Forum - View topicANNCast - Do You Mean "Anime" Anime or like, Actual Anime?
|
Goto page Previous 1, 2 Note: this is the discussion thread for this article |
| Author | Message | ||
|---|---|---|---|
MarshalBanana
 Posts: 5316 |
|
||
|
I thought what popularised Anime in the west was the Pokemon boom of 99 and then the boom of the simulcasting services like Crunchyroll in the early 10s. Maybe Netflix did something that I'm not aware of, but aside from a place for 3D titles and the odd big hit like Devilman Crybaby, they don't seem have brought many big titles to a wide audience.
|
|||
|
|||
BodaciousSpacePirate
 Subscriber Posts: 3017 |
|
||
I have more than a few former college classmates who only watched anime on Adult Swim in the early/mid 00s, and then made the jump to only watching anime on Netflix via their Wii's in the late 00s/early 10s. For those people, if an anime show wasn't available on Netflix, it basically meant they weren't going to even hear about it. |
|||
|
|||
DavetheUsher
 Posts: 505 |
|
||
Netflix has a lot more than just the exclusives. You can watch a lot of big series on it like Full Metal Alchemist, Naruto, Inuyasha, Hunter x Hunter and many others. And it's more mainstream than something like Crunchyroll so the chances of non-anime fans watching anime is higher since the only people who go to Crunchyroll are people who are already anime fans. Netflix is great to get the normie audience and new blood into anime since everyone has a Netflix subscription, and if anime is on the same platform they watch all their American drama shows then there's more chance they'll discover it. Netflix was the reason why older shows like Friends and The Office got a huge resurgence of popularity in recent years among the younger generations who only started watching them for the first time after finding them on Netflix. Established anime fans don't particularly like them because they rock the boat when it comes to seasonal licenses and holding shows hostage until all or half of the episodes get released all at once, but we're not the people that need to be introduced to anime at the end of the day. |
|||
|
|||
|
Scalfin
Posts: 249 |
|
||
|
"Parmesan."
"Champagne." "Bourbon." |
|||
|
|||
writerpatrick
 Posts: 671 Location: Canada |
|
||
|
If Netflix or someone uses a Japanese studio to produce the material (and of course records it in Japanese as well as any other languages), it's fair to call it anime. But it's insulting when people refer to any decent animation as anime because it ignores the skill and contributions of other countries. RWBY is not anime because it was produced by a US company. Even it's creator was American. It's usually a case of someone who doesn't know what they're talking about trying to be hip.
I don't like the terms "anime style" or "anime-like." Either something is or isn't anime and there is no anime style. |
|||
|
|||
|
Ryo Hazuki
Posts: 363 Location: Finland |
|
||
Specific foods have specific recipies, which can be copied if you know the recipie are skilled enough to follow it, whereas even the most derivative and unoriginal anime movie or series is its own product. Of course there is a production method, which is specific to Japan and tropes and clichés, some of which are derivative of other works and others informed by the culture they were produced in. |
|||
|
|||
Cutiebunny
 Posts: 1747 |
|
||
|
I look at Netflix's anime selection as I do Toonami/Adult Swim/Cartoon Network in the late 1990s-mid 2000s. It's a gateway. A lot of people were introduced to anime via CN's showings of Cowboy Bebop, Dragonball Z, Sailor Moon, etc., and I think Netflix will be that vehicle for this generation. I would not be surprised if, years from now, those attending conventions will comment on how they saw something on Netflix and loved it, and that's what made them an anime fan.
As for what 'anime' is, I, too, define it as something that is largely produced in Japan, in Japanese with Japanese employees for the Japanese market. So while something like Totally Spies and the Avatar: The Last Airbender series are heavily influenced by anime, they were not produced in Japan by Japanese workers and are therefore not anime. It's sorta like how many South Korean manga artists have styles that emulate their counterparts in Japan but their comics are called manhwa instead of manga. |
|||
|
|||
Crispy45
 Posts: 363 |
|
||
Actually I think food is a great analogy. You would never mistake America pizza for Italian pizza. And even in America alone, New York and Chicago pizza would both be pretty different. It's all the same concept with similar ingredients, but the construction and presentation are different. Or for another example, if you've ever had it, you'd never mistake authentic Chinese cuisine for American Chinese take out. |
|||
|
|||
|
ANN_Lynzee
ANN Executive Editor
 Posts: 2944 Location: Email for assistance only |
|
||
|
Also in food if you combine two types of traditions to create something similar but different, it's called a "fusion". I think the food analogy is actually really good, and LeSean Thomas used it during the Netflix panel at AX last year.
|
|||
|
|||
Greed1914
 Posts: 4426 |
|
||
Yeah, I was like, "I ought to have seen that coming." Bonus points for making me feel old. |
|||
|
|||
invalidname
 Contributor Posts: 2444 Location: Grand Rapids, MI |
|
||
|
The demographic argument that came up was a good one. The uninitiated American viewer is likely aware of children's cartoons and prime-time animated sitcoms, and beyond this may have a tangential awareness of animation that skews towards teens and adults, and if they assume that's all "anime", then they won't even notice if Netflix co-opts the term. Zac made the analogy to Reign and Aeon Flux, which got filed into the "anime" section at the local Blockbuster back in the day, and you can probably go further back than that to something like the old Heavy Metal movie.
And in turn, that makes me think what we're really missing today is a modern day Ralph Bakshi, someone who makes non-genre animated films for adults. If we periodically had something like a Heavy Traffic or American Pop, the whole conversation about animation would be a lot different, and we wouldn't be leaning on "anime" as a catch-all term for serious, adult-friendly animation. Obviously, no studio is going to bankroll films like Bakshi's anymore, but we can dream, can't we? |
|||
|
|||
|
Sahmbahdeh
Posts: 712 |
|
||
To be fair, there are more mature, thoughtful, non-genre animated films coming out, it's just that they're not American, generally speaking. Just last year there was the Oscar-nominated animated film I Lost my Body and a few years back there was the excellent The Breadwinner. But you have a point, they generally don't get wide releases so can only have so much impact. |
|||
|
|||
 |
All times are GMT - 5 Hours |
|
|
|
Powered by phpBB © 2001, 2005 phpBB Group