I think I’m onto something here, so just let me begin shouting out insults towards people I disagree with real quick. An editorial, I guess.
The 1970’s and 80’s in the US saw a rise of a counterculture against the liberalism of the 60’s and early seventies. Crazy college students protesting war and inequality is cool, but when it becomes disruptive and almost “normal,” people can get annoyed. So we see the rise of the term “silent majority” with Nixon, trying to speak up for those who don’t agree with the protesters. It also gives rise to a much stronger conservative movement to go against the radical change, and keep things the same.
My point in saying that isn’t related to politics, though - whenever something becomes popular, there will be some kind of backlash and counterculture against it.
I think the same concept is being applied to things like Harem and general Moe anime - while I’m still not convinced that it makes up a flooding majority of modern anime like some complete titty babies make it out to be, to say that the genres haven’t had a surge in popularity and output during the last few years would be a retarded thing for anybody to say.
However, the people who like these kinds of anime - myself included - don’t tend to be more logically inclined thinkers when passing down their judgements. Not saying that people who like them are idiots, but I’m saying that we tend to be more feeling-based thinkers as opposed to the more thinking-types who come from other genres. While I personally see no issue with being a feeling based thinker in terms of entertainment, even thinking it’s the way to get the most out of your viewing experience, groups of people who don’t form opinions based around cold hard logic tend to have really vocal members who aren’t all that articulate, and will spout bullshit about the cute couples and whatnot, and focus on only the good parts while outright ignoring the bad ones. While I take no issue with that on a personal level because I come from a school of thought that dictates analytical discussion and criticism is worthless when the series itself can be something one can really enjoy, it can irritate people who sit outside of our preferred genres due to what I can really only describe as cultural differences - even though I think that’s a piss poor way to describe it, personally.
With more moe and harem focused anime like Haganai and K-On!‘s relatively high popularity outside of the circles who piss and moan about them like it’s going out of style, I can’t help but sit back and think - why is everybody so fucking retarded?
But after that, I realized something: A lot of people who constantly bitch about these kinds of anime will often be the ones who want to have at length discussions about their opinions of what they’re watching, and with my perceived quality of the majority of these people’s criticisms aside, they tend to do things like cite specific examples from what they watched and try to explain why they think it worked from a story perspective and all of that. In general, I do think good discussion is trying to be made, but then discussion amongst these folks practically become echo chambers that are just repeating the thoughts and opinions of whoever is the best orator after a while.
Whenever somebody who sits outside of these thoughts tries to come into a circle, they tend to spark trouble with their differing opinions, which sparks discussion amongst members where many outnumber the few, kind of like a hive mind of sorts. The people who are different will generally fold after a while because they’re generally outnumbered and not as good at presenting their thoughts as opposed to the other side.
That I don’t care about, though, if they want to be pussies who can’t stand by what they say they like then that’s on them. The real downside is that when they can’t really defend their argument and sound stupid, it just adds onto the other side’s narrative they’re spinning.
So, I guess the tl;dr version of that is that everybody’s either retarded, an asshole, or just a retarded asshole and I don’t know why I waste my time thinking of these things
Maybe I can try to turn these thoughts into a badass story about conflict or something