The anime is Genshiken (2004), I picked it up on a whim. It’s alright so far. Very “by weebs, for weebs”. The manga is from 2002.
The 80s and 90s being a pass of the baton from veterans of the early days to more modern staff, which already grew up with anime, and the success of Evangelion and merchandising had some awful long-term consequences even if it was probably unavoidable under capitalism.
Not the janitor. The pedo teacher (worst character and every character in-universe hates him, but whatever).
Azumanga is one of those shows like Tenchi Muyo (funnily, the Azumanga author started by creating basically Tenchi Muyo fanfiction) or Evangelion that are fine, even good by themselves, but contain aspects that would be picked up on and create bothersome trends.
Anno wanted to dunk the “teenagers conscripted to save the world with giant robots” troupe in anime and even added some existential horror like the legion of Rei clones that effectively “reset” the character every time a Rei dies, but the otaku/weebs just got horny for that too.
One of the most horrifying takes I ever heard from an actual weeb in the offline world was
(CW: extreme weeb misogyny/snuff/SV/kiddie creeping)
spoiler
that Rei was his favorite character because he, quote, “could take her virginity, kill her, reset her virginity and her innocence and repeat” as much as he liked.
Anno’s intent and the actual response of the fandom is proof that god isn’t real
I remember the late 90s and early 2000s where self described “otaku” insisted that the end of Evangelion was really mysterious and deep and would never be fully understood.
It was Anno directly saying “look. LOOK. THIS. Is this what you wanted? HUH? You’re so fucked up.”
It’s worse than that… we killed god
Is this the reason why Christians like the idea of women “saving themselves before marriage?” There is a sadistic pleasure in fucking a virgin?
When dealing with chuds like that, I always tell them. “Now imagine how you’d feel if a gay man said that about Rei if they were a guy.”
“Purity culture” is sexual pathology and always has been, yeah.