Forum - View topicMadoka: Otaku.
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Veers
 Posts: 1197 Location: Texas |
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ArsenicSteel
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That comment was in response to his post. I said all anime is out to make money and that he is simply putting certain anime onto a pedestal. Where in there am I implying "anime cannot be a medium through which to tell a good/inspiring/thought-provoking"? I simply have no need to explain a point I've never claimed.
Last edited by ArsenicSteel on Thu Dec 29, 2011 8:27 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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GeminiDS85
Posts: 391 |
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These kinds of debates stem from the inability to comprehend one essential facet of art: art is a human created system that has no set rules to determine quality or value. Consequently, problems arise when interacting with the system because there is no clear distinction on what should be valued in the system and what should not. Concepts like authorial intent, interest in making a profit, and audience appreciation are all important factors in analyzing art, yet there has never been a clear distinction on why one of these factors should be more important than another. Therefore, given the total absence of any rules or measures of quality that are inherently part of the system surrounding art, all factors must be relevant and given equal value within the ambit of the system. However, we are all products of societies which contain heavily propagated opinions on how art should be approached and valued, and these opinions go a long way in determining how we approach, consume, and evaluate art. That being said, the problems I mentioned earlier arise when people misappropriate these heavily propagated opinions as facts, but since art is a system that inherently has no rules to determine what is valuable or of higher quality, these opinions misappropriated as facts continue to be disseminated because the system inherently will never allow them to be proven incorrect.
It’s comical to think about how our “civilized” pursuit of art is in many ways just replicating primordial instincts like the drive to be the alpha among a group. Instead of beating each other over the head with sticks to prove we are superior to one another, now we use something like the internet to express our intellectual appreciation and comprehension of art to feel dominant. Anyways, this is by no means a new concept. “Civilized” intellectuals have long been using appreciation and comprehension of art as a way to express dominance. Hell, when Captain X made the statement “so frankly arguing over this shit only reeks of trying to make yourself out to be better than some other nerds,” he/she was being a total hypocrite in that his/her statement is a way of trying to express his/her intellectual dominance by devaluing all of your opinions. However, by even bringing up this point I also find myself being just as guilty in that I am devaluing his/her opinion by suggesting that it was hypocritical. 
Not that it really matters, but for everyone’s edification I just wanted to conclude by saying that analysis of systems is where the majority of academic study has gravitated towards in the last two decades. Try thinking about how the rules of a system interact when something is introduced within the confines of that system, or if the system has any set rules beyond those of the natural world. |
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jl07045
 Posts: 1527 Location: Riga, Latvia |
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Since this has gone off-rails anyway, I'll bite this. The only character that I got really invested in was Homura. She was introduced as a mysterious character and her reasons and emotions were revealed over time and that really worked. Sayaka might've worked for me, but I just didn't like her character. Madoka didn't, because her role was clear for me. She will stand by and watch as the things unravel until the climax, where she will finally make a decision and sacrifice herself in some way to resolve the plot. Mami and Kyoko didn't work that well, because they both had ten minutes of focus to reveal their issues (Mami's conversation with Madoka and Kyoko's with Sayaka) and that is not enough time for me to develop an attachment.
That is of course a nice way to look at things, especially since you did acknowledge that you're doing the same thing. But are you seriously asking us to go meta, because there are no objective mind-independent set of rules? Hate to break it to you, but that goes for anything except mathematics and deductive logics. A meta discussion in many ways is much emptier than one based on ad hoc systems. |
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dtm42
Posts: 14084 Location: currently stalking my waifu |
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Wrong. Factually, utterly, wrong. Ever seen those movie tie-in Happy Meals at McDonalds? Ever visited a toy store and seen shelves full of nothing but Transformers, Yu-Gi-Oh? As George Lucas found out in the seventies, the merchandising side of things is so much more profitable. And don't say that Anime isn't Hollywood and therefore doesn't apply. There are K-ON!-themed guitars that sell for thousands of American dollars for crying out loud. Also, and now is as good as any to mention this, but all the figurines (you know, Figmas and the like) have on average a far higher profit margin than home video releases. An Anime pushing a toy line makes perfect sense. Many, many shows are made simply to boost sales of their original source materials. That basically makes them giant advertisements, although they can still possess artistic worth, and they can still make bucket-loads of money directly themselves. Digimon, Pokemon, Yu-Gi-Oh! are all made to increase sales of the trading card games and whatnot, not to make money from home video release. After the first season of Haruhi came out there was a huge spike in sales of the Light Novels; the makers of Boku wa Tomodachi ga Sukunai are banking on the same thing happening. Ar Tonelico was a twenty-five minute ad for the game, and nonsensical because of it. togainu no chi - Bloody Curs was appallingly bad, true, but only because it was an extremely low-budget twelve-episode advertisement for the Visual Novel. I could go. And on. And on. Many of the shows which don't cross the Manabi Line were never realistically expected to in the first place. To make a basically-animated one-cour show takes US$3m, but this is an investment that can be recovered if it boosts sales of the original source material or hypes up a merchandising line. So there you have it. |
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ArsenicSteel
Posts: 2370 |
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Having tie-ins either planned before(Transformers toys) or coming after(K-ON! guitars) the creation of an anime does not remove the expectations that the home video sales make money. Sure it may lessen the need for high home video sales for the main license holder but the various companies(There's no single company putting out guitars, trading cards, light novels, manga, games, etc for any given franchise) are concerned with making their share back, with interest, for whatever project they invested in. Also I think your analogy with Happy Meal toys and movies is backwards. |
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dtm42
Posts: 14084 Location: currently stalking my waifu |
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Yes, getting their money back no matter how it happens. What part of this is so difficult to you? K-ON! already made plenty on home video sales so in its case the merchandising is just money on the top. But other shows pretty much rely on merchandising and being treated as an investment to advertise the source material. After all, success on K-ON!'s level is very, very rare. And do you honestly believe that when Detective Conan sells like a couple-hundred copies that it is supposed to be breaking even on DVD sales alone? Hmm?
How so? |
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ArsenicSteel
Posts: 2370 |
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The difficult part is the "they" and "their" you are casually throwing about as if only one company has a stake in a franchise or that every company has equal stake in franchise. Either way you're simplifying the flow of money far too much.
Just to clarify your little misdirection. The TV volumes sell in the hundreds and the Specials/Movies sell in the ten thousand range, if not more. The manabi line applies to late night anime, it's not applied to prime time anime. DC volumes don't need to meet the manabi line in order to break even. |
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dtm42
Posts: 14084 Location: currently stalking my waifu |
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Production committees. Look them up. Neither of us are privy to how they operate, but that doesn't mean that they don't have some sort of system for splitting the proceeds.
Why don't volumes of the Detective Conan T.V. series need to meet the Manabi line to break even? Because they're subsidised by the specials. And why do the specials subsidise the television series? Because the series keeps fan interest high between specials. Thank you for illustrating my point. Although:
Now you want to qualify it by saying late-night Anime only? Shift the goalposts why don't you. ---------- Look, I've tried my best to keep calm and enlighten you. But you're being so unreasonably stubborn and deceitful, and spouted so many ignorant or outright factually wrong statements that I just can't be bothered continuing this any further. It's not my job to educate you, and with you refusing to listen even after I've gone out of my way I've used up all of my patience. If I was a betting man I'd say the odds are good on you deliberately dragging this out rather than actually wanting to resolve it. We've gone way, way off topic anyway. This is as good a point as any for me to bow out. |
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TheSwedishElf
Posts: 300 |
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See, this is how ArsenicSteel argues--by pulling all this shit until you go "Screw this, I'm out" and he can feel like he won. |
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ArsenicSteel
Posts: 2370 |
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If neither of us are privy to how they operate then neither of us are fit to claim the other is utterly, factually wrong without verifiable knowledge of how the system "really" works. Or do you only want us to go by your assumptions?
No, what my comment means is that the manabi line is a 2ch construct to guess at whether or not a late night series made money and is not used to for shows that appear in prime time like Detective Conan.
I am not going back to qualify that statement. I was only clarifying that you were using Manabi line wrong in regards to Detective Conan.
I am fine with going off tangent a bit in topics so long as it pertains to anime but can you stop with trying to turn me into the topic of discussion. |
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TheSwedishElf
Posts: 300 |
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I'm not. There you go again, twisting the meaning of someone's post, the only thing you apparently know how to do--saying a single sentence regarding your behaviour is not trying to change the main topic to you.
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dtm42
Posts: 14084 Location: currently stalking my waifu |
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Yes, I don't know why I fall for it time after time. Guess I'm far too naive for my own good. Hopefully I'll be a little wiser in the future. |
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Captain X
 Posts: 253 |
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Too true...
That's a rather academic argument - one that's been made about film and television since the mediums existed. |
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Annf
Posts: 578 |
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That's true-ish in some cases but it's not as universal as you're making it out to be. It's more true than it used to be for light novels now that Kadokawa owns the light novel industry, because Kadokawa is an active investor in many anime productions of novels it publishes, but it doesn't apply to cases where the publisher isn't on the production committee. No money from manga or light novel sales goes to the anime production committee directly (when money does change hands directly it's the other way around, the committee paying the author for the right to animate the work). There's a good discussion in Japanese here about the idea of trying to make profits of the original manga/novel part of the anime income: http://d.hatena.ne.jp/crimsonstarroad/20071117/1195272528 For eroge (VNs), the increased sales effect is simply too small for investing in producing and broadcasting an entire anime series purely in hopes of promoting the original game to pay off. Otherwise, with 500+ eroge coming out every year, you'd see an absurd number of eroge TV series, but instead we only get a half dozen a year. Of course children's shows e.g. Conan, Yugioh, etc. make money from mass-market toy sales and traditional TV advertising sponsorship; they can't really be talked about together with late-night shows since they operate differently. As far as we can tell, video sales remain very important to all late-night shows (keep in mind that the whole late-night system evolved out of the OVA market, which was purely about selling video), but it's difficult to unravel the details of any particular production commitee so we wind up wildly speculating about whether a show is successful or not. |
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You people are arguing over nothing.  |
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