Forum - View topicINTEREST: Masaaki Yuasa Responds to Critic's Poor Review of Devilman Crybaby
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Connor Dino
Posts: 426 Location: Anywhere. Because "hacked." |
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Since you just assumed that a majority of the people commenting here are racists, allow me to assume some things about you in turn. Did you just come from a Social Justice class in your sophomore year in college (where you just got “woke”) and decided to brand people you don’t know anything about as racists to make yourself feel good? Are you for real? How utterly disrespectful. Secondly, how you can say that people are viewing anime through a “colonial mindset” is difficult to fathom, when historically Japan has never been colonized by the West. That is some impressive mental gymnastics there buddy. Thirdly, Japan did some pretty impressive colonizing of its neighbors, but WAIT! Does that mean by giving anime to be worked on by studios in Korea and China, they are…REVERSING THE COLONIAL MINDSET?! So shouldn’t anime being more globalized in Asia be a good thing? But wait, that isn’t what the critic said…huh…I am so confused…muhhhh…. See how stupid that line of reasoning is buddy? Fourthly, people’s problem with the critic seem to be the lack of understanding behind his comments. The translation in this article does not paint the critic in a favorable light. Now was the translation accurate to what he actually said? Not sure, some may have been lost in translation. Taken at face value, people’s outrage in this comment thread is perfectly justified. Lastly, I have seen just as many people try to fill in the blanks and try to make a point about the tweets translation not being completely on point. Did you just skip over that to make your ignorant “point”? Where did the critic in the article talk about this colonial mindset? How does people’s response make him correct? You used a few comments in this thread of (most likely) early teenagers and decided to call all Western anime fans racists…when not a single person brought up race until YOU DID. Who is really being racist here? Maybe I am being baited, since everyone else seems to have had the good sense to ignore you, but I could not resist. Who would have thought that someone with almost 500 posts on an anime news site would be so incredibly misinformed. It would be funny if it wasn’t so sad. |
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relyat08
 Posts: 4125 Location: Northern Virginia |
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I don't think this actually makes his complaints sound any more reasonable at all. The problem is that there are numerous examples of "otaku anime" on Netflix and elsewhere that have gotten VERY VERY popular internationally, CR licenses tons of Otaku anime, Netflix is funding tons of Otaku anime(Violet Evergarden is streaming on Netflix this damn season, they have the license to Fate Extra, Apocrypha, etc etc). So this guys worries are entirely unfounded. People in the business obviously know that "otaku anime" can be successful overseas and they continue to make it and it continues to be very popular. He seems literally worried that just one non-Otaku show(I honestly disagree with characterizing this show as non-Otaku) has gained immense domestic and international traction without having "Japanese anime culture"(also bullsh*t). And then he says things like this:
Which just makes me scratch my head so hard... whether something is late-night anime, or intended to be a mainstream international hit, has nothing to do with the writing quality. But both his meaninglessly vague complaints about the quality of the story, script, and direction in Crybaby, and his assertion that late-night anime is somehow inherently better in those respects is laughably ridiculous.
I think a lot of people feel that way. It's exactly how shows like Re:Zero and Dragon Maid became huge hits in the global fandom.
Yeah, I think maybe they meant ReLife, which did have CR funding. I don't remember anything about Re:Creators. That's pretty much an Aniplex production through and through. |
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Selipse
Posts: 216 |
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My bad, I meant to say "not everyone". In any case, what you're referring to is the fans' reaction, while this guy is talking about the suits' thoughts. He's precisely talking about that disconnect between what producers think and what the fans want.
I just assumed he might have some inside connections that have expressed that feeling (non-otaku anime are more successful), but you might be right that he's just delusional. I still can't comment on the criticisms of the quality of the show itself, but knowing Yuasa I do feel like it's probably just this guy being kinda crazy. His comment about late-night anime doesn't refer to them being inherently better, though. I think he's just saying that late-night shows funded through traditional means that are more 'otaku' in nature and have better quality exist. (Probably referring to how, even though it's this huge production backed by international funding, it isn't noticeably better than old-school domestic productions) |
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鏡
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~redacted~
Last edited by 鏡 on Wed Jan 17, 2018 5:39 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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Amethyst Alchemist
Former ANN Editor
 Posts: 313 Location: where it's always a good morning |
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Thank you for your comments and suggestions. We updated the article and added some clarifications, including more information about the "otaku vs. subculture" debate. |
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portgas
Posts: 66 |
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My take on this is that it's an indirect way of criticizing Western money influence rather than any judgement on the work itself. I think taking on Netflix directly would have repercussions. There has always been some level of "investment" by the outside but when the big money of Netflix and Amazon is involved, things change.
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Selipse
Posts: 216 |
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Thank you for taking into account my comment and updating the article. Thank you as well for adding the info about the "otaku vs subculture" thing. I kinda got an idea of what it was about from the guy's tweets, but it's nice to see it clarified. 
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Lord Oink
Posts: 876 |
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Which is a totally valid concern. Obviously Devilman wasn't, but who knows how long until we start seeing things like what happened to western geek media over the years. In some dark future Disney buys Shueisha and forced Oda to kill off and replace the Strawhats with black and Muslim nonbinaries. I don't think it'll happen. We might see the occasional Neo Yokio shitshow, but otaku anime sells the best in America. Stuff like Attack on Titan and Sword Art Online were huge hits here. If Americans want to foot the bill, let them. I'm sure most companies are smart enough not to mess with a formula that works. This guys complaints seem to stem from not knowing much about American tastes. Despite the handwrithing in this thread, most American fans love otaku stuff. The anti-otaku doomsayers are the minority. and you know it just kills them when they see shows like Re:Zero, Knight and Magic, and SAO top the most-watched stream charts. |
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Mr. sickVisionz
 Posts: 2187 |
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I took a different interpretation from the handful of phrases quoted than others.
To me, he was saying the show is middling and people are overlooking all of the shortcomings because it was made with "international appeal". Almost as if shows made for the domestic audience are lesser shows by default and shows that aren't are better shows by default irregardless of writing, direction, and the other metrics he brought up. When he said there are late night anime that are better, I didn't really think that was a knock on anything. I'm kinda surprised so much of the thread is slamming the idea that this show could be worse than some late night anime (less surprised at the "all modern anime is moe blob" comments that never seem to go away despite how many shows that aren't even remotely like that get made every year). Aren't most of the anime that show up on "Best of" lists or that get uber praise late night anime? I took the reviewer as saying more like "there are late night shows that are better than this [that get reviewed worse, what's the deal?]" Irregardless, the ideas probably would have been better expressed in an actual article rather than 140 character tweets. |
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Xe4
 Posts: 96 |
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Flash is just a tool. It can be used poorly, as in many cases it is, or to wonderful effect, like in the case of Yuasa anime or movies like Ernest & Celestine. |
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Stuart Smith
 Posts: 1298 |
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After reading the full tweets, this is also the interpretation I got as well. It is very similar to when we get a live-action Hollywood adaption of an anime and people say it's an overall good because it will bring more exposure to the medium and reach a wider audience. The standards become far lower as people value mainstream exposure over simply being a good product. -Stuart Smith |
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leafy sea dragon
 Posts: 7163 Location: Another Kingdom |
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This critic sounds like the worst kind: The sort who wants what he's criticizing to be one specific thing and will complain when it isn't that one specific thing. He's like IGN's Hilary Goldstein when he (yeah, Hilary is apparently a unisex name) complained that Mario Kart: Double Dash!! was not enough like the hyper-realistic driving games he enjoyed.
Not just anime. I've been in communities for video games (of many sorts and many franchises), western animation, 20th century philosophy, pinball, electrical engineering, films and filmmaking, young adult literature, history, and toy collection, and that's off the top of my head. Without exception they ALL have people like this. They're always angry, never satisfied, and constantly looking to pick fights, and their numbers have only increased after Zero Punctuation was proven a success and caustic criticism became the hot new way to make reviews.
From reading the article without any knowledge of the Japanese language, that's my impression too. He sounds like someone who cherishes anime that appeals to the otaku niche (specifically the Japanese otaku niche) and dislikes any anime that doesn't. That is, it sounds like the root cause of his dislike of Devilman Crybaby is that it's too different from the norm.
Agreed. I miss Japan Animator Expo. The shorts it produced, particularly stuff like "Me! Me! Me!" and "Kanón," were delightfully, beautifully animated stuff no production committee would have approved of. And they were amazingly strange (especially my favorite, "I Can Friday by Day!") and, while most were pretty clearly anime in their look, all of them were at least different enough to stand out from the samey-samey stuff the production committees WOULD have said yes to. Maybe this critic works for a company that does a lot of production committee work. Maybe he's a committee member himself. (Or not, as I'm guessing they would like something with international appeal, because that means more money.)
People complain that Trigger series are too energetic? That's exactly what I like so much about their stuff (and they are the studio currently still in the business that adheres the most to the 7 Principles of Animation, meaning they are the most traditional in another sense). I swear, some people have become so numb that they don't know a good thing when they see it. They are the people who will eat a filet mignon and complain that it's too tender and flavorful. They are the people whom Gordon Ramsay will cook for in Kitchen Nightmares and complain it's not like their bland food.
Remove the "without tying himself to the conventions" part, and I think that's what this critic means. My impression is that he rejects anything that has found success outside of Japan, even if it's a very otaku series.
Based on that description, I'm starting to get an idea of what his bedroom must be like.
Well, in proportion to its budget. Something made on a small budget can be profitable without a large audience, but something made on a huge budget will require lots of people coming in before it starts turning a profit. A good example is the indie game versus the AAA game. It's why Divekick is financially successful despite selling far, far fewer copies than Street Fighter V, which is putting a strain on Capcom.
I see it more as a gradual evolution--like all other things, other people come in and influence how things are done from then on, both domestic and foreign. Japanese food itself is a good example: Most people eating tempura don't even realize it's Portuguese in origin (including its name), and without foreign influence, there wouldn't be omrice, karaage, or Ramune and its copycats either, all of which have become staples of everyday people's lunches and dinners in Japan. And it works the other way around too: I can't imagine how Hawaiian cuisine would be like without the Spam musubi, loco moco, or their version of katsu pork, all of which were Japanese-inspired due to the presence of Japanese people on the islands for over 100 years. (Well, I hope it's been enough time to speak about Hawaii without talking about the false alarm.)
The article states that the word "subculture" has a different connotation in Japanese than it does in English (if it has any connotation at all in English, as I've always considered it to be a purely neutral word). I don't exactly understand what though.
That's a good point. Mirrored in every civil rights movement: The people who had the social power before won't react well when some of their power is then given to someone else (in this case, the otakus' power to influence what the industry produces). Also the reason behind every time the long-time fans of something see newcomers coming in even if said newcomers are nice, friendly, and polite. I can see this same thing happening to 2-D fighting games, sooner or later. As it stands right now, the genre has changed and evolved the least of any major genre because everyone making 2-D fighting games is catering to the same small audience of the hardcore players. But perhaps it's already happening, if you consider the Smash Bros. games to be 2-D fighting games, as it's already spawned a wave of imitators. (And, of course, there are lots of 2-D fighting game fans who resent the Smash Bros. games' very existence, either because it threatens to take subsequent games in a more cosmopolitan direction or because it has created its own Eternal September in some places.)
He must be that tourist who, when going to a major city in another country, will immediately seek the Japanese community there and never leave for the entire time he's there while complaining how said community has assimilated the local culture into itself. Then again, he has no reason to ever leave Japan.
Not everyone in Japan is an otaku (most people in Japan are not), so I do wonder if he dislikes anime that happens to be successful with the Japanese mainstream too, like your name.
I don't think anyone here is saying their tastes are better than those of the Japanese because they're western, but that the main idea people are saying here is that the way Devilman Crybaby presents itself is more accessible than normal for an anime because it does not conform to the normal tropes of an otaku-centric anime. That is, no one is saying the show, being made for a wide audience, is causing it to fail in Japan. I think it's wonderful if it can succeed both in Japan and overseas.
This critic does not seem to like anything that isn't aimed strictly at otaku or is critical of otaku. I'm sure if he had the chance to, he would have complained about everything Yuasa had made up to this point.
So the way he sees the world would be something like the Japanese equivalent of this: 
In which case, he doesn't understand Yuasa. Yuasa does not make normal otaku-centered anime. Devilman Crybaby is more Yuasa, only with a higher budget and without the constraints of production committees. What he's doing is like criticizing Looney Tunes because Bob Clampett didn't conform to the Disney style animation other studios were aping, or Psycho because Alfred Hitchcock's insistence on not letting viewers in after the movie began meant theaters couldn't screen it in the continuous newsreel style. |
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FD2Raptor
 Posts: 100 Location: Viet Nam |
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Uh................................................................... Looking at some of the tweets I'd say the article and many posters have missed the mark, as I believe he's not talking about how Devilman should have been more otaku pandering or anything to that effect, but he was complaining about the tendency of the praises from the supporter of the series inside Japan that this Devilman anime incarnation is "something that can compete on an international level" and he went on to insinuate that these praises suggest the mentality that the otaku anime is only popular with the domestic audience and only these "stylish subculture" anime (a category of which he included this Devilman anime) would work for the international audience; and that this baseless thinking played a big role in why Director Yuasa was picked for the project (this is the part Yuasa replied to as "Nope", and Kurose followed with "regardless of what the people directly involved might say, it doesn't change the fact that he didn't enjoy this Devilman"). So the short version of this should be about a critic attacking/criticizing the fans rather than the series; i.e. in the same veins as the "this anime is for those that jerk off to their 2D waifu" kind of criticisms you used to run into around this site. |
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Agent355
 Posts: 5113 Location: Crackberry in hand, thumbs at the ready... |
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That makes a lot more sense. Thanks for clarifying. I still disagree with him, because it's just as easy to dismiss the good qualities of a show because you're biased against it as an "international work" as it is to overlook bad parts of a show because you're biased in its favor due to its "international" status. But I'm biased as an international fan to begin with--Devilman Crybaby is just one of many anime available for streaming internationally this season, so I don't differentiate it as being more "international" than any other show. |
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BadNewsBlues
Posts: 7166 |
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Why would they explicitly make such animes which have their fanbases strictly for themselves also the animes you're thinking about are "Miss Kobayashi's Dragon Maid", "Ero Manga Sensei/A Little Sister's All You Need", and "Kemono & Friends".
I'm hairy, American, and chubby too but don't like Devilman Crybaby.
Given how it ends and apparently given what the original series segued into? Violence Jack.
Which is ironic given what Japan tried to do in various other Asian territories...but no not really
Isn't Japan notorious for expecting good Japanese boys and girls to conform to particular standards some of which are not good like working long hours with barely any rest?
As much as I like some of what Japan turns out when it comes to media this does have a degree of basis.
Given that original Devilman manga and anime aren't exactly mainstream outside of Japan hence the ignorance not really. |
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