The coveted spot for most watched anime on the popular anime ranking site MyAnimeList has been taken over earlier today, by lo-fi hip hop live streams. These live steams most often appear on YouTube and feature a playlist of low fidelity hip hop beats, usually with some form of anime girl appearing in the background. Whie the decision has been controversial, MyAnimeList has these videos listed as anime in their database, stating: “it’s a video of cute anime girls, so I guess it’s anime”.

Top anime experts theorize that such a statistic shows a great shift in the viewing habits of anime viewers. “It would appear that most fans now-a-days don’t care for actual content,” says anime scientologist Weebz McKenzie. “Originally we deduced this by looking at what an average seasonal anime viewer watches, but now with the move of the number one spot going to these lo-fi streams, we can say with certainty that your average fan only wants to see cute 2D girls, and could care less about what they are doing and the adventures they go on.”

“It makes sense. I like to listen to these live streams everyday when I do dishes or pretend to do homework, so I can see how the views would pile up,” anime fan Carl Thompson tells Anime Maru. “And it can’t just be any lo-fi stream, either. I often see the Simpsons lo-fi streams or other nostalgic cartoons in the background, but that’s not for me. I want to see a cute anime girl sleeping at her computer or doing homework or something.”

And while many have expressed the opinion that lo-fi YouTube music streams are not actually anime, many fans have taken a more inclusive stance on the matter.

“You have some Japanese anime girl constantly twirling a pencil, so by legal definition it is a legitimate anime,” explains lo-fi fan Darren Pasturli. “Honestly, I don’t understand why people even watch things with plot anymore.”

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