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INTEREST: CG Creator Asks Twitter For Ideas to Solve Anime Industry Problems

It is rather sad that there is rarely any anime that doesn't focus on the Fanservice of the chest and butt. It's grown so much over the past 14 years that I have been an anime fan that I, as a girl, have became pretty much immune to it. It now takes a very big extreme amount of shove in your face Chest and butt fanservice that would make me drop a show. That's the only way to watch anime today pretty much. ignore the fanservice aspects and just enjoy the show if you enjoy the characters and their personalities.

It's gotten to the point that I am surprised as hell that an anime comes out that isn't a Chest and butt anime. you should've seen my reaction to Little witch academia. lol. I was surprised and happy. I thought that anime was cute and really hope it gets a home video release so that I can buy it.

It's rare that I watch new anime in a season that isn't a sequal to a series that i have already watched. the newest show I had watched was zombieland saga. I enjoyed it. Lets head for a season 2. lol.

but hey. I pretty much go with the flow on these things now a days.

That's THE problem with the anime industry at the moment, in case the original creator asked--and taking most of Japan's pop culture down with it--and darned if we Westerners will ever be able to get it through their guarded cultural-isolationist heads before more permanent damage is done.

Japan's always been a few decades behind the US in following our own socio-cultural trends, and they're just NOW hitting on the 50's Comic-Book Scare, where a nation of timid, mainstream Eisenhower-era grownups didn't know what was causing restless, unfulfilled teenagers to become Juvenile Delinquents, and all agreed it must've been those mind-rotting comic books! It was actually common in whitebread 50's US to see kids' comic-book collections burned in town meetings, Berlin-style, since there were no grownup housewives and moms who'd rush to the defense of Batman, Wonder Woman or Tales From the Crypt.
Japan's problem isn't delinquents (that was in the 80's), theirs is the opposite: A nation of timid, mainstream Recession-era grownups don't know what's causing achievement-pressured, pecking-order bullied high-schoolers and frustrated twentysomething jobseekers to drop out of the corporate market or school ladders, and try to find their own barricaded safe-space. Since those people have clearly dropped out just to watch anime and play Internet MMORPG games for sixteen hours a day, it's obviously the fault of those anime shows!
Throw in a declining birthrate, caused by less interest (and more terror) in relationships between the sexes, and every adult who hasn't watched a "kiddy cartoon" in twenty years believes anime's TRUE Seduction of the Innocent is all those sexy 2D anime girls they see on merchandise and bus ads everywhere! Those slacker NEET's must have been rejected by real girls at school for being a loser, that's why they spend all day watching pop idols and magical-girls!...And fondling their whole shelves of plastic anime-girl figures!

Thing is, we got out of it, and slapped ourselves back into sense by the late 70's/mid-80's, and now...er, think comic books are socially acceptable again.
But that's because we took a deep breath, looked back and saw how panicky and wrong we were in a crisis--Japan rarely ever believes that it's wrong, if millions of good working folk all get together on the same idea.
Americans who try to help Japan through their Social-Panic Anonymous crisis, and say "Hey, you'll get through this, we did, and anime is NOT hazardous to your mental health", are condescendingly patted on the head as Clueless Westerners who don't understand the subtle nuances of Japanese culture--And thus literally have to be educated about the secret dangers they've discovered about How Anime Will Cause Instant Lolicon in anyone unfortunate enough to be exposed to it, and why a responsible society should work together to wipe it off the face of the earth.

Um, you know, that was off the mark from what I was saying. Also, I'd recommend to be careful, you're treading some culturally and socially dangerous waters there.

configspace wrote:

The converse of Sturgeon is what we have for animation in the US: everyone produces the same, safe, wide appealing 20%, nay 10% of stuff within a very narrow Venn diagram range of audiences and very limited subjects and genres that is consumed safely by 90+% of the world.

I would disagree with this as vehemently as you disagree with the previous poster's characterization of Japanese animation (I agree with you on that score, at least). US animation is a lot more widely varied and quality than people tend to give it credit for. The new animated Spiderman is a great example of a straight up great animated movie that has a strong identity of its own, and that couldn't have really been made anywhere else in the world. You've got Rick and Morty, Bojack Horseman, Archer, Samurai Jack, various good Star Wars animated series, Gravity Falls, DC's animated shows and non-theatrical release movies, Stephen Universe, Bob's Burgers, Seth McFarlane's shows, Southpark, The Simpsons, Futurama, and like a thousand shows coming out on Netflix I haven't had time to completely give a fair chance...

And seriously, that's just off the top of my head, and mostly from the last few years. I can already think of a half dozen more I could mention. American animation is alive and well, incredibly varied in genres, tones, art styles, and relative level of crassness. Power to you for defending Japanese media, but I don't think you're giving US media a fair shake either.

EDIT: And I have to come back because it feels actually wrong not to mention that Pixar are masters of the form, Dreamworks has been putting out really good stuff recently, and even for all the shit people give Disney when it comes to being as mass appealing and marketable as possible, you have to admit they are damn good at it. It might not be for you, but it's another part of a really vibrant US animation industry that is also, I think, the better for trying to reach out and be interesting for other parts of the world as well.

US animation is a lot more widely varied and quality than people tend to give it credit for. The new animated Spiderman is a great example of a straight up great animated movie that has a strong identity of its own, and that couldn't have really been made anywhere else in the world. You've got Rick and Morty, Bojack Horseman, Archer, Samurai Jack, various good Star Wars animated series, Gravity Falls, DC's animated shows and non-theatrical release movies, Stephen Universe, Bob's Burgers, Seth McFarlane's shows, Southpark, The Simpsons, Futurama, and like a thousand shows coming out on Netflix I haven't had time to completely give a fair chance...

I know it wasn't what you were saying, but the R-word made a good segue into explaining why they're trying to blame an "unexplainable" Recession on unemployed pervert anime fans.
And until they stop doing that, they're not going to have the mainstream success they had in the 90's, when anime was simply something shown on TV to sell goods to as many kids as would buy it.

To continue the 50's-comic metaphor, comics became rediscovered in the 80's when all those kids grew up, turned into Serious Artists and wanted to pay tribute to something they liked as kids.
We're seeing a little of that right now with Japanese female twentysomethings using the 20th-anniversary marketings of Sailor Moon and Card Captor Sakura to remember that, hey, guess it wasn't so bad after all, when they used to watch their influential favorites in third grade...UNFORTUNATELY, that also runs it up against the other major cultural block, namely the innate Japanese cultural terror, pressure, and stigma

We know why this is happening, but we can't do anything, as if we sat the Japanese down and told them why their recession happened at the end of their 80's economic boom, the West would be accused of being "jealous", and logic would fall on deaf ears...
Simply put, Japan's biggest enemy of anime right now is ITSELF.

I know this seems a bit out off topic, but I am going to have to let the shot fire. Nearly 30 years in this country's history, and no one has taken the reins of trying to undergo the trade of trying to make their own legit anime and understanding that spirit? The States has no right to complain about wanting things their way when they have long been the greatest superpower in the world in that timespan, knows what they like in terms of tastes, and has the capital and resources to create their own independent anime industry.
Good night.