The Anime Girl Depopulation Psyop (2024)

42 Comments

1. JD Cowan

   Reply

   November 25, 2024,6:38am

   Earlier generations (from before 2007) never spent their time on shows that featured cute girls doing cute things without plot, purpose, or story.

   I’ve had people argue with me about how moe is central to anime, and that’s a half-true. Pleasant looking characters have always been a core aspect of the medium, but the appeal has always been that they’re used in a story meant to get something across or to simply entertain.

   At that point one has to ask what entertainment is being delivered to a group of men watching a cast of cookie cutter cliché women doing the same everyday things in generic Japanese life over and over with no variation. This might have been novel in 1999 when Azumanga Daioh first did it, but 15+ years later the question has to be: what is the goal of repeatedly watching this same thing over and over. What is the end goal here?

   I find few are willing to ask this question and just wish to consume.

   • Asoulcyclebooks

     Reply

     November 25, 2024,6:54am

     Cute Girls Doing Cute Things fails the multitasker test: Every element in a story must accomplish at least 2 storytelling goals to justify its presence.

2. bayoubomber

   Reply

   November 25, 2024,8:19am

   I’d say anime girls are a product of the time, not a root cause. Between Japan’s workaholic culture and the Wests cult of feminism, I think to fill the void in men’s hearts, anime girls became a necessity.

   Feminism destroyed intergender dynamics and also encouraged women to go down crazy paths – self mutilation (we’ve all seen the before feminism, after feminism pics of women), homosexuality, and other deplorable things. Paired with how men have been shoved out of having a voice in society, their world behind closed doors became that of the internet. Wherever outcast men gathered online, they’d follow.

   • Asoulcyclebooks

     Reply

     November 25, 2024,8:35am

     Complementing the “before and after” pics is the “how it started/how it’s going meme.” What’s fascinating about Modernists is how they promised that doing away with the old traditions would usher in a golden age of universal bliss, but they can’t walk it back even though their meddling just keeps making everyone more and more miserable.

     Thankfully, many in Gen Z seem aware that what can’t continue won’t.

3. Andrew Phillips

   Reply

   November 25, 2024,8:34am

   To the extent “over-idealized portrayals of women and the escapist fantasies” in anime are keeping young men away from developing really relationships with real women, it functions like pornography.

   It’s true the culture is toxic to men in a way which might be unprecedented in history. The impulse to check out makes sense. On the other hand, there’s a risk of moral cowardice in that approach. If we are so afraid of being wrong, or being slighted whether we are wrong or not, we will never put away the fantasies long enough to meet the actual “girl next door.” Doing so entails risk. Real girls are complicated, and anyone who says otherwise is selling something. Marriage is hard work. Even when a husband and wife know each other well and love each other deeply, it is still possible to misunderstand and be misunderstood, to hurt and be hurt. It is also holy work, if we’re brave enough to embrace it.

   • Asoulcyclebooks

     Reply

     November 25, 2024,8:39am

     We both agree that pursuing marriage in this social climate takes heroic virtue. What some miss is that exercising heroic virtue per se is always morally supererogatory, never morally obligatory.

     Chastity, on the other hand …

     • Andrew Phillips

       Reply

       November 25, 2024,10:14am

       Could you clarify the distinction between heroic virtue and everyday virtue?

       • Eoin Moloney

         Reply

         November 25, 2024,11:10am

         Isn’t it obvious from the very name? Ordinary virtue is what is expected of ordinary people, whereas heroic virtue is going above and beyond the call of duty. We praise a man for dashing into a burning building to save some kid he’s never met, because that’s heroic. But it would be harsh in the extreme to call a man a coward for not being willing to do so.

         • Asoulcyclebooks

           Reply

           November 25, 2024,6:10pm

           That’s it.

   • JD Cowan

     Reply

     November 25, 2024,10:18am

     This was central to Shinzo Abe’s pursuit of promoting family It’s no coincidence a flood of anime promoting family life starting showing up, spearheaded by hugely popular Spy X Family. It also does the neat trick moe doesn’t by actually telling a story and having characters interact with each other in more than the same cookie cutter ways.

     I realized something was terribly wrong with this the first time I saw people get visibly angry over a promotion between an idol anime and an RPG franchise because the RPG has male characters their chosen waifu might interact with. This possibility greatly saddened them and they threatened to never spend money again should it happen.

     Why is this deranged behavior encouraged? There is nothing remotely healthy about this. Not even the most base and simple battle shonen promotes anything this twisted.

     • Eoin Moloney

       Reply

       November 25, 2024,11:43am

       Ah yes, that’s a very common phenomenon in the Idol industry, as well as its offshoots in Vtubing. We call those people “unicorns” because they become deeply, irrationally upset when their favourite idol dares to so much as interact with a man, as if such a thing would defile them and make them impure. In reality, it’s almost certainly because such a thing breaks the parasocial illusion of being in a relationship with the idol. Sure, you know in your heart that it’s not really real, but once you visibly see her interacting with another man, you can no longer even pretend to yourself that there’s anything there. The female equivalent also exists, typically called “sisters”, and are the stereotypical rabid fangirl that gets upset whenever their favourite heartthrob (real or virtual) interacts with a woman.

   • Eoin Moloney

     Reply

     November 25, 2024,11:29am

     Next to the very real stories of good men who’ve had their lives ruined by harridans, all that high and mighty talk sounds hollow as rotten wood. You might as well tell men that they need to run through the meat grinder because of the 5% chance that they’ll earn glory by making it through.

     • Andrew Phillips

       Reply

       November 25, 2024,1:28pm

       I can’t speak the dating scene of today. I’ve been married for the last 19 years, so it’s clearly gotten incomprehensibly worse since the mid 00s. I can speak to what it takes to be married and stay married, and stand by that point. Women are complicated. Marriage is hard. Replacing women with two-dimensional substitutes will not prepare any young man for the challenges of married life, which I will insist is a high and holy calling which takes real courage to see through to the end.

       Clearly, running through the meat grinder is foolish. I must ask, however, are all (young) women are now mad in that particularly toxic way? Or, are there places and ways one might avoid the meat-grinder? I’ll suggest one which should not be too controversial here: Does she go to church?

       • Eoin Moloney

         Reply

         November 25, 2024,2:44pm

         Oh, I’m not denying that marriage is difficult, and if it was JUST that, I wouldn’t be speaking such gloomy words. Good on you and your wife for sticking at it.

         Brian recently wrote a post about the lack of a good “Third Place” where people can really mingle outside of school or work. Even within the men and women who go to Church, just picking up a spouse isn’t exactly easy. The support systems don’t exist anymore, especially devastating to those not blessed with large quantities of natural charisma. As for women, well, I have heard some real nightmare stories that would scare off anyone. Perhaps they are not entirely representative, but it’s enough that I couldn’t blame young men for not wanting to risk it. Most of these stem from the frankly ridiculous level of favouritism seen in modern society, especially the court system. A woman can accuse a man of almost anything and will likely be believed. Even if legal ruin can be avoided, his reputation will still be shredded. Amber Heard very nearly got away with doing this to Johnny Depp, and he’s rich, handsome, and popular. Just imagine how well men who aren’t as fortunate and successful as him manage in that situation, especially if their accuser is even a fraction more believable than Heard was. A youtuber that I follow once recalled a story where, in high school, she (being a bit of a shitty teenager) hit a guy over the head with a frozen water bottle (unprovoked). He didn’t fight back, and she didn’t understand why until he told her the next day that she was lucky to be a girl. She isn’t like that anymore, but she realised then that if she had decided to escalate the situation to the point where he HAD to lay hands on her in order to protect his life, HE would have probably been the one to go to prison for it.

         The other trend that’s not helping is women having ridiculously high standards (the stereotype being ‘man must be 6 feet tall and make six figures to have a chance”). Honestly, though, it’s a combination of these factors along with the general shittiness of modern life, the lack of hope for a better future, etc, that’s just making most men give up the ghost.

         • Andrew Phillips

           Reply

           November 25, 2024,3:26pm

           Eoin, I understand. Even as well established as I am, if one of my female students were to accuse me of something untoward, it might quickly be me against the world, with the presumption of innocence thrown clear out the window in the name of believing the victim. We saw that very clearly with the way the establishment handled Brian Kavanaugh and his accuser.
           How does a man find a woman who’s worth the risk, when the search itself is risky, and his own inclinations get in the way? Fair question, particularly since a decision as monumental as marriage calls for both discernment and courage. I’m an introvert, too, and thought I was doomed to a solitary life. If someone had told me in 02 or early 03 I would be married by the end of 05, I would not have believed it.

           • Eoin Moloney

             Reply

             November 25, 2024,6:04pm

             Thanks for your words. Main issue is that I don’t really ho outside much, so I don’t know where to go, or how to even begin. Plus, change is scary and anxiety inducing, and I don’t live independently, which would cause further problems. Plus, “introvert” might be an understatement for me – I’m a diagnosed autistic, albeit with a comparatively mild case. That makes social situations more difficult and stressful, makes change more agonising and anxiety inducing, and reading the especially subtle social cues of romance basically impossible (I have a hard enough time trying to understand people’s subtle intentions even in normal conversation, more than once has there been a problem caused by my inability to read people’s minds for the “obvious” truth between the lines).

             Apologies if that got too personal, it’s just something very important to me that I’ve been bottling up for a while.

             • Andrew Phillips

               November 25, 2024,7:08pm

               It’s not too much, brother. It puts your struggles in context, which I recognize are very different from mine. In fact, this whole discussion topic is driving home to me “the world [I] raised to survive doesn’t exist” in a new way. I’m among the elders of Gen Y, so the world has changed a lot than I realize. If I have spoken out of turn, or made something which is already difficult even more difficult, please forgive me.

             • Eoin Moloney

               November 26, 2024,12:45am

               To Andrew: for some reason I’m not allowed to reply to your previous comment, so I’ll do it this way instead. Thanks for your words, and no, you haven’t made things harder or worse. Hearing a sympathetic voice has really helped me to get it off my chest, actually. So, thanks. Actually, if you don’t mind, it might be useful to continue this conversation somewhere else, for future reference. Do you have an email, or some kind of other online communication you use, so we can talk in future? If you don’t want to, I also don’t mind that, but I figured I might as well ask. Thanks again.

             • Andrew Phillips

               November 27, 2024,8:09am

               Eoin, I can’t reply to you either. I also think it would be useful. We’ll figure something out.

             • Eoin Moloney

               November 27, 2024,2:30pm

               Andrew, I do most of my habitual communication on Discord, but that’s not an app everyone wants to use, so if you’d like you can find me on GMail. I go by kingmcdee over there, at least, that’s the one I use for informal communication.

4. Eoin Moloney

   Reply

   November 25, 2024,11:40am

   I concur with Bayoubomber in thinking that this is more symptom than cause. When things are just too difficult to take, when life is such that you can’t even bear to think about what the future might hold, it can be soothing to see cute depictions of nice things. So many people are without hope. I personally have just sort of accepted that I’m probably never going to find anyone, due to the specific circumstances that I live in. When you feel alone, things like streaming and VTubers can help to feel some sort of connection, even if it’s not as good as real friends. There’s danger, obviously, in going too deep into the parasociality rabbit hole, but most of us who do such things are really just looking for someone to relate to.

   • ldebont

     Reply

     November 25, 2024,2:21pm

     Normally I’d say that it would be a far better idea to seek in-person social relationships with those you see around you, but that wouldn’t be applicable for many people today for obvious reasons. It simply isn’t true (as much as I’d want it to be) that all the alienation is limited to the cosmopolitan centers. Heck, the city where I live is on the very edge of what Dutch people call the ‘Randstad’ (which is basically a highly urbanized and interconnected set of cities containing places such as Amsterdam and Rotterdam), and I’d argue that socially things are about as bad as Amsterdam, only on a smaller scale.

     What’s quite horrific is that most men probably don’t even end up watching pornography or masturbating for sexual stimulation, it might actually just be emotional stress relief, which is why it’s so extremely tempting. If your environment, from the architecture you see to the people around you, feels alienating and isolating, it’s pretty hard to stay away from something that can give you an emotional escape (even if only temporary) with virtually no effort at all. The only problem is that none of it is real; when it comes to pornography, no matter how you ended up there, it’s still a form of emotional self-gratification. It is incomparable to sharing an actual connection with someone or having sex because the connection isn’t mutual.

     Again, finding actual mutual connections with people is paramount, because failing to do so will most definitely lead to some form of insanity (which tends to happen when your mind is stuck in a rut with seemingly no way out). Any replacement is most certainly not going to last…

5. Edwin

   Reply

   November 25, 2024,12:24pm

   This post raises some serious questions that I’ve spent time considering as well. The 2000-onward Cute Anime Girl fined tuned the aesthetic to an unnatural, overstimulating degree. Series like K-ON or Haruhi Suzumiya really exemplify this and seemed to set a lot of standards that spawned countless imitators and the whole “waifu” phenomenon.

   It’s easy to see how this could lead to all sorts of problems. If you are an average or below-average guy, it’s going to be really tempting to just fantasize about a character like Marin Kitagawa, that resemble real women in about the same way as cocaine resembles a garden herb. There is plenty of dopamine on tap but no risk of failure or rejection, versus almost-certain failure to attract a real-life pretty girl, OR likely failure even if pursing an average or below average girl, who can’t even be relied upon for the traditional perk, that the less attractive woman would at least be sweet to compensate for a lack of good looks, and instead is just as likely to buy into feminism and other Current Year nonsense.

   For an increasing number of guys, the cost-benefit mathematics of a fantasy relationship with your anime or video game waifu just seem like a better deal than anxiety and failure-fraught pursuit of real-life relationships. I’m married and have kids so I’m fortunate not to be in this situation myself, but I really sympathize with where they’re coming from. The dating market has just become a bad deal all around and these guys feel trapped by circumstances out of their control.

   Of course as a Christian, the best solution I could offer would be just not participate in the “open marketplace” of dating. You might avoid applying for jobs at publicly-traded companies where you’re likely to get axed at any moment to save investors a few bucks, in favor of working for a privately-owned mom and pop business less subject to corporate pressures. In the same way, we are better off dumping dating apps and the whole modern secular dating infrastructure in favor of a more grassroots pursuit, say, at church, which could afford access to high-quality girls who are not “publicly traded”, to stick to the above analogy: thus, not participating in the standard secular sex culture.

   If I was single when I met my Romanian godmother, I have no doubt she would have found a nice girl for me to court in a matter of weeks. Leveraging this sort of real-world connection could be a real help for young men struggling to find a decent girl to marry. In other words, networking and forming relationships with high-quality people at church might be the savvy way to also gain access to a high-quality girl.

   • Eoin Moloney

     Reply

     November 25, 2024,2:47pm

     Ah, yes, “networking”, the bane of every introvert’s life.

     • Eoin Moloney

       Reply

       November 25, 2024,2:59pm

       More seriously, though, that’s a better plan than nothing, but it’s still not going to work for a lot of people. There aren’t that many young women in my local church and most of the ones that do exist are already married and coming with their families. Then some of us are just terrible at navigating social situations, making the minefield that is the “mating dance” basically impossible.

       • JD Cowan

         Reply

         November 25, 2024,7:11pm

         There was that recent video floating around on X showing how relationships (not just romantic) were formed throughout the decades and they went from meeting people through family, friends, social gatherings, and even work, to being almost entirely online. The issue is that everyone over the age of 30 knows how insane trusting anyone you meet on the internet is and that the lack of a physical presence changes all relationship dynamics.

         Simply put, social relationships are broken on a societal level and navigating a wasteland for any social bonds is a crapshoot–not even just to find a good one, but to even find a starting point. Even harder when you have none of the tools or support older generations have that no longer exist. Bootstrapping isn’t going to fix this when it’s such a deep-rooted issue.

6. Troy Fletcher

   Reply

   November 25, 2024,1:03pm

   Repeated exposure to exaggeration or idealization in media may be sufficient to disengage one from reality. Whether romance novels or anime girls, there is a sawdust-in-the-rice-crispies effect; at some level we are aware something is wrong with our ersatz reality, but being 40% dissatisfied with something is the same as being 60% satisfied with it!

   Of the few tasks leaders of men must necessarily perform, protecting people from things that stop them procreating and engaging with reality may be the first.

   A people subjugated can retreat and regroup, whispering histories to their children to keep the spirit of the freedom they once had alive. But a people severed from reality and each other will silently vanish in semi-contentment.

   • Asoulcyclebooks

     Reply

     November 25, 2024,6:12pm

     It’s encouraging that men are waking up to those facts.

7. Shinji Iskawa

   Reply

   November 25, 2024,2:35pm

   Women need to start dressing like anime girls, pure and simple. Until they do, they’re just men with tits, if they even have them, because who could tell in the burlap sacks they wear nowdays.

   • Asoulcyclebooks

     Reply

     November 25, 2024,6:13pm

     Losing weight would also help.

8. Val the Moofia Boss

   Reply

   November 25, 2024,3:54pm

   The population is declining because of the financial crisis. You can have a degree and live in a metropolitan area and still can’t find a fulltime job, let alone one that pays a living wage. Men cannot afford to move out of their homes to buy a house to put a wife and kids in (unless it is a rundown house in a neighborhood with people you don’t trust). Having both the man and the wife working means they come home tired and will fight, and who is raising the kid during the days? Parents don’t want to subsidize their son bringing a wife into their house and having kids, let alone be an unpaid babysitter, and no sane man would condemn his children to state run public schools. With no home to bring a wife into, there is little point in trying to find a wife. So in the mean time men are holding up in their homes, but still feel lonely and have a longing. Anime helps satiate that. Watching fantasies of romances is readily accessible in the way that having a real home and family of your own is not.

   • Eoin Moloney

     Reply

     November 25, 2024,5:53pm

     I concur. Some people might have special circumstances or the heroic virtue required to maintain stable families in this climate, but by definition those cannot be the majority. If you want the average person to start a family, doing so cannot be overly burdensome. Even things necessary for Civilisation can be be disincentivised, that just means that things are royally messed up and dysfunctional.

   • Asoulcyclebooks

     Reply

     November 25, 2024,6:20pm

     The economy is a contributing factor to be sure, but that alone is not a sufficient explanation. If economics was the only, or even the main, driver of the decline, birth rates wouldn’t have been higher than now during the Great Depression.

   • Rudolph Harrier

     Reply

     November 25, 2024,9:39pm

     Subsistence farmers managed to have large families when it wasn’t clear if they’d be able to eat next month and all the daylight hours were spent working in the hopes that you might get a good crop. It’s true that those children could eventually be help on the farm, but only after they grew for several years.

     The point is that bad economic situations are a contributing factor to low birth rates, but they are not a sufficient condition for them.

     Though I suppose one big difference that you touch on is that in a poor farming family the family spends their time together, and in a poor modern family the parents spend their time at work as the kids spend time somewhere else (maybe at school, maybe at some cheap daycare, maybe left unsupervised.) This also tracks with the fact that birth rates are low even among those with the economic means to support more children, but who still spend their time working away from home.

9. Eoin Moloney

   Reply

   November 25, 2024,5:11pm

   I wonder if the rise in popularity of the “girlfailure” (aka “woman who absolutely does not have her life together at all, is probably mentally unwell and/or socially inept”) is a side-effect of this. Examples: Tomoko from “Watamote”, and almost every Phase Connect VTuber. Men are so demoralised that many of them are genuinely romanticising women with obvious and blatant red flags. The thing is that they’re relatable and unthreatening, unlike most of the “normal” women who won’t even look at you. I guess you could call it being attracted to someone who’s as much of a mess as you, or moreso. There’s also a degree of “I can fix her” appeal to them as well, though that varies from person to person.

10. Altitude Zero

    Reply

    November 25, 2024,5:45pm

    The the popularity of Anime girls is, I believe, far, far more of a symptom than a cause; the answer to young men who cannot find a sweet affectionate woman to share his life with is most certainly not to take even the fantasy of having such a woman away from him, and is akin to banning adventure novels and video games in the belief that this will encourage more real-life heroism, when of course it is far more likely to have the opposite effect. There’s no doubt that some forms of Anime are a form of escapism, but as C.S. Lewis pointed out, the people most keen to prevent escape are always jailers. The fact that hard-core feminists also hate sweet tender portrayals of femininity in anime should give us all pause.

    • Asoulcyclebooks

      Reply

      November 25, 2024,6:23pm

      Yes, it is a symptom. But, what often goes overlooked in discussions of social trends is the feedback loop effect. Like capitalizing interest, second and third-order effects amplify the problem, leading to a vicious spiral.

      As a brilliant friend in the medical field once told me “It’s the symptoms that kill you.”

11. Altitude Zero

    Reply

    November 25, 2024,7:05pm

    Sorry, I disagree. The last thing young men need right now is to be deprived of the few pleasures that they can avail themselves of. The birthrate in the West has been falling since 1957, and TFR went below the magic 2.1 figure in 1972 – long before anyone in the US had ever heard of Anime. If it plays any role at all, it is so minor compared to factors like feminism and obesity it’s not even worth mentioning. And the Great Depression did indeed have an impact of birth rates, reaching what was at the time an all time low in 1936.

    • Asoulcyclebooks

      Reply

      November 25, 2024,8:32pm

      I’m glad we agree that birth rates are lower now than during the Great Depression. Perhaps the general societal shift toward pleasure-seeking has been a mistake.

      • JimH

        Reply

        November 26, 2024,6:22am

        As in so many debates, the answer is contraception.

        Subistence farmers in India, and everyone in the 1930s, didn’t have hormonal contraception. That was why the population didn’t crater. The only pleasure available, and the only release for pent-up frustration, turned out to be the way we recovered.

        God will do something. But, the way things have been going, we’re really, really not going to like it.

12. NLR

    Reply

    November 27, 2024,9:07am

    There are definitely some people who openly embrace the attitude of preferring virtual women, but it seems to be a fairly minute portion of the population. As other commenters have noted, it’s a mostly a secondary phenomenon in response to other issues.

    I think one of the biggest causes is the inhuman mechanized ideology that’s so prevalent in the world (though in different ways in different places). Japan went from “we need as many people as possible to build up the nation” to “we only care about people who score well on high-stakes tests”. The would-be social planners say that they want people to have children, yet there’s not much for those children to do after finishing school.

    Supposedly, we need a bunch of education because we’re a modern advanced society and people need to train for all the advanced things they’re going to be doing. But countries all over the world (and Japan and Korea in particular) don’t seem to know what to do with their people after they finish school.

    But it goes beyond just jobs in the merely economic sense, it’s really about purpose. If you’re working all day in the rice fields, it’s a tough life, but at least you’re working for your family and your community. At this point, you’re not even working to build up a nation because you’re just one widget among many.

    So, the would-be social planners say “it’s bad not to have children”, but they preside over a society that every day is saying “Japan is full, there’s no place for your children after finishing school”. What they claim they believe in isn’t in accordance with what they support.

    In the past there were many men who weren’t able to marry (for various reasons), but what they did have was purpose. One of the strengths of men is the ability to do something apart from social encouragement. And so there’s going to be a lot of people who won’t get married in this era, but if they can find something truly worthwhile to do that would be great (though it won’t be easy). Though, unfortunately, there won’t be any societal status or honor associated with it, just knowing one has done the right thing.

    • Eoin Moloney

      Reply

      November 27, 2024,2:08pm

      Let us hope that this is the case, because that’s the good outcome of a situation where a lot of men can’t get married. The bad outcome is mass antisocial behaviour, or malignant organisations like gangs and cults receiving huge infusions of young manpower due to providing a purpose. In past eras, such men might have become thugs, or if they had the skill and means, mercenaries.