Anime Discussion Best Anime Era ?
- Thread starter Yoho
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Hello Steven. Sorry for the late response, I did not get a notification about it, but when I checked this thread out again, I found your reply to me. I appreciate your curiosity, so I will answer your question as objective as possible.
But to get things started, I would like to criticize something and make a correction:
First of all, I never compared DS with DBZ, please take a look at my post here:
As you see the green marked sentence is a prelude to the sentence that follows. I am making a claim about the technology available for certain animation studios. The red part of the follow up sentence is the argument that is following up with it.
So I think you either did not read/understand my post, or you twisted my words, or you just interacted with me in an ignorance-driven way.
If either, I will forgive you for the cause of having a logical, rational and objective discussion.
So to answer your main question, about what the 20s have above the 90s (btw your german was leaking there, I just sometimes wish us germans would get along better with each other instead of taking down each other, but society always mirrors itself on the internet, as sad as it is, but that's topic for another discussion):
Argument 1: The Technology
First of all, I am really disappointed by the knowledgeable participants here in this thread, for not giving credits to Studio Ghibli here.
Without doubt the sole main carry of the 80s and 90s was Studio Ghibli. While the animation of the western animation producers has stagnated and only slowly progressed, Japan has decided to elevate the idea of handcrafting frames in a massproducing way. Studio Ghibli was a pioneer in that regards, the idea was to detailly handcraft as many frames as possible between the keyframes, which simply lead to the huge success of Ghibli movies. They stood the test of the times, not only for storytelling, but also for animations.
Up to today, there are many traditional studios that still do the whole of inbetween frames via handcraft, which is giving the traditional japanese animations their originality and note of quality. This lasted throughout all of the 90s, and 00s, those years that your typical hermit would deem as "the time of their life".
In the 10s the digital handcraft slowly took over and we set up for the era of CGI. CGI was just sparely used, but the technology was continously evolving, not annually, but seasonally. This is where I want to highlight one certain "modern" studio, namely UFOTABLE to make their establishment globally. CGI was presumed to be invented by huge american corpos over the 50s or 60s, it became an immediate export hit from which china, korea and japan all benefited from.
Something a certain franchise capitalized from, once it became available for gaming and animation companies to kick off the new era of japanese animation - the franchise I am ofc talking about is the FATE/ franchise.
UFOTABLE became the studio that mastered it's craft of combining both traditional framing and CGI enhancement in order to create the modern masterpieces of 10s in term of animation. Which leads into their biggest passion project so far: Demon Slayer, which aired in 2019.
Back then it wasn't that notorious for what it were to become, but everyone who had knowledge of the industry would appreciate DS for what it was, people knew this one would become big.
I am talking here mostly about the japanese animation quality, but it's just ironic to think about what the chinese animation studios have been working on throughout the 00s and 10s. Their accumulative success is now carrying fruits like never before.
The argument also is the widespread of information, the internet, the digital social networks that anime has built up in adjascency to the popculture of both the west and the east.
1 + 1 is 2 based on Adam Ries, this leads us to the 20s. And I might have answered your question with the first brutal honest fact here:
The 20s are ahead of technology in comparison the any former era. We call it "acceleration", aslong it is accelerating, it becomes a metaphorical train with no destination in mind. Technology for example is a basis for making it on the big screen, creating flashyness or noise, that will attract a broader viewership. What I am saying makes sense the most looking at 2025, the most recent year of animation and it's success. The total gross profit is speaking for tiself, but yeah, both Demon Slayer AND Chainsaw Man have lifted the benchmarks.
Such a huge success did not come from nowhere, in prior years within the 20s, both Demon Slayer and One Piece have paved the ways for anime movies to become more successful and appreciate again. This is a reemergence of Ghibli-like success from the 80s.
There are many more movies that became successful in the 20s and franchises are getting elevated left and right because of this.
Being a humble fan of anime, one should cleary acknowledge the modern success of anime and the increasing investment into this branch.
I am speechless seeing how some people on the internet (mostly haters or hermits) carry this narcisstic ignorance towards it. Gatekeeping for absolute no profit, solely out of emotional-narcissistic reasons, no logics behind that.
The 20s are here and not even anime reached a new climax of popularity, also chinese donghuas are reaching new heights.
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/g_zErAzZvIo
This is all due to animation technology and it being ever growing. And yes things will happen that we all fear: AI became also a thing for anime productions, it is itself setting up for a critical era of the future 30s and oh boi am I hyped for that. It will be the talk of the town, it will have errors, it will be bashed, but certainly some others will do it better than the rest and animation will continously grow upwards.
Argument 2: The old eras never died.
You hear me right, the old eras never died which is just ridiculous to think about, because it reduces the value of the whole discussion we are having in this thread, it deevaluates 90% of the arguments or opinions being made in this thread.
At the end of 00s and throughout the early 10s we had a notorious project poppin up with the identity of Dragonball Kai. Dragonball Kai's entire purpose was to have DBZ carry over from 80s/90s/00s to the 10 and beyond, by making a good summary and more digestable version of DBZ for a newer audience. We are entering an era of remastering and remaking. It took a while for the japanese industry to figure out the best formula for this approach, but we are slowly reaching the 20s again and we see a new wave and huge success in the industry regarding REMAKES.
This might come off as a mindblow for some people, but even your preciously acclaimed masterpiece Neon Genesis Evangelion from the 90s, got remastered over the time, keeping a legacy alive even in modern eras. Without the technology for it in the 10s, and their ambitions for it, it would have never happened and shows like these would have a small percentage of it's viewers from today missing.
The 20s henceforth are notorious for being an era of returners. Never before in time has new blood been interested in the good old, than in today's times, where with the help of social media crosspollunation, anime viewers never have lost their touch to the classics that defined the anime branch with their originality.
A big one to mention here is the return of Bleach for example, that took old anime fans by storm and brings new anime fans to a franchise which has been on some kinda freefall since it's original anime conclusion. At this point noone would be surprised when old anime like Monster or Death Note will get remakes, because their mangas are still selling massively. They generate continously money for just existing for a few decades and making it into streaming platforms or such kind of stuff. This money sooner or later will not remain uninvested and that's just the tip of the iceberg. We already saw huge success with both the Urusei Yatsura and Ranma 1/2 remake projects. Hitman Reborn has been announced to get a remake too, with a proper anime conclusion.
I think one of the arguments adjacent to all of it, is that the japanese animation industry realized some of their past mistakes and scheduling issues, combining it with deflating production costs due to the accessibility of animation technology.
What japan is trying to do here: giving their own anime branch justice, maintaining it's generationality and maybe counteract the huge flood of slop comming out of the factories day in and day out.
Man what a great time to be alive, makes me so excited to see where this is going. I personally am watching Monster rn, 60 episodes deep, and I so much wish this got a remake in time. But ngl, the story writing has been amazing, I am willing to rewatch this anytime if it were to get a remake.
Argument 3: Modern Macro Writing
With the huge stream of informations generated and shared throughout the internet, writing stories has never been as technical or scientific as it has been in the modern eras. While alot of it comes at cost of originality, more and more additional factors come into calculation, and this with every passing day or hour.
Let's be real at once here, storytelling is something that hasn't been streamlined within the past decades. Storytelling is something that is refined for centuries. This matters because even if we talk about 70s, 80s, 90s...storytelling is always at all times good, thanks to what our ancestors have done. From tales, religions books, lesson telling via folklore or whatever. You find these century old storytelling aspects within modern stories. We see it in a One Piece, a story about Luffy, but also a story about stories. The flashback of character XYZ is an own condensed story within the story of the arc KLMN, with the purpose of building the world and telling a lesson about philosophy STUVW. This continously gets applied throughout One Piece in various unpredictable and predictable constellations with the purpose of being educational and epic at the same time.
Let us take a look at Death Note for example, an anime I have watched 5 times and brought to a plentful of people as their first or second anime back in the 10s. Death Note is critically acclaimed by gatekeeping and irrational fans as the only one at the absolute top, if it comes to recommending anime to people. This is mostly due to it's complexity, macro story telling and originality.
If we break it down we get an easy formula for it's succes:
- Complexity
- Macro Story Telling
- Originality
Now I see hermits claiming that the 20s can't provide these aspects in their modern storytelling, but is this factually true?
I'd like to take a look at this 20s anime here:
Frieren is known for not having the strongest manga art, but what it did was becomming the best rated anime of all time.
Before Frieren became an anime, it was the manga community that pushed this story for what it is, a generational masterpiece. A timeless classic. This statement doesn't come from nowhere, looking at the aspect of it's originality, Frieren is an elevation of tropes and of an genre to a dimension that hasn't been seen in this constellation before. It is original and complex, both checking 2/3 of the boxes I highlighted above.
Frieren's success comes simply from being good and that is objective, it is a subjective thing whether one likes it, or finds it boring because of their ADHD. But results speak for itself.
Does Frieren have superior Macro Storytelling? yes it has, and it even goes beyond that applying micro philosophies throughout every corner of it's story, making it a detailled written macro story. A so called layered story. Frieren is not the first to do this, most of the anime and generally speaking modern stories are layered, but Frieren is doing this on a more streamlined level, and this causes it to reach out to a wider audience than all of it's predecessors.
Modern Storytelling never fell off imho, it even became widelier know for authors about how to deliver and pack a story these days. Ofcourse aslong a story is not artificially stretched out and milked for money, but a modern manga author nowadays is factoring this in. I will have cut short here, but modern mangakas is a whole topic of it's own and how industry is adapting to it.
I want to mention one more in Gachiakuta, which for some people looks like your regular action shounen on first sight, but underneath it's shell it's a story about stories. Gachiakuta is applying in it's own original way, what mangas like One Piece have established, or atleast shown to be what is possible, with all the layering, macro and micro writing and whatever you wanna add to the sauce.
Recency bias aside, I think we are living in the best era and this era is welcomming towards everyone. "Storytelling falling off" is a figment that has been brought to circulation by haters, hermits, wannabes and other irrational beings.
And oh boi I haven't even tackled the rise of the romance and fantasy genres since the 10s in here.
Argument 4: Pop Culture
One thing I can give everyone along the way: Stop being a hater or a hermit and maybe become openminded. Enjoy the ride, because enjoying the ride is unity and currently the unity is strenghtening. Various content creators and figureheads of the fandoms are combating kids, haters and other irrational beeings on the internet day by day. It is cinema, but it proves that those clowns are having no footholding here. Anime rises in success and popularity and the internet clowns continously suck shit out of their asses due to irrationality, narcissism and other toxic factors.
Just enjoy the ride and appreciate it. Anime was it in it's baby shoes in the 80s, anime is our beloved child that's now growing and carrying the torch of our generations into the future.
Thanks for listening to my ted talk. And sorry for all kind of errors along the way.
But to get things started, I would like to criticize something and make a correction:
First of all, I never compared DS with DBZ, please take a look at my post here:
As you see the green marked sentence is a prelude to the sentence that follows. I am making a claim about the technology available for certain animation studios. The red part of the follow up sentence is the argument that is following up with it.
So I think you either did not read/understand my post, or you twisted my words, or you just interacted with me in an ignorance-driven way.
If either, I will forgive you for the cause of having a logical, rational and objective discussion.
So to answer your main question, about what the 20s have above the 90s (btw your german was leaking there, I just sometimes wish us germans would get along better with each other instead of taking down each other, but society always mirrors itself on the internet, as sad as it is, but that's topic for another discussion):
Argument 1: The Technology
First of all, I am really disappointed by the knowledgeable participants here in this thread, for not giving credits to Studio Ghibli here.
Without doubt the sole main carry of the 80s and 90s was Studio Ghibli. While the animation of the western animation producers has stagnated and only slowly progressed, Japan has decided to elevate the idea of handcrafting frames in a massproducing way. Studio Ghibli was a pioneer in that regards, the idea was to detailly handcraft as many frames as possible between the keyframes, which simply lead to the huge success of Ghibli movies. They stood the test of the times, not only for storytelling, but also for animations.
Up to today, there are many traditional studios that still do the whole of inbetween frames via handcraft, which is giving the traditional japanese animations their originality and note of quality. This lasted throughout all of the 90s, and 00s, those years that your typical hermit would deem as "the time of their life".
In the 10s the digital handcraft slowly took over and we set up for the era of CGI. CGI was just sparely used, but the technology was continously evolving, not annually, but seasonally. This is where I want to highlight one certain "modern" studio, namely UFOTABLE to make their establishment globally. CGI was presumed to be invented by huge american corpos over the 50s or 60s, it became an immediate export hit from which china, korea and japan all benefited from.
Something a certain franchise capitalized from, once it became available for gaming and animation companies to kick off the new era of japanese animation - the franchise I am ofc talking about is the FATE/ franchise.
UFOTABLE became the studio that mastered it's craft of combining both traditional framing and CGI enhancement in order to create the modern masterpieces of 10s in term of animation. Which leads into their biggest passion project so far: Demon Slayer, which aired in 2019.
Back then it wasn't that notorious for what it were to become, but everyone who had knowledge of the industry would appreciate DS for what it was, people knew this one would become big.
I am talking here mostly about the japanese animation quality, but it's just ironic to think about what the chinese animation studios have been working on throughout the 00s and 10s. Their accumulative success is now carrying fruits like never before.
The argument also is the widespread of information, the internet, the digital social networks that anime has built up in adjascency to the popculture of both the west and the east.
1 + 1 is 2 based on Adam Ries, this leads us to the 20s. And I might have answered your question with the first brutal honest fact here:
The 20s are ahead of technology in comparison the any former era. We call it "acceleration", aslong it is accelerating, it becomes a metaphorical train with no destination in mind. Technology for example is a basis for making it on the big screen, creating flashyness or noise, that will attract a broader viewership. What I am saying makes sense the most looking at 2025, the most recent year of animation and it's success. The total gross profit is speaking for tiself, but yeah, both Demon Slayer AND Chainsaw Man have lifted the benchmarks.
Such a huge success did not come from nowhere, in prior years within the 20s, both Demon Slayer and One Piece have paved the ways for anime movies to become more successful and appreciate again. This is a reemergence of Ghibli-like success from the 80s.
There are many more movies that became successful in the 20s and franchises are getting elevated left and right because of this.
Being a humble fan of anime, one should cleary acknowledge the modern success of anime and the increasing investment into this branch.
I am speechless seeing how some people on the internet (mostly haters or hermits) carry this narcisstic ignorance towards it. Gatekeeping for absolute no profit, solely out of emotional-narcissistic reasons, no logics behind that.
The 20s are here and not even anime reached a new climax of popularity, also chinese donghuas are reaching new heights.
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/g_zErAzZvIo
This is all due to animation technology and it being ever growing. And yes things will happen that we all fear: AI became also a thing for anime productions, it is itself setting up for a critical era of the future 30s and oh boi am I hyped for that. It will be the talk of the town, it will have errors, it will be bashed, but certainly some others will do it better than the rest and animation will continously grow upwards.
Argument 2: The old eras never died.
You hear me right, the old eras never died which is just ridiculous to think about, because it reduces the value of the whole discussion we are having in this thread, it deevaluates 90% of the arguments or opinions being made in this thread.
At the end of 00s and throughout the early 10s we had a notorious project poppin up with the identity of Dragonball Kai. Dragonball Kai's entire purpose was to have DBZ carry over from 80s/90s/00s to the 10 and beyond, by making a good summary and more digestable version of DBZ for a newer audience. We are entering an era of remastering and remaking. It took a while for the japanese industry to figure out the best formula for this approach, but we are slowly reaching the 20s again and we see a new wave and huge success in the industry regarding REMAKES.
This might come off as a mindblow for some people, but even your preciously acclaimed masterpiece Neon Genesis Evangelion from the 90s, got remastered over the time, keeping a legacy alive even in modern eras. Without the technology for it in the 10s, and their ambitions for it, it would have never happened and shows like these would have a small percentage of it's viewers from today missing.
The 20s henceforth are notorious for being an era of returners. Never before in time has new blood been interested in the good old, than in today's times, where with the help of social media crosspollunation, anime viewers never have lost their touch to the classics that defined the anime branch with their originality.
A big one to mention here is the return of Bleach for example, that took old anime fans by storm and brings new anime fans to a franchise which has been on some kinda freefall since it's original anime conclusion. At this point noone would be surprised when old anime like Monster or Death Note will get remakes, because their mangas are still selling massively. They generate continously money for just existing for a few decades and making it into streaming platforms or such kind of stuff. This money sooner or later will not remain uninvested and that's just the tip of the iceberg. We already saw huge success with both the Urusei Yatsura and Ranma 1/2 remake projects. Hitman Reborn has been announced to get a remake too, with a proper anime conclusion.
I think one of the arguments adjacent to all of it, is that the japanese animation industry realized some of their past mistakes and scheduling issues, combining it with deflating production costs due to the accessibility of animation technology.
What japan is trying to do here: giving their own anime branch justice, maintaining it's generationality and maybe counteract the huge flood of slop comming out of the factories day in and day out.
Man what a great time to be alive, makes me so excited to see where this is going. I personally am watching Monster rn, 60 episodes deep, and I so much wish this got a remake in time. But ngl, the story writing has been amazing, I am willing to rewatch this anytime if it were to get a remake.
Argument 3: Modern Macro Writing
With the huge stream of informations generated and shared throughout the internet, writing stories has never been as technical or scientific as it has been in the modern eras. While alot of it comes at cost of originality, more and more additional factors come into calculation, and this with every passing day or hour.
Let's be real at once here, storytelling is something that hasn't been streamlined within the past decades. Storytelling is something that is refined for centuries. This matters because even if we talk about 70s, 80s, 90s...storytelling is always at all times good, thanks to what our ancestors have done. From tales, religions books, lesson telling via folklore or whatever. You find these century old storytelling aspects within modern stories. We see it in a One Piece, a story about Luffy, but also a story about stories. The flashback of character XYZ is an own condensed story within the story of the arc KLMN, with the purpose of building the world and telling a lesson about philosophy STUVW. This continously gets applied throughout One Piece in various unpredictable and predictable constellations with the purpose of being educational and epic at the same time.
Let us take a look at Death Note for example, an anime I have watched 5 times and brought to a plentful of people as their first or second anime back in the 10s. Death Note is critically acclaimed by gatekeeping and irrational fans as the only one at the absolute top, if it comes to recommending anime to people. This is mostly due to it's complexity, macro story telling and originality.
If we break it down we get an easy formula for it's succes:
- Complexity
- Macro Story Telling
- Originality
Now I see hermits claiming that the 20s can't provide these aspects in their modern storytelling, but is this factually true?
I'd like to take a look at this 20s anime here:
Frieren is known for not having the strongest manga art, but what it did was becomming the best rated anime of all time.
Before Frieren became an anime, it was the manga community that pushed this story for what it is, a generational masterpiece. A timeless classic. This statement doesn't come from nowhere, looking at the aspect of it's originality, Frieren is an elevation of tropes and of an genre to a dimension that hasn't been seen in this constellation before. It is original and complex, both checking 2/3 of the boxes I highlighted above.
Frieren's success comes simply from being good and that is objective, it is a subjective thing whether one likes it, or finds it boring because of their ADHD. But results speak for itself.
Does Frieren have superior Macro Storytelling? yes it has, and it even goes beyond that applying micro philosophies throughout every corner of it's story, making it a detailled written macro story. A so called layered story. Frieren is not the first to do this, most of the anime and generally speaking modern stories are layered, but Frieren is doing this on a more streamlined level, and this causes it to reach out to a wider audience than all of it's predecessors.
Modern Storytelling never fell off imho, it even became widelier know for authors about how to deliver and pack a story these days. Ofcourse aslong a story is not artificially stretched out and milked for money, but a modern manga author nowadays is factoring this in. I will have cut short here, but modern mangakas is a whole topic of it's own and how industry is adapting to it.
I want to mention one more in Gachiakuta, which for some people looks like your regular action shounen on first sight, but underneath it's shell it's a story about stories. Gachiakuta is applying in it's own original way, what mangas like One Piece have established, or atleast shown to be what is possible, with all the layering, macro and micro writing and whatever you wanna add to the sauce.
Recency bias aside, I think we are living in the best era and this era is welcomming towards everyone. "Storytelling falling off" is a figment that has been brought to circulation by haters, hermits, wannabes and other irrational beings.
And oh boi I haven't even tackled the rise of the romance and fantasy genres since the 10s in here.
Argument 4: Pop Culture
One thing I can give everyone along the way: Stop being a hater or a hermit and maybe become openminded. Enjoy the ride, because enjoying the ride is unity and currently the unity is strenghtening. Various content creators and figureheads of the fandoms are combating kids, haters and other irrational beeings on the internet day by day. It is cinema, but it proves that those clowns are having no footholding here. Anime rises in success and popularity and the internet clowns continously suck shit out of their asses due to irrationality, narcissism and other toxic factors.
Just enjoy the ride and appreciate it. Anime was it in it's baby shoes in the 80s, anime is our beloved child that's now growing and carrying the torch of our generations into the future.
Thanks for listening to my ted talk. And sorry for all kind of errors along the way.
Why is Demon Slayer getting compared to Death Note? Surely a more apt comparison is something like Fairy Tail, or Hitman Reborn (battle-focused shonen)? In which case I'd say Demon Slayer absolutely holds up to those.
Was speaking to Rej about this but we tend to remember the good ones more than the bad ones. So as we look back we associate that era with the good ones and ignore the bad. Whereas when we discuss modern anime, we remember the good and the bad. I also think it's harder for an individual anime to remain in the cultural sphere as every season, discussion gets flooded with new shows and new things to talk about. It's rarer and rarer to see threads discussing shows from previous seasons because people just follow what's airing, as it's airing, and with more and more people getting into anime, there's less of a "let me catch up on these shows" going on.
The only real criticism I think would be fair for modern anime is that there is a reliance on sequels and remakes. But era to era I think it holds up as well as any other.
Was speaking to Rej about this but we tend to remember the good ones more than the bad ones. So as we look back we associate that era with the good ones and ignore the bad. Whereas when we discuss modern anime, we remember the good and the bad. I also think it's harder for an individual anime to remain in the cultural sphere as every season, discussion gets flooded with new shows and new things to talk about. It's rarer and rarer to see threads discussing shows from previous seasons because people just follow what's airing, as it's airing, and with more and more people getting into anime, there's less of a "let me catch up on these shows" going on.
The only real criticism I think would be fair for modern anime is that there is a reliance on sequels and remakes. But era to era I think it holds up as well as any other.
There's definitely differences between different eras, but saying one is better than the other I don't think it's true.
In each era there are shows that define the decade and having a preference for a certain era is fine on its own but in the end it's like a nostalgia bias.
I've seen older people saying music nowadays is way worse than the 80's or the 60's and you can't really say that nostalgia doesn't play a factor.
Each new decade of anything is retroactively influenced by prior decades or prior successes in the specific medium but slowly throught the decades it changes to something completely new.
If you for example compare romance from the 2000's to the romance from 2020's they like night and day lol and the ones from the 2000's are not necessarily better than the 2020's and vice versa
In each era there are shows that define the decade and having a preference for a certain era is fine on its own but in the end it's like a nostalgia bias.
I've seen older people saying music nowadays is way worse than the 80's or the 60's and you can't really say that nostalgia doesn't play a factor.
Each new decade of anything is retroactively influenced by prior decades or prior successes in the specific medium but slowly throught the decades it changes to something completely new.
If you for example compare romance from the 2000's to the romance from 2020's they like night and day lol and the ones from the 2000's are not necessarily better than the 2020's and vice versa
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For the 2010's, you have Steins;Gate, Madoka, Fate/Zero, Attack on Titan just off the top of my head. AoT opinions may have changed but back then it was massive and a clear classic. 2020's has Frieren, Bocchi to name 2. Now in a direct comparison, you probably name less in those eras than before. That's true. But it's also a lot harder for any anime these days to retain the cultural impact some others had because the way we engage and discuss anime has changed massively over the last 10 years.
Sword Art Online used to be a show everyone had watched. Nowadays? You don't see much. And if that's a bad example, look at how Haruhi or Clannad are treated now compared to 10 years ago. Even some of the all time classics have struggled to retain that status as a product of how we engage with it now.
The quality is largely unchanged, and if anything has gotten higher in terms of the floor. Back when I started watching seasonals, you could skip entire seasons with nothing to watch because none of it was any good. Nowadays, there's generally something worth checking out even if it isn't a masterpiece or anything like that. But when people think of the 2010's, they don't remember Wizard Barristers or Absolute Duo. They remember the ones I mentioned. And that nostalgia only gets more powerful the further back you go. And of course, 20-30 years ago anime was still a relatively new medium, so it was a lot easier to have something new than it is now.
All of this is to say that I don't think there is anything to support a complete decline or a lower ceiling on anime quality. It's just that now, we engage with these great shows as they come and go much more than we did back then, we don't have to wait months or even years for it to come out, we get the episodes on the day they air and once they've finished we go onto the next one. Obviously this doesn't literally apply to everyone but generally speaking we have a lot more access to it now than having to find some dodgy pirate site or watch the episodes split into three parts on a crusty YouTube upload. And with enhanced access we have more choice than ever which means "the culturally significant" ones get blended in more with everything else. Which in turn makes them harder to stand out and keep standing out for a long time.
That's how I see it, anyway. People will obviously see it differently but I think what I'm saying is probably relatable to most people here, the idea that the medium as a whole is just getting worse and worse just doesn't hold up for me.
Sword Art Online used to be a show everyone had watched. Nowadays? You don't see much. And if that's a bad example, look at how Haruhi or Clannad are treated now compared to 10 years ago. Even some of the all time classics have struggled to retain that status as a product of how we engage with it now.
The quality is largely unchanged, and if anything has gotten higher in terms of the floor. Back when I started watching seasonals, you could skip entire seasons with nothing to watch because none of it was any good. Nowadays, there's generally something worth checking out even if it isn't a masterpiece or anything like that. But when people think of the 2010's, they don't remember Wizard Barristers or Absolute Duo. They remember the ones I mentioned. And that nostalgia only gets more powerful the further back you go. And of course, 20-30 years ago anime was still a relatively new medium, so it was a lot easier to have something new than it is now.
All of this is to say that I don't think there is anything to support a complete decline or a lower ceiling on anime quality. It's just that now, we engage with these great shows as they come and go much more than we did back then, we don't have to wait months or even years for it to come out, we get the episodes on the day they air and once they've finished we go onto the next one. Obviously this doesn't literally apply to everyone but generally speaking we have a lot more access to it now than having to find some dodgy pirate site or watch the episodes split into three parts on a crusty YouTube upload. And with enhanced access we have more choice than ever which means "the culturally significant" ones get blended in more with everything else. Which in turn makes them harder to stand out and keep standing out for a long time.
That's how I see it, anyway. People will obviously see it differently but I think what I'm saying is probably relatable to most people here, the idea that the medium as a whole is just getting worse and worse just doesn't hold up for me.
Amazing post Ratchy. Very dedicated and relateable to me.
Now I need to watch Wizard Barristers, just so I can make claims.
Now I need to watch Wizard Barristers, just so I can make claims.
Well, this is exactly what I mean. It all just comes down to preference, and there's no clear definitive answer to a question like "What is the best era of anime". Even amongst the animes you named, there are a fair chunk of people who hate them or just don't watch them and probably never will. I hate Bocchi the Rock, yet you listed that as a "good example" of modern anime. Just like some people will hate animes like Dragon Ball or Black Lagoon or Beck or whatever else. It really is just a matter of your own opinion, so there's no real point to trying to debate this as much as we're trying in this thread.
I don't really agree. Some animes can get pretty popular even if they're not actually that influential or don't do many "new" things". Look at how popular JJK is, it got three mangas with one of them still going as I'm typing this very message, not to mention the anime adaptations. I doubt anyone will forget about JJK for quite some time.
There are still a few mangas/animes with a lot of popularity or influence, it's just that they show that differently from how it was in the past, because the world in general is pretty different from how it was back then. The internet was in a very primitive state in the early 2000s, now a lot of things depend solely on the internet existing.
If an anime that was popular isn't talked about anymore, I wouldn't use it as an example of how modern animes are viewed far differently from how older ones were. Some things just fall off and eventually aren't talked about anymore
I don't really agree. Some animes can get pretty popular even if they're not actually that influential or don't do many "new" things". Look at how popular JJK is, it got three mangas with one of them still going as I'm typing this very message, not to mention the anime adaptations. I doubt anyone will forget about JJK for quite some time.
There are still a few mangas/animes with a lot of popularity or influence, it's just that they show that differently from how it was in the past, because the world in general is pretty different from how it was back then. The internet was in a very primitive state in the early 2000s, now a lot of things depend solely on the internet existing.
If an anime that was popular isn't talked about anymore, I wouldn't use it as an example of how modern animes are viewed far differently from how older ones were. Some things just fall off and eventually aren't talked about anymore
What I mean is that there are levels to popularity. JJK is a great example because when the anime eventually finishes, it's not going to be heralded as much as say a Naruto is. I think it's easier than ever for a show to "get popular", but the trade off for that is it's harder than ever for a show to have massive and lasting cultural impact.
Because anime is more mainstream now, and there's a lot more animes being made than before. I think it makes sense that people will cherish animes of current times less than before, as it was rare to find many good animes (or many animes in general) back then.
Now we have an abundance of animes and mangas for every demographic and every genre.
Not to mention, again, a lot of current animes and mangas are usually influenced by older ones in some way, so whatever cultural impact they could have isn't really "their" cultural impact. It's the impact of whatever they copied from in the first place.
Or, even if they aren't trying to copy any older ones, they may still end up making something very similar to ones from the past. That's just how it is in any industry, though, but it's more prevalent/blatant in the music industry. So many songs just take a beat from an older one and use that as the entire base of the song, or they just happen to make a song that sounds like an older one. Again, just how things go, I guess.
Now we have an abundance of animes and mangas for every demographic and every genre.
Not to mention, again, a lot of current animes and mangas are usually influenced by older ones in some way, so whatever cultural impact they could have isn't really "their" cultural impact. It's the impact of whatever they copied from in the first place.
Or, even if they aren't trying to copy any older ones, they may still end up making something very similar to ones from the past. That's just how it is in any industry, though, but it's more prevalent/blatant in the music industry. So many songs just take a beat from an older one and use that as the entire base of the song, or they just happen to make a song that sounds like an older one. Again, just how things go, I guess.
Tbh, from a japanese cultural point of view, the 20s will be the era known for Uma Musume and maybe for wrapping up the one or other show or the Idol/Frieren achievements. But yeah those are the frontliners. Even if horse racing would die in 10/20/30 years, it will still be remembered with every impact, since this is in the history books. History and reality will persist and carry over in form of wiki entries, log entries, accumulated data etc. The west is not ready for this yet and tbh there is noone to blame for. It's just a niche and time will tell how far this niche will explode and how lasting it's impact in history will be.
With that, a shameless plug: Watch Uma Musume: Cinderella Gray. A story based on reality. Fiction would not exist without reality.
With that, a shameless plug: Watch Uma Musume: Cinderella Gray. A story based on reality. Fiction would not exist without reality.
