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Banden
Joined: 24 Sep 2010
Posts: 140
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 Posted: Thu Jul 14, 2011 11:31 am
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| Melanchthon wrote: | | This is a valid point, and I know I've been guilty of it in the past, but anime, like any other fandom, is a very emotional experience and people get fired up over it (look at sports talk radio, for example). But I had an ulterior motive: I feared that anime would become like the America comic industry, a shallow, repetitive regurgitation of ideas and characters, locked in the conventions of it's own convoluted past until in can no longer sustain itself and reboots the entire franchise. When the bubble was bursting, there were two options: expand to try to get a larger audience of people that could function in normal human society or double down on the core otaku market. And I feared that the growing number of moe shows were trying to tap a well that had already run dry. Even otaku have budget limits, and the emphasis on producing shows for them could have bankrupted the entire industry. Fortunately, the industry finally seemed to realize that, but it was looking grim for a bit. There is nothing wrong with moe shows, but a healthy market needs diversity of choice, and that was my main complaint. |
I agree with the conclusion of this post, but not with the premises. American comics didn't market themselves into a corner, nor do I think anime is doing this. American comics were suppressed by the institution of the Comics Code Authority and the forces of morality who very much wanted to exercise control over what was written and drawn. Prior to the CCA, American comics were a vibrant medium encompassing everything from funnies to detective stories to serious science fiction. The CCA and our moral guardians who crafted it, killed all of that off and gave us forty years of Marvel vs DC.
It's only been in the last decade or two that the CCA has fallen away into the dustbin of history, and the industry has made pretty impressive strides towards recovery, lead by artists such as Mark Millar. What continues to hold the industry back is the stigma attached to comics after decades of CCA restrictions, and the mainstream public's ingrained expectation of comic books as sanitized superhero adventures.
In effect, what seems to have stunted the evolution of American comics is not too little help from concerned readers, but too much. At least relative to American comics under CCA, anime is still relatively free to explore its boundaries as a medium and respond to consumer's changing tastes over time. It seems to me that's a positive thing and an opportunity, not a failure that somebody needs to do something about, as we tried to do with the CCA.
As for anime being niche and focusing on otaku subject matter, I honestly don't think there's anything we can do about that. That's literally happening in every area of the entertainment business: TV, music, movies, books, magazines, newspapers, the web. The world is more complicated everyday, and everybody's tastes become gradually more refined in the areas they have a personal passion for. If recent anime doesn't satisfy your entertainment needs, probably that's because there is something else that does a better job? If you consider all the options available, I'm not sure that there's actually a problem needing solved there?
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configspace
Joined: 16 Aug 2008
Posts: 3717
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Posted: Thu Jul 14, 2011 11:33 am
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| enurtsol wrote: | | (.. Re: bill 156 ..)
Just bears repeating.
Anybody believe that?
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No. It looks like he got his talking points from their campaigns and popular strawman talking points and did not bother to actually research it. Why would he mention the stuff about graphic violence and separating the 18+ mags into another section when the ordinance has nothing to do with that? He also missed the titles that were recently affected specifically by the ordinance (again, by purely subject matter)
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| BorgmanJayce wrote: | |
A good analogy would be something like this: Say you want to buy a car, but there's only one type and one color available. That means that there wouldn't be a wider choice if any at all, whereas with most things like movies, anime, manga and videogames, there is a wide choice in all kinds of genres. |
That's what I keep telling everyone - variety. 
Get inspirations from all over the places, not just a few, to prevent inbreeding. |
That's actually the wrong analogy because the reality is that there is variety already except some people choose not to see it. Danny mentioned in regards to producing anime:
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The answer is that they have no idea what's going to hit or miss, basically. This is what many of them say: they don't know until they actually produced and release it. So let's say they make 10 anime titles. Some of them might actually do bad-- really, really bad.
And some of them might do incredibly well, like K-ON! and Macross. So once they wind up producing a title like that, it's going to recuperate the costs for past anime titles that they lost money on.
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I've mentioned the same many times before. If a certain genre was a near guaranteed success, they wouldn't be loosing out money on the very same type of titles people here complain about! Rather, there is always variety because even otaku just don't buy one thing. In fact, I'd say the base is more likely to buy a variety of genres (i.e. more niche) compared to say, the Ghibli audience.
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gwdone
Joined: 01 May 2008
Posts: 272
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Posted: Thu Jul 14, 2011 1:39 pm
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Hey Danny!! I bought the Mikuopolis stream from Nico. Didn't you do the introductions? What did you think about the show and the crowd's reaction to Miku's first performance in the U.S. I loved it!!
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