Ok.

The usual lifecycle of an anime fan looks something like this: they are introduced to the format with great IP – the Attack on Titan anime or the One Piece live action show or one of the miHoYo games.

I don't know how things are in Japan, but I'll be damned if I ever meet someone who gateway series into anime was a live action adaptation of One Piece.

AI companions, an evolution of classic visual novels, are the most popular for anime characters and IP.

The most popular what for anime characters and IP?

Anime studios are adopting new AI technologies to create content faster and more cost effectively, but they are also iterating on new core loops with AI-native character interactions.

Some of them probably are. Screw them.

VTubing has transformed the way millions of anime fans interact with their favorite characters in new social and parasocial relationships by allowing any fan to roleplay as the characters themselves.

You can't just casually throw "social and parasocial" in there and then describe a purely parasocial relationship. Apologize to Shannon Strucci.

Also this is like saying television has allowed us to roleplay our favorite Radio announcers. They seem to be under the impression that the vtuber phenomenon is about people digitally cosplaying their favorite anime character together when it's more like an actor putting on a performance as an original character. And for the big ones, a bunch of Japanese style idol industry bullshit layered on top.

While audience inteeaction is usually a part of it, the nature of the medium remains highly asymmetric.

Ready to dive in? Let’s jam.

Keep Cowboy Bebop's name out of your filthy mouth.

Anime entered the mainstream in the 2000s with popular shounen anime like Naruto, One Piece, and now Attack on Titan.

I might be behind the times but even I don't think AoT is new. At least say Jujutsu Kaisen or something.

This affinity has led to one of the most popular use cases of AI recently – AI waifus and husbandos.

May all your subculture in-jokes die a dignified death before a VC firm references them in a blog post.

Waifu / husbando culture derives from visual novels, and AI companions are the logical extension of these animated storybook games.

"Mai waifu" was originally a funny engrish quote from Azumanga Daioh and was used to refer to any favorite character. The non tongue en cheek relationship simulation aspect merged with the meme later on.

Originally, visual novels were serialized books with anime-styled pictures in between.

This doesn't seem to be what the linked Medium article is saying and seems like they're just mixing up light novels and visual novels.

While there are many practical use cases for AI-simulated human interactions – AI as therapist, as teacher, as assistant, etc.

Practical, huh?

For instance, character.ai’s top characters are all from Genshin Impact; Raiden, Yae Miko, and Hu Tao take some of the top spots at 390M, 202M, and 113M messages respectively as of the time of this blog, compared to Elon Musk at a mere 40M messages.

To be fair I'd rather take almost anyone, gacha game character or not, other than Elon Musk as my conversation partner, whether simulated or real.

The majority of top anime games and visual novels are role playing games that feature a romance mechanic, and so it’s natural for fans to want to deepen their connection to their favorite IP and characters through active interactions.

Factually dubious claim aside, how hard is it to write "series" or at least "anime" like a real human being with feelings instead of "IP".

I've watched some anime series and felt things about them. I've never given a shit about an anime IP. Why would I, never owned one.

UGC Democratizes Creation for Anime Fans Anime is the new playground for content creation. Fans often engage with anime IP by creating their own versions of art, novels, and games, and innovation is happening across the stack.

Pixiv has existed for ages. Even before that was doujinshi, and people have made art, original and derivative, since before the beginning of civilization. Your idea of modding custom animu avatars for shovelware Love Plus sequels is not new.

There are a few notable reasons for the popularity of these games. The first is that there’s clear player demand against a shortage of high quality anime IP games; one example is Palworld’s recent success as the “Pokemon with guns” game, selling over 25M copies in a month across Steam and Xbox Game Pass.

Palworld is evidence of a lack of high quality anime games much like all nonblack nonravens are evidence of a lack of nonblack ravens.

The second reason is that the anime IP licensing landscape is notoriously difficult to navigate for developers, creating a potential undersupply of games.

It's actually incredibly easy to create and publish media based on anime and get away with it. You just can't do it too professionally. If you love democratizing art so much, go to Comiket.

Also there are tons of licensed games based on anime what the hell are you talking about?

Some startups like Kasagi Labo, Layer, and Story Protocol are tackling this issue to make IP more democratized and easier to access.

Misspelled "plutocratized" there. Also had a double take checking out the third one: "Story is the World’s IP Blockchain, onramping Programmable IP to power the next generation of AI, DeFi, and consumer applications."

Beyond UGC platforms, AI models and tools are enabling first-time creators to make compelling anime content that previously would only have been possible with a team of professionals.

I'm sure I will continue to be as thrilled as I have been up to now to see more art made by people who can't make art and filling the gap with statistical average of all art ever.

On the other side of the spectrum, professional game studios are leading the charge for high production-value consumer experiences that build on or create new IP. Anime games are some of the highest grossing in the games industry, accounting for 20% of spend on the mobile app store despite only having usage penetration of <3%.

Sounds great (not), but I heard someone say there was a lack of high quality anime IP games. Surely you can't both be right?

There are two ways that anime game studios broaden the horizon for players. First, they usually create the highest quality games of the most popular IPs like Dragon Ball, Pokemon, or Dragon Quest.

Consistency, what's that? Maybe invest in a bigger context window so you can remember what you generated a few paragraphs ago.

For now, we’ve been covering mostly free-to-play (F2P) mobile games. However, there are several successful PC/console anime games as well: Doki Doki Literature Club, the Persona series, the Final Fantasy series, the Fire Emblem series, and Phoenix Wright, just to name a few.

Doki Doki Literature Club is a fully original freeware pay-what-you-want indie game that became a viral sleeper hit. You're comparing it to Final fucking Fantasy? From a business perspective? Hell, despite the art style it's not even Japanese! The only connecting thread between these games is that they have vaguely anime style art in them.

Anime is also leading the way for digital play, turning previously passive consumption of linear media into a new dynamic form of entertainment.

It's really not.

Some notes:

• Who told Mark Andreesen about the overlap between possible AI ~~suckers~~ customers and weebs? Are we going to get a16z's next hot take - "Furries are eating the world?"

• I'm sure most of the audience here can fill in their own 700+ word rant about the breadth of anime as a visual style, so I'll leave that as an exercise to the reader. However, unlike the older trends of assuming that whichever shonen is currently most popular (the kids still like at least one Dragonball, right?) is representative or dismissing anything with the relevant aesthetic as "some weeb shit I won't like", here the writers manage a much more impressive feat. They acknowledge the breadth of what anime contains, but completely fail to ask the basic question: "why do people like this?" Similar to the original prompts for this kind of rant, they're assuming the art style and Japanese cultural background are the primary reasons why anyone connects with anything anime, and then expand from that premise. I'm pretty sure this is a root cause of why the whole article feels like it was written by goddamn martians.

• Are vTubers playing existing characters a thing? What little I've seen isn't linked to existing stories (that's what humans call "IP") but rather focus on original characters who have their own shit going on. Even ignoring the attempt to shove genAI into everything (as though everyone is going to want to make their own vTuber avatar and stream it someday?) this seems like assuming that the people going to watch the finals of the local Battle of the Bands are going in the hope of getting an autograph from Kurt fucking Cobain.

• There has been some criticism of gacha games as being monstrously exploitative and basically gambling targeted at kids and/or teens, but consider just how much money it makes. These people are ghouls.

• Going back to the genAI we set aside two bullet points up, I do think anime has a unique property there. It simultaneously has a much stronger visual identity than many other aesthetics, including photorealism, but also has a massive number of scrapable examples to train off of. The more consistent style makes it easier to replicate statistically and what visual abberation you still get is less likely to fall deep into the uncanny valley. The outputs I've seen from even older anime genAI were better than their contemporaries, but still pretty easy to pick out. Something about shading or gradient or something, probably because since anime is drawn rather than captured like a photo there's no detail that's fully incidental. GenAI, of course, has no actual purpose and so all details in every output are incidental. That gives the output a weird unfocused quality I think?

In conclusion, I'm starting to suspect that VCs don't have souls and/or don't interact with any human being outside of potential partners-in-somehow-not-crime or potential victims.

iterating on new core loops

We're sorry, but the brainrot is too far advanced. Amputation is your only hope.

Anime – what started as a niche genre of manga and animation

Off to a strong start I see

long on keikakucoin! *

* translator's note: keikaku means plan

a16z anime blog post

Two nukes weren't enough

this mf'er watched all the naruto filler and fuckin' loved it

emails SHFiguarts every week from their work address, "Deluxe Mecha-Naruto when?????"

@sailor_sega_saturn
#postoftheweek (season 1):
Anime – what started as a niche genre of manga and animation has become a multi-billion dollar industry in its own right, with chart-topping games like Pokémon Go and Genshin Impact grossing billions and movies like Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba becoming one of the highest grossing films of the year. Anime is driving pop culture today.