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NJ_ wrote:

ryoukosan245 wrote:

I'm not 100% sure if this is what you're talking about ,but nelvana's dub of Cardcaptors(Cardcaptor Sakura) aired in America in 2001, a year after Sailor Moon ended it's run in America. I personally have only watched Cardcaptor Sakura subbed so I've never seen the dub myself ,but based on everything I've read about it it suffers from the same problems as your typical 4Kids dub. In addition to that it seems the people who dubbed it desperately tried to make it appeal to American boys and failed horribly at it.

That was all on Kids WB because Nelvana had another version of that dub which aired in Canada & other parts of the world which was said to be a bit more faithful in comparison.

Really ,because from what I read the dub still had problems, I mean Kids WB cut the series down to about 39 episodes and tried to promote Syaoran as the main character ,but the dub itself did changed things like changing the music, cutting out all romance(even heterosexual romance), changing characters peronalities(like making Sakura a tomboy) and tried to turn the show from a cutesy romantic magical girl series to a series that was solely focused on it's action and catch em all aspect. I mean when NIS release it a lot of people were upset that they didn't redub it meaning that this dub wasn't very well liked so there must have been something wrong with it.

archyteckie08 wrote:

The main reason why anime sequels are never made just for the West is because the West doesn't buy dvds, audio dramas, bluray, mangas, in game app purchases, music soundtracks, and merchandise like Japanese people do.

The best selling anime bluray disc of 2016, Osomatsu Vol. 1, sold 562,503 copies and made around $34 million dollars; wholesale rates for Japanese dvds/blurays are close to their retail price, with the copyright holders getting the bulk of money.

It's estimated that it costs an anime studio $1.7 million dollars* to create 1 season of a anime show. CR subscriber numbers can't support the 52 simulcast anime shows that it airs each season. Therefore, Japanese anime industry insiders say Japan uses CR just to keep fansubbers at bay. They do not see streaming sites (international or domestic) as viable money sources for anywhere but China.

According to Justin in "The Anime Economy," the copyright holders' net revenue is something like 55%, more of a narrow majority than a bulk. Others have addressed the non-subscriber revenues from CR.

But if the Japanese industry's dealings with CR/Funi and others are meant to keep fansubbers at bay, they've chosen a lousy way to go about it. In the pre-CR 2000s fansubbing scene, many shows would get poor-quality subs, very slow subs, or no subs at all. Now that practically everything gets official streams, the downloading scene and bootleg streaming sites now have access to fast and adequate subs for nearly every seasonal TV anime, thanks to HorribleSubs' streaming rips. Any apparent success in reducing download numbers is likely dwarfed by ex-downloaders migrating to bootleg streaming sites instead.

Meanwhile, the main focuses of present-day fan releasing, OVAs/movies/specials and BD-rips of TV series, aren't provided on official streaming sites. They'd probably get better results in the fansub control department by ceasing all streaming licensing entirely, since at this point the fan releasing scene doesn't have the talent or the manpower to keep up with the industry's output.

But if the Western audiences are so irrelevant, why does the Japanese side even care that fansubs are being made? It's not like Japanese viewers wouldn't have illegal options if English-subtitled fansubs/rips went away. After all, those JPBD bdmvs, R2J DVD .isos, TV transport streams, and P2P share-raws that the Western fansubbing scene uses have to come from somewhere, i.e. from Japan. No doubt the Japanese domestic market is more important, but if the overseas markets were truly irrelevant, I feel the overall market would look more like the hentai scene: pretty much nothing gets licensed, because the overseas revenues aren't enough to justify the negotiation/materials provision hassles, or to offset the risk of reverse importation.

MarshalBanana wrote:

@Kikaioh
80s Defiantly(though there are still internal influences), but 90s... Well maybe the first few years. the 90s almost feel like a return to the 70s, which would make some sense since the people who got in back then would of grown up during that era. Just looking at the OVA market, there is a huge shift between titles like California Crisis(which must be one of the most American Anime very made) and The Humanoid, to around post 93 OVAs like Galaxy Fraulein and Hyper Doll. And then there's TV shows, the rise of Shonen Battle Anime, which were mostly inspired by Asian mythology.

I would agree that the industry started moving in that direction towards the end of the 90s, though I don't think it was particularly set in motion until maybe the early aughts, when shows like Love Hina, Azumanga Daioh and Galaxy Angel really kicked into popularity. I watched Hyper Doll not too long ago, and it personally felt like a more comedy-leaning/cynical 90s version of Dirty Pair, so I'm not sure it was that big of a shift away from what had come before. Shows like One Piece and Cowboy Bebop seemed to draw a bit ways of inspiration from the West, though I do think there were a lot less directly Western inspired shows compared to the 80s just in general.

Stuart Smith wrote:

Two reasons could explain that.

1. The American movie industry has gone downhill. Either in terms of pop-culture influence due to other media outlets stealing attention away, or in terms of output quality. I imagine it's hard to really have a new sci-fi pop-culture milestone when the biggest sci-fi movies are Star Wars and Star Trek remakes. I see Freddy and Jason referenced occasionally for horror icons, but what modern horror icon is there to replace them? Given Japan's mediocre reaction to superhero films, that's a lot of blockbusters they genuinely ignore every year.

2. The Japanese industry grew stronger. Anime back in the 80s and 90s was incredibly niche. Back then, less shows aired in a a year than in a single season today. With the growth of an industry they look instead to each other for references since the community and industry is stronger and more widespread. Nowadays you see the opposite, tons of western media referencing anime or being influenced by it.

-Stuart Smith

Personally, I wouldn't put it in the context that the American movie industry has "gone downhill", considering 7 of the top 10 all-time highest-grossing films released in the past decade (not accounting for inflation, but still, it's a lot of money). I'm also personally a fan of the comic book superhero scene, as well as a lot of CG animated movies, so I'm really enjoying the current era of films that's being produced.

I would agree though, on Japan's tepid reception to Western superhero films, considering they're nowhere near as popular there as they are here in the West. On the one hand, the Western movie industry in general doesn't seem to be quite as innovative as they were in the 80's, back when blockbuster movies were something of a new genre, and they could kind of go crazy with all the wildly different genres of movies they worked on.

On the other hand, I sort of sense the progression of Japan's industry may have moved a bit ways away from that same sort of open creativity, since I think the recession over the 90's may have encouraged studios to focus more and more on servicing the otaku industry, which may have contributed to an increasing cultural insularity, but also a rise of otaku in the industry itself. Back in the 80s I think anime and the rise of the OVA medium were kind of young, and maybe there was more flexibility for creators to pour a wide variety of their own personal interests into the works they were creating. Reading old Animerica interviews from back in the day, it seemed that a number of creative types in the industry seemed to be people who came from a variety of backgrounds (theater, classical painting, musicians, etc.) that had just turned to animation for work when other work options weren't as available, and so the industry itself I think was populated with a broad variety of people with personal interests that weren't necessarily originally invested in the animation scene. But as time marched on, eventually the industry became populated with otaku who had grown up specifically interested in anime itself, and weren't necessarily bringing as broad a variety of non-anime interests to the table, which I think may have contributed to the distillation of the medium in its focus towards more otaku-centric interests.

As for the Japanese industry growing stronger, I'm not as sure. Although I've heard the industry has demonstrably grown in recent years, I've heard tell on the forums that while the number of shows has increased in recent years, that the higher output is more a reflection of the increased number of shorts releasing from season to season, coupled with an increase in single-season standalone series. More particularly, I recall a graph floating around that seemed to indicate that actual minutes of animation produced each year had only just recently climbed back to the same levels as they were back in 2006 (?), but if anyone has that sort of information more readily available it might be helpful for clarification.

One non-anime example: last six episodes of Xiaolin Chronicles made for Cartoon Network's (Eastern) European feeds. See it yourself at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xiaolin_Chronicles#Notes.

Last edited by Jose Cruz on Wed Jan 04, 2017 3:59 pm; edited 2 times in total

Kikaioh wrote:

One thing I find interesting about the topic is that, at least back in the 80's and 90's, Japanese artists seemed to draw a lot of inspiration from Western works. There were influences from movies like Star Wars (Dr. Mashirito's hideout in Dr. Slump, the light hawk sword in Tenchi), Blade Runner (Bubblegum Crisis), Star Trek (Dirty Pair makes a number of references), Jules Verne (Future Boy Conan, Nadia), Superman (also Dr. Slump, Project A-ko), the World Masterpiece Theater just in general, and even Dungeons and Dragons (Record of Lodoss War). The movie "Tenchi in Love" is largely a parody of Back to the Future, and if you look carefully in some of Studio AIC's earlier works, you can see little shoutouts to movies like Rambo, Terminator, and other 80s Western pop-culture titles. In recent years it feels like Japanese creators have become a lot more insular, and so that sort of Western inspiration feels like it's been dialed back a whole lot, though it was fun to see Kill la Kill making similar sorts of references to movies like Pulp Fiction and the Terminator. In a way I think Japanese interest in Western cinema back in the day may have made their works more identifiable to me when I was first getting into anime, and might be another factor as to why I find the more otaku-centric modern sensibilities less appealing.

I wouldn't say insular, it's just that the west is getting relatively less relevant in the world today as asian countries develop: Today the combined (PPP) GDP of China, India and Japan is as big as the USA and the EU combined. Things were very different back in the 80's. So it's natural Western influences decline as Asian influences increase.

Still a lot of modern stuff is made with foreign references in mind, stuff like Shin Koihime Musou is adapted from an ancient Chinese story for example. Although not western it's also foreign.

Also, Japanese pop culture is developing more and more into it's own thing as it matures so it's natural is becomes less influenced by Western stuff. I think that's great because diversity is great: slice of life comedy stuff like K-On! is super cool and super different from anything in the West.

Stuart Smith wrote:

Two reasons could explain that.

1. The American movie industry has gone downhill. Either in terms of pop-culture influence due to other media outlets stealing attention away, or in terms of output quality. I imagine it's hard to really have a new sci-fi pop-culture milestone when the biggest sci-fi movies are Star Wars and Star Trek remakes. I see Freddy and Jason referenced occasionally for horror icons, but what modern horror icon is there to replace them? Given Japan's mediocre reaction to superhero films, that's a lot of blockbusters they genuinely ignore every year.

2. The Japanese industry grew stronger. Anime back in the 80s and 90s was incredibly niche. Back then, less shows aired in a a year than in a single season today. With the growth of an industry they look instead to each other for references since the community and industry is stronger and more widespread. Nowadays you see the opposite, tons of western media referencing anime or being influenced by it.

I agree that today modern Western pop culture, specially the high end nerdom is perhaps more influenced by other stuff like videogames (Fallout 4, The Witcher) and TV shows (Breaking Bad, Mr. Robot). Hollywood has become more of a provider of special effects driven roller coaster type of entertainment rather than a cultural force of it's own while the most critically acclaimed western films tend to be more arthouse stuff that nobody outside of a small niche of critics and film buffs (a niche that's actually smaller than anime fans in the west) appreciates.

However, I disagree on the relative popularity of anime. In the 1980's and 1990's there were a lot of OVAs made, the anime industry was more focused on long running children's TV stuff than now and its output was already huge: according to Miyazaki in 1982 the anime industry produced 50 new TV episodes a week which means 2,100 episodes a year which is equivalent to about 110 late night TV shows (assuming 12-13 and 26 episode shows are in equal number). Plus about >100 OVAs and movies made every year since the mid 80's.

In 2016 we had according to the ANN megapoll 195 late night TV shows, which are mostly 1 cour shows (that's more than the number of newly produced American TV shows of all types, at 119 in 2016). So the industry grew but not that much (in a depressive year like 2009 the output of late night shows was close to 110). What happened was that a shift happened from children's stuff to adult stuff (as portrayed in Shirobako: Musashino animation worked on a children's show in the past and now works on stuff like Madoka and Strike Witches) as Japan's child population collapses and it's otaku population grows.

Manga, on the other hand, today sells much less than did in the past: the peak was in 1994 at 2.3 billion magazines and books, today the figure is around 1.2-1.3 billion which was the same as in the 1970's. I think that manga became mainstream among adults already in the late 1970s but most adult manga of the time wasn't adapted into animation (stuff like Lone Wolf and Cub). Otaku back in the day used to mostly consume manga it was with movies like Nausicaa and Akira that things started to change still the first time an animated film was the highest grossing in Japan was in 1979 with Galaxy Express 999. Now manga sales declined due to the collapse of Japan's children and young adult population combined with things like smarthphones that compete with manga (in many cases directly thanks to the increasing popularity of webcomics in Japan like Re-Life).

Kikaioh wrote:

On the other hand, I sort of sense the progression of Japan's industry may have moved a bit ways away from that same sort of open creativity, since I think the recession over the 90's may have encouraged studios to focus more and more on servicing the otaku industry, which may have contributed to an increasing cultural insularity, but also a rise of otaku in the industry itself. Back in the 80s I think anime and the rise of the OVA medium were kind of young, and maybe there was more flexibility for creators to pour a wide variety of their own personal interests into the works they were creating. Reading old Animerica interviews from back in the day, it seemed that a number of creative types in the industry seemed to be people who came from a variety of backgrounds (theater, classical painting, musicians, etc.) that had just turned to animation for work when other work options weren't as available, and so the industry itself I think was populated with a broad variety of people with personal interests that weren't necessarily originally invested in the animation scene. But as time marched on, eventually the industry became populated with otaku who had grown up specifically interested in anime itself, and weren't necessarily bringing as broad a variety of non-anime interests to the table, which I think may have contributed to the distillation of the medium in its focus towards more otaku-centric interests.

That's true but what you say already happened in the 90's. Manga, which is the real core of Japanese pop culture and otaku culture, became super popular already in the 1960's and popular among adults in the 1970's so by the late 1980's the otaku culture was already fully mature with hundreds of thousands of attendes at Comiket by that time while manga sales were higher than today. What has happened since I think is that anime became more of its own thing now rather than a byproduct of manga with people like Shinkai and Miyazaki making auteur movies instead of manga adaptations while the number of people who claim to be aniotas has increased to a number close to manga otaku.

Quote:

As for the Japanese industry growing stronger, I'm not as sure. Although I've heard the industry has demonstrably grown in recent years, I've heard tell on the forums that while the number of shows has increased in recent years, that the higher output is more a reflection of the increased number of shorts releasing from season to season, coupled with an increase in single-season standalone series. More particularly, I recall a graph floating around that seemed to indicate that actual minutes of animation produced each year had only just recently climbed back to the same levels as they were back in 2006 (?), but if anyone has that sort of information more readily available it might be helpful for clarification.

I know that in 2006 the number of minutes of animation Japan made peaked at near 140,000 minutes which is equivalent to about 460 single cour shows which was about 15% more than in 2005 (close to 120,000 minutes) but then declined and then surpassed that peak only in 2014 and is growing again now. Today we have more shows than ever before at around 200 shows per year (compared to 160 back in 2006) and I rather have 200 single cour shows than 100 two cour shows. Still that's a reflection that shows today feel more like movies and OVAs of the 1980's and 1990's than TV shows and back then I think like >100 OVAs were made per year and while shorter than single cour shows, those OVAs had better animation.

Jayhosh wrote:

Panty and Stocking is the closest example I can think of to a show that was "made for" western audiences. But even then, being a spiritual love letter to American Saturday morning cartoons doesn't necessarily equate being directly intended for that audience either. I mean, it's not like Japanese fans don't like western cartoons too. Space Dandy? That had a more "anime" feel to it but also took on a (mostly) episodic structure, and then of course there was the whole dub premiering on Toonami before Japan part. They had the whole "from the creator of Cowboy Bebop" angle and I think it was a co-production between the Japanese producers and Toonami or Funimation too, if I'm not mistaken (I probably am).

Then again, neither of those are even sequels so I have no idea what I'm going on about.

Yeah, I really liked both of those, it really depends on the staff if they can pull off the mix.

garlogan78 wrote:

Does Little Witch Academia getting a second OVA and an upcoming neflix season fall into this?

Yeah I think it does, since it also started life thanks to Kickstarter.

Kikaioh wrote:

One thing I find interesting about the topic is that, at least back in the 80's and 90's, Japanese artists seemed to draw a lot of inspiration from Western works. There were influences from movies like Star Wars (Dr. Mashirito's hideout in Dr. Slump, the light hawk sword in Tenchi), Blade Runner (Bubblegum Crisis), Star Trek (Dirty Pair makes a number of references), Jules Verne (Future Boy Conan, Nadia), Superman (also Dr. Slump, Project A-ko), the World Masterpiece Theater just in general, and even Dungeons and Dragons (Record of Lodoss War). The movie "Tenchi in Love" is largely a parody of Back to the Future, and if you look carefully in some of Studio AIC's earlier works, you can see little shoutouts to movies like Rambo, Terminator, and other 80s Western pop-culture titles. In recent years it feels like Japanese creators have become a lot more insular, and so that sort of Western inspiration feels like it's been dialed back a whole lot, though it was fun to see Kill la Kill making similar sorts of references to movies like Pulp Fiction and the Terminator. In a way I think Japanese interest in Western cinema back in the day may have made their works more identifiable to me when I was first getting into anime, and might be another factor as to why I find the more otaku-centric modern sensibilities less appealing.

Yeah, there's definitely some truth to this. I do miss them them doing their own take on some of those ideas and agree it was a lot of fun seeing some of it return in Kill la Kill.

Waffitti wrote:

A bit odd to see no one mention Vampire Hunter D - Bloodlust.

Good catch.
That was a good movie too.

If some sequels are specifically made for the West (more specifically, sometimes the USA), does that mean sometimes you see a rise in reverse imports with the subs being in Japanese? Jayhosh, another "made for West" show may have been "Tiger & Bunny".

I recall that Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust, M.D Geist 2 and Big O Season 2 was made for the western market too.

DangerMouse wrote:

garlogan78 wrote:

Does Little Witch Academia getting a second OVA and an upcoming neflix season fall into this?

Yeah I think it does, since it also started life thanks to Kickstarter.

No. It got a second OVA thanks to Good Smile Company financing it. The kickstarter was to add additional funds to be used for additional minutes of animation, nothing more.

The TV series is financed by Toho and a few other companies not named Netflix as well.

Netflix grabbed the western streaming rights for LWA, but they didn't make it. Ignore their 'Netflix original series' garbage tagline they slap onto anime they license.

Chester McCool wrote:

Netflix grabbed the western streaming rights for LWA, but they didn't make it. Ignore their 'Netflix original series' garbage tagline they slap onto anime they license.

Netflix and Amazon Prime should just drop out of the anime industry outside of streaming completed shows/movies that gets added to them and selling the units.

Ryo Hazuki wrote:

Guy Schellens wrote:

I think Cowboy Bebop was designed for a Western public.

You think wrong. It wasn't even shown in the US until 2001 and the movie started its development in 1999, was released in Japan in 2001 and in the US in 2003.

It had its American premiere on VHS in 1999 (2 episodes per tape). The show was starting to develop a following on the internet about a year before the Adult Swim broadcast. Of course, it didn't become a hit until after it ran on Adult Swim.

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