Are people who only watch “safe” anime missing out? – Umai Yomu Anime Blog

Here’s an interesting one, particularly because I’ve actually never really thought of the idea of “safe” and “unsafe” anime. That’s really why I chose it in the end!

What’s a safe anime? I’m thinking it’s something like anime that are very popular, or have a large audience but still have high ratings. Something like that, anyways. Your “mainstream” anime, so to speak.

But you know, some really popular anime may not be all that safe, because it kind of depends on preferences. For example, Sword Art Online (SAO) is pretty contested despite its popularity, there are people on both sides of the fence whether it’s good or not. Personally, I gravitate towards the side of people that didn’t enjoy it. Which would mean it’s not safe for me, but might be for someone else? Miss Kobayashi’s Dragon Maid is another good example I think, because I know that’s quite popular but I just can’t get into cute girls doing cute things anime.

So I feel like it’s actually kind of hard to define what is safe and what isn’t. I loved Attack on Titan, but I guarantee that a lot of people would hate it due to how dark and visceral it is. It’s popular, but is it safe?

As I said, the idea of safe and unsafe anime is an interesting one to think about.

I can certainly think of this as like a scale, where some anime are without a doubt, unsafe, and others are safer overall. Like Redo of a Healer (borderline hentai) is without a doubt an unsafe anime, so when you compare that to SAO, SAO starts to look pretty safe. And so when you think of this with this sort of perspective of a range from the most unsafe to the most safe, even if it’s subjective, it’s much clearer. Like I don’t think anyone would rate Redo of a Healer as a safer anime than SAO, so there are some objective aspects to this range.

With that in mind, you can sort of get a picture of what’s generally “safe” vs. “unsafe”. So someone who only watches safe anime likely sticks to the safe side of the scale, and doesn’t really venture into the less safe side of things.

I mean, if you take the prompt as literal as possible, the answer is an obvious “yes”. If you are avoiding unsafe anime, then you’re objectively missing out on unsafe anime.

But of course I think the intention behind the question is more like, “missing out on enjoyable anime” or something along those lines. And with that interpretation, I still think that the answer is yes.

Ultimately, niche anime tend to be the ones that take the biggest risks. Sometimes they fail utterly, and so you wouldn’t really be missing out. But there are some serious cult classics out there that have never really been super popular but are absolutely loved by many, and you’d be missing out on anime like that if you never ventured outside the mainstream of anime. I’m not really saying that you have to purposely trudge through anime hell trying to find some gems, but I think overall, someone who actively avoids trying out more niche titles will end up missing out at some point.

But enough of my opinion, how about yours?

What are your thoughts on safe vs. unsafe anime?
And do you agree that avoiding unsafe anime will lead to missing out?

Until next time,
Thanks for reading.