>>6348393>>6348391>is anime counterculture?Take care of yourself RQM, remember to drink responsibly ^_~
I don't know, maybe if you were watching anime in the 1980s and 1990s that was counterculture, I can understand it, as hard as it is to believe I once went through a weeaboo phase lol, I imported Demon's Souls (japanese language launch edition) I emulated obscure Japanese language only psx games and I cringe played through every unlocked ending of Way Of The Samurai 4 for all the iaijutsu moves lol (yes I unlocked the handgun)
But these days NFLX has a dedicated anime category tab, Sam Altman evangelises Studio Ghibli ai generated artstyle transfer and the top ranked Tencent massive revenue hundred million download mobile games are all anime bikini armour outfit storefronts so I feel anime is very very much mainstream.
Maybe counterculture never existed at all and it was all just repackaged niche mainstream culture, like those
https://cari.institute/consumer aesthetics marketing microcategories, whimsigoth or cottagecore or dark academia or seawave are not counterculture, it is still repackaged mainstream consumer culture. Maybe counterculture was a containment strategy to mitigate antiwar or black power protest movements, "freedom of expression" to attenuate 1950s 1960s intellectual sympathy for the Soviet Union. Maybe anime is the ideal export for a conquered vassal state with military bases on its territory (in the United Kingdom, this is called VE Day)
Anyway, pic related from Way Of The Samurai 4. I can't find a screen cap of this but there is one game ending cutscene where the hilarious English gentleman (pictured above) commiserates with a character, and discusses how even though Britain and Japan are both small island nations, that appear tiny on the globe of the Earth, they can both achieve great things. I found it to be a poignant moment
