Random Thoughts Thread

[Five_X]

I'm not questioning the quality, I watched tf out of it as a kid too
I'm just not sure if you're that old

Do you think the kind of people who go on forums are young on average?

[Sesto]

once upon a time i pretended to be a 16 year old kid to impress a 16 year old girl on a forum dedicated to halo
(i was 13)

[Deathhappens]

Bruh did yall actually watch this on debut

Few years later when it came to our bumfuck corner of the world dubbed, yeah.

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Do you think the kind of people who go on forums are young on average?

Define young

I am VERY YOUNG
I am BRIMMING WITH YOUTHFUL ENERGY OK
no my neck doesn't hurt in the mornings

[Mattias]

once upon a time i pretended to be a 16 year old kid to impress a 16 year old girl on a forum dedicated to halo
(i was 13)

Still better than the other people who pretend to be 16 on XBox Live.

[ResidentSeagull]

So I got kinda curious and looked around MAL for all the anime seasons from 1970-2000 and came to ask myself a question: was mecha anime the isekai genre of this time period? Literally almost every season had at least one new mecha show, and keep in mind this was a time when most anime seasons had at most 20 new shows (sometimes as low as only 2 new shows), rather than the current standard of 30-40.

Frankly it's impressive that it only took them until the late 90s to start losing interest in the genre due to oversaturation.

[Mattias]

I know Sunrise was putting out a mecha show almost every year back in the late 80's/90's/early 00's, but I don't think it ever got to the Isekai levels where there's 5+ running at all times.

[Skull]

was mecha anime the isekai genre of this time period?

Now that you mention it, it saddens me that there's only like four Isekai Mecha anime out there.

[Five_X]

I'd consider it a bit different, because while there are many isekai anime, isekai is primarily a literature phenomenon while mecha stuff was heavily anime. Modern isekai also typically follows a narrower formula: death in the contemporary world followed by resurrection in a fantasy-adjacent world reminiscent of Japanese RPGs. You can speculate a lot on the social roots of what makes these specific devices so common, but it's impressive just how many variations there are on a fairly strict theme.

Mecha really was the big genre of 70s and 80s anime, though, you're right. Perhaps more so than isekai, what was amazing about the mecha boom was its aesthetic influence on pretty much everything. You can look at a lot of anime from that era and plenty of them inexplicably have mecha or mecha-adjacent elements. Legend of the Galactic Heroes is a good example of this - I think Westerners compare it too much to Star Wars, but it's really a mecha+history novel/anime. The general anime concept of larger-than-life characters with personalised fighting machines has its roots in mecha anime.

I think the end of mecha oversaturation was perhaps caused as much by the Japanese recession as by consumer exhaustion with mecha anime. In the 70s and 80s there was enough cash in the anime market that even the most outrageous anime projects could get made: Legend of the Galactic Heroes is again a good example, what with its 150+ OVA episodes over two decades. I wouldn't be surprised if a big part of mecha's decline was a result of consumers not spending as much as anime and especially on merchandise, which was a backbone of the mecha anime industry. As far as I'm aware, it's only relatively recently (sometime in the 2010s) that anime merchandise has been able to proliferate again.

These are just my half-educated thoughts on it, though.

[Deathhappens]

All I know is mecha shows in the 90's usually had banger OPs.

[ResidentSeagull]

I would stress that my post was in part a joke and I am overexaggerating a bit, but I have been thinking about the current state of mecha anime and what caused it for a while, so I thought about posting this to get everyone else's take on this.

I know Sunrise was putting out a mecha show almost every year back in the late 80's/90's/early 00's, but I don't think it ever got to the Isekai levels where there's 5+ running at all times.

That's certainly true, though as I said when you see only 5 new shows for every anime season (which was the case in the 70s/80s) and 2-3 of them are mecha it does lead me to compare. The way I see it, there's more "follow the trend" garbage tier shows now simply because there are a lot more shows running concurrently now than before.

Now that you mention it, it saddens me that there's only like four Isekai Mecha anime out there.

At first I was curious that there's that many, but then I remembered Escaflowne, Knights and Magic, Dunbine and Rayearth and yeah, now that you mention it that's pretty much it.

.

That makes sense. It's interesting how the ebb and flow of the industry goes. Really you can kinda chart what state the industry was in by what looking at it was doing with mecha at the time.
You had the post Mazinger Z Super Robot boom in the 70's, the 80's post Gundam Real Robot boom, the economic bubble in the 80's where they had money force fed to them so they made amazing looking OVAs like DangaiOh and the experimental post Eva era in the 00's with shit like Rahxephon and Fafner just to name a few.
Nowadays Gundam one of the few influential franchises that has stood the test of time, with previously massive franchises like Macross chugging along.
An interesting little microcosm, to be sure.

[Trubo]

Fuck crypto bros so much. Got to Best Buy about 30 minutes before open because they restock between Monday and Tuesday. Two guys were there before me and talking to each other about whatever hash rate stuff of their setups. Go in and the only new GPUs were two 3060ti, which they bought immediately. Cashier's wouldn't even tell me what the sale price was so I'd know whether or not to bother trying again on Friday or next Monday, cause I'm not interested if they're selling it at 700+.

[Five_X]

If it's any consolation, this late into the fad and with a 3060ti, they're probably not going to get their money's worth by a long stretch.

[Ideofago]

Do you think the kind of people who go on forums are young on average?

Things aren't old, nor young, there are degrees, like the shades of leaves on a tree, or the markings of a ruler. I was just not sure any of you were old enough to break my oldasfuckthing scale. It was expensive, you know.

[Five_X]

It's hardly ancient, but I'm old enough to have a fuzzy childhood memory of the death of Princess Diana. That might be one of the first memories I have of any event that didn't directly involve me, actually.

[Ideofago]

That's almost thirty years ago.

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Wait, it's more like 25 years
It was sooner than I expected

[Deathhappens]

If it's any consolation, this late into the fad and with a 3060ti, they're probably not going to get their money's worth by a long stretch.

God, I hope so. LHR isn't doing enough by a long shot.

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It's hardly ancient, but I'm old enough to have a fuzzy childhood memory of the death of Princess Diana. That might be one of the first memories I have of any event that didn't directly involve me, actually.

I don't remember anything about Diana, but I do have memories of the Y2K craze and 9/11. Your memory is much better than mine.

[Sesto]

turns out if you drink alcohol really fast things feel a lot different! the more you know

[Five_X]

Sesto I literally just posted about responsible drinking habits!!!!

[Sesto]

where the heck i don't see it

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wait few days ago doesn't count as now. a lot can happen in a few days!

[Mattias]

You got to savour it, it lets you stay drunk longer.

The only reason to chug any booze is if you just ordered another round but your train just pulled into the station.