Forum - View topicINTEREST: Mamoru Oshii: Today's Anime Is Driven by Otaku, Merchandise
|
Goto page Previous Next Note: this is the discussion thread for this article |
| Author | Message | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
khaos1019
 Posts: 93 |
|
|||||
|
I love Oshii's work. And I usually really like his insights, but what he's saying here sounds really naive. No matter how avant garde or how much of auteur you try to be, working within the entertainment industry automatically turns your creation into a product. It's just the way the whole thing works. Complaining about that and about how some series are created just for that purpose isn't really going to solve anything or prove any points.
I think he should just focus on his work. I'm interested in seeing Chimamire My Love and how he spins the whole boy meets girl story. |
||||||
|
||||||
Vaisaga
 Posts: 13224 |
|
|||||
|
Yeah, this does kind of sound like the grumblings of an old creator that is no longer particularly relevant complaining about how things were better in his day.
Anime is otaku centric, sure, but what exactly is wrong with targeting your target audience? A copy of a copy of a copy? Of course. There are no original ideas left. It's simply a matter of taking copied elements and arranging them in a coherent, enjoyable manner. Lastly, dear lord the hypocracy. The summary of his new work sounds exactly like the reused otaku pandering stuff he is condeming. Well, at least he's trying to change his ways to match the current market. |
||||||
|
||||||
|
gatotsu911
Posts: 457 Location: US of East Coast |
|
|||||
|
We all know that the anime industry's artistic integrity is in the shitter. The real news here is that Oshii is working on a high school vampire comedy. (Seriously, what??)
|
||||||
|
||||||
toyNN
 Posts: 252 Location: Seattle, WA |
|
|||||
Right! Its always been this way - OVA video market was large enough to support new anime back in the mid-late 80's and we still get OVA like Towa no Quon and Appleseed XIII which don't seem to have that much merch tie-in other than selling the disks. Heck genius George Lucas got the merch rights to Star Wars back in the 70's and made more money that we can count. Selling tie-in products has been a major part of any media production for some time - make it good and you'll sell a boat-load of cool figures too. |
||||||
|
||||||
|
nhat
Posts: 922 |
|
|||||
Yea problem with the anime industry is that the studio makes very little money from selling DVDs and such and have to merchandise to make profit or to break even. Unfortunately stuff can't be self sustained without money. |
||||||
|
||||||
jl07045
 Posts: 1527 Location: Riga, Latvia |
|
|||||
For a business venture, no. For animation as an art form (which is what Oshii is talking about), yes, it is worse. |
||||||
|
||||||
nightjuan
 Posts: 1473 |
|
|||||
On a purely personal level, I can definitely sympathize with your previous remarks. The thing is, your description is focused on remembering and including those Japanese anime titles that were eventually licensed and released overseas. But that's only a fraction of all the anime produced during the decade. Far too many lesser works, including but not limited to those appealing to contemporary fads or past merchandise trends, were also created at exactly the same time and they are now simply forgotten by Western fans who had little or no exposure to them. I don't think it would be a huge exaggeration to say that we're usually only taking the tip of the iceberg into account. In other words, judging the anime industry of bygone days using only the "greatest hits" as a guideline presents an artificial picture of what the market really looked like back then...and sets unrealistically high expectations for what it should look like now. I don't want to say there haven't been any real changes, because that's not my point and we could even ostensibly argue the model's old problems have actually become far more serious along the way, but we should take care to avoid thinking of earlier decades as some sort of "golden era" for pure or selfless artistic inspiration, when there has always been another side of the coin, in every possible sense of the term, even during the best of times. In another twenty years, I imagine there'll be plenty of people inside and outside the industry who will look fondly at the top works of the current era and try to forget everything that's average, mediocre or worse...but the Internet will be around to remind us of their existence, for better or for worse. |
||||||
|
||||||
Dynamic A
 Posts: 39 |
|
|||||
|
I'm not sure if Oshii has the "nostalgic" ring to his comments as others seem to have felt, i.e. invoking a "good old days" of anime. He's basically been saying the same thing about the industry since the early 90s, as an interview with Miyazaki after the release of Patlabor 2 indicates.
Of course, going out at producing an animation/manga hybrid for smartphones in light of those comments seems rather cynical, especially after he's made negative remarks about media being made for phones in the past... but this is the guy who brought us Sky Crawlers, which is one big, long, sprawling exercise in cinematic cynicism. I imagine he can appreciate the dichotomy. 
-DA |
||||||
|
||||||
Anymouse
 Posts: 685 |
|
|||||
|
||||||
|
||||||
|
Konopan
Posts: 397 |
|
|||||
|
Blinding Man on Grass: Was Greener When I Looked at it Last
|
||||||
|
||||||
|
Konopan
Posts: 397 |
|
|||||
|
Blinding Man on Grass: Was Greener When I Looked at it Last
|
||||||
|
||||||
GWOtaku
 Posts: 678 |
|
|||||
|
He has a significant point, but it isn't as though anime originals are dead either. It's also worth remembering that the likes of Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex also counts as a "copy", which ought to be rather obvious sign that this status hardly has to be synonymous with creative bankruptcy.
I too am nostalgic for the time when OVAs were a big deal and experimentation was easier to pull off, though. |
||||||
|
||||||
|
Panon
Posts: 242 |
|
|||||
He's not saying a horn doesn't make it different enough, he's saying the total sum of creativity in Unicorn is "the Gundam has a horn" - and 100% he's right. Gundam Unicorn is one of the most soulless and creatively dead shows I think I've ever watched. |
||||||
|
||||||
|
bravetailor
Posts: 817 |
|
|||||
|
I love the anime industry's crotchety old men. Rail on, seniors. Rail on.
I do my part by yelling at kids to get off my lawn. And I don't even have a lawn! |
||||||
|
||||||
|
nightjuan
Posts: 1473 |
|
|||||
I know that's what Oshii was suggesting, my statement wasn't assuming he was only talking about the mecha design, so rephrasing it doesn't change my reaction at all. Therefore, I'll simply have to respectfully disagree. Gundam Unicorn is far from being original in concept, that is something I will easily admit, but I don't think it lacks "creativity" in terms of actual execution. |
||||||
|
||||||
 |
All times are GMT - 5 Hours |
|
|
|
Powered by phpBB © 2001, 2005 phpBB Group