LogFAQs > #946960445

YoukaiSlayer posted...

Vtubing has the potential for storytelling even if right now it's mostly just variety streaming. Lasting value is sort of a moot point when content is being produced faster than it can physically be watched.

That's a garbage-in, garbage-out kind of argument that minimalizes the value of art and artistic expression in general. And a large reason why "content is being produced faster than it can be watched" is because so much content nowadays is just unscripted talking into a camera, maybe while doing something else.

While I'd been critical of platforms like YT, at least there was SOME editing and scripted content there. (And nowadays we have a few channels with extremely well-put-together content; AbsoluteHistory, for example, feels like something that's on an actual network... but, afaik, it's just YT.)

Just because content is coming out at a faster clip than ever doesn't mean most of it is worth watching. And for some genres, the amount of halfway decent content coming out annually is like nothing.

YoukaiSlayer posted...

Calling streaming in general low effort is a bit mixed for me. 5 minutes of streaming is far easier than 5 minutes of just about any other form of content, but you don't stream for 5 minutes, you stream for many hours in a row, and that is collectively very high effort. Being entertaining for 2-8 hours in a row, without anyone else to talk to, is really hard, especially day after day. You don't have 8 hours of shit to talk about a day.

Probably why so much of what they do isn't terribly entertaining. And do all of them really stream 8 hours a day? Because it feels like you're trying to make a 1:1 comparison with working a normal job. When I see replays of streams, they're usually only 2-3 hours long.

YoukaiSlayer posted...

I also don't think mangaka are "normal" people. Being a mangaka in general is an inefficient way to make money. It's the kind of job you only do if you are really passionate about it. I wouldn't expect many of them to prioritize higher profit over artistic fulfillment as long as they can still live comfortably.

It's more than that, though. There's the potential for very high money in a lot of artistic endeavors which gets people into them and keeps them going. And the reason people wind up leaving them is because they start making so much money doing something else.

YoukaiSlayer posted...

My first point is something I find a bit interesting because anime is getting closer and closer to the same realm of saturation. It's getting very hard to keep up with an entire season because more and more new anime come out every year. For a lot of people, they feel like theres no time to go back and watch stuff from previous seasons because they are always "behind". This is only going to increase as time goes on and it's interesting to see from my perspective. I think it's really waiting for about twice as much seasonal content to hit critical mass. The point where you can watch only genres you like and still not be able to keep up with all of it. It really changes the way anime is discussed.

Kind of a weird argument since most people don't want to watch every single anime that comes out each year, plus if the reason people don't have time to watch anime is because they're watching VTubers, that's kinda... well, there's probably a good analogy, I just can't think of one.

At any rate, those older anime (and shows in general) don't "expire" or age out. They'll always be there. There's a lot of stuff I didn't watch when it came out that I've seen decades after the fact. To some extent, having a backlog is a very good thing -- it's like having your own personal lobster tank (given that this is an anime topic, I might need to clarify that it's a Santa Clarita Diet reference which, in the show, refers to them keeping tabs on Neo Nazis who the wife plans to eat). Granted, it's somewhat problematic when it comes to games, though, or things you physically own that eat up space.

At the same time, for specific genres, there isn't nearly enough coming out.

YoukaiSlayer posted...

Which shonen anime leave the OP good guy alive. By OP good guy I don't mean main character, I mean the characters that are already world class at the start of the show. People like all might. Watching jujutsu kaisen right now and it has a similar thing. Theres one good guy that is the strongest in the world and it's so clear that he is going to be at least in some way taken out of commission, because he is too powerful for the story to progress. What anime leave these people in?

Well, the problem there is that they're often the mentor archetype and death is a large part of the mentor trope. Then a lot of the others exist just to show off how strong characters can be and then have somebody who can job to the series' big bad to make the hero beating the villain more impressive.

Otherwise, there are a lot of kinda OP characters in anime who the hero eventually surpasses who live (some of whom start off as villains then become "we're allies, but not friends" who play a role in major fights -- often beating top-tier villains who might present a challenge for the heroes -- but aren't part of the team)

Offhand, one example is S-Cry-Ed. Technically Ryuho is an antagonist at the start then a reluctant ally and Kazuma briefly surpasses him at times, but he's still tied with Kazuma for being the strongest Alter-user at the end (given that they're kinda stuck in a very long, evenly-matched battle that's suggested will go on for years at the end). Love that anime in general, tbh.

For Street Fighter II V, Guile kicks the shit out of Ryu and Ken in his first appearance (after they beat up his soldiers who had been behaving badly) and is generally one of the strongest characters. While he lost against Bison, the only reason Ryu and Ken beat Bison is because they teamed up and had access to Hadoko. If Guile had learned Hadoku, he might have beaten Bison alone.


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