But I'm busy.
Maybe he was trying to broaden his appeal with young people, or maybe the cultural stigma regarding anime has loosened in the years since I was there. All I can speak to is what I personally experienced.
I do feel a little more guilty about my indulgence now.
That really wasn't my intention. If you enjoy it, and there are certain properties you can get into that really do steer clear of the sexualization, then go for it. Just because I believe its cultural impact has been mostly negative doesn't mean I think everyone who enjoys anime is a degenerate.
The current prime minister, who is a globalist plant? Or one of the previous two Prime Ministers, who were effectively forced out because their political party has been co-opted by international moneyed interests which considered Abe's politics too traditional and nationalistic?
I would argue that it's the stormfags shitting up the place by turning every other thread into circle-jerking about the Jooz, but I'll concede your point that this probably wasn't the best place for Jester to bring it up.
Again, though, my major contention with stormfags is not their retarded beliefs: it's their retarded behavior. You brought up Antonio as if that disproves my point, but almost every post and comment he makes on here receives one or two downvotes if not more, which is mostly just drive-bys by stormfags who dislike him, regardless of the actual content they're engaging with.
It is worth noting that these are English speaking Western childish degenerates. In my experience anyways. Is this the same domestically in Japan?
There is a Western misperception, popularized by Western weaboos, that anime is mainstream in Japan. It's not. I've been to Japan. It is viewed as a medium for children and teenagers, but it's not really socially acceptable for adults to engage with it. Kids in schools are also discouraged from being too open about it. For example, they are expected to have conservative hairstyles and are often disciplined if they show up with "anime hair." A friend I made there told me a story about going to school once with his hair dyed blond: the teacher held him down and shaved his head (they probably couldn't get away with this now, but in the early 2000s there were no repercussions, even from his parents).
Most adults in the typical Japanese workplace would be outcasts for mentioning anime to their colleagues. You certainly would not be taken seriously as a salaryman. It is not a good idea to bring your manga to work, and those images you see online of anime-style murals in Tokyo train stations or lavatories are a rare exception, not the rule.
For the most part, the Japanese establishment has a tendency to view anime as a subculture, and any adult with a vocal interest in it would be considered weird at best. Even online, most Japanese people you'll see discussing it are teenagers or young adults.
I also noticed that there tends to be fairly consistent cultural and social lessons in most of the anime I watch. An example is the constant theme of maturing and taking responsibility in the form of finding a productive place in society.
I'll concede that I may have simply not watched enough anime to really notice any of the more wholesome messages if they're there. Again, I've often tried to, as there are many anime enthusiasts in the internet nerddoms I've inhabited who are always recommending their favorites, but trying to get into anime often feels like watching woke CW superhero shows: I always have to wade through hours of off-putting degeneracy in the search for any redeeming qualities.
In the end, it probably just comes down to taste. I stand by the assertions I've made about what I perceive to be anime's negative cultural impacts, but there are a lot of people whose opinions I respect who've told me that there is good anime out there too. I just can't seem to enjoy any of it.
The biggest annoyance is how degenerate and childish many of the online communities are when I'm searching for a recommendation.
This. There is certainly a component of "It's not the band: It's the fans" inherent in my dislike of anime as a medium, and I won't deny it. But it's also worth examining why it is that anime as a medium attracts so many childish degenerates, and why it has always done so even in the decades before those same degenerates became mainstream and made it their mission to subvert and co-opt every other medium of entertainment.
I've never enjoyed anime: It's always rubbed me the wrong way. Part of what I dislike about it is the animation style itself. Most of the male characters are drawn in a way that I can only interpret as deliberately androgynous, and often the animators dress them up accordingly. Many of the most popular animes and mangas also have a history of sexualizing characters who are portrayed as adolescents and children (Naruto and Sailor Moon are probably the most famous examples, but far from the only ones). Many of these particular properties are targeted at children, and so the intention behind it seems clear.
I would argue that this phenomenon has contributed to some of the most degenerate cultural trends that have popped up over the past decade. There is not only a clear and obvious anime-to-tranny pipeline, but also an anime-to-furry pipeline and several other similar trends.
You probably have a point, although I would argue that kids should be just as uncomfortable talking about sex with any adult, and that discomfort probably exists for good evolutionary reasons.
Parents should still be the ones who decide when these conversations are appropriate, and how they should take place.
Even if you argue that the idea of "sex ed" in schools for adolescents is in principle a good idea, and I can see where you're coming from, in practice we know that if you give these institutions an inch, they'll take a mile.
The most practical solution as far as I can see is to just implement a zero-tolerance policy on teachers talking about sex to their students.
My experience in university showed me that only a minority of men will have that reaction. The rest of them, hormonal youngsters still in their teens, or barely into their twenties, are still so desperate for the women in their classes to like them that they will repeat even the most vile self-hating feminist rhetoric with evangelical fervor.
Hey, I can say it! I have a white friend!
I wasn't commenting on the salience of Jester's comment. I was replying to another user asking about all of the downvotes. The downvote brigades don't just target Jester, but also certain other users on this forum who have not engaged in anything even approaching his level of anti-stormfag austism, but who have nevertheless drawn the ire of their groupthink by criticizing stormfaggotry. These users seem to attract downvotes on every comment, regardless of its content.
Only people of a certain ideological bent seem to participate in these brigades, which is a mode of behaviour that only reaffirms my belief that they are, at least emotionally, a bunch of children.
They correctly view anime as one of the biggest platforms for spreading their ideology, and they will react this way towards any anime property that they perceive as not being on message.
The anime-to-tranny pipeline is a real thing, and frankly I would argue that anime as a whole is a net negative in terms of its cultural impact, regardless of the increasingly rare instances when Japanese animators produce good content.
And yet here they all are, following specific users around the forum so they can downvote like a bunch of petulant 12-year-old girls.
I would even argue that teaching older kids about physiology with regard to their own bodies should be the preserve of parents. I don't want the schools, and by extension the government, anywhere near it.
The purview of formal education should be strictly limited to academic subjects. Not only should "sex ed" not be a thing, but neither should nutrition, dietary instruction or any kind of lifestyle advice. All of this nonsense wormed its way into the curriculum because teachers and school administrators gradually got the notion into their heads that they could be better at parenting than the actual parents. This is an idea that needs to be burned out of the school system with fire.
The amount of adolescent drama that takes place in that corner of the internet, and the fact that anyone still watches them really just goes to prove that the Metokur/warski fan base has really never been more than a bunch of teenagers and sad, 30-something bachelors who never outgrew high school.
You're better off not knowing.
We have our own leftist infestation on here. Stormfags are every bit as much a bunch of histrionic children as troons are.
RIP Britain
Not gonna lie, there are far too many people on our side of the culture war who believe the same.
The same week Bloomberg published the most obvious bullshit articles running interference for Disney and Netflix, they come out with this.
Turns out, when a billionaire creates a magazine whose core values center around the worship of corporations, all it takes to push them over the edge into total insanity is a few corporations not getting getting their way.
And you don't think anyone else should have the choice, when they're old enough to make it, as to which God-given pieces of themselves they want to keep, and which ones to get cut off?
At least if it gets done as an adult, there's anesthetic involved, unlike when they do it to infants.
I agree, and it frankly is kind of funny, but jury trials are all about perception. He's trying to prove that he was the victim of abuse and that his career was damaged by her defamation of his character. He already slipped up the other day by saying he wouldn't take a job doing PotC 6 even if Disney offered it to him: that gave her lawyers ammo to say "Well he's the one turning down jobs: How is that her fault?"
If the jury sees him laughing about the abuse he suffered, even something this trivial, then they're less likely to take it seriously. That shouldn't be the case, but it is.
He's not doing himself any favors by laughing at that where the jury can see him.
Just saying.
When all this is over, Ukraine will be the Kievan Rus again.
I seem to recall hearing that they killed the whole animation department. Apparently it's more expensive to make those than it is to produce live-action stuff these days.