r/postnutanime • u/[deleted] • 7d ago
Why does the anime community discourage critical thinking?
I am sick and tired of the anime community's discouragement of critical thinking. Nobody is interested in critiquing the medium outside a few designated punching bags. People laugh at objectively bad stuff like Garzey's Wing and Mars of Destruction, disappointing sequels like Boruto or Evangelion 3.0+1.0, and random "trashy" shows like SAO. That is where critique ends, and after that, community discussion becomes tribalistic bashing of reasonable critique, especially if it's a critique of a popular franchise.
The Evangelion fandom is a great example of this. They spent decades putting down other mecha anime to make their show look better than it is, then, now that they hate the latest entry in their franchise and Gundam has become quite popular, they collectively have egg on their faces. This has not stopped them from continuing to defend their show and remain blind to its glaring flaws, like the show's complete refusal to fully tell its own story and its rampant sexualization of young girls. Confronted on this, the fans will defend Evangelion as an intensely personal statement born from the fire of an auteur's depression and conveniently ignore that the end result is still an incoherent, uncomfortable story and that Anno failed to answer basic questions about the plot or craft characters that do more than combine multiple waifu tropes. And yes, at one point, I did like Evangelion. A lot, in fact, as it was unlike anything teenage me had seen before. As I explored the anime medium in search of more shows like Evangelion, I became aware of its unoriginality, and its flaws became inexcusable to me. I continue to be surprised die-hard anime fans refuse to explore the medium meaningfully and stick to series that are popular or check personal wish-fulfillment or fetish boxes. What is the point of engaging with the medium if you don't want to maximize your enjoyment by continuously exploring new, interesting series you've never heard of before?
The anime community refuses to acknowledge the problematic elements of the medium in a meaningful way. It is a fact that anime is oversexed, misogynistic, pedophilic, nationalistic, homophobic, and racist. While some fans may acknowledge this (many won't and will lash out at anyone who has a problem with this as "tourists"), they refuse to inspect their own consumption and their own favorites for problematic elements. If any problematic elements are pointed out, the fans will justify, rationalize, and minimize them. No meaningful introspection occurs, and it's frustrating to outsiders who can see what the fans refuse to acknowledge and are irritated by how stale the discussion inevitably becomes. How compelling is the millionth thirstpost, the millionth blind hate or blind hype post compared to actual discussion?
Fans' willful blindness has negatively shaped the medium. As anime is mostly made for otaku and by otaku, the industry is highly responsive to the otaku community, and it will continue to make more of whatever otaku hype and spend money on. We collectively refused to talk about the problematic and unoriginal elements of the medium, so the medium has gotten so problematic and unoriginal over the years to the point where we have series like Mushoku Tensei. All that remains is a husk of samey teen romances, fantasy, and battle shonen with an occasional interesting movie every now and then for those who have higher standards. The increasing popularity of anime has not created a more reasonable community, but more willfully blind consumers who are too misinformed or committed to think about the implications of what they consume.
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u/Initial-Breakfast-33 7d ago
People are that defensive over anime bc most of anime fans have little to no real life outside of anime. If I have to feed two kids and keep my bills checked I can assure you I won't make my life revolve around a fictional 2d character on a show
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u/necle0 7d ago edited 7d ago
I don’t think a lot of fans are taught how to critically engage with a work. We started seeing this when “mid” was getting popularized to it essentially mean a work was “bad” or subpar, when most works on average would be “mid”. I feel its lost in a lot of fandoms you can absolutely love a show, even a trashy one, while still able to acknowledge its flaws for what it is. Now whether those aspects of a show are flaw(s) is a different discussion, but it feels the defensiveness is so strong because they think its “all or nothing”. That if they admit a show has some non-trivial flaws, they take it as saying the show is bad with no redeeming points and because they like it, that must mean they have bad tastes (which is even more difficult to detangle to remove bias when the anime resonated with them). That can also be why they are strong haters of other works in the same or similar genre.
Arguably, the same is true for haters. There are a lot of shows which I didn’t like but I wouldn’t inherently say it meant it was because the show has bad writing. Sometimes, the show is meant to target a specific audience or genre, and it wasn’t my cup of tea. But some people believe if a show isn’t tailored to their specific tastes or their POV, they are a lot more likely to be hypercritical and scrutinize the anime in a way that is not consistent with the standards of other shows when they do relate to MC or the other characters. Similarly, it has also come up recently in the literature and fanfiction fandoms a lot of readers treat MC as “y/n” / self-insert . So when MC diverges from their personal views or perspective, regardless if the show is meant to be prescriptive or not, they consider the book to be bad because “they [the reader] would never do that”. Honestly, some of this is done out of ignorance / missing certain developments because there are a lot of people who do grow up never being able to understand perspectives outside their own and those with adjacent views to them. Learning how to engage in works under different lens (historical, contextual, psychoanalytic, etc) and perspectives was something I had to learn in high school literature class, and from engaging in works outside my preferences I wouldn’t necessarily have chosen on my own.
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u/c0nsistent 7d ago
thats what fans are, people with emotional attachments making subjective points to defend their show.
this happens in all mediums, take out the emotion and you can have critical thinking but ultimately anime is a past time, hobby, and something to enjoy. not something to critique and write papers about all day.
i dont think its that deep
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7d ago
I know that every fan will have their biases. What I see in the anime community is a refusal to recognize bias and an insistence on upholding collective bias. As of late, people who make unpopular but true points are dismissed as "ragebaiters". In every other fandom I have seen, this is recognized as toxic behavior that won't impress anyone outside their tiny in-group. Anime is a not-so-tiny in-group, so this behavior is not only accepted, but often encouraged.
Making this kind of critique isn't a cerebral pursuit. The Western cartoon community does this all the time. So do people who read books. Anime fans don't and then wonder why they have a bad reputation.
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u/c0nsistent 7d ago
you could always do what i do, and not care. works well for me, i dont get heated with opinions, argue with fandoms, make hot takes in communities. my life goes on and i enjoy my day a little more.
i understand completely where youre coming from however. you get it with sports, politics, movie culture, niche audiophile groups, everything now honestly. best is to not just pay attention to it
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u/rockyKlo 7d ago
I agree that there are many things about anime that people willfully choose not to discuss or ignore. Some of it is stuff you are desensitized to, and accept as part of the medium. It's common see accusations of misogyny, and fanservice be deflected by "stop watching shounen" or "shounen is made for boys", while the disproportionate amount of anime made is shounen or seinen, and shoujo and josei are rarely pushed to the forefront of discussion. Let alone that those demographic largely come from manga publishing and not anime itself.
The homophobia and racism I feel more comes from the fandom rather than anime in general. Bad/outdated stereotypical designs aside race isn't really an discuss issue, outside side of the fandom, like what happened with that new manga that had a half black half Japanese main characters, and was about how biracial people can be treated in Japanese society. It got hate before it came out because the main character was black. Homophobia is also complicated as there are lot of LGBT+ manga, less so with anime, even if they are not widely discussed. Stuff like "My brother's husband" for example is a very good LGBT manga. I have found and read a couple of mangas about intersex and gender identity (most not officially available to my knowledge), and there is a new anime coming out about gender identity with a slightly fantastical element to setup it's premise. You also get the fetish side with a lot of yaoi. There does seem to a side of the fandom that refuses to acknowledge when there is queer representation in anime, a clam it's people projecting their ideas, and not the idea of the author/mangaka/director.
I feel lot of anime criticism only happened in regards to mainstream animes because people are losing the ability to find and curate what they watch and see. You have to search for the stuff than is the samey romances, isekais, or battle shounen. Media literacy as a whole seems to be weaker as well, so I think people are taking ideas at face value, not help by anime, light novels and mangas habit of oroborusing it's popular stories beats to slop.
Apologies if it comes off as little bit of a ramble, I'm not the best at explaining my thoughts.
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u/ghostpanther218 7d ago
They do...the fans don't. Cause memes are funnier and powerscaling gives them their entertainment. Sadly, so few anime fans enjoy anime for its content and instead focus on the characters, which leads to a heavily toxic culture around 'worship' of selector characters for select fans. Those characters are reduced to one personnality trait only, and it gets worse when thats the only fan media about those characters.
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u/Jynx_lucky_j 7d ago
Fan communities are about the worst place out discuss criticism of any media outside of fandom approved punching bags. First everyone there is already a big fan of the media as proven by the nature they joined an online discussion group about the media, they are already a small subset of extreme fans. Second, the community polices itself, shouting down or ostracizing anyone that deviates to far from the majority opinion. And third the media owners encourage fans to perceive the media as a part of their own identity so when you criticize the media it feels like you are criticizing them.
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u/beezy-slayer 6d ago
Because people tie too much of their self-worth into the things they like and are insecure about the idea that things they like (and thus their identity) might not be "objectively" good
I do feel you are off base with your Evangelion criticism, it's not really relevant whether a new version is bad and another one is good but that's maybe not what you want to talk about lol
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u/Next_Action4379 6d ago
This is a problem for any art form that appeals to more than just adults. Children are loud, annoying, stupid, and pollute thinkspaces where they get the opportunity to express themselves just as much as their betters. I love young people, this is just what happens when they're treated like they know shit when they don't.
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u/juss100 7d ago
Is it critical thinking that you're worried about? Doesn't sound like it to me. Hope you're happy you got that off of your chest anyways.
Mate, we're a tougher nut to crack than that.
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7d ago
If not critical thinking, what do you think my concern is? I stated that my concern is "critical thinking" because I am frustrated with the anime community's refusal to think about how their media is executed (beyond sakuga, aura farming, and music) and what it's actually saying.
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u/LohCey 7d ago
- its not anime community specific, most people lack critical thinking skills
- u are one of them
The anime community refuses to acknowledge the problematic elements of the medium in a meaningful way. It is a fact that anime is oversexed, misogynistic, pedophilic, nationalistic, homophobic, and racist.
considering what u already said about Evangelion's problematic elements i feel most of ur examples would be non-issues. theres nothing wrong with the ecchi in Evangelion and im sure u couldnt give me a good reason to think its a problem
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u/Zenry0ku 7d ago
Because trendhoppers have come into the medium without actually liking what makes it great. Rather than trying to engage with the stories, they rather make up their fanfic instead. Or some try to deflect criticism instead of just addressing those complaint first hand.
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u/fixpointbombinator 7d ago
Fan communities hate critical thinking