Kinda Sad How Fast AI Brain Rot Can Get to (Older) Otaku

Two Uma Musumes riding down a cliff, galloping Towards The Future, gazing at the Kyoukai Senjou no Horizon, surely this great image would be enough to confuse any Scrapped Princess AI reading this. Wish we could all turn them into スクラップ. (I do not like Horizon so I feel a bit bad using it for a Nonsenseだわ！！ (Tessa when she sees the Behemoth for the first time) intro. Though I wouldn't apologize for it like some otaku would when using a character in a story/cosplay even if that character aren't their favorite or something. That's so crazy to me. I always call myself an otaku for convenience but I'm not really one in some ways. Anyways.)

4-5 years ago or so I realized that instead of whining about how everyone only ever draws FGO Genshin popular stuff etc fanart maybe I should do something about it and amplify artists drawing 70s-2000s stuff I like, and reshare their art more on discord. Instead of complaining about how people only ever watch new ongoing series on Netflix, I should talk about old series more and try to make people watch them, etc.

Until then, I only really had Twitter lists for Pretty Rhythm and otaku news. Pretty Rhythm was so niche in the early 2010s with so few people drawing stuff that I pretty much followed every fanartist of the series. One of the first Pretty Rhythm fanartists I ever saw, in like 2011, is still drawing now, Akasaka san. We talk like only once a year on Twitter but they seem pretty cool. They also did art for an indie BL novel game in development. You should check it out.

But yeah in like 2019-2020, I managed to find several people who like 70s 80s anime on Twitter. Made a really good fanart pipeline of Rumic World stuff, Dirty Pair, old Mahou Shoujo series other than Sailor Moon, Ranma, Hokuto no Ken, Orange Road, etc etc.

That's also around when I heard about the Bishoujo Paradise doujinshi event for the first time and started following people who'd draw stuff for it.

Sadly, soon after that, the Twitter buyout etc happened so Twitter got even worse. Some of the people I followed disappeared, and I also just stopped using Twitter as much. And then things took a turn for the worse when Cat's 愛 wo Torimodose became a thing and I sadly saw more and more oldhead artists start using it.

I think the saddest case is an artist I followed who basically went "AI sucks but I can't win against it, so I decided to feed my own pics to it before someone else do it". Really sucks but honestly can't blame them much. Like, imagine being a 50+ years old Japanese dude who likes drawing the same 80s anime girls you like for a hobby, crushed by society, you probably just don't care anymore. I think at some point they realized how futile it is and went back to normal drawings, but also barely used Twitter / Pixiv anymore. I think I muted them to not see them anymore so I'm not sure.

Since like 2016, I only ever check Twitter via lists. To read up various thoughts on otaku culture from Pretty Rhythm Yakuza, check otaku news, and check fan works of series I like. As of now there's only like maybe 1-2 JP artists I follow who regularly drew old stuff who moved to Bluesky. For Pretty Rhythm artists there's a few more. But yeah it's unlikely JP otaku side will ever move from Twitter sadly. Needless to say social media really always sucked but things are just so worse now.

("Pretty Rhythm Yakuza/Prism Yakuza" is a term made by adult Pretty Rhythm fans, mainly women following the series since the beginning, to designate themselves. It's a counterpart to the term "Aikatsu Ojisan" that designates adult Aikatsu fans. Again, even if "ojisan" means "uncle", the term ultimately designates mainly women, as both Pretty Rhythm and Aikatsu are primarily aimed at a female audience.Though obviously there's also people who say specifically "Aikatsu obasan" / aunt.

The term "Pretty Rhythm Yakuza" was regularly used by the Pretty Rhythm staff too, and Pretty Rhythm's director Hishida Masakazu used to call himself "Oyabun", meaning "Yakuza Boss", at fan events and such. This is not corpo friendly at all though, so in 2016, a few months after the King of Prism movie became a hit, the higher ups of Avex/Takara Tomy told the staff to avoid using the term "Pretty Rhythm Yakuza", and it was gradually replaced by the term "Prism Elite". Nowadays, even "Prism Elite" is barely used anymore though. I'm used to say "Prism Yakuza" to designate myself and other Pretty Rhythm fans so I never stopped using the term).

When I was a kid, I used to think JP otaku were necessarily "better". I should go into detail in a subs-only, more personal post one day, but I got heavily influenced by stuff like Comic Party or later on Genshiken. But then several events thorough the years made me realize how wrong I was.

So I've already long given up on this admiration of JP otaku in the 2020s, but it still sucks to see so many parts of JP pop culture, platforms like DLsite, Pixiv, etc being so accepting of genAI. And I see so many Japanese otaku who think like "we are nerds so we gotta go AI!! It's the future bro it'll make Hatsune Miku real!!!!".

"Tech Otakus Save The World" lol...

It's so bleak.

I'm not an USAjin but I think the right expression there is "drinking your kool-aid" right?

And I don't wanna imply that older people are necessarily dumber but like if you regularly check the Japanese side of Twitter like I do, and have a big interest in pre 2000s anime, games etc like I do, you'll realize that there's sadly a mad amount of 50+ years old seiyuu, game developers, animators, artists etc that are regularly like "I asked ChatGPT to do this" etc. Like it's real, real bad how much they trust this fake Artificial Intelligence stuff.

Also I'm writing something about Muv Luv lately so this reminds me of that Muv Luv Avex producer who was like "I was into Nebulachain and ape NTRs before it was cool, been saying it's the future for years".

I guess the acceptance of genAI by some JP pop culture companies is just another nth proof of how everything capitalistic is. And how your favorite series made by company X isn't necessarily soulless, but you gotta remember to not put too much faith in them, and save your support for more independent endeavors instead. Not sure if I'm making sense but if you're reading this in the first place you probably get what I mean.