Description: A giant snake lady sits in a lake. A man stands next to the edge of the lake and asks, "O snake of the lake, what is your wisdom?"
The snake replies, "Osamu Tezuka, the inventory of manga and anime, created old-school furry icons like Kimba and Bagi and had a secret collection of erotic furry art that he made which was only found after his death; so weebs are really just a human-focused offshoot of furries.
Furries are centered around anthropomorphic animals. Anthropomorphic means it has human traits. Humans are an animal species. Humans have human traits by definition, therefore humans are technically anthropomorphic animals, therefore all art of humans is technically a subset of furry art.
People call him the Walt Disney of Anime, but Walt wasn't a fraction of the person Tezuka was. He influenced the trend of gender bending in manga and anime with a binary breaking character in Princess Knight. He made Kimba the White Lion which was heavily influential on The Lion King(Kimba, seriously Disney?). He's influenced Buddhism through an epic series on the founder's life. He made Message to Adolf, a complex look at WWII and bigotry, while Disney was a Nazi bigot.
It's worth noting that Kimba's influence on The Lion King was marginal at best as outside of character species (which are limited to African species in both mediums) there are hardly any similarities.
Fair. They didn't rip him off; they paid homage to his work here and there. That inclusion was more about the cross-pollination of artistic techniques and style that happens naturally. I probably should have tied it more to how The Lion King inspired some people to become furries.
Pardon my ignorance, but I thought a "weeb" was someone who obsessed over Japanese culture in general, not just anime. So let's say I have a degree in Japanese studies but don't geek out over anime, am I still a weeb?
No, you're correct about weebs being obsessed with Japanese culture in general. Weebs do tend to be obsessed with Japanese culture, however it's like the difference between someone who has a degree in film history and a cinemaphile. Or a geek and someone who enjoys super hero movies.
Weebs also like to forget that (iirc) the furry community was started by a bunch of cartoonists who imported and distributed anime bootlegs during a time when anime was nearly impossible to get in the US. Weebs should be thanking the founders of the furry community for making their fandom possible.
Hahaha, that's funny. Where would you go to find that art so that way I can
totally avoid it? Asking for a friend! Who definitely isn't interested in this or anything!
Most of it is transformation fetish stuff, ranging from human->anthro stuff to weirder inanimate and body-horror-esque/"what-has-science-done" kinda transformation art. Tbh I kinda wonder how much of it was really fetish fuel and how much of it was artistic musings. Some of the drawings are so bizarre that it's hard to believe that they'd actually trigger someone's fetish and seem more like he was just exploring surreal transformations.
Then again, I've been exposed to a lot of obviously pornographic art that normies would think was too weird to be fetish material, so I'm probably mistaken.
No. Weebs are people who are fans of Japanese culture in general, usually to an extreme; ignoring shortcomings of Japanese culture and politics in favor of a highly romanticized version of Japan. An anime fan might think Japan is cool, a weeb thinks Japan is some kind of magical fairyland where catgirls grow on trees.
Is there an equivalent term for people super into US culture? (I know the term if it exists would be different in different countries so more of a broad question)
I was in Taiwan a few months ago and something that really stood out to me were some of the people who would hang at starbucks and McDonald there. Some of them were basically fully decked in what I'd describe as California cosplay complete with very western cosmetic surgeries