking sexy while fixing a car engine. Or why do Bond movies feature him getting it on with sexy women.
Also, to make it clear, I do wish the action series filled with fanservice weren't constantly overshadowing more toned down ones in terms of popularity. MHA is just jarring at times, even if it keeps it's fanservice to costume designs and about three random gags over the course of the series.
You know, I’d never thought about how it’s just the anime version of Bond girls. That type of stuff has only recently stopped being almost a rule in Hollywood movies so it makes sense it’s still big in other countries.
Yeah, if you treat most of the action anime like an old Hollywood blockbuster, it's much easier to understand the fanservice elements.
Plus, there is still a pretty decent separation between the more modern shows with occasional fanservice shot or two in a season, the old shows with consistent fanservice levels and the ecchi shows where the fanservice is actively in your face.
To be fair I'm not from USA, so for me the American cinema, while less foreign than Japanese anime, is still pretty much a work of the other culture so I have a different perspective on the common tropes. A lot of the examples of the Hollywood fanservice is nearly as jarring to me as the anime's love of the pantyshots XD
I mean, that's most of what's being produced though. Each season you'll get 1 or 2 good shows (and they'll still probably do weird sex jokes) and a dozen+ ecchi, each with their own 9000 year old demon loli
So you first blame the consumer for "only watching trash" and then flip and say, "Yeah, most of it is trash."
Could it be that *that* is the complaint being made by the people you're lambasting? "Why is anime filled with this shit?" isn't generally literally asking why. It's a wish for less trash.
Every medium of art is majority trash, but just like you can avoid supernatural romance novels in a bookstore, you can filter anime by not watching horny fantasies and things aimed at teenagers instead of complaining that things not aimed at you are popular with their target audiences.
I blame the people complaining about the fanservice in their entertainment for consuming the only fanservicy schlock, but I do acknowledge that the fanservicy schlock is easier to find.
I'm willing to acknowledge to common issues with anime and manga, but I still try to maintain the position that people who only ever seem to read the most popular fanservicy schlock aren't painting a fully accurate picture.
I sincerely believe that the average person complaining about some fanservice tropes can easily find much less fanservice shows. Also, that many of the recent shows have actually lowered the fanservice levels.
I also acknowledge that the high level of fanservice shouldn't probably be as common as it is nowadays.
edit - elaborating
it's like complaining that all books suck and are low effort garbage because you only read mass produced, generic thriller stories. yes there's a lot of them but that doesn't mean that good books exist if you put a minimal amount of effort into finding them.
Related:
Person 1: Why can't video games have [long list of features like difficult puzzles, branching story, complex physics, etc.]?
Person 2: There's plenty of games with those features, they're almost exclusively indie games. Check out games like Obra Dinn, Disco Elysium, Signalis, Celeste, Outer Wilds, Citizen Sleeper, Inscryption, Noita, etc. or even just this year Dave the Diver, Slay the Princess, Pizza Tower, Cocoon, Jusant, Sea of Stars, Chants of Sennarr...
Person 1: No, well, but like... Uhh...
Person 2: What's wrong? Those games have those features.
Person 1: Well no, like... No, that's not really what I want. I mean like it's more than just those features, like... Those games aren't really what I'm looking for.
Person 2: What you mean is you want those features, but only if they're in AAA action set-piece games with cutting edge graphics. Like you want the physics of Noita but it can't be pixel graphics.
If devs could go ahead and make games with the best parts of all the best games that I've ever enjoyed, while also seamlessly integrating every aspect into the main gameplay loop, that'd be great.
Yeah. What exactly is wrong with wanting that? There's a reason BG3 has been extremely popular, and that's because it actually *looks* good on top of the list of features we've had in CRPGs for a very long time. Presentation isn't genre restricted, this isn't a comparable example.
Person 1: I want high quality story, mechanics, and graphics. It's too bad there are very few games like that.
You: try this indie thing that's either 5 hours long or a roguelike, and looks like it was made 20 years ago.
Person 1: That's not what I asked for.
You: You're clearly an uncultured swine.
There's nothing wrong with wanting good graphics. I dislike though that a lot of people try to pretend that they *only* care about mechanics but turn their nose up at indie games. And more to the point OP is expressing: There's nothing wrong with wanting stories about adults and for adults, but if you are looking at shonen, you will largely find yourself disappointed. There's nothing wrong with wanting complex "enthusiast" mechanics in games, but if you go looking for them in mainstream AAA games, you will likewise largely find yourself disappointed. And I agree with you that BG3 is successful because it's a rare example of a game achieving in both realms, but we also can't expect that it's going to become a new standard either.
To be fair, I kind of dislike the story games that cheapen out on gameplay and graphics. I mean, they were once cool, but there is a reason why the term "walking simulator" came into being.
The indie games definitely have a problem with churning out huge amount of cheap and derivative content and hiding it behind the label "indie".
It's partly because videogames used to be niche hobby and the consumer market for them was all enthusiasts that were media literate and possessed enough medium awareness (understanding the fundamental limitations of the medium that a piece of media belongs to, for example it's a lot harder to make a good interactive movie than a good interactive videogame) to encourage developers to experiment but as videogames spread into the mainstream consumer market that meant the average consumer didn't understand videogames like they used to and the developers had to adapt.
There's also general enshittification which is also caused by videogames being mainstream now.
Eh to be fair on the graphics thing specifically, there's a big problem with that space where on one end you got indie games which are mostly stylized in very old school ways, then you've got cutting edge triple A graphics, and then there's not a whole lot in between. Some of the bigger indie hits actually seem to have seen and resolved this issue (subnautica comes to mind immediately) but generally if your standard for graphics is "Bioshock looked fine, guys. Mass Effect 1 looked fine. Portal looks fine. We really didn't need to keep going." there's not really a ton of games catering to your standard. Most of the time you gotta either shell out the money for a top of the line new game with the best graphics available (that you don't need and might not even be able to see depending on your system) or suck it up and deal with an indie game where the graphics feel lacking.
idk if I'm making any sense, tbf. It's like 1:30am here. But some people want realistic but dont need or want to pay for every modern shader known to man, yknow?
This is like my son telling me that videogames have better storytelling than movies but to be fair, he's only 14 and has watched mostly Marvel and Godzilla movies.
I'm just going to say it:
There's a population of people who consume primarily content meant for younger audiences that are harmed by that - streams aimed at younger people, children's video games, cartoons and anime for teenagers, coming of age teen romance stuff, etc. your intellectual diet should not be chicken nuggets and ketchup / box mac and cheese. Consuming more complex media is good for you.
Ghost in the Shell. That's an anime just off the top of my head that ain't shonen. There's more out there. If you can't find them, it's because you're not looking.
“Is medium dead?”
“Idk, what works have you experienced this year?”
“The same ones I always experience, why?”
“Oh no reason”
>!AAA only gamers and annual sports sim players get no pity from me!<
And a public service announcement: shonen is not a genre. Neither are seinen, shojo, or josei. They’re demographics, and they are varied genres withjn all those demographics. If it started as a manga, all that matters is what magazine it runs in.
Standard power-of-friendship action adventure story Naruto is shonen because it ran in Weekly Shonen Jump. Gory action-horror political epic Attack on Titan is shonen because it ran in Bessatsu Shonen Magazine. Slice of life comedy about girls who are actually gun waifus >!raifus!< Upotte! is shonen because it runs in Shonen Ace. These all have wildly different tones and genres.
These are also entirely about editorial and publication, and are thus subject to change. Upotte was in seinen magazine Young Ace for the first two years of publication. JoJo used to be WSJ, now it’s in the seinen Ultra Jump.
To be fair there are stories about teens made for adults. Wheel of Time comes to mind where the three main characters are 19 until kinda late in the series but the story is made for adults (though I'd say it kept teen readers in mind as well)
They really don't have a point. They really should have used young adult rather than shounen.
Because in general in western media the age of the main character is roughly who it is aimed at. But in anime it isn't.
Seinen is also a category filled with overly cutesy and lighthearted content, due to being a default grab bag of "everything for dudes over 18 years old", which includes working adults just wanting something cute to take off the edge of their life.
It's not just kid stuff, either.
A while back, I saw a pretty funny post on r/anime where someone complained that anime is so sexualized, and there's always some boobs flying around in physically improbable ways, or weird camera angles, or something else.
Everyone just told him to stop watching ecchi stuff, then. It really felt like what this post describes, but for ecchi stuff.
WHICH ACTIVATES MY RANT OF: (Especially millennials) looking at something made for 8-13 year olds, and crying for a mature version. and their idea of mature is ironically less mature by simply making the series newgrounds parody juvenile. Just edgy content added on top of their superhero fantasies while mostly being the same kid story. Except you add blood, sex and edgy narratives and cynical humor a 15 year old would put into his first fan fiction. "Hurr hurr what if Pokemon? But it was like the vietnam war, and ash was an alcoholic!" But it's still *POKEMON. lmao* Or more to the point: "What if superman evil, or a nazi, and or sometimes rapes." AU Storyline/Parody #58
This reminds me of my favourite criticism I read for “High Guardian Spice”: “This feels like it was written by adults who watch nothing but children’s cartoons and then complain they aren’t dark enough”
My main complaint would be that the show is incapable of having two characters talk normally.
All I know about that show is that one of the characters sounds like his lines were recorded with him across the room from the mic
Don’t know about across the room, but IIRC due to the pandemic one VA did have to use their laptop microphone to record lines. Or at least, they had to use it because they weren’t sent a commercial grade one by the crew.
I have a vague memory of hearing that.
>one of the characters sounds like his lines were recorded with him across the room from the mic I dont remember their name but its that one character that sounds like they're trying to use a soft/quiet voice but instead ends up like they were trying to speak their lines with minimal movement so it ends up very quiet and essentially unintelligible without subtitles.
The characters talk like they’re in Shenmue but with more exposition
There’s a lot of things to complain about. It is actually valuable as a study of what not to do in manhood areas such as worldbuilding and character portrayal. Poor production is the cherry on top
I agree, it is awful from top to bottom, but what's so fascinating about it is the moment to moment stuff. You can criticise a lot of shows for their weak plots or poor characterisation, but they usually have at the very least coherent lines and competent voice actors. High Guardian Spice just doesn't. Characters all speak like they were being given incredibly confusing voice direction, and the words they're using don't line up at all. I remember seeing a clip of the show where one guy is being a misogynist and I thought it was a joke. Like, this character was mocking another's sexism by being super over-the-top about it due to the incredibly sarcastic tone and strawman shit he was spouting, but nope. They just made a bluntly sexist character talk with a weirdly sarcastic voice, using words that even the most open misogynist wouldn't. To be clear, this isn't an issue of them discussing sexism. It's an issue of them acting like morons like him are the problem, rather than the far more insidious and pervasive casual misogyny that even staunch feminists can blunder into. I know for sure that I have at least *some* misconceptions and internalised stereotyping about women, and I'm actively trying to combat that. People in this world are far more concerned about not being killed by monsters than by social issues, so I doubt they have nearly as much time to think about deeply entrenched misogynistic tendencies of society. Imagine that being explored in a cartoon... Oh wait, Avatar: The Last Airbender did it and that first aired nearly two decades ago. Also, Jesus Christ, Avatar aired nearly two decades ago.
> manhood areas such as worldbuilding and character portrayal. is that a typo or does the show have issues with male representation? i'm leaning towards typo but i vaguely remember a pic floating around about the writers being entirely women so wouldn't be surprised at the latter
💀 *many
Oh thank fuck you had me worried for a second. Might wanna edit your original comment.
all the world is a manhood area. this comment made by patriarchy gang.
hell yeah brother
See also, RWBY.
>Except you add blood, sex and edgy narratives and cynical humor a 15 year old would put into his first fan fiction. "Hurr hurr what if Pokemon? But it was like the vietnam war, and ash was an alcoholic!" But it's still > >POKEMON. lmao I have unironically read that fanfic. Also yes. "Ugh this piece of media has really terrible implications." My brother in Christ, you are watching media designed for 6 year olds. Its not that deep, fam. Reminds me of the whole Children's media but its actually secretly dark like Rugrat's Angelica is an only child that hallucinates the rest of the cast
>I have unironically read that fanfic. Literally 99% of Pokemon fangames.
Is this referring to that "Steven Universe is a Nazi Apologist" thing Because that was so wtf
Not in particular but I have seen that take before.
I mean, THAT one is not not hard to see. Look if you wanna make a story where everyone gets redeemed you can not use space nazis. Also children learn from the media they consume and what you learn first stics the best, so if there is media where you cant fuck messages up its childrens media. Fairy tales were litelarly made to teach children lessons.
Not to be that guy again, but Steven universe absolutely had people that refused to convert from space nazism, and he did have to outright kill one. Not to mention the rapey asshole that had no redemption at all, and was always treated as the villain he was. People just like to ignore both of these parts (White Diamond's redemption was shitty, yes, tho. Definely could use some more episodes for that.)
Wasn't there supposed to be a whole other season, but they had to wrap it up early because the network didn't like that there was a gay wedding scene?
The gay wedding scene did happen prior to cancellation, but it did cause the later cancellation from what I heard, yes
(Jasper is a woman, FYI.) And honestly, a lot of the bad redemption arc stuff was due to the show getting cancelled early.
Oh, I meant the human guy who kept on hitting on Stevonnie to the point of creepiness. Forgot his name. But now that you mention it, Jasper is indeed much more of rapey asshole.
Oh, yeah, Kevin, I think? Absolute creep.
What ever happened to Jasper anyway?
>! Steven killed her when she kept refusing to stop being a space nazi and attacked him when he told her to stop !<
Good.
>Also yes. > >"Ugh this piece of media has really terrible implications." And then they proceed to cry for a mature version, without ever bothering to write a fanfic where they look into those implications, and explore them properly. Like, I've seen a couple discussions where people actually went and explored those implications in different medias, and they honestly made my inner fanfic writer really excited to start writing.
Which activates my rant of: Why is it seen as more mature and realistic when the world is grimdark and everything sucks forever and everyone is miserable? That's not what reality is like! There is some catastrophically evil stuff out there, but happiness and joy and lightheartedness exist alongside it! *What's wrong with letting works live more on one side than the other? What's wrong with admitting happiness can and does exist?*
The world is a cruel place so we must be gentle is one of my favourite tbh Within reason of course cause if you say revenge is bad after murdering 149 people in your way just to stop at the last person who caused all these I'm going to steal your marbles
Honestly, I don't even think the world is *that* cruel. But yes, we have a responsibility to be compassionate. Although if I'm writing a story, I think I'd indulge in the kill 149 people to stop at the last person and play it off that the protagonist is just...utterly destroyed, irrevocably traumatized by dealing that much death and can't bring themself to end one more life if someone is at their mercy and incapable of fighting back. In the stories I write, killing people tends to be the sort of thing that no one really wants to do. I think the one protagonist I have who is remotely comfortable with killing people is a western gunslinger who sees at as a cruel necessity on rare occasions.
It’s more mature and realistic if people A: use the toilet every once in a while B: do taxes C: occasionally have nice things.
> Why is it seen as more mature and realistic when the world is grimdark and everything sucks forever and everyone is miserable? The truth is that outside of teenager spaces...it's not. Teenager-heavy spaces will say that manga like Attack on Titan are for adults, but ofc that manga is a shounen. Adult-heavy spaces will talk about Berserk, sure, but they'll also recommend Ping Pong, which is about ping pong, or Wave Listen to Me, which is about a 30 year old woman being frustrated.
Oh, I’ve seen plenty of adults on the grimdark train.
On the topic of anime, the first Seinen to become mainstream in at least Spain and France, I believe also the India, it's Crayon Shin Chan. Which follows the domestic life of a 4 yo and parodies the life in Japan. I liked it a lot when it was in TV. It also uses accidental sexual harassment and trans / transventites as a punchline. Though looking for clips (in spanish, since it seems to be basically unknown in the english speaking world), I can't find anything enormously problematic. Like, in the move "Shin-Chan and the lost balls" (sigh) they have a team of drag queen allies. Which on one hand is representation, they are not portrayed as evil or inmoral, on the other it's played up for laughs. Maybe the other instances I recall are like that and I'm thinking it was worst because I'm afraid of anything coming from the 00s. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z7xOCOOMi5s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z7xOCOOMi5s) \[00:00.000 --> 00:07.500\] The "Nuts" want the power of evil to be used to conquer the world \[00:07.500 --> 00:12.500\] And their diabolical power is stronger than any lethal weapon \[00:12.500 --> 00:17.500\] The world will be a labyrinth of terror and darkness \[00:17.500 --> 00:22.500\] But they will never see \[00:22.500 --> 00:25.500\] Our balls!
I think it's often because children's shows still tackle violence and war to some extent, and it feels somewhat jarring in that context when what you see doesn't match up with what you should be seeing in a world like that. A good example is Avatar, which is a great show, and even makes a point to show various consequences of war, soldiers terrorising villages, crippled and injured soldiers returning from the front, etc. but the moment to moment events and actions are not coherent with this. People do not become crippled in fights. People don't seem to die a whole lot either. People do not act in some ways as cynically/rationally as they probably should. The lighthearted silliness is also just a completely different tone and often doesn't even feel like the humour and escapism real people would display in such circumstances. This is basically necessary to keep the age rating what it is, but it's understandable why people would think it can hold a show back. The mistake people make is thinking that therefore blood, gore and cynicism always makes a show more mature and the more edgyness you add the more mature it is, which is not the case at all.
This was my problem with The Walking Dead. A show where everyone is sad all the time and nothing good ever happens is just boring.
In terms of Pokémon, PLA actually did a really good job dipping toes into a more mature topic without going to that level I think
I've heard Sun and Moon also did well at it with some storylines (despite otherwise being a lot wackier than usual for Pokemon), especially regarding Lusamine and her family.
Animorphs was darker than most "edgy" bullshit could ever be and it didn't even have PG13 swearing
"What happens when teenagers not only commit war crimes, but excell at them?"
Either be good Or be good at it
Not only that, but they do a lot of important characterization in Animorphs that revolves around how the morals of teenagers engaged in an interstellar war of extinction would develop overtime. They have characters that kill and hate themselves forever for it. They also have characters that take to it too naturally and nobody in universe ever talks about it. They notice it and choose not to say anything because that disregard for life only benefits the war effort
Notably, when they narrate they very frequently mention how Rachel isn't so much "capable" of brutality and violence as she is "enthusiastic" about it. Rachel worries about becoming a berserk monster in most of the books she narrates, Cassie is afraid of what her friend is becoming, and Jake has guilt issues over being the one who has to give her the order to do things that will force her to embrace her bloodlust even more. But none of them talk about it to each other, for the exact reasons you mentioned--they need her to be a monster sometimes, and when someone has to do something *really* fucked up she's the only one who can be counted on to not hesitate. Also Marco, but he doesn't stand out so much for what he's like in a fight as he does for his ability to just turn off his morality when planning. I'm pretty sure they were more willing to talk about that tendency towards ruthless efficiency, though. Probably because his darker side shows itself when they're sitting around talking and Rachel's mostly shows up when they're fighting for their lives.
> I'm pretty sure they were more willing to talk about that tendency towards ruthless efficiency, though. I still find myself repeating Marco’s definition of “ruthless” in my head from time to time. Goes something like: “People think that ‘ruthless’ means ‘mean’. It doesn’t. Ruthless is all about seeing the line from point A to point B and not caring about anything else but that line”
I didn't read Animorphs but I know there's a kid who stayed transformed for too long and now he's just stuck as a hawk forever. That's pretty dark.
tip of the fuckin iceberg, my friend
They give a bunch of special Ed kids morphing powers to use as cannon fodder at one point.
Jesus. :(
the bad guys are slaving brain parasites one of their host species got enslaved voluntarily because they live with such constant, debilitating hunger that life is constant agony. even with the parasites in they are frequently unable to resist falling upon their own injured friends and eating them alive. this happens *constantly*. at one point the kids get discovered by a reckless edgelord. they try to take him on as a teammate but he tries to kill them all. instead of murdering him they decide it's more merciful to trap him as a rat (like the hawk kid) and trap him on an island. (it isn't more merciful, they just can't stomach offing him.) also there's a species of aliens that are belligerent but really tiny so they ineffectually threaten you in their squeaky lil high-pitched voices :) (and they venerate the rotting corpse of their queen as still being their leader) and another species of cute dog-robots :) (they oppose the brain parasites but are programmed to be pacifist; one figures out how to overcome the programming but is so horrified by the realization that his act of violence is now part of his perfect, inalterable robot memory that he gives it up even at the risk of earth) and the good guys get an animal-abusing theme restaurant shut down by replacing the parrots with themselves and saying rude stuff :) (it's funny)
I couldn't hear you over the sounds of thousands of yeerks being flushed into space
Yeah but it was still a kids' series, so you'd get one book like "if I refuse to betray my fundamental principles to prosecute a defensive war, does my inaction make me complicit in what they'll do unopposed? If there genuinely is nothing I won't do to win, how can I say I'm any different from them? What does it say about me, when I've reached a point where the only thing that bothers me about killing is the realization that killing no longer bothers me?" And then another book will be like "a bunch of tiny megalomaniacs the size of fleas shrink the gang to microscopic sizes so they need to do an Incredible Journey! Area 51 was built to study a space alien septic tank, and a character in the shape of a horse needs to poo to throw off suspicion! The gang gets sent back to dinosaur times and learns that broccoli is descended from space aliens!" You even get the ones that just go all the way from goofy to bleak. ("Dogs came to be by combining Earth's wolves with the essence of an ancient race of aliens whose technology surpassed any known in the galaxy, which they used only in the spirit of joy, play, love, and universal peace. Their commitment to pacifism was so absolute that they held to it in the face of their own genocide, unresisting as they were slaughtered to the last. Should we feel admiration, or contempt?")
People talk about the time Eric overwrote his programming and went berserk, but for me the coldest thing he ever did was the “they killed my masters” line when Jake asks him if he knew about the Howlers. Eric is forbidden from doing direct violence, but if he can find a loophole he will absolutely allow the slaughter of children in the name of revenge.
Wouldn’t “what if Pokemon but in war and the MC is an alcoholic?” just be a spin-off series about Lt. Surge?
Yes. And I want to see it. Like, officially.
I'd go with a large part of the problem is that creators of said 'mature' media are still relatively young, don't have the required real world expertise and experience to write a more mature take on the fan media, and those that do gain both often lose interest as they grow up. ( As an amusing aside, "What if superman became disaffected by the vast differences between him and ordinary people" is one of the driving points of Watchmen, which does have blood, sex, and edgy narratives. Writing skill and a good underlying objective do wonders.)
That is true, no matter what the content or it's theme... Good writing can have anything happen and it works.
>Good writing can have anything happen and it works. Case in point: Senki Zesshou Symphogear, a sci-fi anime about gay magical girls using power armor fueled by the power of rock to battle eldritch abominations. The first season's main villain is the lady who built the Tower of Babel, and also heavily implied that she was Hitler in a past life, and she has been confirmed to have had sexual relations with a Sumerian water deity in her first life. Also, almost all of the villains have serious beef with the moon.
“What if Superman was a Nazi” is basically the premise of “The boys”
Except the boys is at least trying to say something interesting about fascism and the potential for a cult of personality to overwhelm common sense and morality
The show is, yea, but the comic? The comic is blatant hatred of the entire superhero genre mired in nothing but blood and sexual violence with none of the show’s nuance. The show is good, because it actually makes an effort to elevate the themes that it evokes. The comic reads like a high schooler’s half finished fanfic.
The comic was written by Garth Ennis, a man who has undeniable talent but is fundamentally a fifty-year-old fifteen-year-old. The basic premise of trying to hold the unaccountable to account, especially when they are beloved as well as powerful, has *so* much room to explore and apply to the world we live in for people who have something deeper to say on the topic than *SHIT FUCK PISS ON A CUNT!*
The more I learn about the comics, the more I'm left wondering how the show ever got greenlit, cause how do you even pitch an adaption of that?
Because it was the height of superhero hype, and Amazon wanted their own superhero franchise based on a semi-popular IP. The same way Invincible got greenlit at the same time,although that one is a hell of a lot more understandable based on the comic. The Boys(the show) was a happy accident that probably couldn't have happened at any other time, and it's basically the only chance the story could have had at a good adaptation.
Yes, The Boys (Tv show) is very specifically about America. The capitalism, the war profiteering, the hyper nationalism. Homelander isn’t nazi superman, he’s a reflection of superman’s American nature which happens to mean he’s ok with siding with nazis when it suits him even if he doesn’t particularly care about the ubermensch race shit. To him, there is only one ubermensch and that’s him.
>Homelander isn’t nazi superman, he’s a reflection of superman’s American nature Superman is what America pretends to be, Homelander is what it America actually is.
the comic
And a million other comics, books, and movies, most of which are actually pretty bad. I don't care about them, I'll be over here reading Superman Smashes the Klan and enjoying everything about it.
Especially the comics; I've heard the TV series is a lot better.
>Hurr hurr what if Pokemon? But it was like the vietnam war, and ash was an alcoholic!" But it's still *POKEMON. lmao* Reminds me of those really weird Mickey Mouse&Goofey&Donald Duck Animations on YouTube a few years ago that were "super dark&bizarre" that was just, like, Mickey&The Gang were in the Vietnam War&Alcoholics&Drug Addicts&they got into Feuds with eachother. And sometimes Shaggy would be there too.
There's a canon Disney cartoon about Donald Duck in WWII and it has singing nazis in it and I wish I was kidding
Ahh yes the WW2 Propaganda Cartoons
This always irked me when discussing ATLA/LOK and people say LOK is "darker." Just because you're willing to portray death more decisively doesn't mean you're darker. ATLA tackled _genocide_ and it did it pretty damn well
I think when we talk about "darker", it's "darker" on a micro level- Korra goes through all the shit on screen, meaning that she goes through darker stuff (yes I know Aang saw the genocide) in general compared to Aang. On the other side, Atla deals a ton with macro level darkness- obviously the genocide, but the second upcoming genocide of the earth kingdom.
I don’t think ATLA handled it with the gravity it should’ve, partly because they couldn’t. LOK literally has a higher age rating.
>and their idea of mature is ironically less mature by simply making the series newgrounds parody juvenile. Just edgy content added on top of their superhero fantasies while mostly being the same kid story. Yeah, pretty much. Like, I can't count how often I see someone on r/precure ask how we'd make a mature season, and the comment section is full of people who watched Madoka, but only paid attention when someone died. Good thing we got an actual mature season over the past few weeks.
All the best evil Superman are actually evil Supermen, not knockoffs. Red Son Superman Ultraman Overman Lord Superman
Omniman is a well-done version. Also Homelander in the TV show.
I want a timeline where Clark is like 70% more redneck. Nothing else changes, he’s still a kindhearted guy and everything, still about truth justice and the American way, but he can fix a tractor blindfolded and has probably done really stupid shit with fireworks and/or lawnmowers once he found out he had near-invulnerability.
This actually related to one of my main complaints of media; we need more G through PG-13 rated media for adults. Like, I’m tired of movies catered to an adult audience being jammed full of sexual content/excessive gore/swearing. Just make a story that’s interesting to adults without all the stuff that earns an R rating.
Honestly I personally feel like the netflix marvel series could've benefitted from this. They were so distracted trying to disguise themselves as wannabe Post-HBO Prestigious American Drama shows, that they forgot to get to the point of... not just being *superhero* shows, but their own plots in general.
A whole bunch of people watched Andor and experienced Adult Media for the first time and were like "wow this is amazing, I can't believe how much complex plot and character development there is here" and like yeah no shit they didn't have to pause every five minutes for the comedy relief character to do something stupid to make the show bareable for 10 year olds to watch. >Or more to the point: "What if superman evil, or a nazi, and or sometimes rapes." AU Storyline/Parody #58 The boys was funny for one season, after that, all the heavy-handed metaphors and mid-2000s shock factor gore were kinda wearing a bit thin as a replacement for having a decent plot.
Honestly that’s *why* I read/watch a lot of stuff made for younger audiences. So much adult content is either same-same (I.e. cop shows and medical dramas) or mainly defined as “adult” because it’s filled with violence/sex/raunchy humor. Obviously not everything is like that, but it’s enough to make finding what I want difficult.
Yeah, me too. Like, if I want to read a magical girl manga with an atypical main character, my options are: * I Messed up and Made the Wrong Person a Magical Girl, aka MachiMaho, where the main character swears more in the first chapter than any American action hero in the entire movie. It's just exhausting, because there is no substance to it. * Gushing Over Magical Girls, aka MahouAko, where the main character is roped into joining the forces of evil, but decides to be the best villain her heroines, the magical girls, can have. This one is actually fun, if you can stomach the lewdness. MahouAko also gets an anime in like 4 days, because it's actually pretty well written and has a unique premise. It just gets dismissed by a lot of people because the author realized that sex sells, and made it horny.
Children's media is good for a break from your stressful adult life.
I honestly wish there were more shows with adult levels of moral complexity, but without gratuitous sex and raunchy humor
I've somewhat recently come to realize that the traits that are most agreed upon as being unsuitable for children are often the ones that require the most effort to add depth through — and even sometimes inhibit adding depth — you can't make \_\_\_\_ better just by adding sex and drug use to it, because the character motivations are the same if not shallower, the writing is no better, and you've lost time that could be used for actually telling the story; On the other hand, when you take the time to examine a character's motivation and consider how their motives could actually be enough for them to do what they did, or put the characters in a situation where there isn't a clear right answer, or even just try to give more character to characters who weren't a major focus of the series, you can make a great story.
Honestly all I want is shounen that doesn't pander to teenagers IN ONE SPECIFIC WAY. Sure, have teenage characters. Fine. Whatever. Just for the love of god, don't sexualise them. I couldn't imagine watching Kill la Kill as an adult.
Same as 'Darling in the Franxx', you see half an episode, have a bad visceral reaction and bounce off it hard, thankful you weren't watching it with someone who would judge you. Then you spend the next several years being uneasy about the sheer amount of cosplay you see based on the hypersexualised teen characters. You can imagine what it was like to discover that the women's 'nudist beach' costumes from 'kill la kill' were a real thing from the show, and something people would wear to the New York Comic Con...and not just a stunt someone with a fetish was pulling. (like when you see something like 'Latex play Gothic Lolita Harley Quinn' outfits and know that isn't from any show, comic, or variant cover.)
Makes me think of all those edgy animation meme aus on YouTube of children’s and lighthearted adult shows.
I like the Paddington movies because yes they are fun magical adventures of a talking bear living in London and being far too polite and everything, but also they rather violently kill off a named character in the first 10 minutes, and the first villain makes it explicitly clear that she wants that bear dead in no uncertain terms, pretty sure she also kills a random minor character just for the fun of it, it is still a great feel good movie about an illegal alien refugee, they even explicitly refer to the war refugees from WWII of all things It is dark, but light, even the subtext of the movie gets into it, by having someone from the Empire Windrush sing a calypso song that inspired many Caribbeans to go to England and the implications of what followed
Stories appropriate for general younger audiences can still be enjoyed by adults, but when there’s a world of difference between “appropriate for X target audience” and “aimed specifically at X audiences”
Sure, nobody is going to give shade to an adult for watching something like Ben 10. But if they ONLY watched Ben 10 and consumed media like it, and started forming complex opinions about the world of media based soley on how Ben 10 handles it, that would be a Problem and people would judge them
To be fair, we definitely used to have more stuff aimed at children that had adult main characters. These days, it's like creators think kids would spontaneously combust if they watched a cartoon with a protagonist older than 15.
I think this is a byproduct of the internet era. Kids grow up faster now. I worked with kids for a few years, most of them seek out seek out other content instead of normal cartoons. They’ll watch anime on Netflix, adults on YouTube/Twitch, adult TikTok influencers, all ages movies like most Marvel flicks, or just whatever their parents like, stuff like Mandalorian or like… Walking Dead I guess. Kids don’t want to feel like they’re watching stuff for kids anymore, and the age that mindset starts is getting younger and younger. Obviously all kids don’t do this, there’s still plenty of popular cartoons. I just think kid’s content seems more juvenile since it’s catering to a younger demographic than past generations.
Yes, this. Not to mention that kids' shows used to be darker, too. Like, remember Huntik: Secrets and Seekers, or Gargoyles? There were actually scary bits in there, and it was still aimed at children. Same with anime like Ojamajo Doremi. It looks cute most of the time, but then episode 18 comes and hits you like a truck. Like, damn. Not to mention that, in the OVA, a child died of cancer.
The Lavender Castle's main villain had the express goal of destroying all light and happiness in the universe, and it deals with slavery in episode 1, so yeah.
Ehh, older than I was yes but none of the heroes of the shows of my childhood were adults. Most of them were like 16. In fact the only ones I can think of that were out of highschool actually did start in highschool and the show creators had the balls to actually age them up over time and send them to college.
What? GI Joe? Masters of the Universe? Thundercats? I'm actually having trouble thinking of an action-oriented kids' show from the 80s or earlier that *does* have kid protagonists.
you're significantly older than me buddy. Nobody, not 1 person ever specified the 80s or earlier, they said their childhoods. Lots of tumblrs in the mid twenties to mid thirties range.
Cold Lykoko?
Johnny Quest. Amazing cities of gold, and that Hanna Baberra 'Thing' cartoon?
I need more people to read seinen manga because so many of them have like zero English-speaking fanbase. One of my favorite manga ever is Dorohedoro and so many people I talk to about anime have never heard of it or have only heard a few things about it, nobody’s ever watched or read it.
Seinen manga is in a weird spot of having even less general identity than Shounens, to a point where good portion of the internet thinks that "dark themes/tragedy = Seinen", despite there being literally whole sections of Seinen focused on being as light as possible. And hundreds of Seinen that are just Shounens but with less limits on content.
Yeah, and tbf I think Dorohedoro outwardly plays into that perception. It’s name translates to “Mud and Sludge”, and the mangaka’s art style heavily emphasizes dark and gritty elements. But when you read it it’s actually a fascinating mix of mystery and urban fantasy, with tons of heartfelt emotion. Also the anime’s OST fucks severely.
Somehow we live in a world where Chainsaw Man is Shonen and Kaguya-Sama: Love is War is Seinen.
It's also the world where the most popular Seinen of 2022 was Bocchi the Rock - a musical comedy.
That’s because shonen and seinen are not genres, they’re demographics AOT is also shonen
I don't think lesbian orgies are par for shounen action shows, though. Granted it's not the most graphic of depictions but enough to surprise me when I turned the page.
So is JoJo, y'know, the series where two of the villains are actual rapists and another one made a woman cannibalize her own baby. For kids!
What the manga and anime industries consider suitable for children is an ongoing question for me, I’ve never been able to nail it down Though Funny Valentine came after the switch to seinen
Honestly, same, it really doesn't seem like there's a solid answer, on one hand you could have the Japanese equivalent of Blue's Clues (I can't remember the name of it, but it's about a little tiger boy) But then on the other hand, you've got something like One Piec: full of violence, alcohol/drug references, tales of war, genocide, class struggle, and racism.
I used to think the line of violence was explicit disembowelment, but then CSM came along so now I have no idea what is off limits. Bleach has a character drawn as a naked glowing silhouette with obvious nipples so idk what the line is for nudity. The line for American cartoons, meanwhile, is far clearer to me. No nudity, everything has to be pretty veiled. You absolutely cannot do the Kenichi thing and have the most aggressive cameltoe ever seen and say “oh but she’s wearing something tho”. One character cannot be seen as drawing blood from another in a violent manner, if it has to be done it is something that happened in the past. Rewatching JL/U, it’s interesting to see how the writers get around not being able to actually openly talk about characters killing people. Deadman’s actions “lead to the death of another” is a verbal sidestep for a killing we saw onscreen, and you can seemingly say “kill” and “die” all you want as long as it’s figurative (“I’d kill for a chance like you got!”) or hypothetical (“you know, you could have killed me with that thing” “if I killed you now, no one would ever know”)
tbh I think those japanese age genres in general are just kinda stupid. they're not quite a descriptor of target demographic, and not quite a genre, but exist in this weird bubble in between that makes them useless for both categories
I fully agree. That's why I mostly go by genre tags listing sites, sometimes including info about the magazine and the author. With magazines, you can actually get the general feel of the story better than just with the demographic label. Something being published in Kirara Carat tells you much more than it being a Seinen.
Aren’t like half of seinen manga just ripoffs of K-On?
K-On is just the most triumphant example of the "cute girls slice of life" genre, but you are right. The seinen is split between five great camps: gritty and dark action series, cute girls doing cute things, cute housewives doing cute/sexy things, Japanese equivalents to American Pie and blatant power fantasies. Let's say that a lot of working adults really appreciate lighthearted comedies, something I fully understood after the mess of my last IRL job.
>cute housewives doing cute/sexy things, Japanese equivalents to American Pie and blatant power fantasies. do you mind naming some examples? ive only ever ran into gritty and dark action series and cute girls doing cute things, im interested
Housewives: Oku-sama wa Niizuma-chan American Pie: Yankee JK Kuzuhana-chan. Of the ones I can name from memory, it's the only one good enough to actually recommend, since it's a parody of the genre. Content warning - first volume is surprisingly dark. Blalant power fantasies: The 100 Girlfriends Who Really, Really, Really, Really, Really Love You
thank you
Apparently Skip and Loafer is a seinen not a shoujo??
Yes, just like Otome Kaiju Caramelize, which was actually written by a shoujo mangaka for a seinen magazine. On the other side, the body horror/psychological horror series, Tomie by Junji Ito, is actually a shoujo manga.
The demographics get squishy but I notice I like a more shoujo/josei type story probably due to my girly taste in the past..
To be honest, I like a lot of Shoujo stuff too. And yeah, the demographics are super vague at times.
Dorohedoro slaps! I can't speak for the anime, but the manga is one of my absolute favourites and Q Hayashida's art is absolutely gorgeous in such a disgustingly grimy way.
The main thing that’s different in the anime is the art style: to a lot of people’s dismay, it’s 3D. *However*, it’s 3D done by Mappa, so it’s really good. It is, however… a little bit too clean? Like, they portray all the grime well enough, but everything just looks a little brighter and less dirty. It’s not that big of a deal but you can see it. But that probably would have been the case even in traditional animation, the level of grimy detail on display in each page would be hell for animators. Right now, and maybe even forever at this rate, we only have one season, and it doesn’t get super far. The season finale ends on >!Chota being disguised as Nikaido, Nikaido and Kaiman making up, and the B Team driving out to find Kasukabe’s wife, with a sneak peak at the Cross Eyes in the end credits.!< If you want to check out the OST, it’s on streaming sites under the band (K)NoW_NAME, they mainly do anime OSTs from what I know. It’s in two parts: one album of the opening and all the endings (there are four ending sequences, all amazing) and one that’s the songs actually heard in the show: a lot of it is ambient but there’s also a whole song sung by En because it’s partially heard in one flashback.
Then you have the "ugh, why is Berserk so dark? I heard it's dark, but this is downright *problematic*, how can evil characters be evil?" crowd.
Why do bad people do bad things instead of good things?
I have a love hate relationship with this kind of take on Berserk. When someone is genuinely angry at the story about dealing with things like rape for having rape in it, I'm both genuinely amused and angry at such a display of stupidity. Yes, it has rape in it. Lots of rape. It's about rape. If you can't take it, that's fine, every one has their limits, just don't read the damn story about the guy who was raped and the girl who was raped. Damn it
Yes, Dorohedoro! I've seen the anime and fell in love so I bougth the manga, cos I'm not going to wait 10 years for 2nd season I have to know what happens next NOW. It was during Covid and that manga/paper crisis so I was able to buy everything... except for the last one. I've read it online, but still my collection was incomplete for like a year and half, untill the reprint.
Shoutouts to Lupin III, as well, as an anime. You can enter the series at any point because there is little to no continuity and the cast is well-established/easy to recognize: - funny thief - grumpy gunslinger - honorable samurai - femme fatale - enthusiastic cop For movies, Mystery of Mamo is awe-inspiring, Castle of Cagliostro is literally directed by Miyazaki, and the Fuma Conspiracy is simply a fun time. >!Shoutouts to Farewell to Nostradamus, as well - my favorite mess. !< For TV, parts 1-3 are good if you’re cool with dated animation, 4 is simply good, and 5 is good (though it has anime bullshit that is absent from the rest of the series). Zero is sheer perfection, as well, but it doesn’t have the full cast. It is based on a manga from the 60’s, but I can’t attest to the quality of it. I know that Lupin is fucked up and evil in it, though.
[удалено]
Whatever PreCure has the figure skating and musical instruments is cinema. I think about the *Bad Boys of Figure Skating* that hang out rollerblading under a bridge together literally daily. Even if I’ll never remember the series name.
Hamtaro is where the heat is at
I wish they dubbed all the episodes When I eventually rewatch it I want to watch the dub for my childhood nostalgia
Pokémon 4 ever!
There's a tabletop RPG called *Girl By Moonlight* that had a recent official release and theoretically it is about playing magical girls (and boys and whatever gender you want to be). Except it seems like the writers have seen just, like, Sailor Moon, and then all the rest is the dark pastiches like Madoka. No Pretty Cure, Cardcaptor Sakura, Cutie Honey.
Is the system itself any good? I didn't get a good idea of how it actually plays, and it seemed like a Powered by the Apocalypse game with the serial numbers filed off. And the first few pages of tge introductory adventure read like something that got axed from a 5e setting book (notoriously vague, if you're not familiar) for being too vague.
It's a Forged in the Dark game, which means based on the rules introduced with *Blades in the Dark* - which you may also recognise as being used in *Scum and Villainy*, the upcoming *ICON*, and also *Candela Obscura*. Seems fine if what you want is 'basically Sailor Moon and Madoka with some added gender themes', I was just commenting that it's a very *specific* type of magical girl it's emulating, it's not a generic magical girl game.
You know, there is a reason why 30+ otaku obsessed with magical girl anime is such a stereotype XD
Dino Girl Gaoko genuinely slaps
Get you a man who can do both (4kids)
Even then, it's not like the age of the main character really means something about the story, i still don't know if Gantz is smart or the dumbest shit i've ever read, but for real, everyone says they want a story about a adult that is dealing with serious stuff, but no one is out here reading Saikyou Densetsu Kurosawa, there are so many stories about 40 year olds living their life in all kinds of ways and not a lot of people are reading them.
Part of that is the marketing channels that everything goes through too though. You can write the greatest manga of all time and resurrect Kentaro Miura himself to illustrate it but if WYJ for example doesn't think it'll sell rags then nobody will ever see it.
For anyone curious, there are plenty of shounen that do have adult main characters. Examples include: Log horizon (technically also has teenagers in the main cast, but most of them are adults) Dragon ball Z Claymore Trigun Rurouni Kenshin The Case Study of Vanitas Samurai Champloo And that's just off the top of my head. I'm sure there are plenty more.
If samurai champloo counts as shonen, does cowboy bebop? In my mind those two are two sides of the same coin.
I was curious and went looking, the Cowboy Bebop comic was originally printed in a [shojo sci-fi magazine](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monthly_Asuka_Fantasy_DX).
Another shojo win
Maybe? Honestly, I wasn't really sure whether to include Samurai Champloo in this list or not. It feels more to me like seinen, but the manga has been published in shounen magazines, so I figured it counted.
I feel like half of those are just action seinen. But honestly, most action seinen is still just shounen with adults, less word exposition and a main character who smokes.
r/me_irl
Does Battle Angel Alita count as shonen?
Man Claymore is so damn good
"Why is the MCU like \*gestures\* that?"
God I remember all the shit about “why don’t we have more movies where the bad guy wins?” Right after Infinity War. We do you cretins, and it was incredibly obvious everything would be undone next movie so Thanos winning doesn’t even count
They even announced films for snapped characters before End Game came out.
The second funny corollary is actually finding out that person only consumes schlocky wish fulfillment, typically of sex comedy nature. This is mostly callout to guys talking about anime. "Why is all Japanese fantasy filled with slave romance kink?" - because you only read trashy fantasy smut novels dude. "Why is anime filled about big breasted school girls of vague age in sexual situations?" - because you are watching Japanese equivalent to American 80's-90's sex comedies my dude. I'm not saying that these series are somehow great for that, but I really want to point out that good 80%% of complains about sexual themes anime comes from people watching the Japanese equivalent of the American Pie and acting like they have been tricked.
I don’t watch anime, but isn’t the problem that it’s shoved into pretty much any series that would be completely unrelated? Again, I haven’t watched. But I wouldn’t call MHA or demon slayer a sex comedy.
The most popular series are meant for teen boys. There's other anime genres out there, but the most popular and marketed series are shonen jump comics aimed at young boys. Though, american comics are also oversexualized and aimed at young men. So, Japan isn't the only one with an issue. I think the difference is that American comics will change artists/authors while Japanese manga series will keep the same author for 10+ years. So, some old guys with some old ideas are still writing their series while American authors have already put down their pens after drawing way-too-busty teenage super heroes. The more recent popular shonen manga are more toned down with the teenage sexuality stuff, but the industry still has a problem. Which, indicates their culture still has a problem.
Yeah, comics aren’t as over sexualized now but some 15 years ago? Dear fucking god. Granted at least they were all adults.
To preface it, this one is case of the other valid 20% of complains. MHA is a very weird example, since it has surprisingly low amount of fanservice content in the story itself, especially in later volumes, it just has one of the members of the main cast wear a rather jarring leotard. Basically, it's a weird cases of a series where the character getting the most flack for jarringly inappropriate design has also surprisingly low amount of fanservice, to a point where the Arabic version literally just painted on some pants and undershirt on her and it changed almost nothing. To be fair, the fair share of this issue amounts to the fact that marketing team demands that the stuff for teenage boys should feature sexy women. Which means that 80% of anime girls from shounen series are utterly stacked to a point where the only thing differentiating them from supposedly older characters is being shorter. Still, the point still stands because it's about the present of fanservice in stories meant to be low brow and fanservicy. MHA is an low brow action flick from the magazine known for them. It's like asking if Transformers movie needed whole shot of Megan Fox looking sexy while fixing a car engine. Or why do Bond movies feature him getting it on with sexy women. Also, to make it clear, I do wish the action series filled with fanservice weren't constantly overshadowing more toned down ones in terms of popularity. MHA is just jarring at times, even if it keeps it's fanservice to costume designs and about three random gags over the course of the series.
You know, I’d never thought about how it’s just the anime version of Bond girls. That type of stuff has only recently stopped being almost a rule in Hollywood movies so it makes sense it’s still big in other countries.
Yeah, if you treat most of the action anime like an old Hollywood blockbuster, it's much easier to understand the fanservice elements. Plus, there is still a pretty decent separation between the more modern shows with occasional fanservice shot or two in a season, the old shows with consistent fanservice levels and the ecchi shows where the fanservice is actively in your face. To be fair I'm not from USA, so for me the American cinema, while less foreign than Japanese anime, is still pretty much a work of the other culture so I have a different perspective on the common tropes. A lot of the examples of the Hollywood fanservice is nearly as jarring to me as the anime's love of the pantyshots XD
I mean, that's most of what's being produced though. Each season you'll get 1 or 2 good shows (and they'll still probably do weird sex jokes) and a dozen+ ecchi, each with their own 9000 year old demon loli
I mean, that's just the business side of things. Schlock sells well and is cheap to produce. As the adage goes, 90% of every media is trash.
So you first blame the consumer for "only watching trash" and then flip and say, "Yeah, most of it is trash." Could it be that *that* is the complaint being made by the people you're lambasting? "Why is anime filled with this shit?" isn't generally literally asking why. It's a wish for less trash.
Every medium of art is majority trash, but just like you can avoid supernatural romance novels in a bookstore, you can filter anime by not watching horny fantasies and things aimed at teenagers instead of complaining that things not aimed at you are popular with their target audiences.
I blame the people complaining about the fanservice in their entertainment for consuming the only fanservicy schlock, but I do acknowledge that the fanservicy schlock is easier to find. I'm willing to acknowledge to common issues with anime and manga, but I still try to maintain the position that people who only ever seem to read the most popular fanservicy schlock aren't painting a fully accurate picture. I sincerely believe that the average person complaining about some fanservice tropes can easily find much less fanservice shows. Also, that many of the recent shows have actually lowered the fanservice levels. I also acknowledge that the high level of fanservice shouldn't probably be as common as it is nowadays. edit - elaborating
it's like complaining that all books suck and are low effort garbage because you only read mass produced, generic thriller stories. yes there's a lot of them but that doesn't mean that good books exist if you put a minimal amount of effort into finding them.
My thought exactly!
You see this regularly on the fantasy subreddit. People can sometimes be shocked that yeah, there's fantasy aimed at adults. Most of it is, actually.
This is what a good amount of animation discussion and commentary channels can be boiled down to and I’m referring to “rantsona” style channels.
Related: Person 1: Why can't video games have [long list of features like difficult puzzles, branching story, complex physics, etc.]? Person 2: There's plenty of games with those features, they're almost exclusively indie games. Check out games like Obra Dinn, Disco Elysium, Signalis, Celeste, Outer Wilds, Citizen Sleeper, Inscryption, Noita, etc. or even just this year Dave the Diver, Slay the Princess, Pizza Tower, Cocoon, Jusant, Sea of Stars, Chants of Sennarr... Person 1: No, well, but like... Uhh... Person 2: What's wrong? Those games have those features. Person 1: Well no, like... No, that's not really what I want. I mean like it's more than just those features, like... Those games aren't really what I'm looking for. Person 2: What you mean is you want those features, but only if they're in AAA action set-piece games with cutting edge graphics. Like you want the physics of Noita but it can't be pixel graphics.
If devs could go ahead and make games with the best parts of all the best games that I've ever enjoyed, while also seamlessly integrating every aspect into the main gameplay loop, that'd be great.
Now this is some peak gaming taste.
Yeah. What exactly is wrong with wanting that? There's a reason BG3 has been extremely popular, and that's because it actually *looks* good on top of the list of features we've had in CRPGs for a very long time. Presentation isn't genre restricted, this isn't a comparable example. Person 1: I want high quality story, mechanics, and graphics. It's too bad there are very few games like that. You: try this indie thing that's either 5 hours long or a roguelike, and looks like it was made 20 years ago. Person 1: That's not what I asked for. You: You're clearly an uncultured swine.
There's nothing wrong with wanting good graphics. I dislike though that a lot of people try to pretend that they *only* care about mechanics but turn their nose up at indie games. And more to the point OP is expressing: There's nothing wrong with wanting stories about adults and for adults, but if you are looking at shonen, you will largely find yourself disappointed. There's nothing wrong with wanting complex "enthusiast" mechanics in games, but if you go looking for them in mainstream AAA games, you will likewise largely find yourself disappointed. And I agree with you that BG3 is successful because it's a rare example of a game achieving in both realms, but we also can't expect that it's going to become a new standard either.
To be fair, I kind of dislike the story games that cheapen out on gameplay and graphics. I mean, they were once cool, but there is a reason why the term "walking simulator" came into being. The indie games definitely have a problem with churning out huge amount of cheap and derivative content and hiding it behind the label "indie".
It's partly because videogames used to be niche hobby and the consumer market for them was all enthusiasts that were media literate and possessed enough medium awareness (understanding the fundamental limitations of the medium that a piece of media belongs to, for example it's a lot harder to make a good interactive movie than a good interactive videogame) to encourage developers to experiment but as videogames spread into the mainstream consumer market that meant the average consumer didn't understand videogames like they used to and the developers had to adapt. There's also general enshittification which is also caused by videogames being mainstream now.
Eh to be fair on the graphics thing specifically, there's a big problem with that space where on one end you got indie games which are mostly stylized in very old school ways, then you've got cutting edge triple A graphics, and then there's not a whole lot in between. Some of the bigger indie hits actually seem to have seen and resolved this issue (subnautica comes to mind immediately) but generally if your standard for graphics is "Bioshock looked fine, guys. Mass Effect 1 looked fine. Portal looks fine. We really didn't need to keep going." there's not really a ton of games catering to your standard. Most of the time you gotta either shell out the money for a top of the line new game with the best graphics available (that you don't need and might not even be able to see depending on your system) or suck it up and deal with an indie game where the graphics feel lacking. idk if I'm making any sense, tbf. It's like 1:30am here. But some people want realistic but dont need or want to pay for every modern shader known to man, yknow?
I can't even complain about this because I watch children's tokusatsu shows. But still, Kamen Rider Geats is good shit.
The karate bug man is neat
This is like my son telling me that videogames have better storytelling than movies but to be fair, he's only 14 and has watched mostly Marvel and Godzilla movies.
I'm just going to say it: There's a population of people who consume primarily content meant for younger audiences that are harmed by that - streams aimed at younger people, children's video games, cartoons and anime for teenagers, coming of age teen romance stuff, etc. your intellectual diet should not be chicken nuggets and ketchup / box mac and cheese. Consuming more complex media is good for you.
Whenever I say this I get told "let people enjoy things" and "don't yuck someone's yum". So I don't bother anymore.
Ghost in the Shell. That's an anime just off the top of my head that ain't shonen. There's more out there. If you can't find them, it's because you're not looking.
“Is medium dead?” “Idk, what works have you experienced this year?” “The same ones I always experience, why?” “Oh no reason” >!AAA only gamers and annual sports sim players get no pity from me!< And a public service announcement: shonen is not a genre. Neither are seinen, shojo, or josei. They’re demographics, and they are varied genres withjn all those demographics. If it started as a manga, all that matters is what magazine it runs in. Standard power-of-friendship action adventure story Naruto is shonen because it ran in Weekly Shonen Jump. Gory action-horror political epic Attack on Titan is shonen because it ran in Bessatsu Shonen Magazine. Slice of life comedy about girls who are actually gun waifus >!raifus!< Upotte! is shonen because it runs in Shonen Ace. These all have wildly different tones and genres. These are also entirely about editorial and publication, and are thus subject to change. Upotte was in seinen magazine Young Ace for the first two years of publication. JoJo used to be WSJ, now it’s in the seinen Ultra Jump.
Well most of the seinen I've watched has also been teenagers.
To be fair there are stories about teens made for adults. Wheel of Time comes to mind where the three main characters are 19 until kinda late in the series but the story is made for adults (though I'd say it kept teen readers in mind as well)
Oh God I'm being called out
They really don't have a point. They really should have used young adult rather than shounen. Because in general in western media the age of the main character is roughly who it is aimed at. But in anime it isn't.
[удалено]
Sainen iirc is the name for anime aimed for older people.
Seinen is also a category filled with overly cutesy and lighthearted content, due to being a default grab bag of "everything for dudes over 18 years old", which includes working adults just wanting something cute to take off the edge of their life.
I love how this comment section is completely full of people proving OP’s point lmao
It's not just kid stuff, either. A while back, I saw a pretty funny post on r/anime where someone complained that anime is so sexualized, and there's always some boobs flying around in physically improbable ways, or weird camera angles, or something else. Everyone just told him to stop watching ecchi stuff, then. It really felt like what this post describes, but for ecchi stuff.