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What do you think about "Waifu Culture"?
I've been going through some old videos I used to watch and stumbled back on this video essay by J.T Sexkik on the idea of Waifus and how it has taken on several ironic but also non-ironic dimensions.
I've always kind of enjoyed the more jokey aspect of the whole Waifu thing. In large part because I'm fairly insecure and protect myself by being obnoxious about my like of anime as a way of pre-empting judgemental remarks or inquiries. After all, I figured and still sometimes do, if you present the worst possible version of yourself then the only way to go from there is up, right? I'm starting to kind of come around on that, but I still occasionally joke about it.
Was wondering what other anime fans on Tildes views on it were
I think it's pretty clearly harmful, but also there are redeeming bits to it that I value a lot.
The harmful bit for me is grounded in how it expands out to every character in an anime, including the children. I would hope it's pretty clear why that's a bad thing, I loathe going into most any anime communities and seeing people arguing about who the "best girl" is and talking about the sex appeal of the child characters. It's awful and I hate that this thing that I love creates spaces for pedophiles to feel comfortable.
As for the non-pedophilic aspects of waifu culture, I'm more or less okay with it. I've been a lonely nerd for long stretches of time before, and I do think there's a really nice comfort in having loads of other lonely nerds who also latch onto fictional characters. Pandering to the waifu crowd produces good things and bad things. I'm not sure a lot of the best character-driven anime would really be around without that push, but also we end up with a lot of stuff that basically appeals and validates incel-types.
TV anime in general are kinda built on this, and I think unless you have very specific tastes in anime, you owe it something. Some try to push the narrative that waifu and moe things only came up in the 00's, but they've been a staple since the 80s, it only got a little more shameless once the visual novel and light novel adaptation trends took off. I totally get why people write it off or are repulsed, but I've gotten too much from it to flat-out say it's all bad with no redeeming traits.
Waifu culture is one of the aspects of fandom that make me glad I'm not actually involved in fandom.
There are so many things I just don't understand and this is undoubtedly one of them. Some husbands of waifus seem to be taking it so seriously that it almost seems like grownups/teens with serious imaginary friends.
But hey whatever makes your boat float!
I thought it was a joke but then they ruined Samus Aran. There is nothing worse.