this whole whiny "these genres i dislike are ruining 'x' industry" schtick you asshats keep pulling is seriously getting old. get over it already. i'm sick of reading about how one of you (gimmy, zalzane, phubans, etc) miss the old days on every single fucking page of every single fucking thread. go make a nostalgia thread or something instead of polluting every media-centric topic with your incessant whining.
My post wasn't about whining
There was no judgement of value at all
@sharkoss
It really depend on your exposition exposure to anime and genre you affectionate (even if one strength of manga is actually to blur what taste mean, you can love totally unexpected things due to massive genre cross over).
If you have little exposition, rejoice there is plenty good anime (in the history of anime) for whatever taste you have, also it will be less jarring to start with derivative works with minor iteration.
EDITed based on blademasterbobo
But I did start when manga where seeing this massive explosion in genre and mixing, around evangelion and cow boy bebop and other escaflowne! But it is also a general consensus that the result was a big rise of otaku pandering anime.
@zalzane
Kawaii is not moe, but moe is indeed the absolute evolution of kawaii. I'm speaking of this specific format with actually pretty good animation and the perfecting of cute (see erobotan avatar). I took the root from kawaii (chobit) because it happen that kawaii was becoming the main draw to some anime over anything else.
I also suspect that the harem shonen also have birth some tropes as well for the moe and slice of life model but without the harem (ie no hero that is a boy with the girls), the kind of love hina (big cast of cute girl) and co, moe is that without the male hero and the romance.
Sailor moon is not that at all, it's one of the bridge about blurring genre in anime by mixing shojo and sentai, it's not very kawaii at all, it's more like the clamp school of action anime made by girls for girls and which had drawn guys in the process. The 90 is basically that, the big explosion that have the barrier fall between categorization. Even dragon ball is part of this with the definition of modern shonen (and the invention of the martial art championship tropes). All of these trend is why we have work like punpun which would be experimental anywhere else but in manga. I mean seriously, look at any modern manga and say it belong to one genre, even if it is, many similar manga span across many genre at the same time.
However I'm talking about anime, not manga per see (i don't follow manga right now, too hard for me to keep an eye currently, i only follow berseck)
Moe first designate the emotion of protection toward vulnerable character such as Rei ayanami in evangelion and sailor saturn (hotau toMOE) in sailor moon. But in these anime these girls are still bishoujo (pretty girl). The other type of girl was the lolicon (gasp).
Moe became a type of character with the kind of lucky star, ie ultra childlike cutesy girl. The trend of moefication of anything also start, like turning any object, person, idea, into cute girl (strike witch for exemple, or those video where pokemon character are turn in moe girls).
Then these character start to bleed into their own format, the all moe cast like K on and lucky star, which not only had became a genre, but start to contaminate other genre too, central character get overshadowed by the token moe girl, then the moe girl became the center of attention despite not being the main character.
It has also span a subgenre, the imouto, which is ambiguous relationship between brother and ultra cutesy sister (and their friends), borderline on incest. Even when there isn't an official relationship, it might be define as such metaphorically (gunslinger girls). It's effective when the feeling of protection get mixed with hardcore situation. The genre continue to evolve by cannibalizing other genre and tone (puella madoka).
As such the techniques are not new (elfen lied is not technically a "moe" but has all their attributes used a narrative device).
The backlash the genre receive is that it is so effective that it feel manipulative yet addicting, therefore overusing it as it is currently as a trend is not met with happiness.
EDIT:
It is also funny to see that the bronies phenomenon was prepared by moe habituation. MLP has some attribute of moe and is not so far from lucky star in structure and tone.
EDIT2:
However one aspect that fascinate me with manga and the volution of kawai, is how it has bridge the boy club with the girl camp. Before manga everything was clearly gendered, and I grew up seeing the softening manga brought. Suddenly it was okay to for boy to like cute, girly stuff! and so was the reverse too, girl liking boy stuff. The habituation was led by small dose, ambiguous gender, gender bending anime (ranma 1/2), action anime with cute element (db and dbz, especially the emphasis on fatherhood in DBZ), cross of previously gendered genre (sailor moon), quality plot, male stuff show in cute form (city hunter) ... oh and game too! Manga totally change the way gender was define as a story format!
EDIT:
Regarding Aria, it looks like more a bishoujo with moe influence, definition is not clear cut, it's about a trend that is impacting every aspect.
YET ANOTHER EDIT:
A good example is blood the last vampire and the jump from the movie to the anime, while it's not a moe, we can see there was indeed a moefication of the main character shown in many akward situation before revealing her somber part, but blood is complex and sophisticate remix of tropes of many genre, from the fantastical shojo (with the phlegmatic and totally fidel "butler" character who come from nowhere) to the thriller, etc...
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JUST
JUST STOP FUCKING TALKING10/10 troll i raged
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