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INTEREST: C93: The Corporate Booths Reveal How Anime is Now Mainstream

Heh, thanks for the feedback and the detailed response, but what I mean is that the companies that produce the official stuff are often afraid that the fanworks will crowd out p the official stuff and cut into their profits, which I pointed out DOES sometimes happen. And it's not because the fans have no limits on what they're allowed to sell, but that the fans are buying fan-created stuff INSTEAD of the official stuff, and there are enough creators within the fandom to satisfy demand. Some of them might also have a pretty negative opinion of the official stuff, even if only in a "stick it to the Man" kind of way. (By the way, I should point out that I used Bronies as an example not because it's a single incident, but it's an ongoing thing. There is a pretty sizable contingent who have a grudge against Hasbro in some way or another, such that they only buy fan-created material or from 3rd-party companies and only watch Friendship Is Magic through pirated means so as to prevent Hasbro from profiting off of them. Some of them have even stopped watching the show and are enjoying being a fan purely through the fandom.
Hasbro has become sneaky about this, though, and has licensed out to companies like Funko, Aurora, and Olyfactory to make merchandise that these fans WOULD buy.)

I suppose in Japan, you don't have quite as many people who are going to raise a stink about not getting what they wanted, so it's less likely you'll find the outraged parent. Then again, parents often let their children roam around free through the day even when not at school, whereas we've had a rise of helicopter
parenting in the west where parents are getting increasingly scared and will guard their kids increasingly tightly. Of course, my
perception is most likely colored by the fact that I've worked retail before and have had to deal with all sorts of irresponsible parents, or
parents who will use the store as free day care as they take off for several hours, or those who will blame me and my co-workers for getting themselves or their children
into trouble.

There are a lot of women at Comiket. They create a lot of content, sometimes for men, but often for other women.

Franchises that openly cater to the male gaze don't tend to get a large female following unless there are things that can strongly appeal to women too. The lewd ads are simply targeted marketing.

Please don't read any further into my comments than that.

I dunno, you're just making a lot of assumptions about what someone can and can't like, and it comes off as prudish.

Marui Shinjuku has basically a whole floor for fujoshi, complete with an Animate Cafe (the space used to be a butler cafe, though). By the way, last year, they had Yume100 fortune things in a gacha machine around new years. So the internet thing didn't just come up with that.

Frog-kun wrote:

There are a lot of women at Comiket. They create a lot of content, sometimes for men, but often for other women. Franchises that openly cater to the male gaze don't tend to get a large female following unless there are things that can strongly appeal to women too. The lewd ads are simply targeted marketing. Please don't read any further into my comments than that.

The solution is to have male booth babes.

Please bring live shirtless guys in long wigs to comiket.

Also, there are girls who like boob characters. I'm pansexual and I like Sonico, and I know straight and even asexual women who do, too. I don't wish the girls in anime were less naked, I just wish the boys in anime were more naked. Which, like... the solution to that isn't to whine on the internet, it's to buy books of the styles you like, and support the artists, and to write and draw the things you feel like you don't see enough of.

I dunno, you're just making a lot of assumptions about what someone can and can't like, and it comes off as prudish.

Also, you can have a fanservice character who's well-written and three-dimensional and intelligent. There's really no reason to think you can't.

It actually perplexes me that franchises like Touhou and Kantai Collection can be mostly run by the fans and not drive the creators out of business.)

I dunno, you're just making a lot of assumptions about what someone can and can't like, and it comes off as prudish.

People can like what they like. I wasn't saying that girls can't like ecchi or making any value judgments about fanservice. I was only making a neutral observation about demographic trends at the event as a whole.

Frankly, I think you're the one making assumptions about me and my tastes.

So how are defining mainstream here, because the whole thing seems incredibly complex. It seems to be mostly put on late night channels, but then you've got culture icons like a giant Gundam statue and the mass consumption of titles like One Piece and Fist of the North Star.

[Edit] just had a light-bulb moment: Maybe why Japanese companies and creators are to a certain extent chilled with fan content being sold, is because they know that the person selling their goods will reinvest their profit made into buying official merchandise. I mean, if the fan artist loves the franchise to that extent, and I believe they do, if they’re willing to create content of it - content that sells. So yeah, it all comes around in the end.

(If not, at least fan content also creates brand awareness)

I'm not against gender targeted marketing, but booth babes are different. They're encouraging con goers to objectify real women, in a space that's meant to be for everyone. The booth babes do consent to that... to some extent... by taking the job, but now the convention has a general atmosphere where that kind of objectification is considered okay.

Quote:

Anime has become mainstream without sacrificing any of its niche appeal.

What a load of BS