#genres000

I Liked a few Tweets from Shoujo genre fans refuting Shonen genre fans' weird Tweets. And now lately, the Twitter algorithms are showing me back and forth arguments between the "shojoheads" and "shounen heads". (You know this discourse is getting more entrenched than it should, when they start making names for each other.)

One of the stranger concepts I've seen repeated in this discourse is the "only Battle Anime deserve high production value". It's SO ODD! They don't want just one genre to have all the good production value. They want just one SUBgenre to have all the good production value. If I could wish for anything in anime production, it's for all anime to be beautifully animated (without overworking and underpaying the animators). I would think everyone would want to see MORE beautiful animation, not less. It's this weird hoarding mentality, I think. As a hoarder, who has problems letting go of things and can't stop collecting, I don't understand the hoarders who define their collections by contrasting versus the scarcity of what other people have. To me, that's just weird. Isn't the point to have and enjoy a thing? What does it matter if someone else gets to have it or not as well? (Though personally, I'd like to see more people also have collectibles, so that we can all be excited about them together.) But I guess it has to do with the idea of rarity defining status. Why are people thinking in terms of status??? I've always hated "artificial scarcity" defining value. (That's why I love printmaking. I can't replicate more artwork, as much as I want.) This idea of things you love being valuable because it's rare and no one else has it, is just ridiculous to me. It should be valuable, because you like it. And wouldn't it be great if everyone had things they liked? But I don't know... I get joy, thinking of other people being happy. I suppose, because I believe the opposite of every opinion exists, that means there are people who find joy when other people are miserable, jealous, destitute, etc. What a terrible mentality to live with.

So lately, I've seen some posts from this discourse, complaining about Witch Hat Atelier getting good animation. Which is weird, among the sea of everyone so happy at how beautifully animated, every episode of Witch Hat Atelier has been.

And I just realized this is the same as those people complaining about the sakuga in the trailer for Ranma 1/2 remake season 3. I literally saw a Tweet, to the effect of, "Why is Ranma 1/2 getting so much good animation for it's fight scenes?! It's a romcom! All you need is girl gets angry, hits boy, everyone laughs!" And I wrote a whole essay, ranting about how Ranma 1/2 is a parody of the martial arts genre, and therefore, it not only needs good fight scenes, but also, half the jokes won't be effective without taking the martial arts seriously. I completely missed that this was probably part of that entire discourse from the "shounen heads" wanting to hoard all the good animation to only "battle anime" fight scenes. ...So weird...

I don't know if they just don't notice high quality animation if it's not a fight scene---like the fingers intertwining in Mamoru Hosoda's Summer Wars is sakuga, just as much as a fight scene---or if they seriously think ALL sakuga should ONLY be used for fight scenes. Because, clearly, they don't have an appreciation for broader scopes, enough to reflect consumption of multiple genres. They might even ONLY consume "battle anime", while ignoring all other subgenres within the Shonen genre.

That would explain the discourse from a while ago, when everyone was losing their minds over Dandadan, actually focusing on a romance, differentiating it from other newer, modern, Shonen Jump series. They called all references to Romance subplots/genre "Shojo", seemingly oblivious that not all of the Shojo genre is Romance, as well as unaware that the Shonen genre itself, famously, has a Shonen Romance subgenre. That used to be the MAJORITY of the Shonen genre brought to America, when I was a kid.

Sounds like someone who doesn't watch "slice of life", iyashikei, or even moe genres.

People complain about bathos and the lack of sincerity in media.

But people also complain about the "mundane miracles" trope being portrayed as being laid on "really thick", and about Shojo anime taking sakuga animators "away" from the "battle anime" genre.

People are calling this Anime ISEKAI SLOP... 😭 by Kito Senpai

Maybe such comments are just rage bait, but... I'm beginning to think people don't know what "isekai" means.

Magical Girlfriend trope:

Love Triangle trope:

Harem genre origin:

Demon Hunter genre; Isekai trope: