"Anime Was a Mistake"
Part of a series on Troll Quotes. [View Related Entries]
About
"Anime Was a Mistake" is a troll quote misattributed to Hayao Miyazaki, one of the most popular and influential Japanese artists and film directors in anime history, that conveys a strong sense of disdain towards the art of anime and its fanbase at large, including those who identify themselves with weeaboo and otaku subcultures.
Origin
The troll quote stems from the transcript of Miyazaki's interview with the Japanese news site Golden Times[2], published on January 27th, 2014. During the interview, Miyazaki expressed skepticism regarding the current state of anime as an art form and a cultural industry, particularly how little the new generation of animators are seeking inspiration from actually observing human behaviors and interactions in real life. On January 30th, a translation of the original interview was provided by English-language Japanese news site RocketNews24.[1]
You see, whether you can draw like this or not, being able to think up this kind of design, it depends on whether or not you can say to yourself, ‘Oh, yeah, girls like this exist in real life. If you don’t spend time watching real people, you can’t do this, because you’ve never seen it. Some people spend their lives interested only in themselves. Almost all Japanese animation is produced with hardly any basis taken from observing real people, you know. It’s produced by humans who can’t stand looking at other humans. And that’s why the industry is full of otaku!.
Spread
On January 25th 2015, Tumblr blog old-japanese-men posted two animated GIFs containing images of Miyazaki from 2013 documentary The Kingdom of Dreams and Madness. They are captioned with made-up quotes expressing extreme dissatisfaction with the state of anime and otaku culture. As of March 11th 2016 the post has 271,725 notes.[9]
The next day, Imgur user Ondaheightsofdespair submitted the two GIFs of Miyazaki in a post titled "Old sage drops some wisdom." It quickly reached the front page of Imgur, receiving over 8,800 points.[3]
Notable Examples
Search Interest
External References
[1] RocketNews24- Ghibli’s Hayao Miyazaki says the anime industry’s problem is that it’s full of anime fans
[2] Golden Times – 宮崎駿「日本のアニメは人間の観察が嫌いな人間がやってんだよ。だからオタクの巣になるんだよ」
[3] Imgur – Old sage drops some wisdom.
[4] Reddit – Troll puts "anime was a mistake" as a joke on a GIF of Miyazaki. Tumblrista decides against doing research and reacts just as expected. Over 120,000 notes and counting…
[5] FunnyJunk – Anime Was a Mistake
[6] MemeCenter – Search Results for 'Anime Was a Mistake'
[7] Facebook – Anime Was a Mistake
[8] Tumblr – Tagged Results for 'Anime Was a Mistake'
[9] Tumblr – Tumblr – old-japanese-men
Top Comments
Particle Mare
Feb 18, 2015 at 05:15AM EST
James Blunt Moderator
Feb 18, 2015 at 05:24AM EST in reply to