A Few Words...

You know, I was having a conversation today with my friend who works at a famous game company. We were discussing how back in the day we used to love games that were mainly Japanese in origin, and how it was a shame that the state of the gaming industry in Japan is so sad anymore. And I went on to remark that the state of anime was kinda poor as of late, too. It has improved as of the end of last year, imo, but for a while there it was kinda touch and go. I fell out of love for a little bit.

Upon thinking about it, for as innovative as the industry was as a whole in the 80's and 90's into the early 2000's really, it's taken that much of a downturn. The same could be said about anime and manga up until recently as well. I am by no means a prude, but being an adult of higher than normal intelligence, when everything turns to fan service and "PANTSU, KAWAII, PANTSU, OPPAI!" it gets grating after a while. If this is the linchpin of what you're creating, I think you should either reevaluate what you're creating or reevaluate your core audience. So many manga/anime that I've encountered in the last year have lacked any semblance of a story beyond that of like an eroge that I gave up on both mediums for a while. I don't mind a little sexual humor or fan service being injected into an entertaining or aesthetically pleasing (hopefully both) story -- in fact I like it a lot -- but when the point of the whole series is to innundate you with bouncing breasts and panty shots it stops being entertaining. (To me, at least)

The whole lack of moderation thing seems to have extended into gaming now, with games about going to an omiai pub and screwing some random hostess reaching consoles. It's either that or "kawaii mascot" games, which seem to be the equivalent of shovelware here, coming around in droves. Again, I'm fine with cute stuff, but when one spawns a thousand imitators, it gets old. I'm not saying that everything needs to be wholesome like Yotsuba, but when there's an entire industry "turning" because horny adults that never grew up can't stop gratifying themselves to 2-D women it ruins things for the rest of us. Everyone fantasizes both sexually and nonsexually, it's healthy, it's a natural part of the human condition to have some sort of escapism in our lives. But having some much of the same thing, and like this, just takes not only art and innovation a step backward, but humanity kind of falls a bit, imo, as well.