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Piglet the Grate wrote:

BadNewsBlues wrote:

So basically Fruit Baskets (whichever version of the show you're referring to) is better than [...].

Come on now.

None of those shows are going to make me care the least about their characters and what happens to them.

Eh, you might be surprised by Gargoyles actually. Lots of character introspection and some very somber and quiet moments, quite rare in American TV cartoons.

AmpersandsUnited wrote:

To be fair you're listing shows that are decades old.

I listed the shows specifically because the OP essentially argued that American Cartoons from the last 50 years ago are no better compared to a show from 2001/2019 which of course isn't true.

(admittedly I originally read that as a quarter of a century which means I can add stuff from the 80's and the first half of the 90's).

AmpersandsUnited wrote:

Most peoples gripes with American animation are about the modern stuff.

.......some of those shows are are less than a decade old that's not modern enough?

And most of the complaints is the usual "back in my day" shtick

AmpersandsUnited wrote:

We'll probably never going to see shows on those levels of quality ever again due to societal and production limitations. I doubt anything like the Birds of Prey song from Batman: The Brave and the Bold would be made today or half the stuff the DCAU got away with.

If you recall correctly Batman Mask Of The Phantasm was originally released theatrically and had content that would've never flown on Fox at the time and then of course years later they put out Batman Beyond Return Of The Joker which was even more dark and violent to the point they had to make an edited version which was still pretty dark and violent. And since then multiple straight to DVD movies that are also violent and in some rare cases feature sexual content so not really.

Hell the Harley Quinn show on TBS is a thing.

Piglet the Grate wrote:

None of those shows are going to make me care the least about their characters and what happens to them.

Have you watched any of them?

Because a few of them were known for their decent to strong character writing and complex plots. Secondly a lot of those WB shorts had issues with how their characters were portrayed which is how Bugs Bunny could go from a likeable character who was wronged and who you wanted to see get his revenge to being an asshole who generally started the problems or made them worse in any given short who as a consequence you couldn't feel that much sympathy for who also wound up being a karma houndini at the end the latter being more common than the former.

Let's not even talk about how Daffy's character shifted and not in a good way over the same time period.

Piglet the Grate wrote:

The last animated American shows that I would care to watch again were made by Warner Bros. from 1930 to 1969 (why I specified the last half century).

So no.

Also you might want to remember that there was a lot of not good warner bros. shorts from that time period especially the 30's and 60's. Let's not even mention the blackface & asian stereotype stuff that dotted both Warner Bros. & MGM shorts from the 30's and 40's.

tygerchickchibi wrote:

I actually saw some backlash for Canon Busters tbh.
It was some rant post by Sankaku Complex, which I guess is similar to to Bounding into Comics (but worse). They shared their post on Twitter and it was pretty condescending.

It was enough for Stephanie Sheh to call them out on their bullshit.

I personally think that HGS didn't deserve what it got, but tbh I saw more people upset about it's so called "diversity" than anything else. They weren't upset that the women there were white, or that there weren't any men. but the term " diverse" is an automated time bomb for them. It's a trigger word that people seem to be highly offended by.

This isn't anything new to me, though. Fandom just can be as against it just because it's exists in the first place, and I'll never understand the justification for the anger to begin with.

I looked up the article you mentioned, and it seems it was about the way a lot of people only cared about it being made by a black creator than the quality of the show itself. I know a lot of people obsess over issues like that, but it is a two way street at the end of the day. Liking a show only because it has X is as close minded as people hating a show because it has X. It's the issue with making identity politics the main focus of any product, and it's not as if LeSean Thomas hasn't been open and honest about his goals as a creator.

But I didn't mean no one didn't ever complain about those shows, just that they were not huge controversies that literally every content creator and outlet made videos and articles about. People either liked or disliked the shows and moved on with their lives.

battle-arc-fan wrote:

Now onto this High Guardian Spice thing. Please realize that A LOT of American anime fans have migrated to the medium because western entertainment has gotten so politically correct. Example: you have Scarlett Johannsen in the news recently trashing Black Widow as an objectified male gaze character. Even more progressive sites have noted that Disney princess films no longer feature princes, knights or anything else involving romance. The entertainment chief of ABC (a major American broadcast network) issued a memo stating that as a majority of its viewers were female, they needed to develop shows centered around strong women and "weak men" to cater to that demographic. (Not making this up ... commentary on this here: https://ew.com/article/2011/08/07/abc-charlies-angels-revenge-tim-allen/) Creating shows with strong women AND men (you know, like anime does all the time) to increase male viewership while retaining the current female viewers was never even considered. Shocking isn't it? Then again ... not really.

You don't speak for me. I got into this medium because I love animation and was curious to see whether it would pique my interest. Mind you I watched Pokemon, Digimon, Medabots, Beyblade, YuGiOh, Bakugan before finding out they were anime.

battle-arc-fan wrote:

Consider the context here: it isn't that the High Guardian Spice bashers necessarily hated Steven Universe. Instead, they were trying to prevent a situation from forming where Steven Universe is all they are ever going to get to see. Compare Cartoon Network today with 10-20 years ago. Do you honestly think that Samurai Jack, Ben 10 or (the original) Teen Titans, Batman: The Brave and the Bold etc. would get greenlit in this era? Similarly check out the current Nicktoons: The Loud House and a spinoff, Spongebob and a spinoff plus TMNT with a CalArts style April O'Neil. Yeah, no Invader Zim, Danny Phantom, Kappa Mikey, El Tigre or even the 2012 TMNT going on here either.

First of all, do you actually watch Cartoon Network? The issue some people have with CN isn't because of shows like Steven Universe, it's actually scheduling. It's a problem it shares with Nickelodeon. The two networks have a constant fixation with some of their successful programming, most notably Teen Titans Go! and SpongeBob Squarepants, a fixation that has led CN to shaft shows to later dates for reruns of TTG, and as for Nick, any show that isn't SpongeBob or doesn't get good ratings gets the axe.

luisedgarf wrote:

Sorry for my ignorance, but what is "CalArts"? Is some kind of insult?

Remember in the early 2000's when there was a flood of hate against the "moe" anime style? CalArts is like that, but for western animation. It's referring to a set of particular animation stylisms that have spread over a large number of properties that people find distasteful, to lesser or greater degrees.

Common properties are things like ping pong ball eyes, flat mouths, lack of depth, certain types of lining, etc. There's no single element that defines it, anymore than the eye expansion or chipmunk teeth (eg: K-On) define the moe aesthetic.

Seems like the real issue is branding and specific title choices for the "Crunchyroll Originals" lineup, not the mere fact that CR is financially and logistically involved in some anime production. If the Originals lineup were more centered on stuff like Shield Hero, Place Further than the Universe, Laid-Back Camp, MMO Junkie, Tonikawa, and similarly-well-received projects (and the Ex-Arm/Gibiate type stuff were more buried in the seasonal streaming churn), there wouldn't be this kind of controversy.

Cloudywind wrote:

High Guardian Spice may well have been better received if
- it had been announced alongside Japanese anime, to reassure anime viewers that their subscription fees weren't just going into making western cartoons in
- the reveal trailer had been able to convey any reason at all why anime viewers would want to watch it aside from the all-female staff
Bad PR and communication all round.

Come on, let's drop the historical revisionism. The backlash to HGS was not "You guys fail marketing 101 so hard" it was a fear of a dastardly feminist/woke/whatever "agenda" being propagated and imposed. Strange how, for example, no one reacted to CR announcing Goblin Slayer with "they're spending literally all my subscription fees on fantasy rape trash." Almost as if there's a large contingent of the anime viewerbase that holds certain ideological viewerpoints, hates the legitimate industry, hates CR, and is willing to believe any nonsensical conspiracy theory to explain CR doing Something They Don't Like. Though I will say that CR made a bit of an unforced error in the HGS saga, as they didn't "read the room" (perhaps a Bay Area Bubble effect?) in terms of how reactionary the anime viewerbase truly is.

The whole HGS situation was a very big mess, and I think a lot of the blame lies with CR's marketing. However, it's really undeniable that some people took this as some weird brigade against their anime by the "PC police" or whatever. I remember a lot of people crying about the "CalArts style" (despite the fact that the creator did not go there), digging into the personal lives of the announced staff and screenshotting their "man hating" tweets from four years prior, making jokes about the body types and skin tones of the girls on the poster, hyperbolic complaints about the evils of the "PC West" invading anime, etc. I invite people to go back through the archive of bad faith YouTube complainers or even just the Crunchyroll subreddit to read all of that. And much of the ire was directed not at the company of Crunchyroll but rather the individual members of Ray and his team, who cannot control the marketing of their show.

However, I think it's also important to note that there were a lot of good-faith criticisms, even beyond the obvious irony in a "diverse" all-white writers room. CR's brand at the time was very much "by the fans, for the fans" with the biggest brand push being that, through your sub, you support the known-to-be-underpaid anime staff DIRECTLY. Meanwhile, the site and its apps sucked to use (they honestly still do), especially when you compared it to "competing" pirate sites. The video player was still flash in the year 2018 (which they would only change in response to a bitrate controversy). A viral YouTube video advocating for piracy floated around only a few months prior, and people were even starting to doubt if the "supporting the anime industry" marketing held any weight. In response to all this, CR decides the best thing to show subscribers was an ad detailing how their money went to funding an American cartoon. I love American cartoons, I subbed to D+ for The Owl House, but that's not what I use CR for. I wanted an html5 player, a better PS4 app, and CR to stop losing licenses to Amazon and Netflix.

The stupid "political correctness is ruining my anime" argument definitely overtook everything (including the controversy's legacy, judging by the state of this forum), but I think it was incredibly apparent that AT&T and Ellation had zero clue what their subscriber base even wanted. Shame they demonized HGS rather than looking inward and realizing it was a company problem.

Zalis116 wrote:

Come on, let's drop the historical revisionism. The backlash to HGS was not "You guys fail marketing 101 so hard" it was a fear of a dastardly feminist/woke/whatever "agenda" being propagated and impose.

It may not have been the most vocal, but a part of the backlash absolutely was the sentiment that the trailer told you basically nothing about the show due to how focused it was on the people making it instead.

tygerchickchibi wrote:

[...]
This isn't anything new to me, though. Fandom just can be as against it just because it's exists in the first place, and I'll never understand the justification for the anger to begin with.

That said, I'm saddened to learn about the terrible working conditions for staff and i worry that this trend may be going on with other Western companies. .

The whole diversity issue is promoted to deflect attention from more important problems such as the terrible working conditions for staff that you mention, and of course much worse things than that (but those are veering way to far off topic for this forum).

Ryuji-Dono wrote:

Why can't we all agree that each market has their own gems and stinkers? One country's works of media shouldn't be used to evaluate the others.

The issue here is if someone subscribes to Crunchyroll to watch Japanese anime, should that money be put towards making American style animated cartoons?

Either Crunchyroll should make a more a la carte subscription service so people can only pay for what they want, or they should expect to lose subscribers who get fed up paying for stuff they have no interest in.

I'm a Crunchyroll subscriber. That doesn't make me an investor though so I really don't have a say about how the company uses the money I give them. They have a bunch of shows that have been translated that I want to watch and I pay for the ability to legally do so. If I think that what they offer isn't worth the money, I stop giving it to them. Nothing more, nothing less. If Crunchyroll ends up only having shows I don't care about, then that'll happen and Crunchyroll is aware of that.

That being said, the average quality of Crunchyroll Originals is surely below the industry average right? If this something that will be corrected if they just release more and more or is there some kind of systemic problem? I wish I could say bad management = bad shows but there are plenty of examples where mismanagement still leads to great properties...until it doesn't (see: video game industry). Is it simply that good talent was all too busy when Crunchyroll reached out for staff and studios? Surely being part of the production team means that they have some say during the production process? Did they ok everything (even when questionable) or were they still excluded until things were too late? I wouldn't be surprised if it was either.

Piglet the Grate wrote:

The issue here is if someone subscribes to Crunchyroll to watch Japanese anime, should that money be put towards making American style animated cartoons?

Either Crunchyroll should make a more a la carte subscription service so people can only pay for what they want, or they should expect to lose subscribers who get fed up paying for stuff they have no interest in.

Like @JaffaOrange said, a subscriber is not the same thing as an investor. Yes, if you don't like the shows a service provides then you should unsubscribe. But buying a product or service isn't the same as investing in it.
I've seen this similar mentality with video game development. It would be one thing if you gave money through crowdfunding and that person used that money to make a different game, but buying a Konami game doesn't mean they are obligated to use that money to make another Castlevania game instead of their godforsaken pachinko machines.

Zallis116 wrote:

Come on, let's drop the historical revisionism. The backlash to HGS was not "You guys fail marketing 101 so hard" it was a fear of a dastardly feminist/woke/whatever "agenda" being propagated and imposed. Strange how, for example, no one reacted to CR announcing Goblin Slayer with "they're spending literally all my subscription fees on fantasy rape trash." Almost as if there's a large contingent of the anime viewerbase that holds certain ideological viewerpoints

I remember people expressing displeasure at Crunchyroll funding and promoting said controversial shows. Direct comparisons were made criticizing how Crunchyroll will proudly promote Shield Hero but bury High Guardian Spice. It's not as if people don't object to Crunchyroll doing that stuff as well, it's just one side was a lot larger than the other and ended up getting their way.

JaffaOrange wrote:

I'm a Crunchyroll subscriber. That doesn't make me an investor though so I really don't have a say about how the company uses the money I give them. They have a bunch of shows that have been translated that I want to watch and I pay for the ability to legally do so. If I think that what they offer isn't worth the money, I stop giving it to them. Nothing more, nothing less. If Crunchyroll ends up only having shows I don't care about, then that'll happen and Crunchyroll is aware of that.

That's the most reasonable approach. If a service is not living up to your expectations then there should be no obligation to support it. Personally, no, I did not especially care for most of the originals they make. I do prefer them make Webtoon adaptions over more American-focused stuff like High Guardian Spice, and that does seem to be the direction they went with after the backlash they got. Streaming services wanting to exert more control and ownership by making their own shows is inevitable, so customers should make their opinions heard so that they might go in a preferred direction at the very least. We're going to get more originals whether we want them or not.

AmpersandsUnited wrote:

Streaming services wanting to exert more control and ownership by making their own shows is inevitable, so customers should make their opinions heard so that they might go in a preferred direction at the very least. We're going to get more originals whether we want them or not.

Hear! Hear!

This is exactly what happened to Cartoon Network decades ago. They went from paying royalties for the series they had to creating new intellectual property they owned, even if that was in detriment of WB as a conglomerate (that is the reason they cancelled Teen Titans in lieu of Ben 10). This all about the money and those who think Crunchy should do things differently for whatever reason without giving a financially sound alternative, are just barking at a wall.

I really don't count I'm a Spider, So What? as a Crunchyroll Original. The manga had a going to get an anime announcement years before were said to be a thing. While sure it may take a while for things to be animated you think they would have announced this exciting new thing they were doing at the same time the manga announced it was getting an anime

octopodpie wrote:

You don't have to quit watching anime if you like representation or LGBTQ characters or whatever. That stuff has been in anime forever and the idea that it's not or that it's a minority is ridiculous. The (two) examples you cited are series where LGBTQ issues are a central point but you're cherry-picking to an extreme and also making a value judgment based on JP streaming links...are we going to ignore data from CR and Funimation entirely?

Queer stuff has always been in anime. Sometimes it's problematic, like the okama stereotype or lesbian tragedy couple but it's incredibly common even when it's not central to the plot. Like, it's kinda weird you left Wonder Egg Priority off your haphazard thesis statement. Or Dragon Maid. Or all the subtextual yuri stuff in KyoAni works that sell like crazy. Are we pretending that yuri and yaoi markets don't exist either here?

Also if the answer to "the children's cartoon of She-Ra isn't sexy anymore, watch this other children's cartoon (PreCure) for sexy women"... Question

I mean there's doujinshi for everything but I don't think the majority of anime fans look to PreCure for sexy anime girls. Remind me (don't) if you were the same guy who talked about getting off to Sailor Moon a few threads ago and that's why it can't be 'feminist'?

[loud applause] Beautifully said.

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