×
  • remind me tomorrow
  • remind me next week
  • never remind me
Subscribe to the ANN Newsletter • Wake up every Sunday to a curated list of ANN's most interesting posts of the week. read more

Forum - View topic
The anime fandom.




Anime News Network Forum Index -> General -> Anime
View previous topic :: View next topic  
Author Message
Captain X



Joined: 10 Apr 2011
Posts: 253
PostPosted: Tue Apr 26, 2016 1:39 am Reply with quote
This is actually a topic for an upcoming panel I'm going to be a part of, so what I'm trying to do here is to get more of a feel from the fandom, about the fandom. I'm not sure this is the right forum for this topic, but this is for discussion specifically about the anime fandom.

The topic itself is about how anime seems to be becoming more and more the same type of show, featuring the same type of characters, over and over again, with moe in particular being somewhat pervasive, and that a big part of what's driving that is that this is what the fandom is buying up. And I'm not saying that's a bad thing, or that I'm any different as far as buying plastic shit (just bought a Yoko mouse pad, actually Neutral), but we haven't really gotten any attempts at more serious anime in quite a while now. You just don't see stuff like Cowboy Bebop or Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex anymore. And then you get things like Denno Coil, Toward the Terra, The Daughter of Twenty Faces, and Space Battleship Yamato 2199 that don't get dubs, because the cutesy moe harem fan service romantic comedy stuff is what's selling, and much like Hollywood and reboots, this seems to be because of the money involved in getting something made makes the people involved with making it adverse to taking risks.

So, while it's easy to point out a problem (and I know some fans aren't going to see it as a problem), it's a lot harder to decide where to go from there. So where do we go from here? How do we get studios to give us something that would be another GitS:SAC or Cowboy Bebop - something that'd be a serious dramatic series with some depth to the story and characters? I'm sure part of that would involve where we spend our money, but when the lack of variety is the problem, how do you spend your money on something to indicate that you're willing to support shows that take some risks rather than rehashing essentially the same thing with a slightly different gimmick (zombies, tanks, guns, ships, etc.)? About the only thing I can think of is to somehow get an independent project more attention, or to give something that's older and maybe flopped when it came out a second chance - kind of like how The Thing and Blade Runner were both flops when they came out, but decades later are now seen as outstanding movies.

Thoughts?
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
FenixFiesta



Joined: 22 Apr 2013
Posts: 2581
PostPosted: Tue Apr 26, 2016 1:58 am Reply with quote
You already mentioned it yourself, money is the bottom line when it comes to projects.

It is simply safer to adapt a 3+ year old Light novel about "harem moe girls" than it is to let a team attempt to write up the narrative equivalent of Citizen Kane.

Studios NEED work, and if it means flushing out the next buxom highschool girl anime then that is what they have to do to keep there studio economy afloat.

As for directors or studios wanting to try to get accumulated funds from the fans, the example that comes to mind was the Under the Dog kickstarter project, regardless of how the work turns out it was a clear avenue for those interested to directly throw money into a project that "sounds interesting", there is still risks involved as the project can fall flat during production, the work might not turn out to be as worthwhile to the viewing audience, and the best case scenario is that the studio/director tries another project but once again it goes to square one and risks not getting off the ground if the intent is more ambitious.
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
DuskyPredator



Joined: 10 Mar 2009
Posts: 15433
Location: Brisbane, Australia
PostPosted: Tue Apr 26, 2016 2:42 am Reply with quote
In particular this reminds me of a recent video I came across which had Gaijin Goomba of the Game Theorists in it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s1F0W2QhUnQ

Personally I think the complaints about moe are people not following everything.

Captain X wrote:
The topic itself is about how anime seems to be becoming more and more the same type of show, featuring the same type of characters, over and over again, with moe in particular being somewhat pervasive, and that a big part of what's driving that is that this is what the fandom is buying up. And I'm not saying that's a bad thing, or that I'm any different as far as buying plastic shit (just bought a Yoko mouse pad, actually Neutral), but we haven't really gotten any attempts at more serious anime in quite a while now. You just don't see stuff like Cowboy Bebop or Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex anymore.

I don't believe it. Lets take a look at what is out this season. We have Joker Game, Kabaneri of the Iron Fortress, Concrete Revolutio, and I would say Kiznaiver. These are what I would describe as the same as the more ambitious shows that people talk about used to being made and act like they are not anymore. Last season we had Erased, Showa Genroku Rakugo Shinju, and Schwarzes Marken, The season before that we had The Perfect Insider, and the season before that there was Gangsta, and Gatchaman Crowds Insight.

The smart or new shows still get made, it is like people forget that only recently we had Attack on Titan and Parasyte. Some people are too busy thinking that we are seeing moe and the like infect the rest of anime, and I don't think they are looking that it is simply a part of it, but it is not staying stagnant. I think that the current climate is starting to use the elements people claim are mainstream and using them as a tool for new ideas. Like how Madoka kickstarted the dark magical girl series. That School Live is not a moe show using spoiler[zombies to set itself apart, it is a zombie story using moe as a tool to create a certain story], and is actually quite smart. A number of these shows go out of their way to do research that shows a passion for subject matter, and to mash up usual story structure.


Last edited by DuskyPredator on Wed Apr 27, 2016 4:01 am; edited 1 time in total
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message My Anime My Manga
ikillchicken



Joined: 12 Feb 2007
Posts: 7272
Location: Vancouver
PostPosted: Tue Apr 26, 2016 8:15 am Reply with quote
Captain X wrote:
but we haven't really gotten any attempts at more serious anime in quite a while now. You just don't see stuff like Cowboy Bebop or Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex anymore.


That's just flagrantly untrue. Anime has its ups and downs. It has its strong periods and and its weaker periods. I don't think there's ever been a extended period though where there weren't even any attempts at making a more serious show. And if there has been, it certainly isn't now. I'm not sure how far back exactly you're talking about here but I can easily name "serious" shows from just the last year or so. Right off the bat, there's the currently airing Joker's Game. It's a tense, moody spy thriller which is pretty much devoid of any lighter side. Kabaneri of the Iron Fortress also deserves a mention. It's more "action movie" serious. That is to say, it's extremely dark and violent if not overwhelmingly deep at this stage. Still, I think it applies. There's also last season's Showa Genroku Rakugo Shinju which absolutely typifies "serious anime". There's also Erased which is a pretty damn serious mystery dealing with regret and child abuse. There's also the previous season's Perfect Insider if you want something very philosophically dense. Earlier in 2015 we also saw excellent "serious" shows. Death Parade starts as something more in the vein of a horror/thriller about a "death game" but also evolves into this really cool and human story of empathy and understanding. Maria the Virgin Witch is also a great "serious" show. It has a little bit of a more humorous edge, especially early on, but overall it's no more humorous than Cowboy Bebop really and at it's core it's this really fantastic meditation on gender, power and religion.

Those are just the most recent ones too. I could list many more just from the last five years. There's Flowers of Evil which remains one of the most wonderfully engrossing and tense anime I've seen. Psycho-Pass is also easily the most Stand Alone Complex-like thing since SAC itself. Attack on Titan is also a lot of fun (although it gets the same caveat as Kabaneri). Ping-Pong: The Animation is definitely also noteworthy. It's more the opposite end of the "serious spectrum". That is to say, it isn't your classic dark/action/scifi show. If by serious though you mean "a deep, complex character drama" then this is a great example. Lupin III: The Woman Called Fujiko Mine is also an outstanding show. It's not always deadly serious but again if you're looking for something dark and complex it certainly fits the bill. Those are just the good shows too. I could also mention Gangsta, Terror in Resonance, Parasyte and Psycho-Pass 2 none of which are good but all of which at least qualify as "attempts".

This is all just stuff that meets the literal definition of "serious" too. I mean, I'm going off that because that's the word you used. If what you're really looking for is just recent shows that aren't merely insubstantial escapist fluff though then I can list even more. For instance, it's certainly worth mentioning Eccentric Family. It's definitely not consistently serious but if what you really want is a show that's serious in terms of being an intelligent, contemplative, adult drama this is definitely noteworthy. Also, while I wouldn't call any of these shows strictly serious, Space Dandy, Rage of Bahamut, Blood Blockade Battlefront and Lupin III (2015) also exemplify a lot of the other qualities I think fans of more classic shows look for. They're gorgeously animated and all around fantastic action/adventure/comedies.

Look, I totally get where you're coming from. I think there are absolutely valid criticisms to be made of the modern anime industry. I also think the relative ups and downs of anime across different periods is a fascinating and worthwhile topic. Honestly though, when you say stuff like this it mostly just comes off like you aren't at all aware of what is actually out there. I know it is difficult given the sheer volume of content that gets produced. A lot of good shows wind up lost in the shuffle. Still, try not to make such flagrant overstatements. It kinda kills these discussions because they just get bogged down in counterexamples and it causes people to get their backs up against the wall even more than they already do.
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message My Anime
mbanu



Joined: 11 Jan 2010
Posts: 159
PostPosted: Tue Apr 26, 2016 9:27 am Reply with quote
One possible route might be to look at how American comic books handled this problem. You had a group of creators who wanted to tell a different type of story, but the fanboys weren't buying it (literally and figuratively). So the industry ended up in this holding pattern where their core customers were getting older and older, and not being replaced by anybody, because the niche stuff they bought didn't have wide-spread appeal.

With comic books (I defer to those with more knowledge here), it seems like the solution was diversifying into other types of media that fanboys would support, but that they did not "own", per se (in this case, live-action feature films). This allowed the creation of new fans, who (in theory) will financially support new ideas.

It seems like anime is trying to do this, with stuff like the live-action Ghost in the Shell movie. It probably won't work in the U.S., as American anime fans are anti-Hollywood for various reasons (some understandable, some less so), but it may work in Japan, where Hollywood films carry different cultural baggage.

Certain anime directors seem to have used a variant of this to carve out their own niche -- they hyper-focus on attracting the attention of the European film festival circuit, and then if successful, use that attention to attract the attention of Japanese Europhiles who would normally ignore anime.
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message AIM Address
Touma



Joined: 29 Aug 2007
Posts: 2651
Location: Colorado, USA
PostPosted: Tue Apr 26, 2016 10:25 am Reply with quote
@Captain X
I do not know where you are located so I am just going to assume that you are not in Japan, since the odds favor that.
If that is correct then I doubt that there is anything that you can do.

What anime gets made depends on how the fans in Japan are spending their money, not just on anime but also, and possibly more importantly, on manga, novels, music, and a lot of diverse merchandise. People outside of Japan have very little influence on that.

Here in the US we do not have easy access to anything other than anime and some manga, and even with that we are buying it after the decisions have been made on what the next anime will be. We just do not have any real influence.
One thing that might help would be to convince some businesses in the US, and other countries, that they should sell the music and merchandise that is driving the anime industry in Japan. I do not know if that is even possible because I do not know if there are enough potential customers here to sustain a market.
I am rather pessimistic because I know that there were some businesses that licensed and published anime music here, but now there are none that I know of. I did buy a lot of CDs from Geneon Music and Animetrax (Right Stuf) and would probably buy more.

It does not really matter but I will close by saying that I have never had any complaints about the state of the anime industry. There has always been more than enough anime that I like for me to watch.
I like the moe stuff, especially the cute girls doing cute things variety, and harem comedies and ecchi fanservice shows.
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message Visit poster's website My Anime My Manga
Key
Moderator


Joined: 03 Nov 2003
Posts: 18135
Location: Indianapolis, IN (formerly Mimiho Valley)
PostPosted: Tue Apr 26, 2016 11:59 am Reply with quote
Captain X wrote:
The topic itself is about how anime seems to be becoming more and more the same type of show, featuring the same type of characters, over and over again, with moe in particular being somewhat pervasive, and that a big part of what's driving that is that this is what the fandom is buying up.

This kind of argument pops up a few times each year (including just about every time we do a Preview Guide), and the answer is always the same: there's really not anymore truth to that now than what there was at any point in the last 45 years.

Step back and look at the big picture and virtually any era of anime you want to name is dominated by rip-offs of, or genre variations on, a handful of truly innovative titles. For instance, in the 1970s, it was rip-offs or spin-offs of Science Ninja Team Gatchaman, Getter Robo, and Time Bokan which dominated the scene. Mature-oriented and/or standard-setting shows have always been sparse, and I don't think that their frequency of occurrence has changed substantially since the heyday of OVAs ended.

So don't be fooled by the occasional gluts of certain types of shows, like the current one for school battle series. (And for the record, I don't think moe is a dominant thing now. It just never completely went away from its own heyday back in the late 2000s/early 2010s.)
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message Send e-mail Visit poster's website My Anime My Manga
Redbeard 101
Oscar the Grouch
Forums Superstar


Joined: 14 Aug 2006
Posts: 16935
PostPosted: Tue Apr 26, 2016 9:45 pm Reply with quote
ikillchicken wrote:


Look, I totally get where you're coming from. I think there are absolutely valid criticisms to be made of the modern anime industry. I also think the relative ups and downs of anime across different periods is a fascinating and worthwhile topic. Honestly though, when you say stuff like this it mostly just comes off like you aren't at all aware of what is actually out there. I know it is difficult given the sheer volume of content that gets produced. A lot of good shows wind up lost in the shuffle. Still, try not to make such flagrant overstatements. It kinda kills these discussions because they just get bogged down in counterexamples and it causes people to get their backs up against the wall even more than they already do.

For starters I would totally agree with the chicken murderer that going by your own qualifying word of "serious" there have been quite a few titles in the past 5-10 years that would qualify. Normally there is 1 or 2 in most seasons. I want to mention the part I highlighted above in chicken serial killers post. In the past 5 years we have been getting more and more anime every season than EVER BEFORE. In terms of a high volume consistently season after season the past 5 years have set a benchmark for sheer quantity of anime being produced. Never before has there been so much to watch each season. Unless you spend all your free time watching anime there is simply no way to watch every new show. Especially if you have a job, family, etc. Not unless you created one of those pills from American Dad where you don't need sleep.

Given that it is harder for many to find quality shows when there is such a mass of them. Especially amongst whatever the current craze is. Moe shows, harems, or dude in highschool with magic powers and big boobed female lead. It used to be easier to pick out the "serious" shows as there weren't as many to choose from on a daily basis. Now there's so many you have to put some real time and effort into trying so many shows to weed out what works for you and what doesn't. It would be all too easy for someone to miss a quality or "serious" show in today's anime environment. Just because you might have missed it though doesn't mean it's not out there.
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message My Anime My Manga
Zalis116
Moderator


Joined: 31 Mar 2005
Posts: 6864
Location: Kazune City
PostPosted: Tue Apr 26, 2016 10:28 pm Reply with quote
Captain X wrote:
And then you get things like Denno Coil, Toward the Terra, The Daughter of Twenty Faces, and Space Battleship Yamato 2199 that don't get dubs, because the cutesy moe harem fan service romantic comedy stuff is what's selling
I'm surprised no one's pointed this out yet, but Dennou Coil is getting dubbed:
Quote:
Section23 Films announced in its June 2016 release slate that Maiden Japan will release the 2007 anime Den-noh Coil (Dennō Coil) on Blu-ray and DVD in North America on June 28. The release will include an English dub.
Meanwhile, plenty of moe/harem/whatever titles continue to come out sub-only (particularly the more marginal/mediocre ones), just as they often have since 2008 or so. Just look at the raging over Higurashi Kai, a decidedly more "Type B" (link NSFW) 2007 show that had never been licensed in R1, not getting a dub.

As others have said, the success that titles achieve in the Japanese market is more determinant of future projects (whether direct sequels or similar-genre works) that get greenlighted. Other markets like North America had more of a chance back in the mid-00s, when studios were putting out stuff like Paranoia Agent, Texhnolyze, Ergo Proxy, and other more "serious" stuff. But those shows didn't sell enough on either side of the Pacific. However, if you listen to some of the ANNCasts with Nozomi/Rightstuf's Shawne Kleckner, he says that while there was a retrenchment to moe/ecchi/harem/cgdct/otaku-comedy/etc. from ~ 2008-2010, things have begun to swing back the other way as overseas markets recover and become more able to pay higher licensing fees. So there is a silver lining, should you choose to see it.
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message My Anime My Manga
Galap
Moderator


Joined: 07 Apr 2012
Posts: 2354
PostPosted: Tue Apr 26, 2016 10:59 pm Reply with quote
For the past couple of years or so, I've been pretty disappointed with a lot of newer anime. There have been a couple of shows that I did really like, but I feel like the center of mass is moving away from what I like. And I don't really think it's the Moe stuff that's the problem specifically, but I think it's a bit that things are getting a little more trite in a lot of ways, and the stuff that's trying to be 'serious' tends to be doing so in a way I'm less on board with than older shows did. There are some really interesting things, but many of them faceplant and become disappointments in their own way, like Perfect Insider. I'm not saying things are getting objectively worse, but they are moving farther from what I like personally.

See, the outliers in any era will exist and be interesting, but whatever kinds of things there's a glut of could either be something I like or not. And in the Late 80s and 90s the core anime was definitely somehting I could get behind a lot more than today. Here are some examples of not particularly acclaimed or famous things from that period that I really enjoyed:

Voogie's Angel
Legend of Himiko
Shamanic Princess
Yokohama Shopping Log
Phantom Quest Corp.
Golden Boy
Silent Mobius
Genmu Senki Leda
Sol Bianca
Gall Force


And with that list I'm definitely not cherry picking the 'good stuffs' or things that were produced in spite of the environment of the time. Now, I did particularly like their specific premises and execution, but I would consider these works to be fairly typical representatives of their time: not extreme oddities or outliers in any way. And in addition, many of them do have a bit of a sense of "hey, look at these technicolor girls", and I wouldn't consider any of these to be among my favorite anime, but I did like them quite a bit and I would be happy to be seeing a lot more things built along these general lines. I'm really not seeing this kind of thing anymore.
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
Captain X



Joined: 10 Apr 2011
Posts: 253
PostPosted: Wed Apr 27, 2016 3:22 am Reply with quote
Well, some of you have certainly given me more to think about. And actually this topic was very much inspired by that YouTube video featuring Gaijin Goomba. Looking up info on Joker Game in particular gives me some hope. Though, I've gotten my hopes up only to be let down before. GitS: Arise in particular comes to mind, though to be fair this let down is mainly in that the show seems to suffer from how action is treated in modern anime and so simply fails to live up to Stand Alone Complex, not in that it's bad or anything.

There seems to be some confusion over what I mean by "serious." I'm not entirely sure how I can clarify much more what I mean by that, other than the examples I listed with that term in mind. I more or less mean something that would be considered a drama and takes itself seriously for the most part. Attack on Titan was actually the most recent example I could think of when I had this same discussion with my group of friends here IRL.

I have to admit that I'm not someone who really follows news all that closely, which is part of the purpose of posting this thread. Most of what I know actually comes from following reviews, and what gets talked about in forums like this one, and most of what I've seen hasn't really seemed all that interesting to me, with stuff like Himouto! Umaru-chan seeming to stand out as what's popular these days. Admittedly it doesn't help that I'm kind of keeping myself from watching much these days until I can catch up on my own backlog of reviews, but I haven't really been seeing anything that's made me feel much of an urge to overcome that procrastination. It does make me happy to see that Denno Coil is finally getting a dub, though I hope it turns out better than the one for Girls und Panzer did. Laughing

My friends and I have indeed noticed that there has been a tendency of "all of this has happened before, and all of it will happen again" from the anime industry, though pretty much all of us just remember all the robot anime from the late '80s and early '90s and the same sense of a lot of it being essentially the same until NGE came along and was different, only for quite a few imitations to end up following it. Actually I can't help but wonder if many of the character types that are still around today can't be traced back to NGE.

As for the fandom's ability or inability to influence anime production, yeah, that is a pretty daunting task. But as Kamina said, sometimes you have to just kick logic to the curb and do the impossible. Wink

But really what the upshot of this is that I'm not really expecting there to be this sudden change or anything specific to come from this discussion. I'm more or less putting my ear to the ground and also just trying to get people thinking about it. I might not be able to think of anything revolutionary, but maybe other people might have ideas.
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
CoreSignal



Joined: 04 Sep 2014
Posts: 727
Location: California, USA
PostPosted: Wed Apr 27, 2016 4:19 pm Reply with quote
Lots of good points have been mentioned already so I'll just elaborate on some of them.
I pretty much have the same opinion as FenixFiesta. Anime studios need to make money and usually the easier way to do it is adapt something that's already popular or that you know will appeal to a certain audience, hence the LN adaptations and the prevalence of tropes. With anime originals, studios are taking more of a chance. I'm semi-joking here, but I honestly think I'll remember the 2010's as the decade of the LN adaptation just because we've had such a huge amount of LN anime so far, especially compared to past decades.

On the other hand both Psycho 101 and Key make valid points. Since there's so many shows in general compared to the past decades, just by sheer volume, we actually have more variety than ever before. You may have to look harder but there should be at least one or two shows every season that fall into the serious/mature category. That said, anime does seem to go through phases. I also think of the 70s-80s as the golden age for mecha and old-school sci-fi, since there were lots of those shows back then.It seems like it's the same for slice of life shows now. I don't think there were that many slice of life shows back in the 80s and 90s but the genre started getting really popular in the 2000s.

As for GITS: Arise, I see GITS in general as a prestige franchise like how Miyazaki/Ghibli's work is regarded. GITS is internationally known and acclaimed and Production IG has never been known to milk the franchise. A new GITS comes out every couple years because Production IG wants to maintain GITS reputation and I like that approach. Regardless if Arise wasn't as good as SAC. Anyway, I've personally noticed that grand, epic space opera shows like Battleship Yamato and Legend of the Galactic Heroes seem out of style this decade, since I haven't seen any similar shows this decade yet (unless you count the remakes).

I think it's likely that non-standard anime funding, like Kickstarter, will have more and more of an impact as this decade goes on. Kick-Heart, Little Witch Academia, and Under the Dog are all examples of successful crowdfunding projects that otherwise might not have been funded via the traditional route. It's possible that more and more creators, animators, etc. will start looking into crowdfunding or overseas funding as an option in the future. Another good recent example IMO is the Japan Animator Expo shorts from the past two years. Anno's Studio Khara funded the entire thing and basically gave the animators free reign to do whatever they wanted. I enjoyed the shorts and Khara deserves credit for taking a chance.

DuskyPredator wrote:
I think that the current climate is starting to use the elements people claim are mainstream and using them as a tool for new ideas. Like how Madoka kickstarted the dark magical girl series.

This is a great observation and Madoka is a perfect example. I also noticed that a lot of recent "serious" shows are taking this approach where the show will have appealing character designs or take popular story elements/tropes but the actual show itself will be fairly mature or serious. Going back to Madoka, when the show first came out, the story description and the character designs fooled a lot of people into thinking it was a by-the-numbers magical girl show. Though I'd argue that Evangelion was the first show to pull off this "trick".

Zalis116 wrote:
Other markets like North America had more of a chance back in the mid-00s, when studios were putting out stuff like Paranoia Agent, Texhnolyze, Ergo Proxy, and other more "serious" stuff. But those shows didn't sell enough on either side of the Pacific.

Yeah, I think the 2000s was a great time for "serious"/mature shows. I'm not sure if those three shows (especially Texhnolyze) would have been made today just because of how different the market (and industry) is now, compared to back then. Too bad they all sold poorly, though.
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message Visit poster's website
Jose Cruz



Joined: 20 Nov 2012
Posts: 1767
Location: South America
PostPosted: Wed Apr 27, 2016 9:35 pm Reply with quote
I find it funny how western Anime fans tend to be completely oblivious to Manga and the fact that Anime exists mostly as Manga adaptations. Complains about lack of variety in Manga are obviously absurd.

Now, what I think is happening here is that Anime appears to be becoming more Japanese and less western influenced as American/Western economic and cultural influence has been declining since the 1980's. The Cute Girls doing Cute Things stuff is very Japanese and is the kind of stuff that westerners don't usually like (though I love those shows, they are different from anything made in the western countries because westerners are cuteness repressed peoples), but it's a reflection of that shift torwards more essentially Japanese in their popular culture.

Very americanized stuff like Cowboy Bebop is very rare and I think is something that American Anime fans should understand that not everything made in the world needs to be americanized to be good. I myself prefer to watch stuff like Is the Order a Rabbit rather than watch another Watanabe homage to North American pop culture. I guess this constant complaining about "moe" is a reflection of the cultural differences between western animation fans and the Japanese animation producers.

Captain X wrote:
The topic itself is about how anime seems to be becoming more and more the same type of show, featuring the same type of characters, over and over again, with moe in particular being somewhat pervasive, and that a big part of what's driving that is that this is what the fandom is buying up.


Nonsense. Anime is bigger and more diverse than ever.

Quote:
And I'm not saying that's a bad thing, or that I'm any different as far as buying plastic shit (just bought a Yoko mouse pad, actually Neutral), but we haven't really gotten any attempts at more serious anime in quite a while now. You just don't see stuff like Cowboy Bebop or Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex anymore.


Because Space Dandy and Ghost in the Shell Arise never existed. Also there are plenty of Anime better than Cowboy Bebop or GitS SAC made in the past few years. Smile
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message Visit poster's website My Anime My Manga
Parse Error



Joined: 09 Oct 2009
Posts: 592
PostPosted: Wed Apr 27, 2016 10:27 pm Reply with quote
Captain X wrote:
...this topic was very much inspired by that YouTube video featuring Gaijin Goomba...
...how action is treated in modern anime...
...Most of what I know actually comes from following reviews, and what gets talked about in forums like this one, and most of what I've seen... stand out as what's popular these days...

To be honest, it sounds to me as though you're going out of your way to conform to the "jaded veteran oldschool anime fan" archetype. There's a huge difference between being an anime fan with some frustrations to vent, versus being a fan of complaining about anime from the sidelines. Reviews should be something to help you decide which shows you might like to watch and analyze for yourself so that you can share your own unique insights, rather than a place to grab a copy of some mass-produced prefabricated opinion.

Captain X wrote:
I more or less mean something that would be considered a drama and takes itself seriously for the most part.

What caught me unawares at one point, and caused my attitude to sour until I took a break from anime for a while, is that serious and even artistically ambitious shows can become monotonous in their own subtle way when viewed back to back. The breadth of potential variations obscures from conscious view the underlying pattern of buttons they're trying to press, so all one readily notices is that each successive title feels a little less exciting or interesting than the last. I'm not suggesting anyone should force themselves to watch iyashikei shows and harem comedies for the sake of balancing their anime diet, but there are enough series that fall somewhere between those and the standard casual fan or artsy-fartsy connoisseur fare to do the trick.

There's also still a steady trickle of previously untranslated vintage anime being fansubbed and even licensed, along with others that were for a long time hard to obtain becoming easily available, so checking as many of those out as possible is always a capital idea. The majority of English-speaking anime fans have only been exposed to older content that was considered marketable to them at the time, which was an especially narrow and less than representative selection when it came to TV series. Watching the ones that weren't so accessible before not only fills in some of this missing context, it's also a way to continue discovering anime to enjoy even if one truly cannot stand anything recent. Hopefully you would be an exception, but unfortunately, bitterly nostalgic fans typically have a remarkably powerful aversion to actually watching unfamiliar anime from those very same time periods they put up on a pedestal.

Captain X wrote:
My friends and I have indeed noticed that there has been a tendency of "all of this has happened before, and all of it will happen again" from the anime industry

The same is true of the fandom. Complaints about how anime has declined since one started watching it are about as old as the fandom itself. Stick around long enough, and the present day will turn into some fans' Golden Age. For that matter, in this era of simulcasts, it has become commonplace to see people waxing nostalgic for the previous season!

Jose Cruz wrote:
what I think is happening here is that Anime appears to be becoming more Japanese and less western influenced

For the time being, it looks the other way around to me. For one thing, there's been several coproductions and other partnerships between U.S. companies and Japanese ones recently. Even aside from that, with Attack on Titan being successful both domestically and internationally, surely Kabaneri of the Iron Fortress is only going to be the first of many others in the same vein, just as much for the sake of fans in the West as those in Japan.
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
Display posts from previous:   
Reply to topic    Anime News Network Forum Index -> General -> Anime All times are GMT - 5 Hours
Page 1 of 1

 


Powered by phpBB © 2001, 2005 phpBB Group