Forum - View topicNEWS: I Got a Cheat Skill in Another World Light Novels Get TV Anime
|
Goto page Previous 1, 2, 3 Next Note: this is the discussion thread for this article |
| Author | Message | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|
zztop
Posts: 645 |
|
|||||
|
I recall reading some of the novels.
The author's afterwords at the end of each volume basically amount to them admitting they are just making up the story as they go along with no real endgame in mind. ("...I found myself amazed at the turn of events (I wrote)...I have no idea what will happen next, but I hope you can look forward to it.") |
||||||
|
||||||
|
Toloran
Posts: 33 |
|
|||||
Oh, huh. Didn't realize that but it makes sense. I guess the author just specializes in the "Pushing tropes so hard it becomes a parody" sub-genre. I'm honestly not sure if it's intentional or not at this point. |
||||||
|
||||||
NebulousNeon
 Posts: 23 |
|
|||||
|
add it to the pile i guess
|
||||||
|
||||||
|
Florete
Posts: 363 |
|
|||||
|
With a title like that it might as well literally be called "Isekai #42069."
|
||||||
|
||||||
|
xTrailer45
Posts: 33 |
|
|||||
|
||||||
|
||||||
|
thepepin
Posts: 69 |
|
|||||
No, you and people like you aren't the silent majority. Anime is made primarily for Japanese and then perhaps secondarily for South Korean audiences. Any revenue that they get from the west is just icing on the cake. But there has never been and never will be an anime that will be financially profitable based on big western streaming numbers and DVD sales if it doesn't do at least "OK" in Japan also. And if you look at what is selling - especially in the light novel, webtoons, web novel, webcomics - it is isekai. And especially the fanservicey harem power fantasy self insert isekai. It is absolutely booming and there is no evidence that it is slowing down. We can analyze and debate the reason for this all we want, but it wouldn't do a lot of good because we would be commenting on a culture that is very different from our own. Plus, even in the west there is little evidence for your being in the majority. You are on sites like ANN, Kotaku, Nerdist, Polygon etc. But based on social media chatter, YouTube, memes, sites like Myanimelist etc. (harem power fantasy) isekai is extremely popular in the west. Take MAL. While it doesn't do great on quality scores they frequently do pretty good on the "currently watching" counts ... each series gets at least 100K unless it is Eiken level of bad. Go look at Crunchyroll and it is pretty much the same if you look at the "popular" lists, comments and other measures of what users watch. Isekai shows are rarely #1 unless they are high quality like Re:Zero and Konosuba but they are steady consistent performers even if they are meh, and frequently outrank shows that do get western critical acclaim. Also, I wonder about the "silent majority" thing even when it comes to western entertainment. It sounds like the type of people who are currently freaking out over HBO Max cancelling projects. You know, the ones who are ignoring that HBO Max's parent company is $50 billion in debt and said projects were losing them money. This isn't unique to them. Their competitor back in the day MGM was in and out of bankruptcy for years before Amazon bought them. Another of their back-in-the-day competitors Fox sold their movie studio to Disney because they were losing money on it. The CW broadcast network was operated at an ongoing loss by its owners for 15 years before its new owners - the same as HBO Max - cancelled most of its shows and sold it. The American movie theater chain Regal just filed for bankruptcy, and its competitor AMC may do the same. Of the major streaming networks Netflix is the only one that actually turns a (small) profit. The rest - Disney+, Hulu, HBO Max, Peacock, Paramount+, Apple TV+, Amazon Prime - lose hundreds of millions or billions annually. Those that report financial results anyway ... Apple TV+ and Amazon Prime doesn't. Amazon has flat out said that profitability was never a goal of Prime Video to begin with, and Apple said in the past that TV+ was being used primarily to sell hardware and services bundles "for now." And remember the main reason why they went all in on these streaming services to begin with: broadcast TV and cable audiences have been declining for decades. A fraction of the numbers who watched those in the 80s and 90s do so today, even though the total population is 100-150 million bigger. So they are ditching the big budget shows from the 80s and 90s in favor of shorter seasons, unscripted content, sports and other live programming etc. Things are now so bad that where anime (Pokemon aside, particularly since most didn't know it was anime) was once arthouse niche stuff with 2 week runs in a few theaters, for the third year in a row an anime title is dominating American theaters (Dragon Ball Super: Super Hero like Demon Slayer: Mugen Train and Dragon Ball Super: Broly). Note: this isn't a good thing. It isn't that these anime movies did so great - they didn't - but that everything else is doing so badly. Super Hero was originally going to be a limited release but the theaters went to Sony and asked them to open it wider! And this is a movie that had basically no advertising campaign or media coverage. So all evidence points heeding "the silent majority" isn't the best approach. Japan and South Korea gives their broad audiences what they want, which is why their entertainment sectors aren't imploding like America's film, network TV and popular music has been for decades. Most popular Netflix series of all time by a mile? Squid Game. The most popular pop group in the world? BTS. (There hasn't been a popular American male rock or pop group - especially one with a large male following - for decades and no one even asks why.) I really would rather not see the Japanese and South Korean media industries emulate America's. Their populations are smaller and their opportunities for foreign revenue are lower. So their decline would be much harder and faster, and far more difficult to recover from. Amazon was able to buy MGM. Disney was able to buy Fox. Comcast was able to buy Universal. Who buys Sunrise or Bandai if they amass billions in debt? |
||||||
|
||||||
|
Matcha.8
Posts: 130 |
|
|||||
I don't really care about the conception of the "silent majority," which is vague and serves no function in any discussion. However, I am concerned by many anime viewers' tendency to fetishize the conceptual barrier between the East and the West; that anime is a distinctively Japanese cultural product and it's made first and foremost for the Japanese audience. That's simply not true. The Western markets has been on the radar of Japanese anime production committees since the 1990s and its importance has grown progressively in the past two decades that it should be common sense that the Western markets are as important as the domestic (and other Asian markets) to the anime industry now. In addition, it is also increasingly common now to have Western companies directly be a part of anime production committees, as evidence by Crunchyroll and Netflix. These western companies are usually in charge of the overseas distribution, so I don't want to overstate their influence on the content. But Western actors do have a say in what gets produced, at the very least. This is why the boom of isekai, disregarding my own mixed feelings of the development, is as much a Western phenomenon as it is a Japanese one; it caters to the Japanese audience as well as the Western audience, who is very much a part of the intended audience. Useful reading: animenewsnetwork.com/interest/2021-11-02/kadokawa-anime-producers-want-isekai-to-take-over-the-world/.179109 Same with the K-pop industry. The US, especially, has been such an important market to K-pop that the influence of US pop on the genre is self-evident. Why do you think BTS has released numerous English-only singles in the past year? For their Korean fans? Also, let's not forget about the existence of One Direction (not US but UK, but still). |
||||||
|
||||||
|
The Not so Chosen One
Posts: 433 |
|
|||||
It's hilarious to me how you people seem to get so defensive wherever others start to complain about the oversaturation of shitty isekai anime, when the (very) popular opinion about that genre is how cliché, pervasive and tiring it is, whether one watches it or not: like other than people commenting about the writer's other work, most of the time you can read everywhere on the internet about people complaining about other isekai. |
||||||
|
||||||
Cryten
 Posts: 987 |
|
|||||
|
The word on the reddit's is that the writing on the show is hot garbage of the kind where girls are falling all over him for his power and how he is "nice". An interesting contrast to some of the more positive people here though also surrounded by a lot of people disliking / doubting it.
|
||||||
|
||||||
|
Seraph89
Posts: 26 |
|
|||||
When I've bitched about people ragging on Isekai anime in other places the general pushback I've gotten is, "Only the people on ANN bash on Isekai anime." Paraphrased because a lot of it is really nasty comments about the reviewers and people on this site. So I really don't think the very popular opinion is on the side of Isekai being cliche and tiring. Quite the opposite in fact. Edit: For my personal opinion I just don't have the energy anymore to get fired up about it one way or another. I like what I like, I dislike what I dislike. I don't see the need to discuss ether end of the spectrum. |
||||||
|
||||||
|
Ishida_Akira(fake)
Posts: 113 |
|
|||||
This is actually, factually correct. The only reason so many isekai are made is because they sell. They either sell the product, the source material or merchandise, but they sell. So the ones thinking that the vast majority hate isekai cannot be right, as someone IS buying them. In reality, the ones who keep screaming that isekai anime sucks are a very small, but very loud minority, and they don't actually matter. Most of them don't even buy anime, so they tastes are not taken into consideration. On the other side of the fence are the critically acclaimed series that people, especially here on ANN, love because they are artsy, or original (as in not adapted) or don't look like anime at all (somehow this is supposed to be a plus?). Those shows usually bomb HARD in Japan. So who really matters? The ones paying absurd amounts of money for isekai anime products, or the ones complaining about isekai anime? The answer is clear. |
||||||
|
||||||
|
Matcha.8
Posts: 130 |
|
|||||
Bruh? What artsy original isekai titles that do not look like anime are you referring to here? I didn't even know this subgenre existed in the first place. Give me specific titles. Quality titles are beloved by all, ANN included, isekai or not. Re Zero received great reviews by ANN and is a legit global commercial blockbuster, for example. The issue is simply that the isekai genre is filled with hot garbage due to overproduction. I don't understand why people go to such great lengths to defend the ENTIRE genre of isekai like it's the basis of their identity. As with any other genre, there are good and bad apples in the mix. More bad than good ones in isekai, which is an indisputable fact. |
||||||
|
||||||
|
Ishida_Akira(fake)
Posts: 113 |
|
|||||
No, you misunderstood. I was talking about anime as a whole. Many original series or more artsy series flop. The safe bet is usually another isekai, if you wanna make some money. Now, some isekai will flop as well, but that's to be expected. Because they make too much. But people still buy, which is why it keeps getting made. So the people crying about isekai anime don't really matter, because they don't sped on other series as much as isekai fans spend on isekai series. So they don't really matter, from a business perspective. |
||||||
|
||||||
|
Matcha.8
Posts: 130 |
|
|||||
Got it. I understand your perspective better now. I've also acknowledged the popularity of isekai in a previous post so I don't contest your viewpoint. That said, while the anime industry is a commercial industry first and foremost, and hence revenue is important, I don't think revenue is the be all and end all for every anime projects. Or else many original or artsy projects wouldn't even be greenlit in the first place. And just because these projects don't bring in as much money, it doesn't necessarily mean they flop. Because they serve a different function than the media-mix anime meant to sell more merchandise. There is business value when an average anime viewer, who may or may not spend much on anime, can look to a Masaaki Yuasa anime and say: anime can be high art. These titles do the work of sustaining the good name of an industry to the general public, which most isekai cannot do, and there is value enough in this alone. |
||||||
|
||||||
|
kotomikun
Posts: 1205 |
|
|||||
|
The thing is, "most people are sick of this isekai nonsense" and "it must be popular because they keep making money off it" are not necessarily mutually exclusive claims. It's easy to assume that the free market magically produces exactly what people want, but making anime is a complicated process carried out by fallible humans. At best, the industry sort of gravitates towards the types of things that have worked in the past (while also sometimes trying random stabs in the dark to try to stumble into the next big thing).
There's probably some aspects of isekai that tend to appeal to a decent amount of people. But the industry's belief that isekai, or anything else, is the safest investment is partly a self-fulfilling prophecy. If you make almost anything with good animation and music and acting, and advertise it, it'll probably do alright. They're just less likely to give that treatment to something outside of genres already considered profitable. Anime is usually based on manga and light novels (and, increasingly, that one web-novel site), which feeds into the same cycle as people write the types of things they see getting made into anime, those genres are more likely to get published, and so on. Eventually, the ecosystem will tire of a particular obsession, or jump to a new one from one of those shot-in-the-dark projects that took off. Incredibly banal productions that look like quick cash grabs might, hopefully, be a sign that's happening soon... but in any case, the abundance of isekai right now doesn't prove it's what we all secretly or openly want. It's only a trend, like so many others. The masses have a mind of their own, and it's not really the sum of its parts. |
||||||
|
||||||
 |
All times are GMT - 5 Hours |
|
|
|
Powered by phpBB © 2001, 2005 phpBB Group