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Forum - View topicAnswerman - Conventions and Nostalgia
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mdo7
 Posts: 8241 Location: Katy, Texas, USA |
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Well, why not? we have Gen Z reviving retro tech (particularly 90's stuff) and you already have the Vinyl revival to the point where vinyl are outselling CDs (no, I'm not making this up!!!). Yeah, a lot of 90's stuff are being re-discovered and getting a lot of love from Gen Z-ers and as a millennials who grewed up being a 90's kids back then, that makes me very happy. Many of us 90's kids can show off our old toys and tech to curious Gen Z kids (and Gen Alpha demographic), and explaining the history of these items, technologies, and curiosities to them. So it would make sense to do the same for anime and manga. Who knows, maybe the "flipped"/mirrored manga back from the 90's, and early 2000's (to any Gen Z/Gen Alpha readers: yes, that was a thing back then) might peaked some curiosities from Gen Z anime/manga fans as a novelty to them if they're retro enthusiasts.
So I don't know why some anime fans are making a big deal out of anime cons having a panel for old-school anime and topic on anime back in the 80's and 90's given that Gen Z and younger demographic are into 90's and stuff that was made before they were born. So I don't see the problem with anime convention having panels and exhibitions on the old-school days and era of anime fandom in the US, and old school anime. Who knows, you may have a Gen Z anime fan that is just got into 90's tech and 90's fads, and how do you know that won't lead to crossing over into older anime? Anything's possible in this day and age of retro nostalgia. |
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Joe Mello
 Posts: 2563 Location: Online Terminal |
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For context, I've been going to conventions for 20 years, mostly as a panelist or assisting a vendor, but sometimes as a staffer and multiple times (including this year) as a programming staffer. A lot of this has been restricted to the Mid-Atlantic/Ohio Valley regions of the US, but here are my observations:
The people who were part of the Pokemon/Toonami generation never really left with the exception of the pandemic, and most of your current convention staff is probably going to be of the age where they were part of that generation, too. (If you were 10 years old when Ash first met Pikachu, you're approaching 40 now). Most of the people running conventions when the boom happened were likely in their 20's or 30's and have aged up accordingly. Some have aged out, but a lot of them have also stuck around, assuming they're physically able (and some who aren't are still around, too). As far as paneling is concerned, it's one of the subcultures (like cosplay, idols, etc) that's sort of its own cottage industry that people enter once they phase out of the part of adolescence that treats cons as nothing but Spring Break. On the current low end, that's probably going to be some of the later Toonami kids (pre- or early Naruto for reference) so they're going to know about stuff from the earlier in the 2000's as well. So that era is going to be full of things that are both full of study material and have deep personal connections for both the speaker and audience. The problems I forsee come in this next wave, the ones born after 2000. For one thing, this is a generation that didn't experience the origin and/or explosive growth of their local conventions so they just assume the industry is this large corporate monolith and has Always Been Like This (it absolutely hasn't and in some cases still isn't) so they may not feel inclined to participate. The other problem is that the people within that aforementioned cottage industry are really skilled and really seasoned, so that both reduces the opportunities for new voices to break through and potentially discourages new voices out of fear that they won't measure up to the established guard. tl;dr if you want to be a panelist, please do. Please share your passion with us, even if you think it's going to be weird. One of the panels that has stuck with me over a decade later was a group putting on essentially a Nick Jr.-style show intending to teach rudimentary Japanese with Chii from Chobits being the central character of the story. As long as we vaguely think there's an audience for it, there can be a place for you. |
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mdo7
Posts: 8241 Location: Katy, Texas, USA |
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I also agreed with Joe Mello on what he wrote above. I liked to add that we have Zillennials and Xennials that are part of the wider anime/manga fandom so they can played a big role in closing the gap when it comes to introducing older anime/manga or curiosities/novelties from the old days of pre-2000's/early 2000's anime. Zillennials are particular an interesting mix because they can connect Gen Z fans and given that Zillennials have knowledge of the early to late 2000's and that includes anime that came out in the US at that time. |
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Greed1914
 Posts: 5379 |
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I think some of this is because of how easily accessible anime is now. For a lot of people around my age, what you got was what was on TV. Not only did that likely mean rewatching shows and having a chance to analyze them, but it also meant that people were watching the same things. Now, there is so much content coming out all the time that it's easy for people to fall into smaller and smaller fandoms and for things from even a year ago to be 'old.' It might be harder to find the motivation to do a panel for a relatively recent series if you see that interest in it dried up as soon as the next anime season started.
The other thing is that I think for older panelists covering older anime, they've figured out that they need to have a panel that offers something more interesting than, "I still like this old show." |
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TJ_Kat
Posts: 896 Location: Saskatoon, Canada |
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I think part of the reason nostalgia panels are so prevalent is because the anime industry of a bygone era was just more interesting. I don't necessarily mean the shows either, but the industry itself. It's no secret the anime industry has followed the general entertainment industry trend of growing increasingly risk-averse, but in the 90s it seemed like everyone and their dog had some wacky anime concept and had no trouble securing funding for at least an OVA. And it's not just Japan either. You mention Robotech, but you would never get a show like that - pieced together from three separate, unrelated shows - made today.
In the 90s and early 00s, the anime industry as a whole had a lot of "they did what?!?!" going for it, and those kinds of thing and how they came to be are interesting to talk about. |
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FireChick
 Subscriber Posts: 2774 Location: United States |
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Indeed. The anime industry of the 90s/00s is totally different from how it is now. I highly recommend checking out AnimEigo's The Anime Business interviews on their YouTube page. They're fantastic and extremely informative and full of so many interesting and wild stories about how the US anime industry was in those days. |
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kgw
 Posts: 1552 Location: Spain, EU |
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As someone who attends conventions ('salones') as panelist on this side of the Atlantic, I can say that young otaku fans fill the room for publisher releases (some of them like to put on a big show), and for current mangaka authors (last year, the room was almost empty for Kia Asamiya). However, the rest of the panels are usually aimed at the older otaku fandom.
To be honest, our panels usually focus on nostalgia and the history of fandom, as well as 'classic' manga and anime series. As such, we have never had a sold out. |
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Multi-Facets
Posts: 394 |
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This article brought up something I'd thought about previously: At 42, I'm considered an oldatku, and it's kinda alienating. Conventions I've attended don't always have panels relevant to my interests, and veterans of the industry, whether Japanese or English-speaking, only seem to go to large conventions that can pay them. And now, with airlines going to crap, fewer guests are willing to travel. Japanese guests might also need interpreters and tour guides for assistance.
And with more and new content coming out, it's getting harder to find something that resonates with viewers since there's so much of it. I was euphoric when I realized I wanted to read "Kowloon Generic Romance" since Mayuzuki-sensei's writing process appealed to me, and it was something new and exciting that actually got my attention. All the new content means new talent keeps coming in. And since I don't really like dubs and don't really play video games, I keep seeing names I don't know. Jan Scott-Frazier once said it kinda bothered her that fewer and fewer people were seeming to find and appreciate the old-school stuff. The productions that were painted on cels with blood, sweat, and tears (sometimes literally). It was getting harder and harder to relate to the new audience, or to find other people to talk to about it. She missed that kind of connection. I get what she means now. |
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Tenchi
 Posts: 4663 Location: Ottawa... now I'm an ex-Anglo Montrealer. |
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As a Gen X'er, I'd personally still rather buy music on CD than vinyl. While I have inherited two turntables so I can and do occasionally listen to vinyl, I seem to be in the minority of physical media fans who prefer the sound of CDs despite the supposed "warmth" of vinyl. Plus, until until about the seventh generation of videogame consoles, you could play CDs on nearly anything with an optical drive so I still have at least a dozen ways of playing them, including a few portable CD players. But, then again, unlike members of Gen Z, I'm old enough to remember CDs replacing vinyl records (and audio cassettes) as the most common prerecorded audio format, something that happened during my peak childhood years in the mid-1980s, so it's harder for me to intentionally go back to the formats that CD replaced. To tie it in more with the subject of the column, there is now an annual anime convention here in Ottawa but I so far haven't gone to it, both because the tickets are a bit pricey for the amount of actual enjoyment I'd likely get as a middle-aged anime fan and also because, from what I understand (and I've asked attendees directly about this on Reddit), there's next to no audio or video physical media in the dealer's room. For me, unless there's a guest I really want to see (and it would have to be someone on the level of, say, Yoko Hikasa, Minori Chihara, Marina Inoue, Rina Satou, or Naomi Oozora), there's just no point in me going to an anime convention if I can't buy a few imported anime soundtrack CDs from the dealer's room. |
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mdo7
Posts: 8241 Location: Katy, Texas, USA |
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Well, that's the coolest and the strangest thing about it. Even though the CD's audio quality is superiorly better then vinyl when it comes to that, the truth on why people are buying vinyl is not because people have bad hearing and can't distinguish between CD/mp3 audio and vinyl audio. It's because people are rebelling against digital "mainstream"-ness, they don't care about audio quality superiority. I've looked around on the web and this is going to sound strange but there are multiple reasons for that is well let me break that down:
Also, I was told that buying vinyl was a sort of a backlash toward audio streaming like Spotify and buying vinyl (along with CDs) represents ownership and authenticity. The Vinyl revival is more about feeling, and not on audio quality. As I said, the people that are buying vinyl are not audiophiles. So it's a strange paradox for vinyl to be getting revival in this day and age of digital audio and audio streaming. I can't fully explained it, but you're witnessing with our own eyes. |
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bluebaron
Posts: 169 |
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I miss pre 2020 conventions. Nowadays it's way way too crowded.
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Greed1914
Posts: 5379 |
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I have started watching that recently, and it is fascinating stuff. Things like figuring out how to get retailers to give them a chance when they knew they had a hit on their hands, or figuring out how to do things because nobody knew what to do until they tried. Even if the company isn't around or the person retired a long time ago, the excitement is there for the stories of how some famous anime we kind of take for granted even got to where people could see it. Even if I'm unfamiliar with the anime or manga, or don't care about it in particular, the stories of how they even got out to the world is interesting on its own. |
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moroboshi-kun
Posts: 91 |
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'Scuse me for a second while I put on my "pretentious, over-thinking, somewhat arrogant a-hole" hat.
There we go. Nice to see it still fits. “After all, nostalgia is an emotion for people with no future.” ― Kieron Gillen, Phonogram, Vol. 1: Rue Britannia I've been an anime (and comics and animation and sci-fi and fantasy and and and) fan since the 70's. One thing I've always been wary of is nostalgia. I felt like all the music and movies and anime and everything else I was growing up around was exciting and inspiring, but a lot of the older-types kept talking about how great things used to be. I always saw them as, to paraphrase, living their lives in the wrong direction. Sure, there was cool stuff before, but MTV didn't ruin music, it just changed it. Anime becoming popular in the 90's didn't ruin fandom, it expanded it and make it more inclusive and fun (and improved its hygiene). I love my old shows, but the current anime scene could almost be seen as a golden age. Simulcasts. Amazing shows. Tons of diversity in subject matter, even with all the isakai shows. More manga than I can read.
I still feel like there's a lot of creativity, but I can appreciate how weird some of the older shows could be. And creepy and disturbing and gory. Just to call myself out, though, while I try to embrace change and see most of it as a zero-sum sort of thing, sometimes change is for the worse. Streaming is awesome, but I feel like it's come at the cost of a lot of community. I used to run into or even meet people at Best Buy on Tuesdays when the new DVDs came out. Maybe that sort of thing still exists and I just don't see it because I'm older (not old!) and have to use more of my attention for other things, but it seems very different. I am missing having to go buy bricks of video tapes, passing them around, even having to wait for things to show up in the mail. Maybe the trade off is that we get easy access but lose some of the magic and fun. What used to take effort and patience now takes nothing more than a few clicks for instant gratification. That may be a form of progress, but it changes our relationship to the things we love. The chase, the scarcity, the shared anticipation — all that friction made discovery feel electric. Now if you'll excuse me my high-horse needs water. |
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Jisu
Posts: 41 |
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Also, with all the mainstream success that battle shounen have been getting to the point that everyone from reviewers to cinemas to news shows has to acknowledge them (sometimes obviously reluctantly), other genres and demographics still struggle. Shoujo anime, school romance or otherwise, are starting to revive and we're getting many more than we did just a few years ago, but you can still count how many we get in most seasons on one hand even if you add in josei. And what shoujo romances do you find people online talk about mostly? Aside from this season's With You, Our Love Will Make It Through -- where much of the discourse is backlash to its being a shoujo and a furry romance and yet daring to look good and get promoted while One Punch Man S3 looks like garbage, as if the budget is being "misappropriated" to go to a show they don't like, even though they're not even made by the same studio -- it's all stuff from the 90s and 00s. The nostalgic gushing is about Nana, Fruits Basket, and Ouran High School Host Club. The #aesthetic photosets are from Sailor Moon, Super Gals, and Dear Brother. If you're lucky you might find a few people who watched A Sign of Affection or Honey Lemon Soda, but they quickly get drowned out by the idea that the only things worth watching are old enough to vote.
So what does that mean? It means the people who are running panels and trying to diversify the offerings so it's not twelve panels about Demon Slayer are going to go for things like genre overviews, interactive games, and yes, nostalgia bait. Lots of nostalgia bait. Even if you want to do a panel on your favourite current niche anime, nobody wants to do it for an audience of three. |
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Tenchi
Posts: 4663 Location: Ottawa... now I'm an ex-Anglo Montrealer. |
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Not that I've bought more than a couple of new albums on CD per decade since the 1990s (excluding anime CDs) since most of the pop music that I like to listen to is from the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s, but haven't music labels by and large stopped with the "loud" remasters on CD due to the backlash from the people who do still buy CDs? I know I'd rather buy a "quiet" CD with lossless audio than a "loud" CD with clipping and I'd just let the volume controls of the player or computer compensate for the quietness. |
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