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I agree completely with your answer, Brian, regarding the fact that Japanese anime and manga are not made for a North American audience, nor any other audience outside of Japan. Too often, it seems, fans outside of Japan seem to forget that. Still, it's great, though, that so much anime and manga from Japan speak to people and cultures outside their own.

I'm dying to know what OEL manga the asker is talking about...

So am I. Any chance they'll let us in on who is suspected of plagarism?

Also, Brian's answer is something I've been meaning to say for a long time but never to enough people at one time, so hats off to him.

Murder She wrote:

Realistically, though this whole thing does seem a little bit like cannibalizing your own fanbase, it's hardly unheard of for conventions to overlap each other. It just usually doesn't happen over the exact same time period and within seventy miles of each other, with one event being run by the guy who formerly ran the other event.

Aha! So I wasn't misremembering incorrectly! Laughing

Murder She wrote:

It's just a personal pet peeve of mine when people always complain that OH THE FANS ARE THE REASON THAT ANIME SUCKS NOWADAYS or HOW COME THEY DON'T MAKE ANIME FOR ME ANYMORE WHY. That is because these companies and these artists aren't really trying to please you. They are trying to please the audience they already have in their own country, the one that's keeping food on the table; the audience that has vociferously and successfully argued for the types of entertainment they want the anime industry to make for them.

Guys, remember this when they remake Akira and Cowboy Bebop for America. Laughing

Murder She wrote:

With that out of the way! I think I could argue - quite successfully - that the so-called "trend" of nothing but moe and fanservice shows was never really true to begin with....

Oh c'mon, "trend of nothing but" is just a saying. Like saying Western games trend of nothing but FPS or Western cartoons trend of nothing but gag comedies. Of course, neither is completely true, but there's some truth to it that a lot of people say it. Same with moe and fanservice. Laughing

Andrew wrote:

Besides straight up culture things, there are a few things I'm looking forward to at these British events that I wouldn't get to usually see elsewhere. When I'm in London, for example, my days will be spent at the Expo while my evenings will be spent down at the Globe Theater or London's West End for plays. You simply cannot get this kind of combination of awesome back where I'm used to doing my conning.

I hope you enjoy yourself. You will find certain products to be slightly more expensive then their North American equivalent whilst browsing the Expo, though if you plan to indulge in the spectacles of the West End then one presumes you're undeterred by higher prices.

One of the things I've noticed of late, generally from older or more intellectual fans, is this idea that there was this golden age where anime was great, and now it sucks. I've seen dates like '95, '03 and '06 all proposed as tipping points of anime. A lot times people forget about all the bad in the past and remember the good, so it can be a lot easier to say that '95 was great, even though it too had it fair share of bad shows. In all honesty, the number of good shows a year is pretty constant, it's just there are more shows being made today, so the percentage of good shows is lowered.

The moe fad is just that -- a fad. It has already peaked with the introduction of K-On. There is not a show out there that can be more moe than K-On, and the fad began to decline afterward. And in the last couple of years, there has been a general reduction in number of moeblob shows (note: there is a significant difference between moeblob and moe romance. Moe romance has things like writing and plots). In some cases, there might be a plurality of moeblob -- it is still popular, after all, and it will never disappear, but it is on the downslope. I don't know what will replace it (probably nothing, as the anime industry has oversaturated supply and it needs a market correction), but there are still plenty of good, non-moe shows to be had.

Thank you, Answerman, for reminding everyone that Japanese entertainment is not typically made with us or anyone else outside of Japan in mind.

It annoys me so much whenever I see people saying that anime companies need to think of foreign audiences more. They have no reason to think about Westerners when they make their anime because there is absolutely no way they're going to make the money off of it for it to be worth making. Shows that appeal to Western audiences typically don't do as well in Japan, so it's a lose-lose situation for them because the potential foreign market is smaller than the domestic market to begin with.

Melanchthon wrote:

One of the things I've noticed of late, generally from older or more intellectual fans, is this idea that there was this golden age where anime was great, and now it sucks. I've seen dates like '95, '03 and '06 all proposed as tipping points of anime. A lot times people forget about all the bad in the past and remember the good, so it can be a lot easier to say that '95 was great, even though it too had it fair share of bad shows. In all honesty, the number of good shows a year is pretty constant, it's just there are more shows being made today, so the percentage of good shows is lowered.

That sadly happens in ALL fandoms, anime, video games, music, etc. People love to remember the good stuff, but forget there was a the bad as well.

Melanchthon wrote:

The moe fad is just that -- a fad. It has already peaked with the introduction of K-On. There is not a show out there that can be more moe than K-On, and the fad began to decline afterward. And in the last couple of years, there has been a general reduction in number of moeblob shows (note: there is a significant difference between moeblob and moe romance. Moe romance has things like writing and plots). In some cases, there might be a plurality of moeblob -- it is still popular, after all, and it will never disappear, but it is on the downslope. I don't know what will replace it (probably nothing, as the anime industry has oversaturated supply and it needs a market correction), but there are still plenty of good, non-moe shows to be had.

I think there could be a show more moe than K-ON, it just hasn't been made yet. Moe shows can still be good, but there are just some that are not that great and people seem to just focus on them but not the good ones.

Melanchthon wrote:

One of the things I've noticed of late, generally from older or more intellectual fans, is this idea that there was this golden age where anime was great, and now it sucks. I've seen dates like '95, '03 and '06 all proposed as tipping points of anime. A lot times people forget about all the bad in the past and remember the good, so it can be a lot easier to say that '95 was great, even though it too had it fair share of bad shows. In all honesty, the number of good shows a year is pretty constant, it's just there are more shows being made today, so the percentage of good shows is lowered.

I do tend to agree with the people who say that the 80s were the "Golden Age of Anime", though... But not because of overall quality, but because that decade was when OVA boom was around, allowing for so many different types of titles to be made. It looked as if any idea could be turned into an anime; yeah, there were a lot of turds from that era, but like I said absolute quality wasn't exactly the reason it was the "Golden Era", though there were plenty of quality titles coming out then.

To me, the 80s is the only "Golden Era of Anime" due to sheer creativity that was around back then.

Many years ago at a dinner for the guests of honor at an anime con a Japanese director/producer I highly respect asked me what i thought was the best way to appeal to American fans.

I told him not to try but to simply make good works that appealed to his Japanese audience. Those would be the works most likely to appeal to American fans.

Most of the shows are disappointingly cookie-cutter versions of typical-successful anime troupes. Anime is business and risk-aversion is pretty common when "green" lighting some show. But as much as I didn't care for Panty and Stocking atleast studio Gainax is still willing and able to take risks producing shows that don't fit all the stereotypes.

Melanchthon wrote:

One of the things I've noticed of late, generally from older or more intellectual fans, is this idea that there was this golden age where anime was great, and now it sucks. I've seen dates like '95, '03 and '06 all proposed as tipping points of anime. A lot times people forget about all the bad in the past and remember the good, so it can be a lot easier to say that '95 was great, even though it too had it fair share of bad shows.

I generally agree with this, but would personally argue that a case can be made for more ambitious and individually artistic shows being more common than recent years. Anime's gradual expansion--with shows from the mid 90s like Evangelion, Bebop, Utena, Lain, etc.--resulted in shows being made not just to tap into otaku interests, but for the creators and staff behind the show to being as artistically expressionist as movies (after all, "television as art" is a relatively recent phenomenon, certainly compared with movies). I generally see 2007 as a peak of that--Baccano!, Mononoke, Moribito - Guardian of the Sacred Spirit, Denno Coil, Shigurui, Ghost Hound, etc. All of those shows give a real sense of auteurism or, in more common terms, individual vision and creativity.

Now, you still have that nowadays, but... well, maybe it's just me being cranky and picky, but the subsequent works by those directors and writers' don't seem as "free," for a lack of a better word. Nakamura's work has gone from the experimental (Mononoke) to shonen-esque drama (C - Control, albeit still well-made). I suppose it depends on who you talk to, but Kenji Kamiyama doesn't seem to have had as much of a reception with Eden of the East compared to Moribito and Ghost in the Shell. Hamasaki has had to go freelance is now working on a visual novel adaption, of all things. No other doors have really opened for major animators-turn-directors like they did for Mitsuo Iso. And we haven't seen any new scripts from Konaka. Even in 2008 you had Yuasa come out with Kaiba, and you had the ambitious as all hell literary adaption of Mouryou no Hako. But Tatami Galaxy wasn't received as well as it could have been (and ultimately boiled down to being a familiar retread of the infinitely more creative Mind Game), while Aoi Bungaku was the last literary adaption in a similar vein as Mouryou no Hako, IIRC.

So, tl;dr for those not wanting to wade through the rambling and namedrops: I feel as though the risk-aversion that toyNN speaks of above is becoming more common over the past few years, and the kind of distinctive shows we got throughout most of the last decade aren't really being produced as much nowadays. I don't really blame the anime industry for this. Tough times in the economy doesn't invite risk-taking, so they're obviously gonna go where the money is most reliable. And there are still shows I enjoy, even if not to the same degree of shows of yesteryear (and I don't think it's because the new car smell wore off for me years ago). But I do wish things would pick up again for the industry, because that kind of diversity in anime is what will be better for the medium in the long run.

Lord Geo wrote:

It looked as if any idea could be turned into an anime [in the 80s...]

Wouldn't you say that this is as true, if not moreso in the 00s? Could you really imagine series like Mononoke, Texhnolyze, Haibane Renmei or Mushi-sih being made back then?

Bonham wrote:

Lord Geo wrote:

It looked as if any idea could be turned into an anime [in the 80s...]

Wouldn't you say that this is as true, if not moreso in the 00s? Could you really imagine series like Mononoke, Texhnolyze, Haibane Renmei or Mushi-sih being made back then?

Mushishi was based off of a popular manga, and manga in general is able to try different things out much easier than anime is. Mononoke was a spin-off of Bakeneko, which was a part of the Ayakashi horror story anime series. Much like Mushishi, Mononoke was created because of popularity due to a prior work.

Texhnolyze and Haibane Renmei are both Yoshitoshi ABe creations, and he's not exactly an unknown name. Still, I will say that the early 2000's did have some creative productions, but that was partially because of the boom that came from the revelation that late-night could be a great time to air anime that wasn't exactly the most mainstream stuff. It was very much like the OVA boom of the 80s, but in a somewhat different form. It also has changed into being a very traditional way to produce anime, unlike OVAs, which slowly died out during that same time.

Lord Geo wrote:

Mushishi was based off of a popular manga, and manga in general is able to try different things out much easier than anime is. Mononoke was a spin-off of Bakeneko, which was a part of the Ayakashi horror story anime series. Much like Mushishi, Mononoke was created because of popularity due to a prior work.

Popularity obviously plays a part, but I mean in the kind of stories being told and the way they're told. A comparison to American television would be like The Wire, where it honestly could not have been made earlier than when it came out, and frankly could not have been made in recent years, either. David Simon, like, say, Yoshitoshi ABe (or Chiaki Konaka) is a proven name, but it still doesn't take away from how astounding it is how those works were actually made for television (I remember both Simon of The Wire and the producer for Texhnolyze, Yasuyuki Ueda, both expressing surprise that their respective shows could be made). Or, hell, take Masaaki Yuasa: to my knowledge, Mind Game didn't gather all that much of a crowd outside of the usual film and animation aficionados. But still, he actually got the go-ahead to make series like Kemonozume and Kaiba--that's astounding, to me. It sorta goes along the lines of what you're saying about late-night anime taking over the place for OVAs, but I find it more impressive nowadays than what took place in the 80s: this isn't just a few episodes being produced for a direct-to-video release, but whole series being made for television. Not just that, but many of them are wholly original works, too.

please Japanese companies, just keep making shows like K-on, Madoka, IS. i just want to watch some fun when i have nothing to do. no need something like eva that doesn't make any sense to me.

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