When Normies Out Themselves & The Cultured Response

The (Very Normie) Anime Man asked his girlfriend, his podcast cohosts, and all of their collected friends and contacts a question: "What's your favorite anime?"

Let this video--and for the love of God, play it at double-speed--show you that the taste of these people, all of whom have sizable audiences of their own (although none apparoach Pewdiepie), is as normie in distribution as one would expect of "AnimeTube & Adjacents".

Take note of the patterns in the testimonies. Either they are referencing something that they enjoyed as a child, or they reference a current or former favorite of Reddit's r/anime, approximately 80% of the time. This is the old "golden age of science fiction" in action: the best was what you enjoyed when you were 12. The titles offered were what was available on local cable television then, on streaming services of the last decade or so, or they live in Japan and so have direct access. In short, we're looking at most of these responses being those that liked what was put before them- not the response of those deliberately seeking out the best possible material.

This lack of curiosity informs their views in their responses. This is exactly the sort of responses you'd hear worldwide from people talking about live-action film or television, responses that also demonstrate a lack of curiosity in their experiences and a lack of competency in qualifying their response's validity.

That last part is key. Put in schoolboy terms, "Show Your Work". Facile responses, at best, about character or narrative demonstrate a lack of comprehension of what makes such things good or bad- not unexpected as none them are competent authors. They cannot reason; they give only excuses for their feelings. Given the short reponses, and how many of these respondants are busy folks, the odds of them having the time to compose a response better than what we see is unlikely.

There's some good choices given--EVA (as much as I dislike it), Bebop, Arjuna, TTGL--but almost none of them were titles that they had to go out of their way to find due to being in normie-tier media distribution at that time. Had I seen The Five Star Stories, Appleseed (the 80s OVA), or my own response (which will surprise no one), I'd be more inclined to take the respondant seriously. Had I seen more competent responses, likewise. Instead, I saw a pile of (borderline) NPCs talking about what was The Current Thing.

By comparison, my response:

Legend of the Galactic Heroes is a 110 episode Space Opera writen for a literate adult audience that discusses what makes for the best possible government for Mankind, the influence of power on the corruptable, and the fact that reality is not a narrative experience- as shown by when typical narrative plots are short-circuited for dramatic effect just to make certain this point gets across.

You will not miss the lack of supernatural powers or alien beings in this series that grounds its narrative in historical examples, and makes deft use of flashbacks and filler episodes to tell the stories of those whose influence shape events in the primary narrative. This beautiful series will leave you reaching for the history books as you seek to fill the gaps in your knowledge so as to be appreciate what you witnessed, and any work that inspires such autodidactic improvement like this is clearly the best anime ever made.

(By the way, I recommend this being used by parents to watch with teenaged children specifically to prompt discussion on these things and get those youths operating in an adult manner sooner.)