So how can anime be saved?

[pokoko]

Super_Boom said:

pokoko said:

I think some people seem to want a one dimensional focus on shounen battle anime.  Never mind that anime has always been diverse, with plenty of ecchi, harem, romance, and comedy series, not to mention Magical Girl anime and content aimed at kids--it just didn't make it out of Japan as often, so some people think it didn't exist.  People also forget all the crap anime that used to be produced.  Quality has improved greatly across the board.

Personally, I think it would absolutely suck if everything suddenly became Naruto in different settings.

Heh...kind of an aside, but this reminds of something. I have a friend who's probably only seen ~5 anime, and who would like to Skype me to discuss the few anime he does watch. One time, he told me that he saw part of this 'really weird' anime. I asked him what it was about, wondering if it would be something abstract or gory that he wouldn't expect to see. He goes on to tell me about an anime about high schoolers just going about their day, no fights or anything. I waited for him to get to the weird part...until I realized that he probably had no idea that Slice-of-life was a thing, and the fact that it didn't resolve around physical conflict was foreign to him.

I don't know if everyone is this ignorant, or just ignores what they don't like personally, but I do find it baffling how people can view the entire medium as one genre.

Ha, yeah, I can imagine how perplexing that would be.

I remember back before services like Crunchyroll when "anime" meant "whatever is on Toonami".  Things have changed a lot but I guess not completely.