Hypothesis / speculation based on personal observation only:
MLP is similar to anime.
For various reasons, this demographic tends to be overrepresented among anime fans in western developed countries, partially (I speculate) based on the facts that watching anime requires 1) learning about it and being interested in this esoteric, nonconventional form of entertainment (this demographic tends to be more adoptive of nonconventional entertainment), 2) finding information about the anime shows to watch, which implies spending quite a bit of time on the internet for the vast majority of cases, and 3) actually finding versions of the anime shows one can watch, because for the vast majority of anime, if you don’t speak japanese, you need to find a borderline-or-sometimes-outright-illegal version of it that was modified to add “fansubs”, or fan-made subtitles translated in another language (e.g. english).
Most of the above is stuff that involves delving deep into the less-mainstream corners of the internet, or at least having a modicum of google-fu and the patience to learn the basic vocabulary of the genre.
Just that right there should tilt the numbers so that the base viewership contains a disproportionate amount of this demographic, and thus even if they were no more or less likely to enjoy it than other demographics, they would be much more numerous in its fandom.
And who shows up to these anime clubs? Fans of anime, or people specifically selected by their friends who are already also fans of anime (and thus tend to be in similar demographics), and very rarely random people who are not scared off by the esoteric and by the genre (again, primarily young people and somewhat slanted towards young males).
Also, respectable Anime Clubs point you to Crunchyroll nowadays, because that’s more respectable and entirely less legally-murky ;)
But yes, it’s not that hard nowadays, mostly trivial inconveniences. Most anime fans that are relevant here would have started watching anime years ago, though. The first five websites I used to find and watch anime do not exist anymore.
Or you google the name of the anime and find sites where you can just stream episodes like Watchcartoononline or Crunchyroll. Also, Youtube and Hulu have a decent selection between them. I haven’t felt the need to torrent a show in years.
True, but try doing that six years ago. Six years ago (plus or minus 1-3 years? bad memory with timelines), googling “Higurashi no Naku Koro ni” did not return the throng of convenient streaming websites and wiki pages and databases that it currently does.
I tried it, got frustrated, tried to hack myself a way to find good stuff by using image search instead, found guro porn instead, got terrified and assumed fetal position in a corner of my room. Gave up on that anime for a while, back then =P
Of course, most of that effect is that search has gotten a lot better over the years, I think.
I haven’t felt the need to torrent a show in years.
There’s no real need to, but it’s often orders of magnitude easier to find a high-quality torrent than a high-quality stream, and torrents offer the convenience of not dealing with buffers and unstable speeds and random connection errors and so on while watching, i.e. a smoother undisturbed experience.
This is obviously valid for all kinds of full downloads in general, it just happens that almost all full anime downloads are torrents.
I tried it, got frustrated, tried to hack myself a way to find good stuff by using image search instead, found guro porn instead, got terrified and assumed fetal position in a corner of my room.
But if you found images of the anime, why were you so unhappy?
Hypothesis / speculation based on personal observation only:
MLP is similar to anime.
For various reasons, this demographic tends to be overrepresented among anime fans in western developed countries, partially (I speculate) based on the facts that watching anime requires 1) learning about it and being interested in this esoteric, nonconventional form of entertainment (this demographic tends to be more adoptive of nonconventional entertainment), 2) finding information about the anime shows to watch, which implies spending quite a bit of time on the internet for the vast majority of cases, and 3) actually finding versions of the anime shows one can watch, because for the vast majority of anime, if you don’t speak japanese, you need to find a borderline-or-sometimes-outright-illegal version of it that was modified to add “fansubs”, or fan-made subtitles translated in another language (e.g. english).
Most of the above is stuff that involves delving deep into the less-mainstream corners of the internet, or at least having a modicum of google-fu and the patience to learn the basic vocabulary of the genre.
Just that right there should tilt the numbers so that the base viewership contains a disproportionate amount of this demographic, and thus even if they were no more or less likely to enjoy it than other demographics, they would be much more numerous in its fandom.
It’s not that hard to learn to find anime. You show up to one meeting of an anime club and five people will point you to AnimeSuki.
And who shows up to these anime clubs? Fans of anime, or people specifically selected by their friends who are already also fans of anime (and thus tend to be in similar demographics), and very rarely random people who are not scared off by the esoteric and by the genre (again, primarily young people and somewhat slanted towards young males).
Also, respectable Anime Clubs point you to Crunchyroll nowadays, because that’s more respectable and entirely less legally-murky ;)
But yes, it’s not that hard nowadays, mostly trivial inconveniences. Most anime fans that are relevant here would have started watching anime years ago, though. The first five websites I used to find and watch anime do not exist anymore.
Or you google the name of the anime and find sites where you can just stream episodes like Watchcartoononline or Crunchyroll. Also, Youtube and Hulu have a decent selection between them. I haven’t felt the need to torrent a show in years.
True, but try doing that six years ago. Six years ago (plus or minus 1-3 years? bad memory with timelines), googling “Higurashi no Naku Koro ni” did not return the throng of convenient streaming websites and wiki pages and databases that it currently does.
I tried it, got frustrated, tried to hack myself a way to find good stuff by using image search instead, found guro porn instead, got terrified and assumed fetal position in a corner of my room. Gave up on that anime for a while, back then =P
Of course, most of that effect is that search has gotten a lot better over the years, I think.
There’s no real need to, but it’s often orders of magnitude easier to find a high-quality torrent than a high-quality stream, and torrents offer the convenience of not dealing with buffers and unstable speeds and random connection errors and so on while watching, i.e. a smoother undisturbed experience.
This is obviously valid for all kinds of full downloads in general, it just happens that almost all full anime downloads are torrents.
But if you found images of the anime, why were you so unhappy?
I see what you did there =3