All the Franchises Are Dead

Recently, I ran into this tweet (archive here.)

I think it finally hit me.

At somepoint you got to let go and just let something die.

Starwars is dead.
Konami us dead.
Game's journalism is dead.
Journalism is dead.
Ghostbusters is dead.
Predator is dead.

Aliens…… shit. I can't let that go just yet.

— Wilks (@1Alienscomicfan) May 7, 2019

I would go further than that. I believe that all professionally produced franchises are either SJW -converged or soon will be, given enough time.

Let’s run down some prominent examples:

– Star Wars, the biggest name in sci-fi, attacked its own legacy and its most loyal fans to the point where its most recent movie flopped — the first flop in the franchise’s history.

– Marvel Comics intentionally puts sociopolitical preaching front and center in its work, over and above the objections of fans. DC is following close behind, and besides, most of the US comic industry is made of SJWs anyway.

– Mortal Kombat, the poster child of 1990s in-your-face offensiveness (so much so that it led to the creation of the Entertainment Software Rating Board), has adopted a woke stance with its most recent games. On top of that, it actively shuns sexy female designs.

And there are too many more examples to count.

No amount of fan complaints, outraged tweets, and Youtube videos changed a single thing about SJW convergence in entertainment. Wokeness continues to advance through all professionally produced media; ham-fisted, preachy SJW values will be the only permitted viewpoint, and anything that even slightly deviates from it will be eliminated.

“But at least we still have anime! They don’t listen to SJWs — they care about their fans. Based Japan for the win, baby!”

Note that I said all media, not just all Western media.

It is true that there is far less SJW ideology in anime and Japanese video games than in Western-produced stuff. However, there are some worrying signs ahead:

– Sword Art Online author Reki Kawahara says that he will write future entries with political correctness in mind.

– Sony now has a strict censorship policy regarding sexual content; so strict, in fact, that it forced Kenichiro Takaki, the creator of the highly sexualized Senran Kagura series, to make different games.

– American financiers are much more deeply involved in anime’s financing than ever before.

– A concept artist for the Pokémon series called for the end of fanservice in anime and for more social-issue preaching, specifically citing Marvel and Disney as examples to follow.

My prediction is as follows: In five years, anime will be just as converged as Western media.

You laugh now, but everyone laughed at Anita Sarkeesian when she started out in 2013. Now her ideology is the reigning dogma in Western video game studios.

As for the Japanese, they are human beings, not emotionless robots. Like all human beings, they are subject to social pressure. All it takes is for a market leader like Shonen Jump to adopt SJW principles and that ideology will rapidly become the norm throughout the industry because peer pressure will take down anyone who resists.

Now I could be wrong — indeed, I want to be wrong — but the record of companies bending the knee to SJW demands is not encouraging.

I know that this can be hard to accept — you’ve enjoyed a lot of your favorite franchises as a kid, and many of them give you enjoyment today. But the era of companies serving their fans has ended in the West, and I believe Japan is on shaky ground if they’re not careful (as I said, we’ll see in five years.)

The only way to beat this is to stop giving money to people who disdain you, and do give money to people who respect you, or at least don’t actively attack you.

Read some indie novels by my buddies in the burgeoning #PulpRev movement. Take a look at books like Heroes Fall, in which a former superhero sidekick seeks to unravel the mystery of why a prominent hero went bad. Have a go at Combat Frame Xseed, in which Earth fights a desperate struggle against a super-alliance of space colonies. Go and tackle Jake and the Dynamo, about an ordinary guy who gets caught up in a magical girl’s adventures.

And of course, read Shining Tomorrow Volume 1: Shadow Heart, in which a high school girl has to rescue her friend from an evil defense contractor.

If you want to change things in entertainment, do everything you can to support the alternatives. The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. Come, join us. Who knows where we’ll end up?