>>23334303
2012 apocalypse memes aside (and there really was a major astrological shift if you care to pay attention to or believe that sort of thing), I do think there has been a mass cultural burnout of a certain masculine energy.
There's this post in another thread >>23333869
> Yoshiyuki also wondered if it were possible for a new generation to truly capture his original mind set, since so many are quite separated from war.
I think this is the case. Young people, myself included, are quite comfortable and separated from an ever-present threat of real conflict, like my parents and grandparents had. I think this is good, in a way; this time of peace might be a time for people who were formerly enemies to become new allies, friends, and establish ourselves against a new common enemy. I think Occupy Wall Street in the USA was an important moment, in this line of thinking. Political commentators have noticed that social divisions along lines of race, gender, sexuality, and so on, were fomented by mainstream US corporations immediately after Occupy Wall Street, apparently as a means to distract US citizens from uniting against central banks as their common enemy. This, paired with global communication and the internet, completely alter the world social landscape within a decade.

But to this idea of burnout, you see it in major works of culture now. Dark Souls and the post-Dark Souls fromsoft games are very overtly about the "smouldering embers of civilization finally going out".
The Halo trilogy in the west is probably the best most masculine and /m/ adjacent piece of media from the west in the past three decades, Master Chief is almost the embodiment of the archetype of western masculinity, and the Halo trilogy ends with him placing himself into cryosleep to wait until he's needed again. Year 2007.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-WDRvs-IApc