Forum - View topicWhat happened to anime?
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Desslok
Posts: 178 |
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I've been into anime since Speed Racer on the black and white set, wiggling the rabbit ears to catch faint traces of the distant UHF station. And as with any hobby, you come and go with your moods. I grew up with Star Blazers and Robotech, reveled in the late eighties anime boom, drifted away through the nineties, came back in the auights just in time for the studio bubble to pop.
So a little bit ago, I went to the DVD shelf and plucked a series at random off, going "Man, I haven't watched that in years!", kicking off my latest anime phase. Since it's been a couple of years since I watched anything - well before the Hulus and Crunchyrolls of the world - I found all these streaming sites and went "Wow! Free, legal anime! Sweet" The problem is? It all seems to be the same (with the caveat that I only selected a few titles at random and am totally judging a stream by it's thumbnails). It's all kind of school-girl-ly and adorably cute with very few adult series. By adult, I don't mean Tentacle Monster Rape movies. I mean serious content - stuff like Wings of Honneamise, Vampire Hunter D, Gunbuster and Record of Lodoss War? Hell, even more goofy shows like Captain Taylor, City Hunter or Dirty Pair seem to have vanished. And there's nothing racy or questionable that I found, nothing like Demon City Shinjuku, Ninja Scroll or Fist of the North Star anymore. So what happened? Now, there has always been stuff like Urusei Yatsura or Ramna 1/2 - but never this dominant? Did anime tastes and themes shift so wildly since I last came out of hibernation six or so years ago? Or am I just not looking in the right places? Last edited by Desslok on Fri Dec 12, 2014 8:39 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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Spastic Minnow
 Bargain HunterExempt from Grammar Rules  Posts: 4609 Location: Gainesville, FL |
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This complaint comes around occasionally- expect some fanboy rage for asking it.
In short, the stock answers are. -a lot more anime is produced now than in the past -proportionally, the ratio of "adult" stuff to "non-adult" material is not actually all that different. -When people remember the old "greats" and wonder why they aren't made anymore, it is often because they are handpicking the best over many years of product (conveniently forgetting there was plenty of stuff not to their tastes in the past as well) versus the product of one current market. -Yes, you are missing the "adult" stuff. You haven't looked hard enough. There's probably even a better variety of "adult" stuff than you remember in the past. -Yes, there is a lot more of that stuff you don't like but that's just largely because there's a lot more anime in total and just like in the past (whether you remember or were aware of it before) that stuff is quite popular. |
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DuelGundam2099
 Posts: 533 |
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Last year we had Samurai Flamenco which isn't too different from what you described (although I never saw FotNS outside of Anime Abandon reviews which is weird because I heavily enjoyed the MD Geist dualogy). As for adult stuff in general you should probably ask what qualifies as "adult" exactly and keep in mind that kid shows can be good too. 
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Desslok
Posts: 178 |
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Fair enough - and lord knows I've enjoyed non-adult stuff too. Totoro (and really all the family-friendly stuff from Ghibli) has been some of my favorite flicks - animated and non. Admittedly some of it is me just not looking in the right places, and working from a small sample - I'll get half way into the first episode and go "Naw, this isn't working for me" and move on to the next one. Hopefully The Haters wont take this as me spoiling for a fight, or going "They changed it! Now it sucks!" - I'm actually looking for opinions here, if I'm just not seeing things correctly.
How dare you impugn my rose tinted glasses of the past, sir! Pistols at dawn! (: Eh, seriously - you're probably right (or at least more right than I'm willing to admit to). Nobody remembers the One-Hit Wonders of the eighties (Starship? We liked them?) but everyone remembers Thriller.
Well, that's reassuring to know. It just means that I'll have to dig harder, I guess. The up side is that with all the legal sources to sample from, I'm not out anything but some bandwidth, instead of having to sink 20-30 bucks on a blind buy based on an ADV trailer. |
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vanfanel
 Posts: 1242 |
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As a fellow Starblazers/Robotech generation fan, I feel your pain. The kind of stuff we like is still around, but it's kind of lost its place in the limelight. In the 80's, the anime boom was largely SF-driven, and the seriousness that provided has waned over the years. Stories about hyperdrives and interstellar wars that had scantily clad babes in the background have gradually turned into stories about scantily clad babes with, oh, something about a hyperdrive and interstellar war in the background. But the good stuff is still around if you dig for it.
AMEN!! I don't miss everything about the good old days! 
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FenixFiesta
Posts: 2581 |
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I have seen the OP' statement in so many other's posts in one form or another, and this nice little laundry list is probably the best one can come for as a response. asking "what happened to anime?" is sort of like asking "what happened to Dr. Who?" or "what happened to live action comic hero movies?",viewership trends change, the writers and the producers of said material changes, in truth the quality is about the same with those yesteryears, with that said an increase in quantity means there is much more "meh" to "bad" depending on ones personal tastes, the flip side meaning that if you can potentially find more good to great within the past decade of Anime releases with just a little help (by asking your fellow anime viewers) scrounging through the literal hundreds of series releases within the recent decade. |
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Key
Moderator
 Posts: 18179 Location: Indianapolis, IN (formerly Mimiho Valley) |
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That's what most of your problem is, actually. While there have definitely been some stylistic shifts over the years, the kind of fare you're talking about is definitely still being made. For instance, Cross Ange has a combination of sex and graphic violence reminiscent of your Demon City Shinjuku or Ninja Scroll, and I think GARO: The Animation falls into that category too, while Rage of Bahamut: Genesis is a more adult-leaning fantasy series. All are currently airing this season.
Not true at all. Many a One-Hit Wonder from the '80s has been quite memorable.
Hey, I discovered a lot of good series that way! (But also admittedly a few clunkers, too.) Last edited by Key on Sat Dec 13, 2014 11:30 am; edited 2 times in total |
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誤称
Posts: 549 |
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Starship had three number 1 songs as "Starship", it wasn't a one hit wonder. (And of course, it is the grandchild of Jefferson Airplane and had a lot of very solid rock DNA in its line-up.) |
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walw6pK4Alo
 Posts: 9322 |
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Yes as was said, the solution is always to dig harder. There's even a remake of Yamato out there now, one which while it doesn't necessarily replace the original 1974 anime, it sure makes it more approachable and interesting. I'll even bet there's tons of 80s and 90s anime up your alley that you haven't gone through yet, I'm always encountering them constantly, even if they're not all that great, like Salamander for sci-fi or Ys for fantasy. Although, most fantasy anime tended to be comedy-oriented or contained other wacky elements. Try out MyAnimeList's recommendations, they often connect a bunch of older or lesser known titles to each other, I've found it one of the most useful tools for just gathering together heaps of anime to put in the backlog.
[EDIT: Try to be a little more quaint, as opposed to telling someone to straight-up piss off. Thanks. -TK] |
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Cptn_Taylor
Posts: 925 |
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It's not a problem because you're simply wrong. There is a lot of anime being made, infact the number of anime series is inversly proportional to the number of episodes. So modern anime is very short, 12-13 or 26 episodes series. Confront that to some (not all) of anime series from the past. You cite Robotech, but as you well know Robotech was the result of tying together 3 anime series each of which didn't go beyond 40 episodes. Macross 36 episodes, Mospeada less that 30 and Southern Cross around 26 or so. Fist of the North Star had around 120 episodes, but it was a series that was broadcast over more than 2 years. Same for Ranma or Yurusei Yatsura or even Sailor Moon. Conan the future boy was 26 episodes and it's as close to a perfect series as you'll ever find. Great character development and a story so tight and without filler it's a pleasure to watch and rewatch.
Anime has being going on for more than 4 decades and you can cite only 10 productions that you find interesting. The series you cite are not the whole of anime. I bet there are hundreds of series fromt the seventies, eighties, nineties and 00's you haven't even heard about and watched. Just because you find 10 black sheep doesn't mean all sheep are black.
The optimist would say nothing has happened. The variety in anime has never changed. Some things have changed for instance how you draw characters. But then if you look really close characters in anime in series from the 60s don't look like anime characters from the seventies who don't look like anime characters from the eighties and so on. One thing that has changed is that outside anime for children very few series go beyond 26 episodes. In fact most of them are 13 episodes and 13 episodes no matter how good the writing staff is is just not enough time to develop the characters and story in a coherant fashion without going the infodump route. And that in my view is a problem. But for series that are 26 episodes you'll find they're just as good as the old so-called classics. Another thing that has changed in better or worse depending on your viewpoint is that japanese broadcast has become much more "sanitised". So anime with dirty jokes or a little bit sexy are out of the question for young viewers. Even modern copyright law has had an effect on anime. In the past japanese authors were very liberal in using trademarks and copyrighted characters from other shows in their own shows. That's why old anime has a lots of self references. Modern anime is not like that. The only self references you can find is between series from the same production house/anime company if even that. But you can't pay homage to characters from series that are not yours. As for adult stuff you can still find it. As some else said Cross Ange points back to the good old days of violent anime and non politically correct anime. Something that is anathema to modern audiences. They are few and far between but you can still enjoy anime. Of course it goes without saying that you'll never enjoy anime in the same way as when you were a child. That is obvious. |
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TolueneTyrant
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You aren't wrong, the large majority of anime is crap nowadays. The bar has been lowered so far over the last couple years, it's sad what has become of the medium. I know most people with vocal opinions will disagree with me, largely because other fans with standards as high as mine have mostly stopped watching the medium by now. Heck, I can count the number of series I've enjoyed since 2010 with less than five fingers. But that number isn't zero so I continue to hold out hope that someday there will be series which not only eschew the past shows that I hold in high regard but actually live up to them if not prove themselves better.
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FenixFiesta
Posts: 2581 |
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This is the type of presented opinion that is indistinguishable from a sarcastic post that one can only roll there eyes at because if they are honest then a person with such a snooty perception of media might as well walk out the door and anyone remaining wouldn't mind there absence.
Once again that would be your own problem as an individual viewer, it would be like complaining about the film Prometheus that some people found it to be an entertaining watch and then boast that you are on the side that though said movie was bad. To put the disclaimer again, assuming you are being "authentic" what good is it ride in the "modern anime sucks" bus and then tout about how anyone that is still a fan of said modern anime "... and they must suck too". It is one thing to say that "modern anime doesn't catch my eye anymore" and then it is another to imply that anyone that likes modern anime must have "effectively no standards" when it comes to watching/buying said media. |
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Funkgun
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Actually it was marketing, and what country you lived in.
In places such as N. America or UK, titles first brought out to VHS or DVD market during the 90's to the late 90's were short series and movies (cost less) and aimed squarely at a a young male demographic. Sci-fi/horror/action. That is why you had ads like this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cCbUMEooHhI To the OP I think someone mentioned Rage or Bahamut. (great series so far) I'd also jam in Sword of the Stranger, and Redline for some killer movie/ova's. (Redlne really looks like that animation style of dark shading that was in things like Demon City) |
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Zalis116
Moderator
 Posts: 6867 Location: Kazune City |
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vanfanel
Posts: 1242 |
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Older Japanese otaku have to a degree been left behind, as well; the interests of young otaku today are quite a bit different from those of the 80s, when geekdom was much more oriented around serious sci-fi and fantasy... We 40-somethings now have to make do with a few new things every once in a while, and a trickle of 80s nostalgia revivals. I filled out the survey for my top five favorite anime this year, but could only come up with four titles: ("Fate Stay/Night," "GARO," "Jojo's Bizarre Adventure," and "M3: The Dark Metal"(which was so-so, but overall I liked it). I probably could've added "Silver Spoon," but I haven't watched season 2 yet.) |
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