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NEWS: New York Times Manga Best Seller List, August 15-21


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doctordoom85



Joined: 12 Jun 2008
Posts: 2091
PostPosted: Sat Aug 28, 2010 11:40 am Reply with quote
littlegreenwolf wrote:
I grew up buying Sailor Moon, Magic Knight Rayearth, Utena, Kare Kano, Cardcaptor Sakura, Escalfowne, Fushigi Yugi, Ayashi no Ceres, Marmalade Boy, etc, and that's just naming a few.


I'm confused, unless this wasn't meant to follow the "no anime that targets JUST girls" line. Sailor Moon and Escaflowne both had plenty of male fans, and there are definitely a significant number of male fans for CCS, Utena, etc. Plus, if Escaflowne is allowed to count as an example, then why are Gundam 00 and Code Geass excluded? Gundam 00 does put more emphasis on mecha, but Code Geass features as much mecha as Escaflowne did (as in, it's definitely there, but not the sole attraction).

Also, CLAMP did do the character designs for Code Geass, so that shouldn't be surprising. It's not like CLAMP hasn't been guilty of similar-looking characters before, not to mention Suzaku's character is radically different from any version of Syaoran.

The "whole rest of the industry can die" remark was also a bit much, unless it was meant to be more sarcastic. Really, the North American market is not filled with that much moe or fanservice titles as you're all making it out to be.
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littlegreenwolf



Joined: 10 Aug 2002
Posts: 4796
Location: Seattle, WA
PostPosted: Sat Aug 28, 2010 12:09 pm Reply with quote
doctordoom85 wrote:
littlegreenwolf wrote:
I grew up buying Sailor Moon, Magic Knight Rayearth, Utena, Kare Kano, Cardcaptor Sakura, Escalfowne, Fushigi Yugi, Ayashi no Ceres, Marmalade Boy, etc, and that's just naming a few.


I'm confused, unless this wasn't meant to follow the "no anime that targets JUST girls" line. Sailor Moon and Escaflowne both had plenty of male fans, and there are definitely a significant number of male fans for CCS, Utena, etc. Plus, if Escaflowne is allowed to count as an example, then why are Gundam 00 and Code Geass excluded? Gundam 00 does put more emphasis on mecha, but Code Geass features as much mecha as Escaflowne did (as in, it's definitely there, but not the sole attraction).

Also, CLAMP did do the character designs for Code Geass, so that shouldn't be surprising. It's not like CLAMP hasn't been guilty of similar-looking characters before, not to mention Suzaku's character is radically different from any version of Syaoran.

The "whole rest of the industry can die" remark was also a bit much, unless it was meant to be more sarcastic. Really, the North American market is not filled with that much moe or fanservice titles as you're all making it out to be.


Ok, maybe I should't have put Escaflowne in that list, but Escaflowne had a heck of a lot more to offer female viewers than Code Geass or Gundam. I'm just not a fan of mech. Escaflowne thankfully didn't have a lot of it as the main focus, even if the show is named after one. Sure, guys can like shoujo, but that doesn't stop shoujo from being shoujo. I'm talking about anime based off of girl comics here, not anime that's designs to widely pull in everyone it can. I'm talking about anime with a focus on relationships (be it romance or girl bonding), a female lead, and/or innocent cuteness that isn't moe. The industry here isn't giving me any of this.

I'm fully aware of CLAMP being responsible for Code Geass's character designs, but you're going to need more than just nice character designs to get me to buy a series even if I am about as huge of a CLAMP fan as you get. Honestly I found Code Geass just damn annoying with its overblown melodrama and constant revenge theme. I hated everyone by the end of the 1st season, and really didn't want to waste my time on a 2nd season. Romance in Code Geass? Please, the romance in that by the end of it was about as romantic as Devil May Cry. It's fine if political drama with robots is your thing, but the average shoujo fan? Had nothing to appeal to me other than a credit to CLAMP over the character designs.

My comment may seem a bit harsh, but that's honestly what I feel. In my opinion the majority of what they're trying to sell right now is just crap, and I don't care about the North American distributors anymore. I've gone from someone who used to buy tons of anime in a year to buying next to nothing. Why? Because there is nothing to interest my demographic. You guys can continue to have every shonen jump/moe/mecha/action anime that comes out, I won't spend a dime on it because it doesn't appeal to me enough to waste my money on. You claim that the market isn't as saturated with moe/mech/whatever, and that may be true, but when you get down to it with everything that is out, where is the shoujo? Still not convinced? Click on the "Girl Power" category of ADV's anime on demand section. Girl Power has gone from shoujo central to girls in skimpy clothes just kicking butt. I cringe every time I go in looking for something new to try checking out.

So until the anime market actually gives me something I want, I'm not going to buy a thing. I'll just continue happily giving my money to the manga industry instead. There's nothing wrong at all with this stance. I don't feel the need to support an industry outside of Netflix/Anime/random viewings on crunchy role, when there's nothing I want to buy. Perhaps I'm just one of a few female anime fans who feel this way, but I'm pretty sure most in my generation (women in their 20s) are wondering what happened to the stuff we loved and were buying during our mid-teens.

The only answer I have is that shoujo took the biggest hit when the anime bubble went pop. That, or I was one of the few people buying it.
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Rednal



Joined: 07 Jul 2008
Posts: 132
PostPosted: Sat Aug 28, 2010 5:26 pm Reply with quote
I find that to be... a perfectly reasonable stance, actually. We buy what we want to, and we pass on everything else, and the industry tends to get more of what people are buying. I'm definitely the sort of person who only buys what I like... although in my case, I just happen to like almost everything (that isn't shounen-ai/yaoi/excessively and non-humorously gore-filled), so my collection is relatively diverse. Anime smallmouth + sweatdrop
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CCSYueh



Joined: 03 Jul 2004
Posts: 2707
Location: San Diego, CA
PostPosted: Sat Aug 28, 2010 9:26 pm Reply with quote
Char-
Dude, just because they hired chicks for the character designs & it's not all boring tech crap & filled with 6 yr old, gun-toting loli girls backed by bikini-clad G-cup bazooka toting 16 yr olds slicing guys in half as they make out with one another does not make Code Geass or Gundam 00 chick titles. They are as shonen as Bleach, Naruto, D-Gray-Man, & any other intelligently marketed shonen title throwing a bone to gals.There are still more than a few big-breasted gals in tight outfits in these titles. (god, any gal I know in real life built like Sumeragi would have already have had breast-reduction surgery unless she worked in the adult entertainment industry). Come on. CC vs the shoutaboy? If Geass were really a gal title, there would be way more hot guys & way less D-cups. Angelic Layer is shonen.
The shonen mags discovered in the 90's when they were experiencing a sales slump gals would buy mags like Shonen Jump if it had stuff like Hoshin Engi filled with a lot of hot/cute guys in the story. Sort of like Bleach, Naruto, & D-Gray-Man. Gals' money spends the same (really, it does) so who are these publishers to begrudge gals choosing to spend money on shonen titles that are easy on chicks' eyes?
Do you REALLY believe guys put FMA, Naruto & D-Gray-Man on the bestselling list?
Do you believe all that many GUYS are buying Blackbird (about a chosen maiden in love with a hot male Tengyu surrounded by hot-to-cute Tengyu bodyguards) & Black Butler?
Maximum Ride, I'll gamble, is pulling in the regular American comic audience & maybe even some of Patterson's fans. I loved his stuff when I was a teen back in the late 70's-A Prayer For the Dying & The Eagle Has Landed were favorites. Same for Twilight-obviously cashing in on a much larger fanbase that probably doesn't really know manga exists.
Really, the labels are dumb. All the companies want is the thing sells. They aren't saying "You are not a guy so you can't buy shojo"

If you look over the threads, if you haven't actually already taken part in the debate, you may have seen this last week Ken Akamatsu weighing in with his opinion on the slump in anime sales. He noted the hardcore male audience anime makers have relied on for a couple decades has lost buying power(spare cash) while gals, as in the 90's, have increased their audience share in the manga market while animators have been stuck in that otaku moe/fanservice mode & lost money for not following the trend.
Do I think shojo titles would sell better than shonen?
No.
But I can't believe shojo titles do all that much worse than less-than-blockbuster/mass appeal shonen titles. Of course Naruto & Bleach are going to do better, but I also believe more shojo than shonen titles like Black Butler (which technically is shonen because it runs in a shonen magazine) & outright shojo titles like Vampire Knight as the moe stuff aimed at the hardcore male audience & are worth the gamble.
MAYBE part of the problem was the insane licensing blitz at the height of the bubble where companies licensed all sorts of shojo manga which ended up apparently selling poorly, but we also saw MB cancel their entire line of older shonen titles so it had to be less the genre doesn't sell, but titles licensed willy-nilly didn't sell.

Quote:
Sailor Moon, Magic Knight Rayearth, Utena, Kare Kano, Cardcaptor Sakura, Escalfowne, Fushigi Yugi, Ayashi no Ceres, Marmalade Boy

I'm not Japanese, so I don't know for sure, but it seems as though Sailor Moon is one of the early titles (like Saint Seiya) that had massive appeal for the opposite gender. I'd say the Otaku magical girl titles like Papillon Rose would not be here were it not for the Sailor Scouts & Utena was created by a guy & a gal, wasn't it? I've seen an interview with the director who seemed to be a dude. In fact a lot of the shojo anime series had guys at the helm, I thought. I know in Newtype the director of InuYasha commented on putting his biases into the anime such as he felt Takahashi, as a woman, had no qualms making Kikyo a cold-hearted monster while he as a guy could not paint her as harshly. Lust & Gluttony's enlarged presence in the first anime are simply because the (I believe male) director liked those 2 homunculi when they had smaller roles in the manga. A lot of shojo seems to get filtered thru male eyes as an anime.
Escaflowne was an early effort at the mass-market bombardment as we saw later with .hack. (or so the promo material in the Escaflowne set I bought said.) They commissioned a male manga title & a female manga title.
Magic Knight Rayearth again was heavily influenced by the male director who, in the interviews included on the MKR set commented Nova was straight out of his Iczer title which I'm pretty sure is a dude title. It has a fair share of guy fans.
I can't believe that many people bought the Marmalade Boy anime. I only bought 3 of the sets. It really wasn't anywhere as good as the manga. For my money, neither was Kodocha's anime.

Wallflower was fun, but I really relate to the horror fan gal since Halloween's been my fav holiday for most of my adult life.

I can't really remember what's been released in the last couple yrs specifically, but Story of Saiunkoku was excellent. Shurei was a very strong lead who stood her ground to the men around her. Growing up in the 60's & -70's, her struggle to remain true to herself in a man's world is more what I can relate to.
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