Fashion. Weebs. Few terms could be named that are as completely polar opposite. Trust me, I would know. There’s a reason you can spot a weeb out of a crowd. I mean, oftentimes they’re wearing shit that straight up tells you. Don’t get me wrong, there’s nothing inherently wrong with sporting some merch to promote your favorite anime, game, band, album, pornstar, etc. The problem is, so many of these products are either ugly as hell or cringey as hell. Let’s get the ugly portion out of the way first.

Oof. Not good. But why is it not good? Because there’s no taste whatsoever. I’m no fashion expert, but simply slapping an anime character’s face or even worse entire body onto a shirt and calling it a day isn’t the most refined design process in the world. It feels about as cheap as you can get in terms of “I can sense the manufacturer wanted to make a quick buck so they slapped Luffy’s face on it and called it a day”. I don’t care how much I love a character, slap their whole body onto a shirt with no design choice in mind, and you’ll find a shirt I probably won’t ever take out of the closet. Not so much for fear of others hating on it, but because I myself will be hating on it. These tacky shirts are a problem, but they are nowhere NEAR the issue of… cringey anime shirts. What’s the difference you may ask? Observe.

FUCKING hell okay okay that’s it, that’s all I can manage to shift through. These are just some of the hideous products I found on image searches. Why do I hate them so much? Many reasons. For one there's practically no design or organization; it's just text on a shirt. Secondly, they present the most pompous, asshat, “I’m so quirky and different xD” attitude imaginable to everyone you come across. This is the exact kind of shirt you see people wearing in early high school so that everyone else KNOWS they watch anime and they’re an awesome person for doing so. To make matters worse, this type of shirt is nothing new as you’ve seen it countless times before with more “normie” text written on it. “Don’t talk to me before I have my coffee” “Eat. Sleep. Game. Repeat.” That type of overplayed dribble that’s creatively bankrupt. Personally the cringe hits way harder for me when it’s anime though, because I’m like damn those are my fellow viewers making us all look bad.

Okay. I’ve said my piece. But I don’t want to end on such a negative note, so I will answer one last question. “But Snooze, if you’re such a big fashionista why don’t you give an example of a good anime shirt you dumb fuck?”. Valid point. Allow me to present what I consider a banger. Please take a quick look below. See that? Hell, it almost doesn’t even look like an anime shirt. In fact many of you may claim “Snooze that’s not even an anime shirt that’s a fucking hand gesture” which is almost correct. It’s Megumi’s hand symbol for his move “Demon Dogs” in Jujutsu Kaisen. Hence why I love it so much. It’s simple enough that it doesn’t stick out horribly and it looks pretty sick even if you don’t know what it’s from. A hand symbol that resembles a dog with a black dog emerging out of it in the shadow? Even a regular Joe who doesn’t watch anime might find that to be a cool design. HOWEVER, a JJK fan will almost INSTANTLY recognize it and might feel comfortable saying “nice shirt” or striking up a conversation about JJK. To me, this is the perfect balance. Prominent enough that fellow fans will understand the reference, but stylish enough that it doesn’t make you look like a complete dunce.

Now we're talking.

Sorry guys, I know this was a bit of a longer one and it’s about anime shirts of all things, but as you can probably tell I’m somewhat passionate about this topic. To this day one of my favorite gifts from Kinky was a basic polo shirt that instead of the normal polo logo, was replaced with the Geass symbol from Code Geass and it’s the exact kind of balance I mentioned earlier. Since then my standards for anime shirts have risen greatly and I hate seeing people pay money for these low effort garbage shirts that you see advertised a lot online. Do you own any anime clothing? If so, what made you buy it and are you happy with it? Have you seen the types of shirts I mentioned advertised before? Have you seen them in real life in the wild? Open the closet, pick an outfit, and leave a comment below!