Why does this board feel so empty?

[dragon1412]

Originally Posted by serenade_beta

What happened?

Frankly., from where I see it, Anime and manga only made mainstream because the decline in quality of many comic and animations. So people flocking to it more like an alternative, of course, Anime, manga is still getting more popular, but I personally think that if the comics managed to get it rhythm back then Anime might turn back into niche interest.

I don't watch or read comics stuff myself, but when I search for the info in the web, the general complains seem to be too much politics and ads on comics nowadays. When I asked my friend, who is a long term comic reader, his reply is that the comic in general have seen decline in quality for years now, the politics is just something way later. He said that comics just rinse and repeat popular characters way too much. And ads seem to be a serious problem. On the other side, if they turn over a new leaf, It seem hard for anime to compete with them at least on Western media.

Originally Posted by Cosmic Eagle

Even for niche stuff these days, Discord seems to be the place to go


no chance. The site will get shut down in seconds lol. It's not as flexible as Nyaa or Tokyo Toshokan

Discord are for niche stuff sure, but I don't think they reach the scale and as encompassing as forums. Though Discord+Reddit combo is what practically slap forum out of light.

I'm not necessarily saying that AS will run torrent again, just that torrent might be a thing again and anime might have less coverage than it is now. I still now viewing Anime boom on Mainstream as some sort of fad or trend that people jump in before jump out again. This also consider we don't really have any big hit recently. Torrent is viable just that we can only run those that aren't licensed. Most are licensed at this point though.

Generally I found the majority of current viewers are not necessarily like anime as much as a passing entertainment, once the next big thing come, It very likely many of them will just jump ship again. That and many of the current big companies like Sony with their new business models like stream and ads based video will likely turn a portions off as well.

With that said, Anime is still on the boom at the moments though, but with the fact that anime have lower limelight recently and we also don't have really good and big hit anime for a while now, there is serious chance that a lot of viewers who just jump on the trend leave. It kinda like superhero movies, there was one times where super hero movies is quite literally everything on media, but recently the popularity fall a lot off. The most recent big hit is Kimetsu no Yaiba, but consider the original manga already finished.....

EDIT: this is limited in western media of course, most Asian tend to be a lot more familiar with Anime/manga stuff

[mangamuscle]

On the other side, if they turn over a new leaf, It seem hard for anime to compete with them at least on Western media.

No chance at all of that happening, because the problems of american comics are threefold:

1. Wokification. This no doubt have repelled many readers, but imo that is not the biggest problem, back in the 1970s american comics also touched many political topics but they still thrived more or less.

2. Quality. Comics used to be a simple business, popular series flourished and those who were not languished and were cancelled sooner rater than later. But atm it seems many editors are ok with a series as long as it is woke enough, because the owners (warner and disney) only care about potential new movies. I still remember back in the day when marvel comics printed multiples of 100,000 per monthly issue for their popular titles, nowadays many series get 10,000 at most.

3. Business model(they own). People often rant about how manga and anime are the same old, same old, the most recent is about how isekai is stealing all the oxygen in the room, yada, yada. But american comics are way worst, we have had the same characters and titles for decades. We are not talking about a beloved few that never go away like DBZ or pokemon. The reason is simple, big companies OWN this characters and want them to be perpetually current, they will give no chance to any writer that wants to create and own new intellectual property:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H27rfr59RiE

So even if the superhero movie fad dies off (in the 2030s at the soonest), disney & warner (or whoever they sell the IP to) will want to milk their comics intellectual property until it dies off.

[serenade_beta]

Originally Posted by dragon1412

Generally I found the majority of current viewers are not necessarily like anime as much as a passing entertainment, once the next big thing come, It very likely many of them will just jump ship again. That and many of the current big companies like Sony with their new business models like stream and ads based video will likely turn a portions off as well.

With that said, Anime is still on the boom at the moments though, but with the fact that anime have lower limelight recently and we also don't have really good and big hit anime for a while now, there is serious chance that a lot of viewers who just jump on the trend leave. It kinda like superhero movies, there was one times where super hero movies is quite literally everything on media, but recently the popularity fall a lot off. The most recent big hit is Kimetsu no Yaiba, but consider the original manga already finished.....

Ah yes, the "anime viewer", who watch One Piece, Naruto, and maybe a couple of other popular anime, but have no knowledge about 9/10th of the rest of an anime in a season.

[barcode120x]

I don't watch anime anymore nor care much for the anime-genre/universe, but I still lurk here just to reply to random threads like this one.

[Endscape]

As others have mentioned, many of the older members here have kind of phased out of the anime/manga lifestyle, and we're not getting many new people to replace them, since they tend to go to Reddit/Discord. If I was looking for a place to discuss this stuff today, I might not have even learned about Animesuki.

Another point of note is how compartmentalized the boards seem to have become, at least by my my reckoning. When I first came here, it seemed to me that there were more users going to and from all the different boards but that has changed in recent years.

Originally Posted by dragon1412

I don't watch or read comics stuff myself, but when I search for the info in the web, the general complains seem to be too much politics and ads on comics nowadays.

Don't believe everything you hear. Comics have always been political, people are just complaining because they don't like POC's and current politics in their comics.

[dragon1412]

well I don't know much about comic in general, but I do remember there was a boom of them when I was in middle schools, and then the entire superhero boom recently and now they are kinda phasing out. It also share the part with the K-pop boom with korean drama for a few years when I was in highschool, but now they are no longer anywhere near as prominent. What I mean is, Anime is kinda like that in my eye, right now we are still in the middle of the boom, but most of the viewer seem more like they are just chasing the moment trend, and when the next boom come, they leave. Most viewer on web right now are just caring about the stuff most mentioned on social media anyway.

Originally Posted by serenade_beta

Ah yes, the "anime viewer", who watch One Piece, Naruto, and maybe a couple of other popular anime, but have no knowledge about 9/10th of the rest of an anime in a season.

Yeah, pretty much this.

[Cosmic Eagle]

Originally Posted by dragon1412

Discord are for niche stuff sure, but I don't think they reach the scale and as encompassing as forums. Though Discord+Reddit combo is what practically slap forum out of light.

I'm not necessarily saying that AS will run torrent again, just that torrent might be a thing again and anime might have less coverage than it is now. I still now viewing Anime boom on Mainstream as some sort of fad or trend that people jump in before jump out again. This also consider we don't really have any big hit recently. Torrent is viable just that we can only run those that aren't licensed. Most are licensed at this point though.

Generally I found the majority of current viewers are not necessarily like anime as much as a passing entertainment, once the next big thing come, It very likely many of them will just jump ship again. That and many of the current big companies like Sony with their new business models like stream and ads based video will likely turn a portions off as well.

With that said, Anime is still on the boom at the moments though, but with the fact that anime have lower limelight recently and we also don't have really good and big hit anime for a while now, there is serious chance that a lot of viewers who just jump on the trend leave. It kinda like superhero movies, there was one times where super hero movies is quite literally everything on media, but recently the popularity fall a lot off. The most recent big hit is Kimetsu no Yaiba, but consider the original manga already finished.....

EDIT: this is limited in western media of course, most Asian tend to be a lot more familiar with Anime/manga stuff

Reddit is full of crap quality posts though.....have to trawl through a lot of nonsense before finding good stuff


And I dunno...it feels anime used to be on a bigger boom 7-12 years ago. Most of the serious otaku are from then.....Now it's like....memes. Feels like most of the consumer base will grow bored eventually. And yes, I mean among Asian fans also. Heck, even in JP, IRL stuff is catching up with most people's anime watching

[Kafriel]

My take on the matter is this:

1. Anime is not as big as it used to be. Less long-running shows, with quality anime usually going for an annual cour, and viewers just making a "to watch" list, instead of bothering with the huge library of older titles.

2. People move on. Even I don't watch anime as much as I used to, and since I'm not watching any that are currently airing, I'm not inclined to post here, either.

3. With our generation moving on, the new anime fans have to be around somewhere, but this is not that place. Discord is pretty popular, and generally mobile apps have gained too much popularity, forums are a dying breed.

With all that said, AS is a haven for me, I know what I'll find wherever I look, and actually having peace and quiet is...nice.

[dragon1412]

I think that is owned by lack of big hit atm and today production standard, original anime is rare nowadays, most of them are adaptions. I agree that around 12-15 years ago is the biggest boom, the current boom is more like a trend rather than an actual progress in the industry, AS issues is more with forum rather than just anime. Recent seasons also don't have big series that people can come and discuss on. Economic issues also worsen year after year so as a Industry, Anime nowaday more prefer to play it safe with adaptions and used preexisting popularity of the novels or manga, despite many times the quality of such adaption are questionable.

I agree that Reddit quality is questionable, and I have trouble navigating it, on the other side, it describe exactly what is the trend atm, Reddit top post are those that garner attentions, not those with quality, so top post nowadays tend to be filled with Meme.

That said, I'm also one of those who found AS as a haven.

[Liddo-kun]

the internet is saturated with places that want to hoard anime fans discussing anime.. as mentioned already, discord and reddit take a huge share out of this.

and myanimelist forums, is still healthy and thriving as of today.. like how I already mentioned Love Live Niji threads here have only me as the active regular poster. But LL Niji threads on myanimelist have 50+ posts from various people for EACH episode thread with several people discussing the anime with me, both in profile and in the forum threads. That alone speaks the extreme disparity in active population size. The Higurashi Gou thread here has at most 10+ posts every episode release, the Higurashi Gou threads on mal has 200+ posts from various people for each episode thread. So in my opinion, anime is actually still going very strong.. it's just that fewer people go here. -- there's now even the website named Anilist also trying to take it's share of members.

But I like this place, it's something memorable and historical for me. So will still stay and be active here.

[Avrorrange]

I’ve been thinking, perhaps the crack down on spoilers and fan translations had something to do with the decline of this board as well.Ten years ago, people used to flock here to discuss fan translations and spoilers.Only five years ago,this site peaked with over 6000 online users.Nowadays, they have mostly gone underground or with certain people having their blogposts.

[Sacredus]

Originally Posted by Darth Fanta

I’ve been thinking, perhaps the crack down on spoilers and fan translations had something to do with the decline of this board as well.Ten years ago, people used to flock here to discuss fan translations and spoilers.Only five years ago,this site peaked with over 6000 online users.Nowadays, they have mostly gone underground or with certain people having their blogposts.

Well, that was a reason for me to stop visiting this forum regularly.

[-G1-]

Originally Posted by serenade_beta

Animesuki doesn't offer torrents anymore, so this is just an forum now. So naturally, there will be more users on other site forums, like AnimeNewsNetwork and... uh... Reddit.

ANN isn't very active either. Has experienced significant decline.

All the forums I used to visit in Spanish are now dead, and only some forums in English remain alive, but not particularly active. It's a shame that many disappeared without a trace, because lots of information and interest discussions about anime were lost.

Like other users have said, forum as a platform are kind of outdated, with people who want to discuss anime having an online identity tend to use websites like reddit, while those wish to remain anonymous will gravitates toward 4chan anime boards.
And anime it's easier to get now in the west, I'd say that 10 years ago we still depended on fansubs and community work to upload the anime and share it, many communities came to be precisely because of this. Now, with sites like crunchyroll available worldwide at a very affordable price, there aren't many fansubs nor there is a need for a community of users to share anime through hosting services like the now defunct Megaupload.

[The Green One]

The simple truth in life is nothing lasts forever. Everything that rises will one day fall and be replaced.

It is what it is.

[germanturkey]

I was looking for an old timers thread. If you look at the join date doe the people in this thread, almost everyone came more than 10 years ago. Unfortunately life happens and interests change. But I’m very glad to see familiar names still here.

[leongsh]

I feel old in here. I'm quite sure I have seen some that joined the forum before me still posting in here. I still read and occasionally post in Animesuki.

For the most part though, people have generally left forums and migrated to Reddit and Discord since both offer fan-focused series-specific channels and servers for discussion of most anything within those specific series including posting fanart and fanfictions. The general anime channel in Reddit is a karma whore's wet dream where they can post to whore karma points and upvote or downvote individual posts as well. The commenting structure in Reddit works better when you only want to respond to specific posts instead of needing to properly quote to know who you're responding to inside these forums.

Then there's MyAnimeList. It is one of the frontlines for fans defending their favoured series, brigading in upvoting and downvoting shows, and a lot of juvenile reviews. The forums there have a number of trolls posting blown-up egoistical opinions like they are the final arbiter of taste and their opinionated posts are matters of undisputable objective fact.

[Infinite Zenith]

Sometimes, the minimal functionality is exactly what we need, which is why I'm still around. As for MyAnimeList, one can hardly take a step without walking into their King of Egotistical Opinions of Taste, RebelPanda, and his hordes of mindless followers I'd rather keep to the quieter, more contemplative discussion that we have here (minus the odd disruptive individual or so we sometimes get).

[serenade_beta]

Originally Posted by leongsh

The general anime channel in Reddit is a karma whore's wet dream where they can post to whore karma points and upvote or downvote individual posts as well.

Ahh yes, gotta love those "I can't say anything back to you, but I don't like what you said and want to slap you for it" systems. Great decision by Animesuki to remove it's several years back.

[leongsh]

Originally Posted by serenade_beta

Ahh yes, gotta love those "I can't say anything back to you, but I don't like what you said and want to slap you for it" systems. Great decision by Animesuki to remove it's several years back.

Yup. The "I can't answer back those points, hence, I will downvote you to oblivion". There is some upside in that there is enough mass of people who can sometimes balance it and upvote your post. However, in Animesuki, it was badly implemented in comparison where the upvote/downvote was on the poster and not on the post. Thus, it left a bad taste with a lot of people. The voting on the post (like in Reddit), instead of the poster, is slightly better but still left some obvious karma whoring where snappy simple punny replies get the bulk of upvotes while those going into detail discussion are generally less voted on. That could be the result of people getting shorter attention spans from growing up with social media, particularly Twitter, Snapchat, etc.