“The Anime Industry Has Become a Porn Industry, Hasn’t It?”

An anime fan alleging that the anime industry has degenerated into nothing but a porn industry has provoked an interesting discussion of the post-moe-boom anime market.

2ch discusses the issue (after illustrating its point):

“It’s become expected for anime to contain ero – to be honest this is pretty weird.
You can’t even show them to children or commoners…”

“Actually the anime industry just can’t survive without ero.”

“Late night anime is pretty much based on ero.”

“Even in the otaku market, anime is sinking right to the bottom.”

“Well, an anime like Bakemonogatari couldn’t have sold without the erotic component.”

“One issue is the age of producers – there seem to be a lot of older producers who really do think that normal adults don’t watch anime and that its sales will only be as big as all the bouncing breasts it contains.”

“I think Strike Witches encapsulates the current state of the industry. We don’t really need moe, animal ears and pantsu all over the place, but without it they won’t sell.”

“There were plenty of good older titles which had ero – Cat’s Eye, Lupin, Cobra, etc. What we see now is that these good ero containing anime have died out in favour of moe-anime, now the industry staple.

[…]

The ero-scenes in late night anime are now their main way of attracting audiences, and they are otherwise devoid of content – quite the opposite to how ero-anime of years past handled things.”

“Given the choice between a crap anime with ero and and a crap one without, I’d surely pick the one with.
Rather than being necessary, it’s a necessary evil.”

“The people who actually spend a lot on anime are moe-otaku and fujoshi. The ones who always whine about it aren’t the ones actually buying it.”

“But K-ON! and Angel Beats! never even showed any pantsu – makers who say ero is needed to sell are just making excuses.”

“Those titles may not have any direct ero elements, but aside from Ghibli anime (and perhaps including it) they all still rely on appealing to men with romantic elements and bishoujo characters.
We can say they are indirect ero-anime.
Their sales relied on a combination of those elements and good story and composition.”

“The issue here is that only moe anime sells. If they don’t build a new layer of non-moetard fans only moe anime will ever be produced.”