Forum - View topicAnswerman - What Makes An Anime A Crossover Hit?
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Brakus
Posts: 130 Location: Virginia |
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Just because some anime series have Justin's criteria doesn't always translate into crossover success. Redline and Tiger & Bunny were two of the biggest missed opportunities this decade.
Bite your tongue. I personally think there's an untapped market with bara/gei-comi style hot guys. (Kudos for Fate/Zero's Rider/Iskander to be one of the first such characters with a prominent role.) A few titles here and there have done a bit of dabbling. Even this season's One-Punch Man satisfies my bara itch just enough.
And this is the reason why anime really hasn't caught on in the mainstream in the West. Japan insists on marketing what they think is "Cool Japan" to the West, instead of what we Westerners think is "Cool Japan". Again, this has led to some missed opportunities. |
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Lili-Hime
 Posts: 569 |
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Anime is anime regardless of content (if it's Japanese animated its anime). What anime is now is not what anime always used to be. If things like SNK or Death Note are 'un-anime' to you, you may want to watch some late 80's early 90's OVAs... or old 70's/early 80's TV shows. They are definitely nothing like anime today for the most part.
What the japanese and western anime fans find attractive though isn't necessary the same. Fanservice seemed to attract more western guys when the women were 'hot', rather than cute... characters like Makoto from Ghost in the Shell, for example. The difference is pretty easily seen in Eva. Rei is the most popular girl in Japan, while Asuka dominates in the US. As far as anime guys go, they're usually a bit more femme than ur average western heartthrob. Probably why Free! got more popular, they had the courage to draw abs and muscles. |
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Paiprince
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T&B had a modest success since its TV airing. How else it could've spawned 2 movies?
Good for you, but I rather they keep bara on the down low. We already have enough hypermasculine guys from the other side of the Pacific.
And what that might be? Westerners, like a few mentioned, isn't just America ya know. Just because it's the biggest market doesn't mean it represents every one of us.
You mean tons and tons of robot toy commercials and children's tales adaptations from the 70's then seguing into experimental OVA's, some being creations of madmen? Yeah, I've been through those and can't say I've much love for them, barring a few titles. Anime, regardless of the semantics, has its own style, techniques and trends that are unlike anywhere else in the world. This is why I stuck with it from day one. You may not like it, but a huge chunk of the fanbase shares my sentiments. If it suddenly "evolves" to eschew them all to become indistinguishable from your typical CN/Nick/Disney Channel programs, what then?
That's rather simplistic. There are as much fans who prefer cutesy, dainty girls like Madoka or Mikuru over the gungho Revy type gals just as there are much girls who are more into waifish men (Lelouch and Sasuke are fujoshi heartthrobs to this day.). Don't base your observations from just the circles you frequent. |
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Lili-Hime
Posts: 569 |
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They're still just as anime as Madoka Magica though. Ofc as you pointed out schoolgirls and mechs have been there since the beginning (yay for project a-ko!)
But I do like it; never said I didn't. I like a wide range of stuff. My favorites go from Madoka Magica to Urusei Yatsura to Utena to Trigun. I'm just a fan of animation in general  So if the art is drawn like western, I don't really mind TOO much ofc it depends on the style. I LOVED Panty and Stocking to death. I enjoy both western (Yes even European) and Japanese animation. Ofc I love anime mostly because it's still drawn in 2D.
Lol I don't really frequent any circles My point was I guess the general conception amongst non anime fans in US is the ideal female does look like an adult woman not dainty whereas I notice in Japan they tend to idealize youthfulness a bit more. OFC not all americans or all Japanese will all into those categories. Idk my friends like a variety of characters. One thing in common though is most girls love Char like crazy |
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leafy sea dragon
 Posts: 7163 Location: Another Kingdom |
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Something I should mention is that my mom grew up in a country that received a lot of anime imported in and dubbed, and still does. As a result, she has watched Dragon Ball Z, Death Note, Blue Gender, and Monster with me. She particularly likes Monster, and that probably illustrates this column's mention of an anime being truly good if your parents like it too.
There's also how, in the 80's, western media tended to be pretty gritty and dark itself, at least in its aesthetic if not always in the narrative. The Dark Age of Comic Books happened during then, as was the rise of cyberpunk in literature and, from Blade Runner and onwards, in the movies too.
Is that a reason why One Piece failed to catch the American mainstream's attention whereas Naruto and Bleach succeeded?
Personally, I believe that sports anime usually fail to catch on in North America because anime is associated with geekiness, and geeks and nerds are not supposed to be too interested in familiar sports, whether playing or spectating, a trait I believe originates out of P.E. classes in school. Inversely, the kids who would become interested enough in sports to be potentially interested in sports anime see these freaks at the bottom of the social ladder watching anime and would have no part in it. In Europe, however, these sports anime were aimed at kids, before they can create this kind of distancing from negative social experiences, so you have kids who watch them who would otherwise have no interest in anime. Notice, for instance, that anime about FANTASY sports can catch on, or real-world sports with fantastic enhancements, at least to a limited extent, such as IGPX and, if you call competitive CCG a sport, Yu-Gi-Oh!.
What was meant was that you could jump in or out of Cowboy Bebop whenever you want, skipping episodes, and not miss that much. Notice how episodic television in the United States didn't catch on until Internet streaming became easily accessible (even if it wasn't mainstream yet when shows like 24 were on), soap operas notwithstanding.
If it's your favorite anime ever, then you can see why it would be popular enough to hit the mainstream: It's other people's favorite anime ever, likely for similar reasons as yours.
If you're talking about the Pokémon anime, I've been observing that fandom for a long time now, and I will say that the Pokémon fandom is really three fandoms: The video games, the anime, and the card game. They're all different enough that it's kind of difficult to maintain interest in all three at the same time unless you're a kid and excited about it all.
The first Hollywood movie that comes to mind is Psycho. We all know the shower twist by now, but when it was new, it was marketed as a movie about a woman who becomes increasingly uncomfortable with carrying a large amount of money around obtained through less-than-pure means. Alfred Hitchcock even requested movie theater workers to not let people into a screening if the movie's already started. A "pilot" is not meant primarily for viewers, but for executives. It's a sample of what the show might be like so executives don't just pull the plug. The rest of the show doesn't necessarily have to be like the pilot (for instance, the Criminal Minds pilot has Hotch behave totally differently after that), but it has to bring in a high enough viewership to convince these executives to keep going. Similarly, Americans have a lot of options to watch television from, and I really do mean a lot. The number of shows available at a time exploded with cable TV, then exploded again with satellite TV, and once more with streaming services. If a show doesn't immediately grab an American viewer's interest immediately, he or she will most likely go find one that does.
Except the people who make anime and manga don't decide what makes a hit. The audiences are. You're also not really understanding this article. It's not about what an anime should be like for it to be popular in the mainstream in other countries. It's a list of traits common to anime that already are popular in the mainstream in other countries.
Monster definitely has the potential to become popular outside of Japan (supposedly, Guillermo del Toro is on it), but I suspect it didn't due to a combined lack of marketing on Viz's part, music rights holding everything up, and that the anime fans themselves never took much of an interest to it in the first place. The last one, I think, is the most important, because every international hit in anime I can think of was first a hit with anime fans. They're the ones who provide a starting point, an anchor of sorts, for the show's popularity. They're the ones who will create the word of mouth that will catch the mainstream's attention. But I don't ever hear much about Monster in anime fan circles. (By this, I don't mean the big observers and consumers that make up the bulk of this site's readership, but the people who, say, go to anime conventions and cosplay and such. They're the most vocal of western anime fans, and they're the ones who can create that word of mouth the most quickly and enthusiastically.)
Wait, I thought in the 90's, the majority of Americans who don't live in areas with high Asian populations thought Japanese people were ultra-efficient, ultra-hardworking, and ultra-formal businesspeople on the cutting edge of technology who could make products the Americans had no hope of competing with, considering this was a bit after Sony, Toyota, Honda, Mitsubishi, Yamaha, Nintendo, and SEGA collectively made huge inroads into North American markets.
This is something I see often for niche fanbases: It's insular enough that it can be hard for some people to see whether something is popular with non-fans or not, especially if said fan does not associate with many non-fans. (I'm not pointing fingers at anyone, but it's simply a pattern I've noticed, not just with anime fans.) I mean, who, among people who post in the Anime News Network forums, knows what Medieval Madness is? Or Cirqus Voltaire? Or Attack from Mars, Monster Bash, or America's Most Haunted? I think the number of people who can recognize all of those would be in the single digits. But some of their fans (and all these examples pertain tot he same fandom) think they're well-known in the mainstream comparable to the Spawn comic books or The Hunger Games books. spoiler[They are pinball machines. But I talk about pinball a lot, so it shouldn't be a surprise.] I have a hard time finding someone in said fandom who has heard of Attack on Titan, by the way.
I saw a Redbox machine with The Sky Crawlers under its children's section. Animation Age Ghetto.
The easier thing to do, and I'm sure that's what most people do, is to just stop watching anime altogether and go consume entertainment that appeals to them better.
Most western animated television is also still 2-D. At least, the ones that haven't yet finished that I watch. And yeah, I've noticed that, as far as women treated as "sexy" in western animated works go, like Jessica Rabbit, Hello Nurse, or the Martian Queen, heck, even ones that aren't supposed to be attractive to viewers like Olive Oyl or Queen Chrysalis, invariably are quite 18-or-over in their appearance and behave maturely (and often have sultry voices). Look at illustrations done in science fiction and/or fantasy circles, like book covers and conventions and such, and you'll find the half-dressed or skintight woman seems to have facial marks, skin structure, and such indicating they are in their 30's or 40's. Same goes for illustrations from the mid-20th century I've seen (most easily noticed in comic books of that time). Then again, maybe these are targeted at men around that age, who would presumably be most attracted to women around that age too, or, more likely, drawn by men around that age. It's less common that I see characters who are unmistakably young or young-looking and meant to be attractive to viewers that are not Asian in origin (I'm not counting characters seen as attractive by other characters this time, as in those cases, they're there to provide romance between equally-young men, like with Kim Possible or Xiaolin Showdown Kimiko), and even then, in a lot of cases, like Gadget Hackwrench, Sally Acorn, and the Totally Spies! girls, their ages are never made clear. And in these cases, the girls NEVER behave innocently or naïvely except on purpose to mess with the guys. I personally believe there is a stigma in the west, especially in the United States, to lust after girls or women who are innocent or naïve and are young. It sounds exploitative. |
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Danette-Anime-Otaku
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Seriously I hate the word cartoon for it's negative connotation that it's "just for kids". A show's main demographic may be kids but doesn't mean it can't be enjoyed by adults, Avatar: The Last Airbender being a perfect example of this. It's on a network aimed at kids but I saw it in collage and loved it. |
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