bitofhope

Given the kinds of crowds he hangs out with (i.e. mostly other rich people and political elite) is that not an understandable conclusion?

I might not be a huge fan of his work, but I'll take it any day over AI slop. At least it's a creative vision.

new meta for cultivation novels: prison literature

There was a lot I left unsaid in the Stubsack comment because of how difficult it is to express the uncanny valley effect I got from reading the a16z blog post. It's not just the very AI generated sounding prose, or the relatively broad knowledge of multiple forms of Japanese and Japan-inspired media combined with the glaring factual inaccuracies and extremely surface-level understanding of the topic. Even the whole angle of "how can we insert ourselves as a middle man to extract surplus from this" dressed up in a veil of celebratory excitement is par for the course for a private equity firm, but somehow they completely fail to understand anything about anime or video games as a business either.

The only way I can describe how the article reads is this: it's like if an anime fan gave an introductory presentation about Japanese media, then a business analyst gave a presentation on the size of anime business, revenue of gacha games and market value of Japanese entertainment brands, then an AI bro who knew nothing about either topic but took meticulous notes on both presentations threw them together into a blog post and padded out the word count using GPT.

Edit: Here's a long-form piece about Japanese cultural capital from someone who does know what he's talking about, as a palate cleanser https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IM2VIKfaY0Y

Oh my god the site changes your cursor into the TV headed cat.

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Oh I see, the cursor becomes the "sticker". JFC, imagine having a banger of a domain name like this and that is what you do with it. Some business genius smart boy man at the company that hosts wanker news looked at this and said "yes, if I give these people money it will surely pay itself back"?

Coincidentally, NFT grifters Azuki bought the anime.com domain name and have funding from a16z competitor Y Combinator.

lmao

I'm worried the studios might be too big to fail. Or rather, too big to fail fast enough not to have the fallout of their loathsome ideas screw all of us over.

They don't make non-"smart" TVs anymore and that's not because nobody objected.

What are you gonna do when the other major studios follow suit, adding that sweet sweet AI aspartame in their franchise schlock? Not go and see Batman vs. Darth Vader 3: The Rebackening? Watch an indie movie instead? Don't make me laugh. Your friends are already depicting you as a soyjack who insists on watching foreign 6-hour black-and-white silent films about communism.

Assouline! The gasoline of ass!

Are vTubers playing existing characters a thing?

I think I've seen some people do things with Live2D models of Touhou Project characters, but that particular AY PEE is famously extremely permissive about derivative works. If you squint, you might count cases where a vtuber version of an existing character is backed by the artist or company who already owns the rights to that character, which is not unheard of.

Other than that, no. VTubers playing characters from existing anime is not a thing that happens much. If anyone's confused why that's the case, consider a context where a someone who isn't a corporate robot might use the term "IP" (as in intellectual so-called property).

Back in the day they let you nuke a self-styled god-emperor's fascist resource extraction empire of genocidal death cultist twice, but nowadays you can't even spare one little warhead for a16z?

Ok maybe this sneer is a little edgy even for my own tastes. Up it goes anyway.

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.