Forum - View topic

Hey, Answerman! [2008-08-29]

einhorn303 wrote:

A single episode of anime is worth exactly the expense it took to produce it. Whether the expenses be in animation, writing, music, or voice acting. That's how much it's *worth*. Another question is, how much it should cost? The cost of the episode can be calculated like this: P should be equal to the amount of people who would like to see the episode and would pay it. The cost of the episode should be the worth divided by P.

Your model is missing a vital factor - a healthy profit margin. Without a profit margin, nobody would be making anime. Who goes into business to break even?

Well, in your defense--and I wish Zac had mentioned this in his response--your confusion stems from the fact that the common usage of the term "yaoi" among US fans is a little different from what the Japanese mean. In the standard US anime fan vernacular, "yaoi" is pretty broad and denotes pretty much any male/male stuff at all, but from a utilitarian standpoint it's more useful to mimic the Japanese and reserve the term "yaoi" for the explicit pornographic stuff (which itself can be broken down into further subcategories). The term for the more common, less explicit romance-centric material is "BL" or "boy's love." They used to call it "shonen-ai" but now they call it "boy's love" even though the latter is pretty much a straight up translation of the former.

The hardcore fujoshi in America already go by this terminology anyway, and there is a tangible difference between the two, so it'd be beneficial if fans knew the difference. On that note, oddly enough there is actually no such term as "shojo-ai." You'd think there would be considering the relatively archaic term "shonen-ai," but nope. Though in my experience, a great deal of the audience that reads yuri is the same as the yaoi-reading audience: mostly girls.

Of course, the trouble is that there is pretty much no way to quickly and easily distinguish between the "softcore" stuff and the "hardcore" stuff. The cover artwork look extremely similar between one and the other, which is how so many teenage girls get away with reading this stuff right under their parents' noses.

That is the real reason why there is plenty of fully explicit male/male sex comics available at regular chain bookstores but not male/female ones. I don't even think there are any publishers releasing "standard" porn manga anymore since well, it's really obvious from the covers that they're porn. True, the bona fide yaoi stuff does come shrinkwrapped, but there is ALWAYS at least one opened copy courtesy of the "manga cows" sitting in the aisles.

The last nail in the coffin is that most yuri "series" are very short and don't allow for any buzz to build up around them before they're over.

The term for the more common, less explicit romance-centric material is "BL" or "boy's love." They used to call it "shonen-ai" but now they call it "boy's love" even though the latter is pretty much a straight up translation of the former. The hardcore fujoshi in America already go by this terminology anyway, and there is a tangible difference between the two, so it'd be beneficial if fans knew the difference.

You're both missing the real money-maker, the merchandising and peripheral productions market.

Please go here for an accurate set of definitions:
http://www.aestheticism.com/visitors/reference/jpnse_def/index.htm

lol Wait, was there really more to that Alexie MacPherson fanfic? I wanna read it!

You people must not know about Gear Second Luffy and beyond... Naruto would not stand a chance against a fully-fed , ticked off Luffy.

My then 12 yr old was the one who wanted Fake & Gravitation so she actually got me into it. Yaoi is basically Harlequin Romance with 2 guys. The attraction is romance without the screechy/sneaky/evil females. I cannot recall any character in yaoi that I've read that rivals that "friend" in Peach Girl who was always after the stuff the lead liked. Yaoi is FANTASY. The boys are beautiful. They lead different lives from the masses. Even if they have problems, it's still different, like the old image people had in the 30's & 40's that Hollywood movie stars were different, rarified creatures from the rest of us.

As for the gay men that are a bit more "manly," well, they're not really gay. They're bisexual (if you want to call them that), and most of the time they only got with this one guy because (as pointed out above) he's more or less a woman anyway.

You can't be serious. That's a joke that I am just not getting right?

Not all homosexuals feel the need to dress in womens clothing, nor do they feel they are a women trapped in a mans body. They fully believe and understand that they are men, and they fully realize that they are attracted only to other men. And no I am not talking about confused little boys, I am talking about full blown gay. No pun intended.

What your saying here is basically that the only real gay men in the world are those whom are transgendered(psychologically), and that's just not the case.