"Anime Was A Mistake": Explaining The Truth Behind The Hayao Miyazaki Meme
Many people have seen the meme of the famous Hayao Miyazaki saying a quote along the lines of «Anime was a mistake. It's nothing but trash.» Anime fans love to put this quote at the end of silly anime scenes, particularly ones that are sexualized to the degree of bodily absurdity. However, there is a story behind this meme, and it has to do a lot with how Miyazaki views the anime industry.
The quote is far from exact. The source of the meme image comes from the Golden Times, a Japanese news site that put up screenshots of an interview with Miyazaki in 2014. In the screenshots, the subtitles read a much longer and more intellectual version of «Anime was a mistake.» Instead, Miyazaki criticized how people (most particularly women) are portrayed in anime. He basically called it unrealistic and part of his explanation translated to, «It's produced by humans who can't stand looking at other humans. And that's why the industry is full of otaku.»
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«Anime was a mistake,» is a humorist short-form of what Miyazaki spoke about in the Golden Times interview. There is some humor in it, especially for fans of both his work and other anime, but the meme also promoted a lot of online discussion as to what Miyazaki actually meant by his criticism. Fans have questioned what Miyazaki means by how characters are portrayed, whether that means how they are drawn, how they behave, or a mixture of both.
Fans who have watched a lot of Miyazaki films, as well as other anime, may have a good idea of what Miyazaki meant. His films do not adhere to anime tropes, and the anime industry has a lot of tropes from characters being tsundere, yandere, generic male leads,
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