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Anime Spotlight Spring 2014-The List

This one lost me after looking at the character list, seeing a male lead, and then about ten female characters of varying tropes/body designs/fetishy styles before getting to the only other male character, who looks to be the villain of this color-by-numbers sameness.

Splitter wrote:

This one lost me after looking at the character list, seeing a male lead, and then about ten female characters of varying tropes/body designs/fetishy styles before getting to the only other male character, who looks to be the villain of this color-by-numbers sameness.

This. So much.

If I was working on an art team, I'd have sledgehammer next to my desk and would once in awhile burst into the story department to remind them that me and my team are working really hard while there apparently drinking lead paint.

Actually the synopsis implies that most dragons are male, as Eco being a young girl is surprising.

(Cutie gay dragonboys never ;_;)

Actually the synopsis implies that most dragons are male, as Eco being a young girl is surprising.

(Cutie gay dragonboys never ;_;)

Splitter wrote:

This one lost me after looking at the character list, seeing a male lead, and then about ten female characters of varying tropes/body designs/fetishy styles before getting to the only other male character, who looks to be the villain of this color-by-numbers sameness.

This. So much.

Eisenmann V wrote:

Splitter wrote: This one lost me after looking at the character list, seeing a male lead, and then about ten female characters of varying tropes/body designs/fetishy styles before getting to the only other male character, who looks to be the villain of this color-by-numbers sameness. This. So much.

I'll triple that.

Yeah, scrolling down the list of girls with varying hair colors and purposely vague character descriptions ending in "but...", I was just beginning to think the only thing missing here was the white haired, masked antagonist. And there he was.

Knoepfchen wrote:

Yeah, scrolling down the list of girls with varying hair colors and purposely vague character descriptions ending in "but...", I was just beginning to think the only thing missing here was the white haired, masked antagonist. And there he was.

Lol. Anime, why art thou so predictable.

ChibiKangaroo wrote:

Knoepfchen wrote: Yeah, scrolling down the list of girls with varying hair colors and purposely vague character descriptions ending in "but...", I was just beginning to think the only thing missing here was the white haired, masked antagonist. And there he was. Lol. Anime, why art thou so predictable.

Because risks can be damning when you're catering to a market that revels in familiarity.

Just like the western market for tv shows and movies.

Anime just wants to be like all the other big boys.

rederoin wrote:

Just like the western market for tv shows and movies. Anime just wants to be like all the other big boys.

Oh come on, Western tv shows and movies are not like this. Sure, they can be derivative and play on some similar tropes, but they don't just literally recycle the exact same characters with just different hair colors and names and mass produce them in show after show, using the exact same jokes and same type of plot developments over and over and over every few months.

Let me take you back to a conversation I had in the winter of 2008. Picture a small, smoke-filled karaoke box in Ueno, filled with ten or so 30- to 40-year old Japanese men celebrating the end of both Comiket 75 and the year itself. I'm sitting across a small table from Tomo Kataoka, author of Narcissu, one of the most highly regarded visual novels ever made, and head of "Neko Neko Soft", one of Japan's oldest and most highly-regarded eroge production outfits. Tomo's been writing text-and-sex adventures before most of us even knew how to pronounce anime correctly, a true veteran. He takes a drag from his cigarette, looks at me, and says, "Look, I'm glad you're really into eroge now. I really am. We need more young people playing our games. But you young people..." He pulls another drag. "...are all the same. You start playing eroge when you're 18 or 19. You're really into it. You love the sex. The romance. The girls. The art. The voice acting. The music...everything. By the time you're 22, you've seen it all. It doesn't interest you anymore. You're out. You move on to better things." He snuffs out his cigarette. "But..." I say. "Or," he says, lighting another cigarette, "you become one of them." He tilts his head, indicating the other men sitting around the table. They nod their heads in agreement. "These guys have been playing eroge longer than most people in the industry today have been making them. The girls are all the same to them now. When they play, they look for a certain type of girl. I bet you one of these guys sitting here with us today is really, really into tsundere." A mousy, bespectacled man with messy hair raises his hand. "Yup," he says, "That's me." And so on, and so forth. A different man claimed dominion over each different archetype. "You see?" Tomo says, smiling at me. "It's not about the characters. It's about the archetype. When you've seen 100 tsunderes, you know what's up already. You know what you're getting yourself into. You like it. That's why you haven't moved on yet. That's why you're still playing eroge at 35. Everyone else figures it out, gets bored of it, packs up, and goes home."

rederoin wrote:

Just like the western market for tv shows and movies. Anime just wants to be like all the other big boys.

Oh come on, Western tv shows and movies are not like this. Sure, they can be derivative and play on some similar tropes, but they don't just literally recycle the exact same characters with just different hair colors and names and mass produce them in show after show, using the exact same jokes and same type of plot developments over and over and over every few months.