• KobaCumTribute [she/her]@hexbear.netEnglish
    8·
    12 hours ago

    To take this entirely too seriously because “[media] sucks now, when it used to be so good!” is like nails on a chalk board to me: all media mostly sucks and has always mostly sucked, but how much of [given media type] stands out as excellent from the sea of low-grade dregs that’re always being churned out just varies from year to year and for the most part I can’t help but feel the amount of good media in any given year is on average increasing and reaching new peaks more regularly.

    So memes aside, I can’t help but feel like “modern anime sucks” is something that’s been being said forever and has at times been true, but currently isn’t. I mean like there is awful slop and there’s consistently been awful slop running all the way back forever, but the past few years have had some of the most gorgeously animated and all around good series ever. Like Sakamoto Days, Dandadan, ZOM 100 (and the same studio is coming out with Witch Hat Atelier some time this year which I am very excited for), Frieren, I personally don’t like a lot of things about Dungeon Meshi but it’s still highly acclaimed and objectively a great adaptation, and so on. Even something like Solo Leveling is mindless slop but it’s extremely pretty and inoffensive mindless slop with an amazing soundtrack.

    How many series from the 2000s were as good and memorable? There definitely are some, without question, but I feel like people look at a handful of iconic, lasting series coming out of an entire decade and hold them up as what it used to be like, yet when I go back and look almost all of the stuff that was airing alongside that is all like the worst moeblobs you’ve ever seen, ecchi shit, and bottom of the barrel shonen action slop, and if you go back and watch it was run through with just rampant misogyny and random homophobia and a lot of that was inserted into even the “good” iconic series back then too. I mean that’s still, obviously, a problem but goddamn if it didn’t used to be so much more rampant and worse in general.

    Like if Frieren were made back in the early 2000s it would probably somehow be made to be a harem anime centered on Stark who’d be the “real hero” and be given all the big dramatic moments that Frieren has in the real version, and either Frieren or Fern would probably have been given that awful extremely affected raspy mewling voice that the worst anime always makes some female character have that’s supposed to sound “innocent” or some shit and make all the misogynistic otaku hogs squeal and buy dakimakura and vinyl figurines. And also it would be 90% OC filler slop, cut most of the characters in favor of new, worse ones, and completely mangle all the themes and plotlines.