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OK, that makes perfect depressing sense.

jsevakis wrote:

If I sound cynical it's because this year is my 20th anniversary of trying to get "normal" people to watch anime. My life is a gigantic failure. Surprised

If it's a consolation, I watched Robot Carnival, Gundam 0080, Neo-Tokyo, Bobby's Girl, Time Stranger, Windaria and Roujin Z as a direct result of your Buried Treasure articles. Not that I count as "normal", but... yeah.

jsevakis wrote:

Oh you bet. But it's not about what the parent will enjoy or necessarily wants to see. For some reason (and I don't understand why this is, myself), American parents try like hell to protect their kids from:

1. Nudity, even unexploited innocent nudity

2. Sad emotions (Goku's father dies? Better digipaint over those tears!)

3. Things the parent doesn't really understand, because that's embarrassing when the kids ask

Something like Toy Story 3 can (barely) get away with #2 these days. I think that slipped under the radar because nobody actually cries real profound tears in the movie itself. And it's Pixar, so everyone agrees it's good already, and no actual thought has to go into the decision to go to a Pixar movie. But normally, parents will go through such lengths to avoid it, it's pathological. I have no idea why this is, but it is part of our culture -- when Astroboy came out here, there was actually a PTA campaign against it because it was too emotional.

And parents would actually rather sit through dribble like the Scooby Doo movie than have to try to explain why everyone is sitting on the floor at the dining table, and why all the doors slide from side to side. I think a lot of people get very insecure when confronted with their own ignorance, especially in front of their kids.

If I sound cynical it's because this year is my 20th anniversary of trying to get "normal" people to watch anime. My life is a gigantic failure. Surprised

The amount of parents I would have complaining about your 3 points when I worked at Sam Goody/Sunoast was staggering. And that was 8 years ago almost. I think number 3 is actually the biggest reason of the 3. So many times parents would come in and complain about an anime series or movie and some part of it. Inevitably 9 out 10 when I asked questions trying to find out why it angered them gave me generic bs issues. They didn't understand the nuances of the show or culture and just simply were ranting because they didn't get it so it obviously had to be wrong or bad for their kid somehow. Mind you these were the same parents who would drop little Jimmy or Jane off with a Benjamin in their pocket, a cell phone, and just leave them to roam the mall so mommy and daddy, mostly mommy, could go have social hour. Kids that were between 8-14 mind you. IMHO they should've worried about their own parenting first. Plus the stuff kids see/hear now simply at school or on the news.....it blows away what they'll see in most anime. Barring hentai of course. Yet to see tentacle monsters on the 6pm news except in Japan heh.

As for ratings and the Oscars.......this is why i gave up watching them. If I like the host(s) I watch just for their bits. Not for the actual awards themselves. It's also why I ignore ratings and critic columns when deciding on a show to watch. I read the synopsis and watch a clip. If it grabs my attention I watch it. If I wind up not enjoying myself oh well. If I worried about critics or ratings I'd probably never get to watch anything.

jsevakis wrote:

Oh you bet. But it's not about what the parent will enjoy or necessarily wants to see. For some reason (and I don't understand why this is, myself), American parents try like hell to protect their kids from:

1. Nudity, even unexploited innocent nudity

2. Sad emotions (Goku's father dies? Better digipaint over those tears!)

3. Things the parent doesn't really understand, because that's embarrassing when the kids ask

[...]
If I sound cynical it's because this year is my 20th anniversary of trying to get "normal" people to watch anime. My life is a gigantic failure. Surprised

It's funny you didn't mention extreme amounts of violence or profanity. When I was 6 or 7 years old, I distinctly remember my older brother and his friends watching the South Park movie on TV and my mother had no problem with me watching it too. A few weeks later, she ended up scolding me because I kept saying "f**k" or "damn" whenever I screwed something up.

Fast forward to last year when my (then) 9 year old nephew and my other brother came up for summer vacation. He wanted to watch Hunter X Hunter (2011) with me and his Dad was fine with it. Around the episode, in the Hunter Exam Arc, where Killua pulls out the convicts' heart, his Dad shows up. He's not upset though; rather he's wandering why "that pale kid has white hair". Confused

I don't always show action-oriented stuff to my nephew (I have nieces but I couldn't get them into anime; they love Dora the Explorer though) but he understands that it's "just a cartoon". I showed him plenty of Ghibli movies and even Brad Bird's The Iron Giant, one of my favorite films (animated or not). He had no problems with the sad, quiet scenes in Ghibli films or the spoiler["death" of the Giant] but his Dad (my brother) did mentioned for me not to show him too many "sad" films. So odd.

Justin wrote:

Children's programming is a big, big business, and there's simply not a compelling business case to be made for bringing in an already-made foreign property you can't control or own, when you can make one yourself.

Making childrens programmes in itself isn't so much "big business" as any production house dedicated to childrens programming can and do actually do it in even the smallest studios. The late great Gerry Anderson, who created Thunderbirds, first started in his back garden shed until he got rained on with the television equivalent of manna from heaven, or in short sponsorship which was firstly toy manufacturers and then sweets and what is called "junk food" companies. When other producers saw that they too could get into the shower of "manna" there were at least a dozon studios producing childrens programmes from puppets to animation. But that all withered and died when the UK Office of Communications (OFCOM) bent to the winds of change. The winds being all the special interest groups and the National Health Service (NHS) that were waving red flags and flashing red lights at all the obese children with poor dental hygiene, pointing fingers at all the commercials that aways went with "childrens TV" and banned such companies sponsoring childrens programming. Now there is very few if any UK produced programming for children that get made and those have to live on what they get from the licence fee payers for the BBC. which is pitance in comparison. Also with the advent of DTH satellite broadcasting, and now cable down our fibre phone lines, only the BBC has a UK dedicated childrens channel called funnily enough "C-BBEE's" but even some of their programmes are "imports. That sceneario might not happen in the US, but we also thought it would never happen here, until it did.

I've told this story before, but I'll tell it here again as it has to do with the topic of what is childrens programming. this is a true story. I had given my then 7 year old daughter a copy of Totoro, which she still keeps as one of her "charished possessions" and we all enjoyed it. One day she had invited a couple of her school mates over to our house to play and because it was raining she asked to watch Totoro on the DVD player which I gladly set up and played for them. Of course they thoroughly enjoyed it as one would expect. A few days later when it was my turn to "fetch the children" from school, one of the mothers of one of the girls who saw the DVD can up to me and said "my daughter told me they watched a movie at your house, where the father had bathed with his children, is that true?" I was knocked for six and after getting my composure back I calmly explained that it was a movie made in Japan , that it was rated "U-for all audiences" by the BBFC (British Board of Film Classification). I then explained that in Japanese culture it's not uncommon for families to bath together. Thankfully she understood and didn't show any signs of anger, or disgust. I even offered to lend her the DVD so she could view it herself, but she declined saying "I'm not upset, just curious if it was true or not." I still feel as if I did something bad to this day and we never did that again. So as this example proves, what is considered "childrens programming in one culture can be not in another. Another example was Panda-Go-Panda, a very early Miyazaki-Takahata production from when they both worked at Toho in their younger years. I suggested it to my wife who is a Teachers Assistant at our local infants school Reception class (kindergarten) to show to the year-R's during "wet play" basically staying in class during rainy days watching movies to keep them occupied whilst the teachers have their lunch break. after the Totoro incident, she rejected it on the grounds that "the little girl is showing too much of her pants when she stands on her hands, and she shouldn't have been left alone by her "granny"", and I had to agree thinking later; Why was it that mostly everything else in that anime defied the laws of physics except to when it came to her standing on her hands and then gravity was allowed to cause her dress to fall showing her pants? "those two just couldn't let it lie, could they?" I then thought rolling my eye's.

Quote:

The Shawshank Redemption is not the best film of All Time

The hell it isn't!

Under most circumstances, I have no problem with anime being censored, as long as it also means it's on TV for a wider audience to see. Obviously censoring for a DVD release makes no sense, unless you want to release a separate "mass market" edition with TV edits to get in more stores, as was done with Dragon Ball Z, Sailor Moon, Tenchi Muyo, and Yu Yu Hakusho, which all got edited VHS releases in addition to uncut (in SM's case, it was only for seasons 3 and 4).

Anime and manga does catch on well with a tween demographic. My middle school library's most popular books were manga, and whenever a student had trouble finding a book, the librarian would immediately ask if they read "those manga books". Also, my Barnes & Noble has more manga than it does American graphic novels (manga takes up three shelves, and US graphic novels take up about one and a half).
If the right series gets the right exposure, it could easily enter the mainstream, like Naruto, Dragon Ball Z, Sailor Moon, Pokemon, and Yu-Gi-Oh! all did. They were the right shows (easily marketable in the US), they got treated well by their respective networks (in SM and DBZ's case, it did take a couple tries before they found their right network homes), and kids ate them up. I grew up in the late 90s/early 2000s. I remember all about the Pokemon and Yu-Gi-Oh! crazes, everyone knew what DBZ was (and kids my age still do), and I remember when lots of other kids were into Naruto (it was never my thing...).

While anime as a whole isn't really mainstream among adult audiences (though quite a bit definitely know what it is at least), I can say growing up in 2001-2005 that it at least was at one time among the Elementary/Middle School crowd. I can't speak for this generation of kids though, since I am not among them. I highly doubt it's anything like it was before, since other than shows like Pokemon, Bakugan, and Beyblade, there isn't a series that's really hit the mainstream with them. I still see manga in the middle school Scholastic bookfairs though, and last I checked, the Scholastic book orders still have the "How to Draw Manga" books in addition to it's usual selection of Pokemon-related books (usually guide-book types, not actual manga). My school's Scholastic bookfair is coming up. I'll see if it has anything manga or anime-related. I counted SEVEN titles last time I was there (including some relatively obscure series like Vampire Game and Skip Beat in addition to titles like Kingdom Hearts and the Cirque Du Freak manga).

It is pretty difficult to market animation (other than Family Guy, The Simpsons, South Park, and odd nostalgia stuff) to an adult audience, explaining why anime's biggest demographic here is the younger crowd. The adult anime crowd is there, it's just not terribly big (it also tends to attract the more geekier type).

A little off-topic, I am proud to say that I have an Otaku teacher. Cool

He's even into stuff like Project A-Ko, Dirty Pair, Wicked City, Bubblegum Crisis, and the song from the original Ghost in the Shell movie that plays during the opening credits is one of his ring tones. When he learned that I had interviewed Rebecca Forstadt (Lynn Minmay in Robotech) for my Senior Project, he was... quite interested in my presentation.

jsevakis wrote:

2. Sad emotions (Goku's father dies? Better digipaint over those tears!)

This is something I've noticed a lot when I used to sometimes watch those Disney/Nickelodeon sitcoms with my cousin when she was little. Anytime there's a chance for even a remote sad scene that would leave a real person depressed or in tears, the scene ends with or mixes in a stupid joke to 'lighten the mood'. Like if they do a parody of A Christmas Carol and it shows a character looking at how their future will be lonely and bitter and depressed because they drove away all their friends, they always throw in tons of jokes like a random guy coming up to them afterwards asking about cheese or squirrels or something else "random and funny". It's like they don't want to even hang up on something being sad or emotional, and every scene has to have a joke in it, which kind of ruins any emotional angle they were going for, which I guess they think would be too heavy for kids or something. Action cartoons do this too I notice, with a lot of one liners/jokes all over during 'dramatic moments'.

Quote:

It's not that there aren't companies that are still mining Japan's back catalogs trying to find new children's programming -- there are. But with most of the good, clearly marketable long-running properties already spoken for, pickings are pretty slim.

There's quite a lot, but the problem is they tend to be about stuff America doesn't care about or won't accept. Danball Senki and Inazuma 11 are two of the hottest kid's properties in Japan right now, the problem is one is about soccer (Americans hate it) and the other is about robot model kits (Given how poorly the America Zoids toys were in comparison to the Japanese ones, American kids don't like model kits or companies don't think they have the patience for them anyway, when they can take an hour or two to build)

Then there's Cardfight Vanguard, but there's some unwritten law that only one show of any type can exist at a time in America. No one wants to market Vanguard on TV while YGO is still dominate in America, since it's what killed Duel Masters when they tried so many years ago. Sort of like how people instantly called Digimon a Pocket Monsters rip off and shunned it back in the day. It seems like only one show can exist at a time or it'll be called a rip off and ignored, leaving it to die. Meanwhile, Japan can have like 5 card shows at once co-existing in harmony) Sort of like how they tried bringing over various toku series after Power Rangers was a success, but they were all lampooned for being "Power Rangers rip offs" and died out quickly.

Other card games like Chihayafuru, well... no kid cares about karuta in America.

Gyrozetter is new, but seems to be building quite a big audience already in Japan, but it's about cars and robots, and I guess Transformers fills that niche in America already. Plus the arcade games don't exist in America.

Then there's Pretty Rhythm, Jewelpet, Aikatsu! and all the other marketing shows aimed at girls, but girls stuff doesn't really exist here so those are thrown out by default.

Dozens of shows, but none that would really click with American kids.

Last edited by configspace on Fri Feb 01, 2013 8:54 pm; edited 1 time in total

Quote:

Those are all seinen manga publications

This is been repeated before by Answerman, but it's not accurate.

Highschool of the Dead (Dragon Age) and Muv Luv Alternative (Dengeki Daioh) are SHOUNEN

If Brian was going by content, I don't think that's an accurate way at all, since these demographic targets are set by the publishers so it is really a black/white categorization.

One can be very easily misled by certain presumptions. For example:
- ToLoveRu Darkness (Shueisha's Jump Square) = Shounen
- Hidamari Sketch (Manga Time Kirara Carat) = Seinen
- Otome Youkai Zakuro (Comic Birz) = Seinen

Remember, while "Highschool of the Dead" and "Dakara Boku wa, H ga Dekinai" and "Highschool DxD"--all Shounen--are serialized in Dragon Age, the following are also in the same magazine:
- Full Metal Panic!
- GoSick
- Ikoku Meiro no Croisée
- Kamen no Maid Guy
- The manga version of Kaze no Stigma
- Kore wa Zombie desu ka?
- Scrapped Princess
- Seitokai no Ichizon

Quote:

Dozens of shows, but none that would really click with American kids.

Given how some Japanese kids shows are pretty popular over here, I'd wager that it's more that execs don't think they would click with American kids.

Quote:

Then there's Pretty Rhythm, Jewelpet, Aikatsu! and all the other marketing shows aimed at girls, but girls stuff doesn't really exist here so those are thrown out by default.

Well, there's MLP, which I've even heard as described as "Precure with ponies", but the real problem is not that there isn't a market for young girls (there is) but execs are stuck in the 1950's and assume that girls are not a viable market.

jsevakis wrote:

DrizzlingEnthalpy wrote:

[I can definitely understand those things being a barrier, but... what parent really wanted to see three Chipmunks movies? From my experience parents are hard up for films they can take their not-PG-13-ready-yet children to and consequently go to movies that they don't expect to enjoy themselves.

Oh you bet. But it's not about what the parent will enjoy or necessarily wants to see. For some reason (and I don't understand why this is, myself), American parents try like hell to protect their kids from:

1. Nudity, even unexploited innocent nudity

2. Sad emotions (Goku's father dies? Better digipaint over those tears!)

3. Things the parent doesn't really understand, because that's embarrassing when the kids ask

I'm hoping some of the above things are changing with the next generation and "crunchy" parenting, but I think it'll be a long time before mainstream parenting techniques mean sitting down and talking about what your kid is digesting on TV. My son is three, and even I'm still very guilty of #2 (1 and 3 are nonissues in my house) even though it's probably a healthy part of teaching a child to empathize.

It's kind of hard to describe unless you have a child.

DrizzlingEnthalpy wrote:

jsevakis wrote:

If I sound cynical it's because this year is my 20th anniversary of trying to get "normal" people to watch anime. My life is a gigantic failure. Surprised

If it's a consolation, I watched Robot Carnival, Gundam 0080, Neo-Tokyo, Bobby's Girl, Time Stranger, Windaria and Roujin Z as a direct result of your Buried Treasure articles. Not that I count as "normal", but... yeah.

I also feel compelled to offer my thanks for your Buried Treasure column. I never would have seen Night on the Galactic Railroad, Ringing Bell, Project A-Ko and Barefoot Gen if your reviews hadn't piqued my interest (granted, I might have been happier not seeing Barefoot Gen, but I think the historical and sociological understanding I received from watching the film was worth enduring the emotional trauma the movie delivers).

Also

penguintruth wrote:

Quote:

The Shawshank Redemption is not the best film of All Time

The hell it isn't!

Seconded!

octopodpie wrote:

It's kind of hard to describe unless you have a child.

Just taking a guess with what I'm about to say, does it have anything to do with protective instincts or something?

PurpleWarrior13 wrote:

Under most circumstances, I have no problem with anime being censored, as long as it also means it's on TV for a wider audience to see. Obviously censoring for a DVD release makes no sense, unless you want to release a separate "mass market" edition with TV edits to get in more stores, as was done with Dragon Ball Z, Sailor Moon, Tenchi Muyo, and Yu Yu Hakusho, which all got edited VHS releases in addition to uncut (in SM's case, it was only for seasons 3 and 4).

Anime and manga does catch on well with a tween demographic. My middle school library's most popular books were manga, and whenever a student had trouble finding a book, the librarian would immediately ask if they read "those manga books". Also, my Barnes & Noble has more manga than it does American graphic novels (manga takes up three shelves, and US graphic novels take up about one and a half).
If the right series gets the right exposure, it could easily enter the mainstream, like Naruto, Dragon Ball Z, Sailor Moon, Pokemon, and Yu-Gi-Oh! all did. They were the right shows (easily marketable in the US), they got treated well by their respective networks (in SM and DBZ's case, it did take a couple tries before they found their right network homes), and kids ate them up. I grew up in the late 90s/early 2000s. I remember all about the Pokemon and Yu-Gi-Oh! crazes, everyone knew what DBZ was (and kids my age still do), and I remember when lots of other kids were into Naruto (it was never my thing...).

While anime as a whole isn't really mainstream among adult audiences (though quite a bit definitely know what it is at least), I can say growing up in 2001-2005 that it at least was at one time among the Elementary/Middle School crowd. I can't speak for this generation of kids though, since I am not among them. I highly doubt it's anything like it was before, since other than shows like Pokemon, Bakugan, and Beyblade, there isn't a series that's really hit the mainstream with them. I still see manga in the middle school Scholastic bookfairs though, and last I checked, the Scholastic book orders still have the "How to Draw Manga" books in addition to it's usual selection of Pokemon-related books (usually guide-book types, not actual manga). My school's Scholastic bookfair is coming up. I'll see if it has anything manga or anime-related. I counted SEVEN titles last time I was there (including some relatively obscure series like Vampire Game and Skip Beat in addition to titles like Kingdom Hearts and the Cirque Du Freak manga).

It is pretty difficult to market animation (other than Family Guy, The Simpsons, South Park, and odd nostalgia stuff) to an adult audience, explaining why anime's biggest demographic here is the younger crowd. The adult anime crowd is there, it's just not terribly big (it also tends to attract the more geekier type).

A little off-topic, I am proud to say that I have an Otaku teacher. Cool

He's even into stuff like Project A-Ko, Dirty Pair, Wicked City, Bubblegum Crisis, and the song from the original Ghost in the Shell movie that plays during the opening credits is one of his ring tones. When he learned that I had interviewed Rebecca Forstadt (Lynn Minmay in Robotech) for my Senior Project, he was... quite interested in my presentation.

That's a very interesting thought, and story you tell there PurpleWarrior. About the censorship, I wonder how many fansub watchers are aware that the fansubs anime they're watching are the TV broadcast version which are censored?

I suppose releasing rated versions of horror films to theaters really is pretty similar to the "censored" anime TV broadcasts, but the price of entry for seeing both is, thankfully, nowhere near as dramatic. I'll happily pay ten bucks to see THE EVIL DEAD in April and then pay twenty bucks to own it in October. (Whenever, I just assume October because... y'know.)

I also find it incredibly sad that the last noteworthy film to get an NC-17 rating on release , Killer Joe, immediately surrendered its classification with the MPAA and was released as "unrated" once they had a proper distributor. They also released a censored version on DVD, though who they think the market for a cut version of that particular film is, I haven't a clue...

Justin, I could be off base (not having children and all that), but my guess is that "sadness" is a big deal because parents simply don't know how to react when their child starts blubbering over a cartoon. Their entire existence as parents is often built on finding way to make their children happy, excited, feeling good about themselves... and then little Jimmy or Julie spends the better part of a weekend mortified and swallowing sadness because Simba's dad had to get himself trampled.

It's a natural, healthy reaction to entertainment to feel it, particularly at a young age, but that means a young child is probably hit harder by fictional horrors and depression, and the parent - having long gotten slightly numb to how "cartoons" are supposed to make them feel stuff - just walk away figuring that letting their kids get sad over 'nothing' is a bad idea for everyone.

Sad movies are avoided, the kids are happy, the parents don't feel like they've f***ed up. Everyone's happy. Even if the kid isn't watching some really great movies as a consequence.

That said, you really should take anything I say with a handful of salt. I'd probably let a child watch Pan's Labyrinth over Where the Wild Things are, because while the former is a violent, unnerving, and sadistically cryptic film that ends with spoiler[the child heroine being murdered], at least it retains a sense of wonder and whimsy from start to finish. At the end of Where the Wild Things Are, spoiler[all Max knows is that adolescence is going to suck, and there's nothing he can do to avoid it.] The latter might be a more useful message, but I think it's a much less pleasant one to bear.

A question for those of you referring to I believe American parents, does this apply to Canadian, British, or Australian parents? Or are they more laid back than Americans? I wasn't sure.

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