UlasanAnime.com – It is widely understood that otaku TV anime often engage with the meta. This means it involves the definition, deconstruction, reconstruction, adaptation, and swapping of existing or recognized genres and archetypes. It’s a continuous creative cycle where successful frameworks are repurposed with modifications to produce something similar yet new.
New ideas that prove effective are frequently integrated into other existing frameworks to enhance their impact. Of course, not all endeavors turn out as planned.
What’s particularly interesting about this season’s meta, much like a new expansion in games like Magic: The Gathering or Shadowverse, is the prevalence of attempts to mislead or misdirect audiences by presenting generic vibes. In the previous season, Fuuka might have been the biggest “gotcha,” but the most successful misdirection came from Kemono Friends. Here, audiences were presented with borderline “so bad it’s good” CG animation, which paradoxically helped engage the right part of our collective consciousness to parse a surprisingly sincere and nuanced story. Two seasons prior, the well-received “buttocks anime,” Keijo!!!!!!!!, also employed a similar tactic, where viewers expected one thing but received something quite different.
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Even original anime projects like Haifuri utilized this trick through their marketing, though it remains unclear if it genuinely fooled anyone. The often-criticized Mahou Shoujo Ikusei Keikaku (Mahouiku) can be seen as a victim of not correctly reading the meta; it used this bait-and-switch setup to deliver a traditional story, ultimately disappointing the audience. I believe this season will witness a few more shows playing out in a similar fashion as more series pick up on this trend.
To clarify and disclaim, when I say “misdirect,” I don’t necessarily imply a deliberate intent behind the process. It could be intentional or unintentional. In some cases, the marketing material or production style was crafted to create contrasting expectations, while in others, this was not the case. I believe Kemono Friends serves as a good example where there wasn’t a specific intent to mislead in that manner.
Certainly, media mix projects often employ marketing strategies to manage our expectations and generate interest to a certain degree. However, I want to highlight the shows where these elements are so deeply embedded in the “art” of the production that they compel you to adjust your strategy, much like modifying your deck to counter the meta in a card game, to use the analogy.
