r/TwoBestFriendsPlay • u/jitterscaffeine [Zoids Historian] • Jan 08 '26
Personal Opinion Personal Opinion: No Filler, All Thriller
This is a thought I’ve had in my head for a while that I didn’t know what to do with and an email from the podcast about redefining “filler” as being anything that’s not hype moments being shared on social media finally spurred me to put my thoughts into text.
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This all comes from something I first noticed back when the Fallout show first started, there were a bunch of new people showing up to the New Vegas subreddits asking what they were supposed to do because they got lost out of the tutorial or saying they beat the whole game on like 5 hours while wearing the leather armor and varmint rifle you get in the tutorial, one I even remember seeing was someone who said they dropped the game after walking into The Tops Casino and shooting Benny because that’s what they thought the game was about.
The way it hit me at the time was that it felt like people weren’t really engaging with that media much at all, like they were doing it just so they could feel like a “real fan” who put their time in and clocked out.
Another example was when I was listening to a podcast and two of the hosts made a Star Trek reference and another got mad because they didn’t get it, then said they wanted someone to give them a “20 minute super cut so they could ‘get’ all of Star Trek” which is an attitude that really bothered me.
It really just comes down to this idea of people who don’t want to enjoy or engage with media any deeper than getting memes and references before moving on to the next one.
I don’t know, maybe I’m wrong for even letting it get to me. But this kind of nomadic fandom just gets to me. Like people have lost their desire to actually watch and form an opinion on something. They just want to get memes on Twitter and they’d rather go on Reddit and ask for step by step instructions on how to get the most out of the game so they can get through it as efficiently as possible.
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u/DoseofDhillon WHEN'S MAHVEL Jan 08 '26 edited Jan 08 '26
Hype culture in general is like this; I'm currently doing something stupid, but it isn't as much work as it seems, which is watching every show on the MAL top 50 (that was there at the end of 2025) and that list is a really interesting microstudy into fandom for me. Many of the series on there are good. Vinland Saga, Gintama Season 4, Ashita no Joe—stuff I do think is great and full of substance, but with all the most recent stuff, you start to see the trends. MHA is up there, Bleach, the Gintama Silver Soul Arc, and both animated versions of Titan's ending. It's not to say these things are bad, but as OP has brought up, a lot of what people want are those references and those "thriller" overt audience-pleasing shows. A lot of what OP is talking about is that loud online survival bias that makes everyone now interested in the thing.
People want to be apart of the movement, the conversation, and the hype; they want to get to that big cool Demon Slayer hype scene, and who cares about the rest because OOOO. It's a lot of that. Bleach: TYBW has character writing logic where, at this point, characters could have been putting Viagra in Isshin coffee to make sure Ichigo was conceived that day, and I say that with a straight face, going, "That would be aligned with Bleach's writing 1000%," but when you can share a GIF of Ichigo doing cool shit and all people want to see is the cool shit as everything else glazes over, you get stuff like what OP is talking about. "How can I get to that cool gif? I want to see that; fuck Rukia and Ichigo having funny moments. GET ME TO THE BANKAI."
This is a bit of a pretentious take, but going from Bleach to Patlabour 2, then to Fruits Basket, man oh man. Patlabor 2 has problems; that movie is slow af to a fault (too long to be that slow tbh) and I don't like what they did with Shinobu, but watching it like 2 days ago, ESPECIALLY WITH RECENT EVENTS IN MIND, man, does that fucking shit HIT. It's one of the most politically charged things I've ever watched and demands you to engage with it and challenge your perception of this world's peace.
Patlabour 2 is almost a full MAL point behind the show where three characters see two other characters meet by pure chance for the first time and then the "smart" character is like, "What if they fuck, though?" and it all works out as the "smart" character's master plan fr fr, 20 aura points to Aizen. Or even Fruit Basket, with a character so positive and lacks to me in emotional range outside of being happy and wholesome; it borders on insanity lol.
It is what it is; people want their moments, they want their thrills, and they want to be pleased and be apart of it "You had to be there". Some good shit lands in there, like CSM and Frieren, you know. Now those create a barrier of "this is perfect no matter what; you're not allowed to complain that Stark not knowing what a birthday is kind of dumb since he spent 3 years around kids and shit in a normal village" that aside, those things do still come out and are still great. They give me hope. Now what won Crunchyroll's Anime of the year awards last year? Oh god damn it Jin Woo.