>>79484916I guess it falls more into the category of memes in the literal sense: ideas that have permeated into our very cultural identity without us realizing.
You're not wrong, anime's influence is eveywhere in invisible ways. Western cartoons have shonen aspects from time to time, and stuff like DBZ and Sailor Moon are ubiquitous enough to be normiecore, to borrow a phrase.
But at the same time, the actual /consumers/ of anime are a far more bounded subset. Your anime watchers still fit into a typical stereotype: primarily people who use the internet in the same way as you and I do and not in the way that your mother does. I'm not saying that people who watch, say, KLK are exclusively residents of their parents' basements, but as a proportion of the full population, you could say that MAYBE 5% of first worlders consume anime in a broader sense than watching DBZ as kids, and that's being incredibly generous. Anime has gotten huge lately, particularly these past few years, but it is no sense an overarching cultural phenomenon.
JoJo is definitely in our society's lexicon whether we like it or not, but if you asked a bunch of people on the street about their opinions on the latest chapter of JoJolion there is a very small and very specific set of people who would respond with more than a "what?" At the end of the day, anime is a "niche" interest, particularly to the average working joe like IT HURTS's very own Bill Tehrani. Sure you and all your internet buddies know all there is to know about Season 2 of Nichijou, but your sample is not representative of the world at large.
