Lately, a lot of stupidity has come across my YouTube feed, mostly related to “Otaku” channels bashing “Tourists” for thinking that anime is not representing women well.

i guess i didn’t bury the lede, but I think the situation is far more complicated than they make out, and the tourists, while they do generally suck, have the right of it.

First, let me be clear: tourists (which those channels define as “people who just got into anime a few years ago and are free with their opinion on social media” – for the most part) kinda suck. I don’t really respect them a lot of the time (though I’d probably be considered one. I don’t care) because they don’t understand much about Japanese culture, don’t speak the language, rely on dubs, and tend to take a Western approach to critically approaching anime. I’ve railed about this on several forums, to the point where I think if you don’t speak Japanese, or at least have a passing familiarity with Japanese culture, you should probably give anime a pass. To this level, i agree with this otaku commentators. Tourists can be a problem.

But my YouTube feed has been very “educational”. Because of the “shorts” feature (where you pretty much cannot hide channels), i get a lot of content through that is, well, I can’t think of a better word than “problematic” (even though I hate that word). It consists of women with absolutely massive breasts, and their sole purpose in life seems to be to, well, service whatever MC there is. That’s the only reason they exist. Man (or woman) approaches (or is approached by) a woman with a completely unrealistic figure, and then spends the rest of the manga completely, wantonly engaging in incredibly degenerate and lustful behavior. These kinds of manga/anime exist solely to provide an outlet to the worst of human sexuality. I looked up one or two out of curiosity. I felt dirty afterwards, and I’m usually pretty live-and-let-live.

Now, I do know the difference between regular anime/manga and hentai. I get it. These are hentai, not your mainstream anime. But, the truth is, it’s on a continuum. On the one hand, you have fairly wholesome anime such as “Hibike! Euphonium” and “K-On”, where the girls are treated like, well, girls, and you’d be hard-pressed to consider it even ecchi much less anything else. Then, on the other hand, you have anime like “Don’t Toy with me, Miss Nagatoro”, which is just a steaming pile of ecchi trash. The closer you get to “hentai” on the ecchi scale, the worse the representation of women gets. Women are often treated as objects of desire, with no real purpose in life than to be a romantic foil for the MC or fanservice fodder, and it’s, frankly, somewhat disgusting. (To be clear, If the ecchi aspects have a plot-based reason, I’ll give it a pass. About 95% of the time, they don’t.)

So, the “tourists” have a point.

The problem with the way these channels see “tourists” is pretty much described by their definition of “tourist”. It has to do with how long you’ve been a fan of anime and how familiar you are with it. The problem is that this is the classic gatekeeping conundrum. On the one hand, when you’ve been familiar with something for a long time, the “community” gets kind of ossified and starts with groupthink. So when new voices come in, they’re not going to be listened to, because their new perspectives might go against what the die-hard fans (in their opinion, anyway) think of any given issue. The way anime treats women, in large part, is a problem, and it’s only the most intellectually and morally dishonest of those who can’t at least see that it’s something that deserves serious discussion.

On the other hand, the “tourists” have their own issues. Those who have been fans of anime for a long time do have some useful insights, and it does no good whatsoever to charge into a given situation, especially where there’s already an established community, and try to upset the apple cart without at least understanding the preexisting history and culture. Sometimes, as with DOGE, you have to just take a wrecking ball to something and then pick up the pieces afterwards. But most of the time, it would behoove both parties to take a step back and say “I see what you’re saying. Here’s why I think you’re wrong. But you’re right on this particular point, and maybe we should take that into consideration.”

Neither party will do that. Both are, frankly, too stupid and immature.

This is why I do not engage with the anime community. Almost never. My account on MAL is fairly locked down, I only post on blogs I control (never social media), and I, quite frankly, have no interest in engaging either with the “otaku” community, or with the “tourist” community. Both suck. And, to be quite frankly, I enjoy anime for my own reasons, and my opinions are my own. At the end of the day, if no one shares them, as long as I can sit down and enjoy an anime of my choosing every now and then, I don’t give a flying fuck what anyone else thinks.

But If you’re going to engage in such a community, the very least you could do is be an adult about it.

And I see very little adult-like behavior in either community.

People like me are watching. And we’re not impressed.

You may consider the mic dropped.

Off to do productive stuff that has nothing to do with anime.