Item — HN Reader

I welcome this.

I know there is a huge market for those excited for infinite anime music videos and all things anime.

This is great for an abundance of content and everyone will become anime artists now.

Japan is truly is embracing AI and there will be new jobs for everyone thanks to the boom AI is creating as well as Jevons paradox which will create huge demand.

Even better if this open source.

2 comments

I don't know, I used to like some anime and mangas when I was 14 in the mid 90's.

Nowadays it seems everyone is interested by "anime style" of content but all I see is terrible in term of quality. It seems quantity increased so much in the last 30 years it only made quality stuff more invisible and we are inundated with animelike trash.

Yes, but that doesn’t mean good things aren’t being made today. In fact, plenty of recent shows are better (in every regard: pacing, animation quality, character development, themes, …) than most popular stuff we had in the 90s. Heck, they’re better than many live action shows today. Quality from the 90s era looks skewed in the West, because we had such limited access that what even crossed the barrier were outliers in their own right.

YouTube channels like Mother’s Basement help picking out something to watch. Geoff has routinely pointed how he literally watches anime for a living and it’s still hard to watch everything worthy he finds.

Video titles are pretty self-explanatory. If you want to find something to watch, fire up one of “The BEST Anime of [season] [year]” and you’ll get plenty of recommendations, nicely ordered and with some short explanation of what it is about and why it’s noteworthy.

https://youtube.com/@mothersbasement/

The percentage of anime I like is low and has always been low. I find a new anime I like comes along about every three years (I have to dig for it though.) In general, I care about the writing and story more than the visuals. So with a great increase in the amount of anime a single writer can create, shouldn't this allow for more well-written sloppy-visuals anime to exist? I'm excited to see.

How do you typically find anime you end up enjoying now?

It comes down to identifying what I dislike about the anime I dislike.

I find I don't like "fanservice" (boob jokes etc.), or at least find it to be a signifier of poor quality. So I use animefeminist.com for recommendations, since it's pretty effective at filtering out (or at least warning of in advance) that kind of red flag, and also for their ranking of seasonal anime. (If you use this method, make sure to look for their "recommendation," "digest," and "three-episode check-in" articles specifically). This improves things from about 1% chance of enjoyment to probably 1-in-15 chance of enjoyment. On average, each season has an anime I find is not bad, but only every 2-3 years or so is there an anime I unabashedly love.

(Of course, there may be shows the site rules out which I really loved -- for instance, my all-time favourite anime is Attack on Titan, which is blacklisted on anifem because someone once wrote an article on polygon about how its overtly pro-jewish anti-fascist allegory is anti-semitic somehow. I think that's a load of bull, but probably not enough of a problem for me to stop using this method of finding anime.)

I think Attack on Titan is a good anime, but I read the allegory as being a Japanese one, and in that reading it comes off as somewhat apologist toward fascism. I think many readings are present in the work and more besides can be read into it, so I don’t claim that any interpretation is right or wrong, because that would probably involve spoilers.

Have you seen Psycho-Pass? I wonder what your site has to say about it, as it seemed kind of a feminist work to me.

You might find this site interesting:

https://cyberfeminismindex.com/

I love Psycho-Pass, it's a classic Urobuchi. Can't find a proper review on the site though, likely since it predates the site's launch. (They're doing reviews of previous years as well, but slowly.)

Regarding the Japanese interpretation of the allegory -- I don't think it's apologist toward fascism really, because essentially every side in the conflict has fascist elements. In that sense, it's more "some situations just don't have any good solutions." But what's clear to me is that the situation itself has fascist roots. Regardless, the Polygon article in question has a much more surface-level reading -- it is clearly stating that it's antisemitic, which I simply can't see at all. Spoilers rot13: vg'f gehr gur gvgnaf ner ~wrjf, ohg guvf vtaberf gung gurl ner gur perngvbaf bs ~anmv rkcrevzragf, naq nyfb gung nyy gur cebgntbavfgf ner ~wrjf nf jryy.

I don't understand what I'm looking at with the site you linked, but I am intrigued.

V ernq vg nf na nyyrtbel sbe ubj Wncna gubhtug bs vgfrys qhevat JJ2, nf n qvfgvapgyl qvssrerag enpvny urevgntr sebz znvaynaqref va Znapuhevn naq bgure cnegf bs Puvan. Guvf fhccbfrq enpvny fhcrevbevgl bs Wncna bire bgure Nfvna angvbaf jnf hfrq nf whfgvsvpngvba sbe frvmvat pbny naq bgure angheny erfbheprf nf rneyl nf 1937. Ivrjrq va guvf senzvat, gur fubj pbzrf bss nf ncbybtrgvpf sbe gur uhzna rkcrevzragf gung Wncna pbaqhpgrq nf jryy nf gur ngebpvgvrf gurl pbzzvggrq. Ubjrire, V trg gur frafr gung nyy bs gur snfpvfz va gur fubj unq bppheerq va gur cnfg, naq gur rpubrf naq nsgrerssrpgf ner gur onpxfgbel sbe gur pbagrkg sbe gur fubj, qrcvpgvat ubj gur puvyqera bs jne naq rzcver svtug qrfcrengryl gb birepbzr srne, gura funzr bs xabjvat gurve cnfg, abg whfg nf ybfref va n jne, ohg uhzna rkcrezragf jub orpnzr jung gurl srnerq, qrngu vgfrys, qverpgrq abg whfg vajneqyl, ohg bhgjneqyl nf jryy.

> I don't understand what I'm looking at with the site you linked, but I am intrigued.

It’s kind of like an interactive bibliography with commentary?

https://cyberfeminismindex.com/about/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyberfeminism_Index

Not my experience - as someone generally not interested in anime I only tend to be aware of the cream of the crop.

And in fact we seem to have a once of a decade alignment of talent (starting in 2023 with Season 1) with Frieren.

This is absolutely correct. The quality has nosedived so hard in the first three months of 2025 that there wasn't anything worth watching whatsoever even if you were in the target demographic.

If success is not a function of quality (in general), then producers have an incentive to produce a lot of cheap stuff. It's like playing lottery more often.

In the end, there will still be quality content but it will be much more expensive, available only to an elite.

Then the elite will now what's good quality and will be able to produce more good quality. Those will be hired.

The vast majority, only exposed to bad quality, will not be able to produce quality anymore. And won't be hired anymore.

And so here is your great quality divide.

This is great for an abundance of content and everyone will become anime artists now.

I don't think they'd be artists, but AI-prompters, although you're right that there will be a huge flood of content.