Anime – a genre which has been slowly infiltrating the western hemisphere since the 80’s. For those who somehow don’t know what this is, anime is an animated show and movie genre which originates from Japan. While us Westerners are just now getting fully invested in these wondrous worlds, anime itself has been around for quite a long time. It has, however, taken off in the past 25 years or so as the style has become more accepted over here in the States. During this time, we’ve seen incredible shows like Dragon Ball Z, Naruto: Shippuden, Black Butler, Angel Beats, Orange, Attack On Titan, Hunter x Hunter, Yuri On Ice – the list could go on, but these are just a few major names that dominated the early 2000s to mid 2010s.
This now is where I deviate from the narrative I’ve already started.
Around 2015, when anime truly started to pop off in the USA, things suddenly got bad. We went from series that are quite literally now heralded as classics, to slop show after slop show in the late 2010s to the early 2020s. There’s one show I remember specifically because it grossed me out: Citrus. Initially having trailers back in 2017, I remember seeing initial clips and being intrigued due to the fact that the story focussed on a lesbian romance; however, upon seeing the full trailer, I was genuinely disgusted. Before anyone gets mad at me, it’s not because the main characters were LGBTQ+. I myself am queer, and enjoy a good homosexual plotline every now and then. Citrus though was absolutely vile, because the two main characters in love were stepsisters.
Now you can argue the ethics of this all you want, but I myself find this sort of relationship being sensationalized and romanticized to be really creepy and gross. I think I was only 14 when I was seeing ads for this on the app Crunchyroll, as were many of my friends. I vividly remember all of us being wildly uncomfortable with the implications behind this, not to mention just how sexualized everything seemed to be. Thank goodness I never watched this and stayed far away from whatever side of ‘anime’ this was.
While the frankly odd sexual tension of this show was what put it on many’s radar at the time, another show that rose to popularity but then crashed spectacularly was Darling in the Franxx, having come out in 2018. While I never personally watched the series myself, I remember this stuff being huge at the time. The initial episodes were great from what I heard, only for fans to be disappointed with the ending of the show. To be honest, you’d probably be better off watching Neon Genesis Evangelion, as both shows seem to have a similar plot. Evangelion just happens to be executed much better for a roughly 30 year old series – which I might add is getting another anime adaption coming up soon.
Another honorable mention from this time period was Boruto: Naruto Next Generations which began airing in 2017 and finished up in 2023. Being the continuation of Naruto: Shippuden, Boruto focusses on the next generation of the main cast, taking long-time viewers of the franchise back into the world of ninjas. As a fan of the original Naruto series myself, I really didn’t mind this iteration too much, though I will be the first to admit that it has its own problems. I think the biggest issue most fans had with it (spoilers by the way) is that to make the next generation more the focus of the show, they had to nerf the protagonist of the old series – Naruto – by taking out one of his major power sources. The show wasn’t necessarily bad in other regards, but many fans of the overall franchise felt that the writing was much weaker in comparison to the older shows, which I would agree with.
This long standing dry spell of good anime lasted for a while, roughly until about 2020, when an uptick of good anime started to appear again. It was only really past 2020 to about now in 2026 that anime has started to get good again. While I can’t be sure why anime got so bad from around 2015-2025, I can imagine that it had something to do with Covid-19, as well as the oversaturation of the market during that time. You see, anime was already starting to get popular in western audiences during that time, but it still had a touchy reputation due to stereotypes the internet made about the fandoms during that time. Using the anime Citrus as an example, most internet denizens thought all anime was like this, and hence brushed it all off as being gross and weird.
During 2020 and Covid-19 though, there was a lack of usual entertainment to consume because the world was shut down. One of the few industries still going strong during that time was the anime industry, mainly because most of the production for shows could be conducted in remote settings. This, combined with the common person’s boredom, seemed to drive more people than ever towards the genre of anime. This effect though, from my observations, also seemed to oversaturate the genre. With more people watching anime, major animation companies in Japan began to pump more content out. Suddenly, it seemed as if there were a million shows all coming out at once, with a new show seeming to be announced every other day.
While this increase in viewership of the genre made me really happy at the time, in hindsight, I wish that not as many people had found the genre. The overproduction of shows for new consumers has ended up leading to a stagnation within the storytelling aspect of the media. It seems like every other story has the same plot with the same characters – and don’t even get me started on the naming conventions for the shows. It seems like they all followed the Isekai trend of long names, which end up telling the whole plot of the one-dimensional story. The increase in attention also saw an influx of new fans being introduced into the fandom culture of anime, which really rocked the ship for a lack of better words.
Many of the new fans coming in had no idea what fandom culture was even like, bringing what many consider to be a ‘more toxic’ fan culture, which seemed to predominantly replace the old culture. Growing up, the anime community was considered a safe space for many nerds or people otherwise looked down upon in society – for example, anime has long been accepting of the LGBTQ+ community. While this might’ve only been in subtext seeing that most anime is produced in Japan – a historically conservative culture – there was plenty of room for queer folks to express themselves. People weren’t looked down upon for shipping two characters of the same gender – if anything, this sort of scenario would often lead to debates amongst fellow fans of whether or not the two characters would actually make a good couple based on their personalities as well as the context within the anime itself.
The community surrounding the genre of anime had for a long time been bullied and ridiculed by most on the internet; but within the community itself, that was a different story. Even if fans of different shows or mangas clashed online in debate, typically no one would cross the line into actual bullying. There were unspoken rules of respect for showrunners and mangakas, as well as for your fellow fans. While it was okay to be passionate about your favorite series, everyone still had respect for one another. At the end of the day, we would all come to each other’s defenses if others online were bullying the community for no reason.
When the genre became more popular though, there was a very sudden and drastic switch within the community’s culture. My roommate and I were speaking on this the other day and we both came to the realization that ‘normal’ fandom culture had taken over the already existing culture within the anime community. When I say ‘normal’ fandom culture, I’m not talking about things like Marvel or DC stuff – I’m talking about Taylor Swift stan culture type shit. Suddenly, you had people bullying each other, trying to cancel showrunners and mangakas, and even people gatekeeping characters or shows. Many anime communities suddenly became known for being toxic, which in turn began to give the community a different, but equally harmful, reputation.
Granted, we did get some pretty incredible anime out of all this drama. One that immediately comes to mind is Jujitsu Kaisen, as well as Dandadan, BEASTARS, and GACHIAKUTA – all animes which really took off. While the works fall under the category of shonen anime, all the series I mentioned also present unique and new takes on the subgenre. While I won’t spoil the plotlines within this article, I highly recommend checking them out if you’re looking for something new and interesting to watch or read.
While we are still getting a few dud shows now and again, anime has really seemed to be recovering from the slump that it was in for a good while. I know this fluctuation of quality over time is definitely something to behold, but can also be incredibly normal. Things in life follow trends, and said trends don’t remain stagnant, they change over time. As a longtime fan of anime, I just hope that things continue to get better; not just for my own enjoyment, but for the sake of the community as a whole.
Credit of Feature Image to Author, Anna Stevens
