Why is anime not so violent now?

One thing to keep in mind is this is just an observation from a not-so-big anime fan - I really don't watch anime and am basing this mostly on the countless clips I've seen of older and newer anime, so many of you are likely much more educated than I am on this subject.

I've seen clips of older anime in which you'd expect gratuitous violence, like Violence Jack or GenoCyber (which notably is much more graphic than what you'd even find in recent "violent" anime shows). I guess Fist of the North Star could fit in that category too. But even more mainstream stuff like oldskool Macross has people getting crushed and eyeballs exploding. Space Runaway Ideon's finale has everyone, even kids, getting blown to pieces. Princess Mononoke has people getting beheaded and dismembered and the like. Evangelion also saw kids getting brutally injured or murdered. Berserk is an obvious one.

By "older" I generally mean anime from the 70's-90's. Everything starting in the 00's, as far as I can tell, started to get much more tame. There's the occasional violence gore galore anime like Elfen Lied, but that was the defining characteristic of that series. You don't really find it so casually as you did 10-20 odd years ago, from what I can see (again, coming from someone who doesn't really watch a lot of anime).

Out of pure curiosity, could someone explain to me what shifted this tone in violence (if anything)?

MegaTokyo is boring. I don't need to explain this to you. Moving on.

It also became apparent that I had given Fred too much credit when I took the aforementioned fanboy wet dream stuff for self-aware cleverness. MegaTokyo isn't a clever, self-aware fanboy wet dream -- it's just a fanboy wet dream. A fact that is not in itself, but leads us to, the biggest reason MegaTokyo sucks, which I will try to explain for you now:

In a nutshell:

MegaTokyo is embarrassing to read.

To expandify:

Fred Gallagher is a sexually repressed weirdo fuck-up, with a moral high horse not merely between his legs but actually working its way up his arsehole. We learn this about Fred from reading his comic. He isn't aware, of course, that his slip is showing, which is why it's embarrassing.

Plenty of stories are fanboy wet dreams. There's nothing wrong with that necessarily. But MegaTokyo is a repressed and, paradoxically, judgemental fanboy wet dream.

To continue my little story: I stopped liking MegaTokyo, but kept reading it in case it got better. It didn't -- it got worse and worse, so I started hating it. But I'd still check in from time to time, because I'm an idiot. A while back, on this very LiveJournal, I linked to this page...

http://www.megatokyo.com/index.php?strip_id=706

...calling it the most embarrassing page of MegaTokyo thus far. And it's certainly a good example of what I'm talking about. The heroic Piro nobly and boldly censures the wicked Miho for daring to have a personality and sex drive. And of course she is immediately, tearfully remorseful, because that's how it would go in Fred's world.

About Fred's World, Though...


Fred's world has two layers: The first consists of his genuine fantasies: virgin schoolgirls, sex robots, goth girls with low self-esteem, etc. The second layer, formed from repression, moralising and so on, is basically his denial of the first layer. The second layer is the fantasy that poor, repressed, pussy-whipped Fred thinks he should have -- the fantasy where he doesn't take advantage of the girls from the first layer; holds hands with Kimiko after they fall in love, and so on.

The two layers of MegaTokyo are responsible for all its infuriating contradictions: Fred draws sexy women, then gets angry at his fans for wanting to fuck them. Fred surrounds Piro (ie. himself) with a fantasy harem, then turns them into a bunch of nutcases. Then Piro, uh... helps them? Or something? I dunno.

If MegaTokyo were just the first layer, it would be a fun, sexy romp. But it's both layers, and the upshot of that is -- and this deserves its own line -- this:

MegaTokyo is a sex fantasy where no-one gets laid.

More to the point: MegaTokyo is Fred's sex fantasy where Fred doesn't get laid. He's a pervert and a prude at the same time, and that's what makes his comic so unbearably awful.

Why Can't Fred Just Enjoy Himself?


'Cause he's fucking pussy-whipped, that's why!

The thing is that Piro is Fred. Piro can't have wild orgies because he is, officially, a fictionalised version of Fred, so Fred can't let Piro do anything Fred wouldn't. Fred's sexual fantasy is Kimiko, but because everyone knows that Piro is Fred, and Fred is, in fact, married to Sarah, who Kimiko is officially not...

Well! How to solve this conundrum, eh Fred? How to maintain both your public anime girl fantasy and your marriage to a woman of iron? Here's how Fred did it: He put Sarah in the comic, too, as a character called Seraphim -- Piro's conscience.

Let that sink in for a minute.

[a minute]


Fred is so repressed that to stop himself from enjoying his own fantasy, he invited his wife (then girlfriend) into it, to play the role of his conscience.

The character of Seraphim -- of all the revealing, embarrassing elements of MegaTokyo -- is the most revealing and embarrassing. I mean, my god. My god.

You poor bastard.

Anyway!


I told you about how even though I hated it, I would visit MegaTokyo from time to time, just to make myself angry. Well, the last time I did that, this is what I saw:

http://megatokyo.com/index.php?strip_id=959
http://megatokyo.com/index.php?strip_id=961

I began this entry by calling Rodney Caston shit. Nonetheless, Fred turning Largo (Rodney's character) -- who I don't even like; never did -- into a second Piro... it's too much. I haven't been back to MegaTokyo since then. Except to write this entry, of course.

And soon, this entry will be finished, and I'll never have to think about MegaTokyo ever again! People will ask, "What do you think of MegaTokyo?" and I will point to this entry and say, "That."

So, with the big reasons out of the way, here's why else MegaTokyo suckles at the parched teats of Satan:


    * Shitty art

    * Shitty everything

    * Shit shit shit

    * Poo

    * Tits

    * Cock

>>2
wat

I don't think there's enough violets in anime.

I think they should make a japanese cartoon about the JACKSON 5 GET

http://img337.imageshack.us/img337/2061/moeisgarbage.jpg

These days it's all to cater to lonely Japanese nerds and ugly fat white people.

WTF happened to you Japan? I want more like M.D. Geist please. Forget the cutesy crap already.

>>6,7
Exactly. weeaboos are pathetic people. anime always will be rotten garbage!