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@Eternal September

I was going to ask you whose list you're referring to but since the only sales list that covers anime, with numbers, is the Japanese one there's nothing else you can be referring to. The most recent sales figures show eroge and light novel based anime topping the chart and the series that Western fans get wet over appear all over that chart with no discernible pattern to be seen.

Pfft Western fans, more like Western snobs.

ArsenicSteel wrote:

@Eternal September

I was going to ask you whose list you're referring to but since the only sales list that covers anime, with numbers, is the Japanese one there's nothing else you can be referring to. The most recent sales figures show eroge and light novel based anime topping the chart and the series that Western fans get wet over appear all over that chart with no discernible pattern to be seen.

Pfft Western fans, more like Western snobs.

I wasn't really referring to the adaptation sources in general, but to the specific pandering faults that are often identified with them, Shana-clone light novels like Dragon Crisis and Hidan no Aria, and eroge like Hoshizora and Maji de Watashi.

Sure, techinically Steins;Gate is also a Visual Novel, and Nisemonogatari is a light novel, but I don't hear many arguments that these are killing anime. It's about the content, not the medium.

I based my post on the Japanese sales, as translated on mania.com.

In the 2011 sales list, there were 18 big hits, out of which 2 were universally loathed (IS and GC), while below the 3000 treshold (that would normally bring profits), there were 45 series, out of which ony 3 (Mirai Nikki, Chihayafuru and, UN-GO) were universally praised. (plus a few that are primetime TV shows, so their TV ratings would show their success, not their disc sales).

Of course the details are arguable, if you were spending more time in a group that happened to love Ben-To, or one that loathed Yuru Yuri), but it's generally true that most of those people who complain about bad trends in anime, regarding what gets made, and what sells, would probably fit into the same general crowd that actually praised the most popular shows, and hated most failures, even if they fancy themselves as rebellious spirits who go against the sheeple.

More anime by design? Does this mean they'll finally put out Sacred One through Sacred Six?

If you weren't making general comments then why not just say so from the start. Saying Dragon Crisis was a failure is completely different than saying boob series have low sales because Westerners don't respect those kind of shows.

For the record the anime I was referring to was Horizon, Heaven’s Lost, Steins;Gate, and Haganai. Cherry-picking aside, there simply isn't any correlation between the highs, lows, and Western appeal to support your claim that Western fan respect does anything for anime sales in Japan.

I don't remember Un-go being universally praised especially compared to something like Chihayafuru. The praise I saw for it was not out of the ordinary especially considering that it was by the Director and Writer of one of the biggest hits in the past decade FMA.

Now here's the thing outside of Tiger and Bunny do you really see an anime on that top tier that would be a big hit in both the West and Japan? I think Madoka had potential, but Aniplex went the Oreimo route, and if you haven't bought Madoka now your'e going to need to do it before it starts selling for over 100 dollars for even the basic bluray.

Charred Knight wrote:

I don't remember Un-go being universally praised especially compared to something like Chihayafuru. The praise I saw for it was not out of the ordinary especially considering that it was by the Director and Writer of one of the biggest hits in the past decade FMA.

Now here's the thing outside of Tiger and Bunny do you really see an anime on that top tier that would be a big hit in both the West and Japan? I think Madoka had potential, but Aniplex went the Oreimo route, and if you haven't bought Madoka now your'e going to need to do it before it starts selling for over 100 dollars for even the basic bluray.

I wouldn't say that Aniplex went the same way with Madoka that they did with Oreimo, more they did a "Japanese Domestic" style release in a Western market. Full Disclosure: I pre-ordered & bought Oreimo, but my wallet stayed closed for Madoka, this tells you how well that release style was received by at least my very small part of the western market.

Maybe the most important question that Dentsu's Otaku Think Tank will get an answer to is this, will Dentsu actually listen to and act on the results? Especially when it comes to marketing to World Wide and / or Western tastes?

Mark Gosdin

The otaku think tank isn't for marketing to Westerners or World wide tastes.

ArsenicSteel wrote:

If you weren't making general comments then why not just say so from the start. Saying Dragon Crisis was a failure is completely different than saying boob series have low sales because Westerners don't respect those kind of shows.

I did make general coments. I just made them about genres, and not about the source medium of adaptations. Boob series have low sales. Shana clones have moderate to low sales. "K-on genre" shows other than the only serious hit, K-on itself, have varying sales, with a high chance of failure.

I just happened to describe those generic fantasy-series that seem to follow the path of Shana, like Dragon Crisis, Hidan no Aria, C3, Kurousagi, etc, as "Shana clone light novels", that you jumped on, to argue that actually there are also successful light novel adaptations.

ArsenicSteel wrote:

Cherry-picking aside, there simply isn't any correlation between the highs, lows, and Western appeal to support your claim that Western fan respect does anything for anime sales in Japan.

Even leaving cherry picking aside, and looking at strictly the top 3 series, compared to the lowest three (of late night, disc sales-based series), obviously you can always claim that you don't believe that Madoka, AnoHana, and Persona 4 were more popular than Hen Zemi, Moshidora, and Gyakkyō Burai Kaiji, that were just as popular, and it's not like I can pull an objective list of anime popularity in the fandom that could disprove it.

Charred Knight wrote:

I don't remember Un-go being universally praised especially compared to something like Chihayafuru.

Well, for one thing, it was constantly around Chihayafuru on the Anime Power Rankings, though that only shows the blogosphere's opinions.

The point is, that anyone who isn't trying to look at it with the intention of cherry-picking these rare counter-examples, can see that Dentsu focusing on how to make more anime like the ones with high sales, is a good thing for "us", where "us" is the general preferences of the western fandom (and probably the Japanese fandom as well).

Assumign, of course, that they do their job well, and figure out the qualities that can make good anime popular, instead of just relying on the same bullshit stereotypes as posters in this thread, and conclude that anime needs more moe and more boobs because that's people they say on online forums.

I was arguing that there was no correlation between successful series in Japan and Westerners respect for any given series. Pointing out successful light novel adaptions merely was a means to an end. Boob series also don't generally sell badly; To Love-Ru, Queen's Blade, Seikon no Qwasar, Sekirei, and High School of the Dead are just a sampling of a longer list of boob anime that have sold very well and tend to be highly ridiculed by Western anime snobs.

Looking at the past anime sales charts show there's no evident trend to those anime genres you are focusing on. All that you've pointed out is that a specific show sales and attempted to make those little slices of the pie speak for entire genres they are a part of.

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obviously you can always claim that you don't believe that Madoka, AnoHana, and Persona 4 were more popular than Hen Zemi, Moshidora, and Gyakkyō Burai Kaiji, that were just as popular, and it's not like I can pull an objective list of anime popularity in the fandom that could disprove it.

I am not pulling the vague popularity card. You've been talking about video sales and trying to say an apparent pattern exists between Western respect and Japanese sales. I've been staying within video sales and say no such pattern is there.

I guess my only concern is that every possible concept will be run by the 'otaku thinktank' and, if it doesn't score high enough, it won't be developed into an anime.

I think the overwhelming consensus of a 18-25 yr old male otaku group is that they'll watch anything with harem/eroge themes, while a similarly aged female otaku audience will vote for reverse harem situations.

So...Oppai mousepads and body pillows for everyone.

I guess it would depend on how these otaku were gathered. If it were truly random, maybe a petition featured in several stores, online sites and weekly/monthly manga mags would be a good way to get a general audience. But if it's a "ask people at one store in Akihabara on a Sunday that's holding an AKB48 promotion", then...no. That wouldn't really be much of a random sample.

Makes me wonder how they would know what a worldwide audience would want. There's different tastes all around and have to tread carefully. Makes me think they either want mega-hits like young children shows or moderate successes from other genres. They'll need to research otaku beyond Japan if they really want to be sure of a successful worldwide appeal.

Meh, too much crying. I don't see anything wrong with making shows that the market likes. "Pandering" to what people like isn't bad. It's actually great. What does an anime company gain by making shows people don't want to watch or buy? They still do this every now and then, but that's how it should be really. You can only make so many Kaibas, Real Drives, in a row before you have to close up shop and can no longer make anything, whether it be a pet project, something for the mainstream, or something for the fans.

Plus, Madoka, Nisemonogatari, and most of the shows that end up as hits could be described as something that "panders" to otaku in one way or another but nobody cries a river about it because actual craftmanship went into the product rather than, "let's use every crappy animation technique we can think of to tell the most generic scene it all before tale ever told in the most generic scene it before way possible." I don't see why people jump to the conclusion that figuring out what people like to watch means that shows will be crap quality on every metric and will spell the death of the industry. I'm pretty sure that since it's creation, the industry has had the goal of making shows that people want to watch and buy. Just because your favorite genre faded (which I find tends to be the ultra niche genre of "Super future intergalactic planetary virtual world space cowboy/cyborg detective) doesn't mean that making what people want is now bad.

DRAGON CRISIS!
I saw Dragon Crisis mentioned and I feel compelled to make one key point. Design by committee, being based off of a light novel, or pandering had ZERO to do with why that show was a flop. DC was better executed than most shows in its genre and had way higher production values than most. So, why did it flop so hard? One reason. Just one reason: some idiot thought it would be genius to go against the grain and cast Rie Kugimiya as a cute little girl who was completely non-tsundere. Not once did her character say, "uresai! uresai! uresai!"

DC went good to high quality on a lot of aspects. It had beautiful Sakuga MAD quality violence in every episode, more fanservice than you can shake a stick at, tons of characters with mysterious powers, incesty situations, multiple cute shy girls with big breasts, a lesbianish cute girl, tons of characters with cheesy sob story backgrounds, a pervy male character who has no shot at ever getting any (at least in anime), Rie Kugimiya playing a flat chested little girl, magic stuff AND science, a male lead who fears ever sticking his dick inside of a female, enemies who can transform into stuff that would be a cool figure to buy, mech battles, and a super cute elementary school looking pedobear-approved female lead... basically everything an otaku could want, but didn't realize that the legions of Kugimiya fans would be willing to overlook all of that and shun the series if Rie wasn't doing her Shana thing. They needed someone to read the script and deliver an Excalibur-like Fools! once they noticed that Rose wasn't tsundere.

Meanwhile, a show like Aria the Scarlet Ammo, which is like DC except worse in every possible aspect, has 5x the sales per volume. Not because it was good, not because it wasn't designed by committee, not because it was had more or less moe fanservice pandering, but because someone had the good sense to realize that if you're going to cast Rie Kugimiya as a cute flat chested girl then she damn well better be doing Shana/Taiga/Nagi/Louise. If not, cast someone else because you're just going to upset people when they go in expecting one thing and get something radically different.

ArsenicSteel wrote:

I was arguing that there was no correlation between successful series in Japan and Westerners respect for any given series. Pointing out successful light novel adaptions merely was a means to an end. Boob series also don't generally sell badly; To Love-Ru, Queen's Blade, Seikon no Qwasar, Sekirei, and High School of the Dead are just a sampling of a longer list of boob anime that have sold very well and tend to be highly ridiculed by Western anime snobs.

These mostly sold around 3-7000, justifying their own production costs and bringing a profit. Of course, if every single boob show would be a massive failure, they wouldn't even be made any more, but neither of these was in the category that one would call big hits, and what Dentsu is trying to analyze.

Looking at the actual list of all 10.000+ sellers, there are only about a dozen of "moe shows", "boob shows", and "pedo shows" added together, out of 91, plus a few other obscure ones that flew under the western fandom's radar for some reason but other than that, it's pretty much a solid list of classics. Especially around the top, the list of the 30 best selling shows ever, includes only 3 K-on-style moe shows (including K-on), and one boob show (Infinite Stratos).

All the accusations in this thread, that focusing on the demands of the otaku audience would automatically mean "more moe loli pedo bullshit", or "they'll finally put out Sacred One through Sacred Six" are entirely unsupported.

ArsenicSteel wrote:

I am not pulling the vague popularity card. You've been talking about video sales and trying to say an apparent pattern exists between Western respect and Japanese sales. I've been staying within video sales and say no such pattern is there.

Then you ARE pulling the popularity card. You couldn't see a pattern between popularity and sales, by "staying within video sales" without considering popularity.

Ryvius213 wrote:

Also, don't try to make yourself sound like the victim by saying they don't make anime you like anymore. In truth, only people with relatively(correction: really) broad tastes are really happy season after season. If you're demanding more series that appeal to the mainstream, I'd hate to say it, but you're probably not in the mainstream. Believe it or not, series that are completely out of this world and super deep or "Eva-esque" aren't mainstream at all, and the more successful ones all have relatively mundane elements that garner mainstream interest.

I'm happy season after season as I don't see what I want to see in anime but I see it for what's there; Watch five shows of everything and go from there. But the whole issue/topic/overuse/misuse of "pandering" is really starting to bother me, espcially in the thread which has so many posts that start with it.. Shonen/shoujo isn't just a category, they label series that are tailored to meets the expectations and desires of the target audience. Such that, a shoujo romance isn't the same as a shonen romance. These shows pander to their respective audiences, it's the point of having target audiences.

I just want to see if I got this right: If you don't like it, it's "pandering"; if you do like it, it's "anime"? Or am I oversimplfying it?

And that brings me to the problem with this study: Oversimplication. Sure, every producer wants a magic bullet so they can kill the dreaded beast known as "failure". It's same all over. But even with a target audience in mind...

Oh hell, I'm repeating Bakuman.

Anyway, what they want to simplify isn't the audience which is the point of the studying Otakus {What will get them to watch and buy our merchandise?} but the creative process {How do we do it easy and as cheaply as possible? How do we become instant successes?}. They'd probably be better off studying successful anime producers, writers and directors rather than asking "Otakus, what do they want?". For one thing, I'm pretty sure Otakus don't want to be a "they" or "them". Each otaku is unique to his own tastes or I think that's how they want to see it.

Here's my suggestion: If you want to attract Otaku, why not try throwing money at a good idea? Some people license mangas, some people go for light novels or games, other producers pay creative people to come up with something original or, dare I say it, new. It's so simple, it just won't work. For one thing, they'd have to recognize what a "good idea" is.

Another part of it is deciding when to join the bandwagon and when to become the trendsetter. One clue is when someone says "Hey, let's do another [blank] show" as a first suggestion, it's time to try something new. And that's the key point right there, "try".

So, this study has "instant fail" all over the place.

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These mostly sold around 3-7000, justifying their own production costs and bringing a profit. Of course, if every single boob show would be a massive failure, they wouldn't even be made any more, but neither of these was in the category that one would call big hits, and what Dentsu is trying to analyze.

I suppose as long as one is moving the goalposts then something would never be regarded as a big hit, unless it agreed with their opinion. I pulled out QB and To Love Ru because I knew they were massive hits without having to verify sales.

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Looking at the actual list of all 10.000+ sellers, there are only about a dozen of "moe shows", "boob shows", and "pedo shows" added together, out of 91, plus a few other obscure ones that flew under the western fandom's radar for some reason but other than that, it's pretty much a solid list of classics. Especially around the top, the list of the 30 best selling shows ever, includes only 3 K-on-style moe shows (including K-on), and one boob show (Infinite Stratos).

So you're saying there's a variety of genres that reach 10k+ sales per volume. That's good to know. Now can you tell me how that is relevant to; "the most financially successful series are also the ones that western fans tend to respect..." because, again, I fail to see how this data supports that claim but I bet this, my sole reason for quoting you, is going to be avoided once more. If anything it reinforces the need to find out what it was about those shows that made them mega-hits on the Japanese sales charts in the first place. Personally I think Dentsu's efforts will result in them trying out some ideas and having the same hit/flop ratio as before the Think Tank.

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All the accusations in this thread, that focusing on the demands of the otaku audience would automatically mean "more moe loli pedo bullshit", or "they'll finally put out Sacred One through Sacred Six" are entirely unsupported.

True. If anyone could predict the outcome of the think tank then the think tank would be unneeded.

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Then you ARE pulling the popularity card. You couldn't see a pattern between popularity and sales, by "staying within video sales" without considering popularity.

I can't help that sales and popularity are closely linked. I haven't said popularity in this thread except to point out that I am not directly talking about popularity. You're the one that thinks he can whip out an objective popularity(oxymoron?) list.

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