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Miyazaki on nerd culture
It's not just relevant to anime, for American comic books suffer similar problems. But I'll let the quote speak for itself.
UPDATE: Edited title to make it less inflammatory.
Comments
>thinking peeps with stereotypical cookie cutter personalities don't exist in meatspace
The problem isn't that it's unrealistic(save for the anatomy), it's that these people get idealized. Indecisive highschool drama, sexpots who can't take no for an answer because a guy must always want it, people unable to fundamentally communicate: this is the slice of reality otaku choose to glorify.
Everyone can be made to look stereotypical if you only (care to) know them for a little while. You have to spend time with people for them to reveal their true colours. And I'm saying this even though my childhood was spent in suburban purgatory which is stereotypically associated with the cookie cutter types. It's worth noting that those environments encourage people to fake a personality in order to fit in.
Also, was that addressed to me, or Miyazaki?
Italicized for contradiction.
"Idealized" and "unrealistic" don't always go together, though. Sometimes character traits are exaggerated to be unlikable, although I pretty much only ever see that in fantasy and scifi things. And there's probably something where characters or people are idealized yet with an attempt to make it realistic. Something that romanticizes "imperfections" like "there are good people, bad people and everything in between and that's beatiful!" maybe.
Miyazaki.
It's not that people are inherently shallow: it's that people will always fall into some form of stereotype, and the animu versions exist just the same as any other. Whether or not they determine that facet to be their true personality matters very little. Faking is becoming, in a way.
Not to mention how varied a personality you can portray in 13-26x20 minutes to be had, and how fleshed-out 'real people' also can fall into a stereotype easily.
Yes, but good writers think beyond just the stereotype. That's why no good writing has ever come out of TV Tropes (I would be happy to be proven wrong regarding that statement). Flat characters are acceptable for less important roles, or even when the environment takes more prominence in the story, but not for more crucial roles such as a love interest (and writers tend to fall flat in that regard).
There is a disconnect between Eastern and Western cultural values, but even as someone who is living in a Western country I don't think Miyazaki says "I hate you nerds", but rather characters of mainstream anime tend to have a set of characteristics that reflects their authors' opinions, much like author appeal. That is problematic because he assumes many anime writers haven't had worldly experience and thus narrowly write stories based on their own interests. Whether that's true or not, I don't know.
On maybe an unrelated note, The opposite isn't any good either, when people moving to Japan decide to ridicule its mainstream culture to make it more in line with Western sensibilities. Sort of defeats the whole point of moving there.
>tweet nets him over 50 rape threats
Huh. That's emancipation for you, even the dudes get sent those now instead of the generic death threats.
Back to the topic at hand, I've seen characters with evolving personalities get lambasted as indecisive and characters with nuance portrayed as boring and characters with multiple contradictory traits as inconsistent. I suppose you can't win all the people all the time.
I'm still waiting for a harem animu of either gender where the love interests lose interest over time, experiment with poly stuff, decide to remain friends, abandon ship after a failed date, actually discuss the dynamics of their situation, and the like. Tone: half Melvin Burgess, half Daria.
I actually would pay to see that.
^^^ ...wut?
Anyway, I don't get how "waifu" is a racist stereotype. It's just a negative stereotype of anime fans, as far as I can see. And I'm pretty sure it's not even part of mainstream Japanese culture.
No idea what archive.today is, though that tweet is still there. Maybe it was a thing used just in case the tweet got deleted? I have no idea who this David A Hill Jr is so I can't say what the likelihood is of that happening.
Anyway, didn't Hideaki Anno say something similar to the thread topic, a while back?
Alternatively, Keiji Inafune about the Japanese game industry?
Curiously, I remember seeing internet rage happening anytime someone says something like this. Also something about Roger Ebert saying something about videogames. Or even Phil Fish commenting on JRPGs (or was it Japanese games in general?). Basically, a thing about reacting pretty strongly against people who appear to hate on this hobby. Maybe it's just a thing that has to do with it being non-mainstream?
(Incidentally, that's yet another way that GamerGate isn't really particularly novel, but rather is a continuation of a phenomenon that's been observed before.)
Waifus are going mainstream now:
It's curious, this gal is a pro-GG pornstar, and the Dutch feminists whose blogs I tangentially read also seem to retweet pro-GG stuff while voting very left(Socialist Party, Greenleft, etcetera). It's probably the perception that anti-GG is sex negative.
^This shit happens with almost anything, gamers are just more computerbound and tech-savvy than most, so their rage is more visible.
Anno's sentiments, according to an interpreter(holy fuck, this is glorious): http://i.imgur.com/kqzYE7s.png
But GG was literally founded on the idea that women are destroying the gaming industry by sleeping around???This isn't a GG thread.
Meh, GMH is the one who brought it up.
(I'll just pretend you wrote this, because it's a valid sentiment but was phrased as a ridiculous strawman)
This perception comes from some of Anita's sex worker-phobic remarks and the general anger at cheesecake from their crowd, the association the SJWs have with the trust in state institutions to police and regulate sexuality and sexual behaviour(which plenty of kink-positive folks and sex workers have bad experiences with) and the shaming of male sexuality(creepy neckbeards), I suppose.
^Hint: Brevity is a virtue.
I find Miyazaki's statement in particular to be interesting because he is mainstream, so when he says something like this, it carries the implication of "This is why I'm successful and you're not." On one hand, that is a direct attack on nerd culture, but on the other hand, he is in the position to say it. And I guess it resonates with me because it explains why I've become increasingly disillusioned with the nerd label. It seems to value self-centred materialism above all else. I think the same of the suburban culture, and I suspect there is overlap between them.
And when I think of doing anything creative, I think of his words as some sort of secret ingredient revelation. Go outside and meet people. And to me, that does seem to be the difference between whether fiction feels real or artificial. "Oh yeah, girls like this exist in real life."
Miyazaki seems like he's been needlessly angry these days. There was that time he got mad that Ghibli's adaptation of When Marnie was There for having a blonde girl on the poster, even though that's what the character is supposed to look like.
From what I've read, he's always been grumpy. He just doesn't believe in showing that in his films. But that is a bit over-the-top.
On another note, that quote just doesn't seem right for the direction this thread is taking (or rather was taking from the get go), considering he was talking about drawing and animating, not writing and characterization.
This is nonsense. Miyazaki's statement was about animators, not writers.
And he's still wrong. There are many great animators working in Japan today who can do realistic movement that makes you feel for the character. Sakugabooru is a great resource.
Oh Naas made my point before I could~
*reminds self to study anatomy*
Speaking of which, anyone who knows online sources about drawing anatomy or at least a good starting point?
Funny, I was planning to learn to draw from the stuff you linked at IJBMer's update, as well as nohay's link. And of course, Pinterest is always handy for specific things (artistic NSFW).
Some time ago I tried to learn to draw with Andrew Loomis' books, they were pretty good (but I got stuck at drawing cubes), I assume his stuff on anatomy is also good.
Edit: For future reference.
(I'm already feeling sorry that I did.)
I remember linking that, I'm just on the prowl for any additional resources I can find. Loomis can be quite daunting for newcomers like myself. Weird that his stuff is out of print though.
Anything that is making fun of how non-native English speakers pronounce English words is pretty racist.
I guess I have been racist against myself since I was a little kid then.
I thought waifu started out as one of those Anglicisms the Japanese (or, at least, anime Japanese) are so fond of.