Forum - View topicINTEREST: Cowboy Bebop Writer: Anime Will Die Out in Few Decades
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ikillchicken
 Posts: 7272 Location: Vancouver |
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Well what exactly do you consider to be what he's describing? I see him complaining of stagnation and anime that is more about merchandise. I see him complaining about series that are just empty escapism and anime with no significant plot development that instead focuses on cute characters. So basically, he wants something fresh, original and complex. If Ghost Hound and Dennoh Coil don't meet that description I don't know what would. Or what about Baccano, Durarara, Tokyo Magnitude 8.0, Michiko & Hatchin, House of Five Leaves or Time of Eve. Hell, he's apparently reaching far back enough that I can throw Mushi-Shi and Le Chevalier D'Eon into the mix. If none of these shows meet his criteria then I don't know what the heck he wants. |
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maaya
Posts: 976 |
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actually if you read the whole article, the whole thing gets a lot clearer. He is not saying that there hasn't been anything apart from Ergo Proxy or Eden of the East. He is just talking about the shows he knows very well, since he worked on them, as examples.
I think these statements are very interesting also:
Not necessarily agree with everything, but quite a bit and always interesting to see some insiders actually daring to speak out their mind. |
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PetrifiedJello
Posts: 3782 |
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Misconception. While the anime industry does have some faults, rest assured it's not going anywhere for a long, long time. If the anime industry collapses, I'm very confident the fan sector picks up where it left off.
I don't believe it's horrible. This is misleading. Stop and think what happens to anime if every single series getting released has the same "quality" as Cowboy Bebop. Like anything else, it gets diluted in time as everything starts to "look the same". Anyone who has viewed anime from the 80s and 90s knows exactly what happens to quality when "originality" hits the scene. Copycat series come spewing out of studios faster than they can actually make them. Today's "moeblob" is no different and thus, "quality" is subjective.
These "top tier" anime got boring for most people. Yu Yu Hakusho burned itself out and was the predecessor for shows like Naruto, One Piece, and Dragonball. Too much of one thing tends to burn out in time. The costs of producing Cowboy Bebop and Outlaw Star alone were enough to ensure their demise in continuation. "Moeblob" animation is cheap and easy to produce. Copy. Paste. Change color palette. Repeat. Produce. Air. Capitalize on body pillows. When one episode of Cowboy Bebop (et al) take months to produce, that's a problem. This time requires payment, and I don't know of any series which has generated enough revenue that a single episode can fund future episodes. Can anyone? Today's anime takes a few weeks to produce, and many (I've read) aren't even completed until it's nearly airtime. While I do agree there are fewer "quality" series being released to separate themselves from the typical trope (found in any entertainment, for the record), I can't blame the industry for failing to do this when there simply isn't any capital lying around to get a series like this done. Instead, we get people like Sato who do nothing more than stand on a soapbox and rant while doing nothing to make change. I certainly can't believe Sato has millions of Yen lying about to even kick start a project, let alone create one. In looking at his resume, he really has nothing to be speaking out against. Color me skeptical, but writing lyrics to an anime opening theme isn't what I call quality change in anime. |
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Parsifal24
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I was just thinking didn't Hideaki Anno say this same sort of thing back in the mid nineties? Not the industry is going to die but that Anime has become stagnant in some sense? I don't know just thinking out loud I guess.
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Onizuka666
Posts: 266 Location: U.K |
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@Amethyst: Nice to hear from someone in japan.
Sato has a very good point, and while he might have worded it a bit wrong, what he says is already happening. The quality has gone down, not just in animation but more so stories to tell. Story and characters should be at the forefront, because with out those, there's no point in us watching. Indeed, the saviour of the anime industry will be for studios to think from a global than regional perspective. Japan can be very isolationist, and this kind of isolation can of course be a death to creativity. There's a reason why many artists throughout history, have sought inifluences form various places, sometimes through travelling, and many in the anime industry need to do the same. But I digress, we've got Supernatural, Thundercats, and a few Marvel anime on the way, all of which give japanese studios exposure to different product and ways of thinking. I'm sure all of these will provide a nice pay day for all involved. Where that money goes will be key, as perhaps studios aren't investing any of it properly or enough. Another aspect, is that if japanese new english more, they'd be able to produce much more anime far much more varied markets. Eg: You want to sell anime to a place like Saudi Arabia who have a lot of money. You do your research and come up with something that will appeal to them. Thinking globally is the way forward, but without that, and focusing too much on the niche anime audience, the anime industry will cannibalise itself, til there's nothing left. I feel many fans have become too caught up on the tropes of anime genres, where the story becomes an after thought. Studios then pander to the audience, instead of remaining focused on story and characters. While this should be a good thing (selling model merch etc), now it tends to happen to the detriment of exposure to and appreciation of other series (as well as anything outside of anime/manga, for some). For the future, I think that the large japanese studios should look at nurturing young talent, and letting them flex their creative muscles, on their own individual animation projects, beside the main projects. If young bloods don't get such an expressive outlet and say in things, they are more likely to not enter the anime industry at all, and more likely to go a dojinshi route (or the games industry), outside of the main industry sphere, where their exposure will be limited. Adding to that, while there are competitions for manga to find talent (ie: International Manga Comp), why are there none for anime to do the same (correct if wrong here)? The positive recent drive to welcome foreign animators to Japan, is also a welcome trend. At least with the low japanese birthrate, no one can complain about 'they are taking our jobs'. Perhaps Sato should get in on this kind of initiative, and work with more young talent, home and away. Build a website for them, and change the broke ass way the industry currently is heading. My own anime watching/buying has also dipped significantly, as less appeals to me, that I've began to go hunt for those many anime that I never purchased before (Giant Robo, Basilisk, Black Lagoon etc). And with every new anime season, just by reading a synopsis, I can pretty much tell what's good and going to appeal to me, and what cookie cutter crap stuff is not. |
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an4564
 Posts: 6 |
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if the industry declines enough at one point the studio heads will see something is wrong and change to keep up with everything
i dont see anime dieing out completely but i do see it as a much smaller industry then it is now only way anime will die completely is for every writer to just stop writing and no new writers come up i dont think this can even happen |
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writerpatrick
 Posts: 671 Location: Canada |
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So anime will end--in 30 or 40 years. I don't think I'll really care then.
His basic point is that because so much animation work is being exported, animation produced in Japan will end. But that's highly doubtful. It may not be the industry it is today but it's hard to eliminate it completely. Furthermore, animation is very much an international product. There's plenty of countries producing animation so there's absolutely no danger that it would disappear. And even if the manga upon which so much of it is based goes, there's still a lot of anime based upon novels and non-Japanese material. So there's still plenty of material to draw from. By the time the Japanese animation industry does collapse, it's likely the Korea and many of the other countries that are getting the sub-contracted animation work will learn how to do it properly. So those will be the countries the animation comes from. The only ones really affected will be the Japanese animators. They won't be able to get the jobs they use to nor will those jobs pay as much. But the fans are unlikely to notice a difference. |
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rockman nes
 Posts: 271 |
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Reading this and looking at the backgound of the main page, I would have to agree (somewhat).
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Dagon123
Posts: 194 |
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Anime won't "die" out, its ingrained in the DNA of Japanese society, its like Superhero's and loony tunes in America, we may not make new episodes, but we have channels for them, people still buy them, and newer shows today still use the archetypes from the past just using modern technology, Ben 10 is a Superhero, its what we like to see even if its drastically different then the original superman, Chowder may use surreal comedy but he still uses gags I've seen in Tom & Jerry. My point is right now they are in a recessive state, as this guy put it
No one is willing to put there career on the line if they have an idea they know is truly great, sure its not the "sound" thing to do, but it proves that point exactly, you have to step outside of your comfort zone to be something.
I'd personally love to see this, you can bash Afro Samurai to hell and back but its original, as far as I know theres only ONE afro samurai anime, and its this one, and it did what it set out to do with flying colors, there are many other places outside japan that would love to do this (I'm looking at you France), would it be "traditional" japanese anime? no, but with the way the cookie-cutter shows are being flown off the assembly line, a change of scenery would only do it good, there are other things then being in a highschool japan ^_- |
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Ranma824
 Posts: 456 |
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I'll take escapism over anything Sato can write every day of the week.
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wandering-dreamer
 Posts: 1733 |
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When did escapism become such a bad word? When I think escapism I think "Okay, had a bad day, instead of beating my head against a wall because of how frustrated I am, I'm going to get lost in a good book/movie/something so I won't wake up tomorrow still being p.o'ed at the world in general." I didn't think that escapism referred to just living out your fantasies through a story but rather just as a break from the real world, and isn't that what everyone here is doing at some point or another when they watch anime?
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maaya
Posts: 976 |
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No, actually that's not his point at all. Quite on the contrary. He dislikes anime being used for nationalistic aims, as in the part i cited above. He saays that Japan refuses to teach more evolved animation techniques to the foreign sub-contractors, because then they might actually become good in doing animation oO And they don't want foreign talents in the industry (for anything else than the cheap unimportant work), because they want to keep the "japanese supremacy" on anime. He thinks this will block creative input from outside of Japan. And at the same time they are also blocking creative input from inside of Japan as well. He talks about both of these aspects. |
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agila61
 Posts: 3213 Location: NE Ohio |
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I am trying to think of how Cowboy Bebop is an exploration of the problems of the today's struggling bounty hunter industry ... the exploitation of the bounty hunters by authority, etc. ... except its so not. I think escapism is not the precise word here, since we can escape into a well told story as well. Indeed, its in many ways easier to escape into a well told story. |
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stararnold
 Posts: 227 Location: LaSalle, Quebec, Canada |
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So as long a lot of people in Japan still love Anime, the Anime industry can't die at all. Only a few Anime genres and trends are likely to die due to the low amount of support by fans. Therefore, the writer is only half-right (or at least in my opnion).
What's really dying though is Anime distribution in North America and a few other outside-Japan areas because pirates responsible for fansubs are interefering with it. |
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Onizuka666
Posts: 266 Location: U.K |
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@Maaya
You made a great summarising of the whole dumb situation right there. Gates closed to outside talent and gates closed to young wanna be talent in the industry. Its insanely like a snake eating its tail, and gradually choking on it. Of course, the reason anime won't totally die is because of hentai. As they say, while many of us might frown on hentai, its anime that's never returned by the customer. The money from hentai does a lot to help the industry along. I noticed something else. There are a good few manga about actually making manga (Comic Party, Bakuman etc), but where are the same representative tales about making anime? Seems there hasn't been anything since Gainax's Otaku No Video way back in the late 80's. Perhaps Genshiken is the modern version of that. Perhaps we should leave that one to Shinkai, because he's the only one, who has shown that you don't need the big studio, to produce some cool compelling anime. I'm sure we'd all like Gainax to try a modern OnV, but unfortunately, they've become the man, and Eva and Gurren Lagen are their main focus. I'd love to see more from them, but it seems even they have lost their creative edge, at times. Someone said stuff about novels. I was really pleased by Guin Saga, and its such a shame that didn't get a second anime season (I'll hunt the books/audio books down), as its the kind of anime with good substance and a decent tale to tell. Besides that, I also thoroughly enjoy Baccano, also based on a novel. So perhaps this too is a more positive direction, use other source material as a base then cook. |
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