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The story
A thread that started with the post “Anime, movies, games, music — literally everything lately is boring” caught fire on 5ch’s Nanademo Jikkyo G (an “anything goes” board). What began as a debate over whether creators’ quality has declined or viewers’ way of engaging with media has changed soon grew into a full critique session, with posters naming specific titles like Parieto, The Odyssey, Madoka Magica, and NHK’s Taiga historical dramas. One side argued that difficult, connoisseur-oriented works have simply gotten harder to communicate to audiences; the other countered that it’s really just otaku failing to do their homework, with content overload dragging down relative ratings across the board. The debate ran on without either side budging.
What people said
It's because the audience's quality dropped that highbrow works don't land anymore.
Something like Evangelion wouldn't even take off today.
Huh? There was nothing highbrow about why that got popular.
Might be different from the creators' side, though.
More than "highbrow," I mean anime that requires you to savor difficult storytelling, art, and directorial detail — that's all done for now.
Too many people only watch for the battles; even the Madoka Magica movie gets nothing but complaints that the fights are "meh."
That's a movie Nolan didn't even need to make
These days, isn't everything just some work that a small clique worships like a god while everyone else calls it creepy?
There's no more mainstream stuff that's mildly liked by everybody.
Twilight of the Warriors: Walled In from last year was total mainstream crowd-pleaser material though
Parieto and Mars Express were great but barely got talked about, right?
The former's a completely original new work from Goro Taniguchi, no less
Watched Parieto, it was trash lol
Do you think finding that interesting is an old-man take that's out of touch with the times?
It's less about research ability and more that we're gorged on entertainment.
Same as with rice demand.
Tell me specifically what wasn't interesting about it
I liked the ballet dance sequences, the naginata sword choreography, and the girl-meets-girl coming-of-age story, plus the acting-driven direction worked for me
It felt like a "beautiful world" dreamed up by an old person — so pretty it was almost funny.
Young people won't fall for that, it's like "what is this, some new religion? A scam? A recruitment pitch?" that kind of vibe.
Falling for something like that is exactly an old person's sensibility.
That'll pretty much tell us everything we need to judge
Onyanko Club
Yuyu
Evangelion
Haruhi
Madoka Magica
Megazone 23
Songs by Yuyu and Onyanko Club
Then don't go complaining about battles that people can enjoy without any extra effort.
"The fights are awesome, and now I want to know more about this character, get immersed in this world" — that's how it's supposed to work once it clicks.
I came here for curry, and you're telling me the pickled radish on the side is great — that's not what I asked for.
Nah, the order is different for everyone.
Plenty of works like Lain or Ghost in the Shell built cult followings where the atmosphere comes first, before anything else.
There's no rule that says "battles have to come first" — that's just an excuse for not being able to enjoy anything besides the fighting
Not really following your logic here, but if you only want to watch works that pursue pure realism, then something like Sister Act is nothing but a feel-good fantasy too — maybe that kind of story just isn't for you.
Guess you should just stick to watching movies like Civil War
If you don't get what I'm saying, that just proves it's an old man's sensibility
You might not realize it, but right now you're doing the same thing as those otaku nitpicking that famous anti-war anime by going "that's not even a real bomber"
I'm getting slapped with some label I don't recognize here, but
at the very least I think your read on the work is off
It's like watching "The Two of Us" and complaining that the caregiving methods shown are inaccurate
You're the one who started with the labeling
Was the Madoka Magica movie really that bad? I don't know that one
Go see for yourself, dude
Let's put a little money in the animators' pockets
In M-1 comedy-competition scoring terms, Madoka Magica's a 99, Rebellion's a 96, and Kaiten's a 94
X Japan
The Blue Hearts
What about games and music?
Music's covered in Re: #55
Banjo-Kazooie
Super Mario Bros. DS
Pokémon Diamond/Pearl (DS)
Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Explorers of Time
Kid Icarus: Uprising
Super Mario Galaxy
Why is that, I wonder?
With Taiga dramas the datedness doesn't really bother you as much
Part of it is that there was a much wider range of stuff you didn't have to worry about compliance-wise, so they could do whatever they wanted more freely.
But honestly the bigger factor is that it was an era that benefited from Japanese acting being at its absolute peak
Sometimes the old stuff is simply higher quality, plain and simple, but other times it's just that your brain got fried on a dopamine rush from having fewer things to compare it to back then
Complaining about the battles and then turning around and saying "everyone's different" is just moving the goalposts.
If everyone's different, then you should just shut up and take whatever rating people give it
I'm not complaining and I do think everyone's different, but
my point is that visual media is a comprehensive art form, and yet more and more people can only enjoy that one aspect of it — that's not a contradiction
That's your own assumption too
Doesn't seem like there's anything more to get out of arguing with you
In the curry shop analogy, even if what comes out is pickled radish, the point I was making is that the radish is delicious in its own right —
And especially with visual works, it's common for something to look like it's flying the "curry" banner but actually serve you radish instead. What I'm saying is there are more narrow-minded people now who go "it wasn't curry! garbage!" I'm not denying your taste, to be clear!
I started composing music, and watching a track gradually turn into the one you imagined is a different kind of enjoyment than just consuming stuff.
Plus when you share it and the play count goes up, it scratches that need for validation 🥺
Might as well post it here then
Harem stories turning garbage the moment they lean into the harem angle has been a tradition since SAO.
Give me Iron Wok Jan! any day
That's not a recent work though, that's from over 10 years ago — so what you're saying is the old stuff was garbage too
Background and key points of this debate
The feeling that “things used to be better” is a debate that resurfaces every generation, and this thread is no exception — no single cause won here. Those pointing to a decline in creators’ quality clashed head-on with those pointing to a shift in how viewers engage with media, and neither side backed down. Part of the backdrop is that the explosion of streaming and subscription services has caused the sheer volume of available content to balloon, making it easier for the time and attachment people can devote to any one work to get diluted (the thread itself touches on this with the phrase “gorged on entertainment”). It’s also worth noting that the back-and-forth over real works like Parieto and The Odyssey tended to drift away from critiquing the works themselves and toward slapping labels on each other — “old man sensibility,” “narrow-minded” — based on differing reactions. And it’s worth keeping in mind, as a premise for this whole debate, that the older titles cited in the thread as “the good stuff” (Evangelion, Haruhi, Madoka Magica, etc.) weren’t universally beloved at the time either — their reputations solidified only in hindsight, years later.
※This article is compiled and summarized from the 5ch (Nanademo Jikkyo G) thread “Why is everything lately — anime, movies, games, music — so boring.”
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