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Answerman - Regret-tinged Nostalgia

I always see non-Murricans talking about all of the anime their countries aired when they were kids, like Saint Seiya all over the place and Harlock in France, and both of those and more in Italy. It would have been nice to see those WMT anime get dubbed since they're mostly European or North American works to begin with. Though I'd question their feasibility of licensing even now, not many people are chomping at the bit to see the new Anne or Les Miserables.

Regardless who posited the question, it was an interesting one to answer, and it actually has come up before. Not everyone who reads the column also visits the forums, or has any idea who the asker was. My goal is purely to find the good, answerable questions, research, and write an answer that will inform as many people as possible. Anything beyond that is out of my control, and I tend to ignore it for the most part. (It's the only way to stay sane writing this column.)

reanimator wrote:

As a Korean American who seldom watch Korean shows (I do like their game/variety shows though), I find mdo7's incessant glorification of K-Pop/Drama and constant downplay on anime obnoxious. At one time, he sent me this super long private message about how well Korean media is doing after I made a comment on how obnoxious he is on the forum. Since Justin answered mdo7's question with clarity, I hope he could just shut up about how wonderful K-pop/drama is. We all get it. Being a K-pop fan is fine and all, but being obnoxious is not fine.

Hey whoa, whoa. All I just did was submit a question, and I thought mine on why did Cool Japan fail when South Korea was able to do this was a very interesting question. I've already tone down my love of K-pop/K-dramas. But South Korea has made a lot of anime fans questioning why Japan didn't market and globalize their pop culture beyond anime including their celebrities outside of Asia when South Korea was able to do this.

jsevakis wrote:

Regardless who posited the question, it was an interesting one to answer, and it actually has come up before. Not everyone who reads the column also visits the forums, or has any idea who the asker was. My goal is purely to find the good, answerable questions, research, and write an answer that will inform as many people as possible. Anything beyond that is out of my control, and I tend to ignore it for the most part. (It's the only way to stay sane writing this column.)

And thank you for your response Justin. I like to get a veteran experience on how and why Japan lag behind on marketing and globalization of pop culture when South Korea outdid it, and very quickly too. I like your thought and response on it. When I became a K-pop fan last year I was actually amazed of how South Korea is playing the marketing/globalization game better then Japan and how quickly Korean pop culture has become popular worldwide in just 2-3 years. This has made me question and even want to investigate why did Japan lose it's cool few years ago and South Korea got ahead. I watched videos on Youtube on how and the secret behind it, read research papers, attended a Global Hallyu forum last year.

Justin if I find more articles on the Japan and South Korea pop culture comparison and one that talked about how Japan lag and South Korea succeeded, I'll PM you with the article. As I said over the email, it won't be South Korea alone that can replicate this, I do see Taiwan as a potential rival to South Korea's Hallyu Wave.

You asked a good question about difference between how Koreans and Japanese market their media. I had the similar thought about why isn't Japan isn't doing the same thing as Korea years ago. Then I realized that Japanese live action is already a failure and anime is niche even to their own mainstream, so it's a waste of time to worry about how Japanese run their business. My thought is that they should learn their lesson through failure. I want Japanese mainstream media to fail because they will not grow without experiencing serious difficulties.

Anyway, it's your overt obsessiveness with Korea that irks me and others. We all figured out that you love everything about Korea and more inclined toward live action than animation. That is fine and sometimes flattering (to me and other Korean-Americans).

The problem is that you have this obsessive tendency to overwhelm people with wall of links & texts on just about any subject matter remotely related to Korea and its relationship with Japan. That's why I singled you out because you don't know where to draw the line. If you don't have anything interesting to say or has irrelevant subject matters, then it's best to be quiet.

I want to see Taiwan competing with K-Pop, since I have a thing for Taiwanese women (even the average ones tend to be cute from my own experience), put some in (and some good looking women from Mainland China or HK for good measure) with at least a decent amount of talent and I'm there in seconds if not even faster.

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I just want a South Korean company to enter the console market, give me something that will revitalize my love for console gaming.

mdo7 wrote:

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Here's the thing: J-media fans don't care if K-media is more mainstream in the West. But the constant attempts to rub our noses in it, for reasons I can't comprehend, is very off-putting.

mdo7 wrote:

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Here's the thing: J-media fans don't care if K-media is more mainstream in the West. But the constant attempts to rub our noses in it, for reasons I can't comprehend, is very off-putting.

Hoppy800 wrote:

I just want a South Korean company to enter the console market, give me something that will revitalize my love for console gaming.

That's a neat idea especially if you like RTS's which the system's entire library would probably consist of.

Although you might not care, but my only concern is: the J-media fans that are too obssesed with Japan and aren't open-minded to other Asian media including Koreans may not like it when K-pop/K-media (or any Asian media that is not Japanese) is getting more mainstream attention then J-media, because well you know how some people are.

Then I realized that Japanese live action is already a failure

And if (some) J-media fans tend to not like Korean dramas it's often because of the over-reliance on particular tropes*

*(Me, I'm currently totally sick of the "poverty-stricken heroine [who still has a very nice wardrobe and roomy apartment and the latest smartphone OF COURSE] meets rich and/or famous guy" storyline-- please Korea, give me a hero who just has a normal job.)

Although you might not care, but my only concern is: the J-media fans that are too obssesed with Japan and aren't open-minded to other Asian media including Koreans may not like it when K-pop/K-media (or any Asian media that is not Japanese) is getting more mainstream attention then J-media, because well you know how some people are.

Okay, I get that all those bad dubs from the 90s can be excused for their shittyness and I get that not all of them were as bad as Garzey's Wing.

So where's Sentai's excuse for putting out terrible dubs on a regular basis? They occasionally get lucky like with Watamote, HOTD and Kill me Baby but for every dub like that there's about 10 dubs that are sub par like Tamako Market and Girls und Panzer or completely unbearably godawful tripe like Little Busters and Prisma Illya with casting choices that make you swear they were on drugs and voice acting that should be used as a legal method of torture. They've been around for quite some time now but notice all my examples were fairly recent dubs.

Every other active dubbing company is, on average, decent. They've all made bad dubs in the past but it's a clear minority compared to the good stuff they've made. But when it comes to Sentai I seem to find a lot more bad than good. And trust me, I've tried very hard to find the good.