New-gen anime shows are on the receiving end of:
- Bullying.
- Disrespect.
- Hate.
- Name-calling.
- Jokes.
- Elitism.
And everything in between, including being dismissed by many anime fans who are obsessed with the original big 3 anime.
Or anime fans who are obsessed with old-school classics to the point of ignoring everything else.
Why is it that old gen fans attack new-gen fans so much, and the newer anime that come out?
Is old gen better than one gen?
Let’s talk about it.
Why old gen anime fans bully new gen:
1. Low-hanging fruit
You know how it is. If there’s low-hanging fruit on the tree, it’s easier to grab it compared to the fruit that’s harder to reach.
It’s the same concept when it comes to old-gen vs new gen, and why new-gen anime gets abused so much on social media and forums.
When you’re an OG anime fan who grew up in let’s say, the 70s, 80s, 90s, or VERY early 2000s, you were exposed to some of the greatest anime of all time.
Even to this day.
Anime like:
- Fullmetal Alchemist.
- Naruto.
- Dragon Ball Z.
- Code Geass.
- One Piece.
- Monster.
- Neon Genesis Evangelion.
And so many others.
This is like a so-called “right of passage” to diss the living shit out of new-gen anime shows. Because fans like this feel like their era is better, and all this “new shit” is all hype, bells, and fragile whistles.
That’s the justification.
It’s an ego thing, but it makes newer anime an easy target which I’ll get into next.
2. Old-school bias
You see this or used to see this in the Hip Hop industry. Once rappers like:
- Soulja Boy.
And many other newer rappers started to come out in the 2000s and beyond, some of them were disrespected by the old-school OG rappers who set the stage for Hip Hop to be successful and thriving.
They didn’t like the new sound, the new rappers, the new lyrics, the new style, and how it didn’t feel like “real” hip hop.
Well, it’s the same with the anime industry in a lot of ways, which is ironic seeing as anime and hip hop have similarities.
When My Hero Academia came out in 2016, it was bashed over the head with a steel baseball bat nonstop. Everyone swore it was the worst shonen ever made and was a copycat of Naruto, etc.
People couldn’t shut the f*ck up about it. But over time those haters vanished once seasons 3, 4, and especially 6 came into the picture.
The same thing happened with anime like Sword Art Online. Fans of .Hacked, the “OG” version of SAO that came 10 years later had fans bashing SAO for its content.
Other fans jumped on the bandwagon of d*ckhead YouTubers who bashed SAO for clicks, and the franchise (in the West) was dragged through the dirt and thrown into a puddle, over and over again despite being the #1 light novel by sales.
Old-school bias makes some fans feel like they can diss the life out of the new gen with the assumption that these “new gen” anime are hype, won’t last long, and don’t deserve any praise, awards, or accomplishments.
3. Older anime are protected, newer anime are rejected
The older and more successful the anime is, the more it’s protected, praised, treasured, and held tight by its anime fans. This is true in other fandoms and industries as well.
Nostalgia is a powerful drug that won’t allow you to let others downplay, dismiss, or disrespect the OG’S that made the future (or present) possible.
This creates old-school bias, negativity if taken too far, petty arguments, so-called bullying, and trolling to the highest level for average clicks and views.
Newer anime shows have more to prove because they’re new, obviously, and because in the microwave world, we live in, anime shows can be popular today and forgotten by the end of the week, month, or season.
This is unlike the older anime which are stamped in history and won’t ever go away from the limelight in spite of newer anime popping up, or the industry evolving and changing.
It’s justified bragging rights, even if those bragging rights do have some truth to them.
4. Because newer anime takes inspiration from older anime
This is a fact that can’t be denied no matter how much you argue. Anime like Jujutsu Kaisen has admitted to taking inspiration from shows like BLEACH, one of the shounen big 3.
My Hero Academia clearly takes some or a little inspiration from shows that came before it. And Black Clover feels like it takes inspiration from Fairy Tail or One Piece (Fairy is inspired by One Piece as well).
But is this REALLY a good excuse to bash newer anime?
Naruto took inspiration from DBZ, as did One Piece. Even DBZ was created as a result of outside inspiration.
Same with Code Geass, Gurren Lagann, Kill La Kill, and many anime people respect.
This is the way of the world. Nothing gets made without some influence or inspiration, even if it’s small or tiny. It’s just old-school anime comes with an extra dose of bias, unlike any other time in anime history.
This is more true with the Big 3, or anime from the 80s and 90s.
5. Fanbases ruined by shipping
My Hero Academia, admittedly, has a special kind of fanbase that has ruined the fandom with its overuse of shipping. I’m talking about female fans, especially the Yaoi shippers or those who salivate over male characters while crying about female fanservice.
It’s not just ordinary shipping. It’s the type of shipping that’s outright pedophilic, nasty, questionable, and suspect as F.
This is something that happens more with newer anime series compared to older anime for a few reasons.
- Older anime didn’t have the internet.
- Newer anime in modern times have weird fans who are put on public display.
- The internet is now more open.
So this becomes a reason for old-gen fans to diss new-gen anime so much.
6. So-called fanservice
And then there’s fanservice. Yep, it existed before the internet came about, before the late 2000s and 2010s, and before anime went mainstream in a sense.
Admittedly though, it feels like newer anime have fanservice, and the kind that’s blatant, unnecessary, and not well thought out.
Older anime wasn’t so bad with this because the quality was prioritized over everything in a lot of cases. Some newer anime can’t say that.
And so, this is the reason fans can hate, diss, dismiss, belittle, and make a mockery out of newer-gen anime because it feels justified.
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