Anime Causing a Decrease in Birth Rate?

Anime is a style of animation that is a trademark of Japanese culture and is also one of the most profitable products that Japan has. It has grown from a small scale that was only popular in Japan, to one of the most widely known and liked genres of shows globally. It has become something that is celebrated in many countries,  but also something that draws lots of criticism. There are the ‘normies’ that think anime is strange and that anyone who watches it is quirky. There are those who watch it as well, many in secret in order to avoid being judged by the ‘normies’. Anime, in a way, has become a social stigma of being an ‘outsider,’ or someone weird. There are many extreme anime fandoms, which doesn’t help improve the negative views that these ‘normies’ have.  These fandoms often have extreme attachments to a certain anime that they came to love and enjoy, which only further alienates the ‘normies’.

There are words that are used to describe those that are obsessed with anime: weeaboos ( or weeb) or otakus. Weebs are those who are not Japanese, but due to their obsessions with Japanese culture caused by anime, wish to become a Japanese person. They often mix Japanese with their native language and often uses the terms incorrectly as well. Otaku, on the other hand, is Japanese term for people with obsessive interests in certain activities, particularly in watching anime and/ or reading manga. These people tend to stay at home and do nothing productive except watching anime all day. They are another form of hikikomori, people who  stay home and shut themselves off from society.

This is where the conspiracy comes from: that Japan has created Anime as an act of revenge against the actions of America in World War II. Some claim that it was created as a way to decrease the population in America by creating these ‘weebs’ and ‘otakus,’ because by making them anti-social, it will drastically decrease the chances of these individuals finding a significant other. Also, these ‘weebs’ and ‘otakus’ have their ‘waifus’ or ‘husbandos’ from their favorite anime.  In a way they are finding their significant other in animes and accepting it as a fact. They buy merchandise that’s related to their ‘waifus’ or ‘husbandos’ and continue to waste their money and time on something that can’t respond to their devotions and something that was created, something that isn’t real.

Surprisingly this culture of creating ‘waifus’ or ‘husbandos’ didn’t start in America, it started in Japan. Japan has a more severe issue involving weebs and otakus than in America. Japan is having equal or perhaps even more of an impact on birth rates than in America, so if these conspiracies are real Japan is harming themselves severely as well.

This culture, however, has also been westernized. There now exists a platform called Twitch and many also use that to their advantage. There are many ‘e-girls’ that exists on these sites that makes a living off donations that they receive from live streaming their ‘content.’ On a similar note to waifus there are ‘Twitch thots’ on Twitch. They are similar in a way that people donate money to a certain streamer, thousands of dollars in extreme cases, in order to gain attention or any sort of accomplishment from being a ‘help’ to the streamer’s life. Many who are dedicated to the streamer often view that they are friends or even a significant other to the streamer due to the sheer amount of money or effort that they have put into the streamer.

An example of a situation like this is when when there were conventions going on, the viewers found out the location of the streamers by their live streams and made efforts to talk to them in real life, thinking that their activities of being a dedicated viewer and/or being a sponsor of a significant amount of donations will help them become friends or even a boyfriend/ girlfriend of the streamer. The cold reality is, it doesn’t help at all, it only creeps the streamer out and they don’t care about who you are in real life, they only care about the money. All in all, while it may seem far fetched that anime is the cause of declining fertility rates, no one can deny the affect it has had on the lives of young men in this generation.