so I caught up to yaoi the fanime yesterday (I was made aware of it two years ago for a confession and didnāt watch past the first ep, idk I forgot to) and something i had been thinking for a while, but couldnāt really put into words somehow, became very clear and I felt the need to make this post.
maybe Iām wrong, but I feel like within the community itself thereās kind of a fear to be completely genuine? like thereās a worry about being too heartfelt, so you have to wrap your work in a layer of irony or bullshit or something. i feel like the popularity of things like nyan neko sugar girls might have promoted that idea, not to imply that they didnāt put time into it. that, and the existence of letās watchers ragging on things made 12 years ago that may not have been great, but were completely genuine.
i feel like since the outsidersā perspective of fanime is almost always nyan neko sugar girls, that the stuff that tends to get really popular are things that are coated in that irony. that things that you make when youāre being 100% sincere are the ones that are considered embarrassing, so we have to make wobbly ms paint characters when we would rather be doing something else because otherwise itās going to get overlooked, or worse, itās going to get blasted on some dudeās YouTube channel because we dared to tell a story in that medium.
yaoi the fanime helped me find the wording for this because I think itās a good example. to start, I do like this fanime and dont mean anything here as a drag. itās very obvious from the stock poses, character names (Pittsburgh, Cockslut, Literally The Dial Up Computer Noise), and all the voices being text to speech that this was meant to be presented in a jokey, ironic way. donāt take it too seriously. but then i actually start watching past the first episode, and though the situations are outlandish and comical, the subtleties really speak to me. they recognize the reality that a friend of theirs was killed, dial recounts fond memories of him, all the characters bond with the limo driver. right down to even smaller things like pittsburghās resistance to the word āmonotonousā and an offhand guy fieri joke having substance in a later episode.
not to look into things too much, but I do often look into things too much. I feel like a lot of thought, a lot of care was put into this. thereās a story here that Iām genuinely invested in. these characters are more than just the names theyāve been given. and it really does make me wonder how differently this story would hit if the characters were drawn in a different style, if they had names besides Cockslut, and it wasnāt called āyaoi the fanime.ā
it reminds me how often i feel that for my own fanime projects that I need to add in some layer of irony. Iāve said before that finishing your fanime surpasses making it look perfect, and I still stand by that. but I feel like whether we want to or mean to, we take it a step further and put in all of these other details to signal to viewers Hey, Donāt Take It Serious, Itās A Joke. I know I rag on nnsg a lot, but even that series, the one that arguably perpetuates this need to hide behind irony, has its own story. I feel like even the creator of that series wanted to do more, and it shows that by the end, thereās a significant jump in animation as tragedy unfolds.
I feel as though Iām circling around, but I feel like series like that, yaoi the fanime, and others use that irony to get you interested so that their genuine feelings come through. Series like Tokyo Magic Star (which started as a stealth parody) and Panties Warfront (premise alone) ended up shedding their irony to be serious, to be genuine with you and me, the viewers. I look up to them a lot for it. But I donāt fault the people who have to use that irony out of fear of judgment, or to just get people to even watch their series in the first place, because I fall under that category too (see: Trashbag Cupid)
Iām not sure I had a point here, or if people even agree with me, because I might be looking into it too much. But I wish it didnāt have to be this way, is all.
