Genki Life Magazine 35 - Spring 2019

Idon’t normally tend to point fingers at people, but just
this once I feel like I need to get some things off my
chest here.
Almost every single season nowadays, it seems there
has to be a scapegoat. An anime which you are somehow
obliged to publicly hate on or you’ll be looked
down upon by the community and no one will take you seriously.
I’m honestly sick of this kind of group pressure/bandwagon
mentality. We’re now halfway through the year and
yet hating on popular stuff over the internet is somehow
still considered to be the coolest and best thing since sliced
bread. Especially when
it’s
gross, creepy and
immoral shit made
for closet pedos, am
I right? Shows like
this really bring out
the most toxic sides of
the anime community.
When you have an anime which totally wears its
heart on its sleeve and doesn’t try to hide its true
intentions in any way, why is it that so many people
seemingly insist on still making themselves
watch it even when it’s clear as day that they’re
not going to like it and that they’re not part of the
target audience? Eromanga-sensei is one of the most blatantly
polarizing series in the last few seasons, and quite frankly
you should be able to easily figure out whether you will
enjoy it or not just from reading the synopsis and by considering
the fact that it is written by the same author as Oreimo.
In short, Eromanga-sensei features the following:
• A glimpse into the life of a young, aspiring light novel
author in Japan
• Lots of references to other anime, light novels, the
industry itself and more
• Pseudo-incestuous relationship themes (they’re not
actually blood-related)
• Somewhat trope-filling and eccentric characters
• Cutesy moe-style heroines
• Frequent suggestive shots of various middle school girls
“I don’t
know anyone
by that name.”
• An abundance of romcom clichés and sexual gags
• Memes
• Cameos of characters from Oreimo
• The perfect setup for providing tons of juicy ero-fanart
and doujins
Now if you have a problem with several of these themes,
you don’t need to watch this anime. It really isn’t any more
complicated than that. It is clearly not for you, and you don’t
need to go out of your way to force yourself to watch it just
so you can go on a lengthy rant afterwards about how trashy
it is, how it is “pandering to otaku,” label it as “pedo-bait”
or anything along those lines. If you’re not even part of an
anime’s target demographic then quite frankly you have no
business trash-talking it for not adhering to your own standards—the
problem lies entirely on
your end in that case. Criticizing an
anime for its execution is logical—criticizing
an anime for merely belonging
to a certain genre is not. You don’t
need to go on the aggressive
from the safe place
behind your monitor just to feel better about yourself. If
your sole reason for watching an anime is to make fun of
and insult the people enjoying it, you really need to get your
priorities straight. Even more curious are some comments
I’ve seen basically saying “i-it’s not like I enjoy watching this
terrible anime or anything, don’t get the wrong idea, baka!,”
as if implying that either their morals or the group pressure
is preventing them from admitting to themselves that they
actually like it. Give me a break already.
On the other hand, as someone who actually does enjoy
those kinds of themes and absolutely loves imoutos in general,
Eromanga-sensei is a pretty solid anime that does just
about all the simplistic things I could ask of it. It’s cute, lighthearted,
decently funny at times, has a lot of sexy shots of
22 Genki Life Magazine • Spring 2019